Catherine Zack is on a mission to put the tools of immediate stress relief in as many hands as possible. A former corporate litigator turned meditation teacher and mindfulness coach, Catherine helps people create personal “stress culture revolutions” to redefine the way they pursue success, embody leadership, and access something even better than work/life balance: wholeness.
Connect with Catherine Zack:
- Website: https://www.catherinezack.com/
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-Leadership Resources: https://linktr.ee/McMillionLeadership
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- Discount Code: JMCMILLION
My Mission: I will end toxic leadership practices by equipping leaders with transformational leadership skills.
Together, we will impact 1 MILLION lives!!!
Every day is a gift, don't waste yours!
Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
Catherine Zack is on a mission to put the tools of immediate stress relief in as many hands as possible. A former corporate litigator turned meditation teacher and mindfulness coach, Catherine helps people create personal “stress culture revolutions” to redefine the way they pursue success, embody leadership, and access something even better than work/life balance: wholeness.
Connect with Catherine Zack:
- Website: https://www.catherinezack.com/
✅ SHARE THIS PODCAST
✅ GIVE A 5-STAR REVIEW
✅ SUPPORT
-Leadership Resources: https://linktr.ee/McMillionLeadership
-Resilence-Based Leadership Program: https://resiliencebuildingleader.com/
- Discount Code: JMCMILLION
My Mission: I will end toxic leadership practices by equipping leaders with transformational leadership skills.
Together, we will impact 1 MILLION lives!!!
Every day is a gift, don't waste yours!
Joshua K. McMillion | Founder MLC
You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader what I like to call a pal. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership. Welcome back to Tells the Leadership podcast. I'm your host, Josh McMillian, an active duty Army officer, leadership coach and founder of McMillian Leadership Coaching. I'm on a mission to create better leaders what I like to call a purposeful, accountable leader. My vision is to impact one million lives in the next 10 years in the civilian and military workspace by sharing transformational stories and skills.
Speaker 1:On today's episode, I'm going to be sharing a transformational leaders story Catherine's act. Catherine is on a mission to put the tools of immediate stress relief in as many hands as possible. A former corporate litigator turned meditation teacher and mindfulness coach, Catherine helps people create their own personal stress culture revolutions to redefine the way they pursue success, embody leadership and access something even better than work life balance, and that is wholeness. Let's go ahead and bring on Catherine. Catherine, welcome to the Tells the Leadership podcast. I'm humbled to have you on. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, it's so lovely to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm excited to chat with you today and be here with your audience as well, get to meet them. I feel like, even though we do everything virtually, it does feel like that connection crosses the airwaves. So I love to be in conversation with you and with all of your listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can already tell the conversation that we had beforehand, like going on a phone conversation and then now you have a very calm voice. So I think that that's going to be a refreshing, because most of the people that I have one you know tells the leadership podcast have a very militaristic tone about them. I don't know how I come off, but just hearing you talk I think it's going to be a refreshing tone. Maybe you could start off with providing just an overview to our listeners of who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Just a small question Just a tiny question.
Speaker 2:That's so good, and thank you for what you said about my voice. I've also been told that I put people to sleep with my voice, and so you know what I'm going to count that as a success. If anyone falls asleep, you probably needed some rest. So there we go, and that's a good segue into, I guess, who I am and what I do in this world. I am a meditation teacher and a stress coach and a relaxation guide, and I came into this work not because I myself am a naturally calm, patient, relaxed person. Quite the opposite. I actually came into this work as a second career. I started my professional life as a corporate litigator so you know you should be glad that you're not hearing my lawyer voice, because that's a scary one for sure and I left corporate law nine years ago really to solve my own stress problem and then, by way of doing that, started to teach and share this work with others and haven't looked back since.
Speaker 1:So there's going to be so much goodness, I think, to get into that journey of how you went from being a corporate lawyer into mindfulness coaching and then kind of where you are right now. But I always love starting off the conversation with the same, just simple definition, because we all have different definitions of leadership. But I want to hear what is Catherine's definition of leadership? How do you define it?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. Another small question. I believe that everyone is a leader, and I think many of us don't claim that for ourselves, but it's true. I think you are a leader anytime you walk into a room, anytime you share space with others, and it's not just what you say, it's how you make people feel, it's the space that you create Every time we interact with others. We have the ability to show up as a leader, to show up and just change the air in the room. I mean, we know what that feels like. I think about this a lot in the context of my work, which is working with individuals and talking about their own stress levels and their own nervous systems. I always say every collective has a nervous system, like your office has an organizational nervous system, your family does, your neighborhood, your community, and so just by showing up in those spaces and shifting our energy with our mere presence, that to me is like the essence of leadership.
Speaker 1:You said something that I already, I already really like, and it's the change, the air. So leaders have the ability to change the air and it's so true If you've ever and I know you're coming from the corporate world, corporate legal there's definitely a different atmosphere when you're at work versus like being in the military probably the same, you have a different heavy atmosphere. But if you go into for example, I just went out, probably a couple of months ago to one of my vendors that I work for in my current program and they were on the West Coast, very creative, very intuitive company, totally different vibe within the work. But it all comes down to the leader and the culture that they set within that organization. What type of environment do you want to establish within your life, which I think is important, because you said another amazing thing and I love your definition of leadership is that we are all leaders and you're a leader of yourself first, and that's that's a very important note. So already, starting off with some really good nuggets, I love it.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Yeah, and I think you know we've talked about this in our earlier conversations. We're both parents and I think that's such a great example of like the essence of leadership, because it's not just about what you say, right? And you know that, being a parent, your kids know when you are saying one thing and you mean another, like they just see through all of it, and I think we all have that ability.
Speaker 2:We just sometimes lose it as we get older, but it still matters, it still counts. Your actions have to match what you're saying, and I think that's also a big part of leadership.
Speaker 1:Deeds and words. For a long time I always said deeds not words, but you have to be able to align deeds and words. And just a quick story, because you're so true with parents. We're trying to break the habit of having my children eat in front of the TV, so they eat in the dining room. Well then, yesterday I caught myself breaking the rule. I was like oh.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to go eat in front of the TV with my kids and it'll be okay. And then my, my daughter, which is, you know, very cerebral and intelligent young lady, just did you break in the rule? I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, you're right, I am breaking the rule.
Speaker 2:That's right. Oh my gosh, that makes me think of all the things. Like we could have an whole episode on parenting and screams.
Speaker 2:I love that. Another thing it makes me think of is, like leaders also need to know you know. You need to know what the rules are and when and how to break them, and also to own when you're not in alignment with breaking them at the right times. And then the other thing that this makes me really think about when it comes to the definition of leadership and what is the leader and how do we lead, it's it's like the word I would use to describe what I said before is embodiment, like there has, it's like you know, integrated through your whole being.
Speaker 2:So it is your deeds, it is your words, it is your thoughts. Even I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:So that kind of reminded me of a whole concept when I was going through my leadership coaching, but I didn't really understand beforehand. We always have a leadership philosophy. Whenever we go into an organization, you want to have a leadership philosophy, but most of the times I feel that leaders nowadays that are leading organizations or large teams, that leadership philosophy is just words on the paper. It doesn't mean anything. So we were going through an exercise with JR flatter and I use it a lot in the podcast and the coaching. It's called a house of leadership.
Speaker 1:So what is your metaphorical house of leadership? What's the base foundation that you lead yourself and others with? What are your four walls of how you would build that leadership? What are the pillars and the components, the core values that you hold Near and dear to you, and then the roof of that. And if you can build your house of leadership and it's right on the right foundation, it kind of goes to what you were just saying. When you're when you're when you're placed in an ethical or a moral issue of where, hey, should I go buy the book on this or should I follow my gut, then when you have your core values, you know who you are. You can do that much easier. Versus, if you don't know who you are truly, who you are, you kind of hesitate. I believe in those in those moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love, I love everything you're saying and it's like it's so. Both and we absolutely need to understand like what our Theoretical take on things is. But if we only live in that space, we're not really leading.
Speaker 2:It's again like parenting I use parenting as a metaphor for so much, because it's like nothing is theoretical. You got your, you're living, you know. It's like it has to be happening in real time. These lessons don't just live on like a placard on your wall. It's like it comes to every decision-making moment, even as simple and mundane. It's like where are we eating dinner tonight? Kids? That's the other thing. Oh no, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, I was gonna say I could see some of the art on the background too. Usually I have some of my daughter's art back there, but yeah, that it's so. Yeah, what were you gonna say? I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I don't remember, but it wasn't that important. It'll come back to me, something about yeah, it'll come, it'll come. You know it's, it's not theoretical, it's got to be lived. And oh, this is so. This is like to kind of pull all the the threads were weaving together back into the same tapestry, like Some people look on the outside at the decisions that I've made in my career like corporate litigator, you know Very much beginning my professional life in this adversarial, high stress, fast-paced, high stakes environment and then like leaving to teach meditation.
Speaker 2:I mean, those things seem quite different, but there's so many parallel. There's so many roots of my work now that come from my training as a lawyer and one of the biggest things that you move, one of the biggest distinguishing Factors of how things are organized as a lawyer and in law school is that you learn substantive law, like property law, tort law, contract law, and then you learn procedural law, like civil procedure. How do you take this law through a civil litigation, litigation, criminal procedure? How does that work? And it's just, it's always both. You need to know the meat of what it is and then you need to know the how of how it comes to life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we, we haven't even got like 10 minutes in this episode. I haven't got any of the questions I want to ask you. But then that also reminds me of another thing. So my definition of leadership is to inspire, and I think that it takes four key Characteristics you have to be proficient, you have to have a strong reputation, you have to produce output so pro and I'm a pro at creating acronyms and you'll learn this about the catheter and I'm really good at just making acronyms but I think part of being proficient and what you just said is understanding the tools that you have at your disposal and then how to maneuver those tools in real life, and that that is where the art and the science of leadership come together.
Speaker 1:How do you take those tools and then how do you maneuver them to achieve the desired effects in either your life and the Organization, the team that you leave, and that is where I believe separates Ordinary from extraordinary. It's that little bit extra, how John Maxwell always says, just that extra little bit of effort of taking the tool, the practical Academic knowledge, and then applying it to the real world, but not applying it by the book, applying it to your situation, and that takes I think that takes courage to do I love that.
Speaker 2:I love your acronyms. I want to learn them all. That's so helpful. It's such a good teaching tool. It's so nice to be able to distill something down into the Rememorable essence of the thing. That's great.
Speaker 1:I love how. How will you put that? Because I like to think that I'm an infantryman, so I follow the rule of kiss. Keep it simple, stupid. So if I can remember it, everyone else will write.
Speaker 2:So so much there, that's so good yes.
Speaker 1:Walk me on your journey, because what I want to know, what inspired you to go into corporate law? And there's some lessons I believe that can be learned there, especially then the pivot of why you decided to leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know my I've said this before and so far I'll stick to it because it remains. The truth for me is that I was Assure about my decision to go to law school and to become a lawyer, as I was in my decision to leave. But I would say the surety of those decisions came from two different sources. And my decision to go to law school was very much driven by a Kind of natural set of talents and proclivity toward the ability to do this kind of work. I mean, we naturally kind of navigate and are guided towards things that we can do. We're good at you know, we can make it work.
Speaker 2:But that's not the only criteria. I was like choosing your work in the world, right, we forget that and I so. I think I had like a natural ability. And then, you know, as we grow up, we start to receive these signs of external validation and you know, walking the very straight and narrow linear path of always doing the next right thing that took me to law school and to big law, was like just, I mean, all the road signs I had were the nods of approval and oh, that's very good, good job and that's very impressive, and how six. I mean, you just pick up these signs that you're doing the right thing in other people's eyes. And so I felt sure that I was making the right decisions. Everyone around me was. But then my decision to leave was so sure, but it came from a totally inside place. I mean you better believe it that when I told my parents I told them you know, partners, I worked for my colleagues like a Half, one half of the reaction was like are you kidding me?
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:So I, better you know, have known from the inside out that that was the right decision for me, because half the people around me thought I was nuts, you know how did you Realize that that was the right decision for you?
Speaker 1:because that that's a hard decision and I put myself in some of my friend's shoes that I thought was, you know, going to go well above me in my military career. But they chose. They chose to get out. And the similar path is that when we walk this linear path you know, being in military, there's a, there's a rank structure to it. There's a very linear path for us to be successful. But when we deviate from that, like you just said, people like, why are you doing that? And I have a buddy of mine right now. He, he turned down CSL for lieutenant colonel, which essentially means he ended his career. You know, 20, 22 years in. He ended his career because he chose to take a job that he was deeply passionate about, versus going and doing a job that he could have done. But his, you know, his he has no alignment there between the head and the heart and that takes that takes courage. How, how did you work through that?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I have to be, I have to put myself back in those shoes, which are very different shoes than the ones I wear now. I was, I had, I knew my husband, we were just kind of getting together. At this juncture. I was in my late twenties, I didn't have children, Like I was making that decision for me and I didn't have this like larger kind of decision making structure that I have now, almost 10 years later, which is like needing to make decisions that are the best for not only me but my family. So I just, to kind of it, didn't feel as courageous to me then because it was just me, you know. It was like I could do this and so that's like some context, I feel like. But how did I get to that place of knowing?
Speaker 2:There's this wonderful book and I am such a student as much as I am a teacher and I learned so much from books and there's this beautiful book.
Speaker 2:It's written by this man named Parker Palmer and he's an educator and he's an activist and he's a leader and he's in his eighties, which, like I just love I really love learning from people who have decades of experience and wisdom to share with me, and this book is called Let your Life Speak, and the premise of this book and it comes from a philosophy that I think is pretty ingrained in Quakerism, which is his faith background and it's like we go around telling our life what we think it should be right.
Speaker 2:We're like this is what I want out of this experience, this is what I think it will look like in the end, and this is what I this, you know, I'm good at. I'm good at you know liberal arts, history and and arguing I should be a lawyer right. Like we're telling our life how it should come out. And letting your life speak requires listening to what your life actually wants from you, and the distilled essence of that he talks about is your vocation. It's a calling. This is from the Latin root word that means to call, and so in order to live a life and make choices that align with your vocation and not like an external definition of success, you have to listen to yourself and get really quiet and spend a long time listening, and that was really what I was doing in the years leading up to leaving was listening.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I I'm kind of reflecting on you know, I think we all have our own religious backgrounds, right, and I never try to push mine on anyone. But I was attending a church this weekend and they broke down. You know the passage of John, chapter three. Yeah, it took it through verse one through 18. But what you just said I think summed it up beautifully is that that whole passage is about being born again. You can be born again in your life and reinvent yourself. The labels that other people give you aren't necessarily the labels that have to define you for the rest of your life. You can follow your passion, you can follow your purpose, and that's so true. What you just said is the secret to that and and I'm starting to discover that now is is slowly silencing your mind and spending time to think, and that's that's hard to do. It's hard to sit down and to journal and to think through a complex problem, but when you can do that, it just flows. It just flows out of you.
Speaker 2:Yes and it's. I was just thinking about what you were saying about being reborn and coming back to our earlier kind of nods, to this idea of like a straight, linear path. I mean, we are so, oh, we are dear, tender, fragile human beings who also have a lot of arrogance and thinking that, even though the entire natural world around us shows us that we exist in cycles, that growth is not linear. I mean, I'm looking outside my window right now, we have a snowstorm coming later today and yet the buds, the earliest buds of spring, are shooting up. It's like this cycles are all around us and we think, oh, that's not for me, I can just go straight forward really fast for the rest of my life on this one track.
Speaker 2:You know, come on.
Speaker 1:And then burnout. If you do that, it leads to burnout. I've seen so many peers of mine that just go nonstop, you know, a hundred miles an hour and then 20 years in, yeah, they're successful, but they have no balance in their life. And I guess balance for me is I don't necessarily like the word balance because I believe that we yeah, okay, perfect, Because we're chasing that moment in time and it only comes in a fleeting.
Speaker 1:But if you can chase harmony and just be okay and acceptance of where you are within your life, maybe you need to spend more time with your family, Maybe you have to spend more time at work to get through that season, which what you just said. I feel like we're on the same wavelength, which I love, but and I'm also kind of depressed that I wish I had snow it's actually a nice spring day here, but I think that that is that is the key is that you have to be okay with the changing of seasons and not trying to force a plan, Because when we, when we, fight the plan, we lose the battle. And it's the same when we go into me putting my military hat on. I can create the perfect plan in the world, but once I get into contact with with the enemy, life it's going to change and I have to be okay to allow that to change and not try to force it, Because when you force it then it just leads to burnout.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love. I mean. My working definition of burnout is like continually asking yourself to give what you no longer have left to give Like you.
Speaker 2:Just you can. You know you're running on fumes, right, running on fumes. And then we're we take better care of our cars, right, we allow ourselves to run on fumes, and then we, like, get shocked when we are, we break down, you know, when we're on the side of the road, we can't go any further. And balance, oh my goodness. I mean, my podcast is called beyond balance and it's really came from this place of like. Yes, it's this ever elusive myth we're always chasing that puts so much pressure on us that we'll never get to. And I love what you said harmony For me, I think the word I use that lies beyond balance is wholeness.
Speaker 1:All right, team, let's take a quick break from this podcast and I want to personally invite you to our private Facebook community that I call purposeful accountable leaders, or pals and pals is a community dedicated to inspiring and developing servant leaders by sharing transformational stories and skills Exactly what tells the leadership is all about. My goal is to build a community of like-minded leaders that can share lessons, learn, ask questions and celebrate wins when it happens. And my mission in life is clear I will end toxic leadership by sharing transformational stories and skills, and you will find countless transformational leaders in this group. Many of them I have had the honor to serve with in the military. If you want to find a community that can help you grow both personally and professionally, we would love to have you. You can simply search purposeful accountable leaders on Facebook or click the leadership resources tab in the show notes to join. I am looking forward to seeing you guys and continuing to grow together on our leadership journey. Back to the podcast. Holiness, I like that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah and balance. To me it's very adversarial. If you're trying to find balance, you've got the two sides of the scale and you're putting some things over here and some things over here, and when you separate out the elements of your life, like they're constantly going to be at war and also not everything can be weighed and numbered and put on a spreadsheet or tracked with an app in terms of metrics, and I think balance leaves all of that texture and nuance of a whole life out of it.
Speaker 1:And that leads to a question that I wrote down that I've been wanting to ask you is how do you have such a deep level of acceptance and what you just said, to understanding that everything in life can't be measured? How did you develop that mindset? Because I'm thinking of you pre where you are now, but wearing a lawyer hat, knowing a lot of the lawyers that I've had and that's I don't know, maybe you weren't like that before, but I'm assuming that was a major mindset change From most of the lawyers I know of where you are now with. I don't know if you've ever read the book David Hawkins, the level of consciousness.
Speaker 1:I think you're much higher on that map of consciousness versus probably where you were with the lawyer, and how did you kind of develop that deep level of acceptance?
Speaker 2:That's really sweet. I mean, of course, like catch me in a moment with both of my kids melting down. Yeah, I'm like nope, never mind. And my husband always does that Like we'll all be freaking out and he'll be like gosh, I really wish we knew a stress expert right about now. And I'm like touche, honey, touche, yeah. So, and that's the other thing too is I always have to share, and I do this with my clients and my students and on my podcast, like I'm never going to pretend like I have any of this figured out, I just share from a place of integration. That's a few steps further down my own path and that's what I offer. But you know, again I'm coming back to books that helped me understand this journey, and I just finished this wonderful book Falling Upward Spirituality for the Two Haves of Life. Have you read this? Did we talk about this?
Speaker 1:It is on my, so I'm just like you, but I'm a slow reader. As I have a, I want to read so many books a year, but I do it so slowly that I like to journal through it. That is on my books for this year that I want to read.
Speaker 2:It's so good and Richard Rohr talks about in that book, that there are two halves of life and we are very much a first half of life culture and that's where things line up like good, bad, right or wrong metrics, trackable spreadsheet, all that kind of like you win or you lose, and we need that. It's an organizing principle for creating a life, building a life. He calls that the foundation of life, but he says so many of us don't realize that there's the whole rest of the house to build. And so if we allow ourselves to get to the further journey of life, which is where we have an understanding that things are not so black and white that we could appreciate that growth and change could look like the cyclicality of seasons and not like just getting further up the ladder, like that second half of life stuff. And it can be chronological.
Speaker 2:It's not that way for everyone. Some people never get there. And it's not that you leave behind the first half of life stuff, you just take it with you as you move. So both can be true. I mean like first half of life stuff is great. It's like OK, taxes are due this day. These are the rules. Stop it red, go on green. Of course we need that stuff.
Speaker 1:So that made me think of, kind of putting it through a military lens. Every operation you ever go on, there's a decisive point. It's a moment in time of where you have either gained enough combat power on the objective or you have enough overwhelming force that the end state is certain. And once that decisive point is achieved, then effectively you've won that battle. And what you just said I don't think I've ever thought of it like that is that we are always focused on the first half of our life, but there's a decisive point there and I think we always I guess it's labeled now as what is it? The midlife crisis that everyone kind of goes through.
Speaker 1:I think that's the decisive point in people's lives is being able to shift from that first half of life being focused on metrics. Where did I get my graduate degree? Where do I go to work next? How much do I make? Do I have all the fancy cars? Do I have all these things that society says that I need to be happy? And then you find yourself in that decisive point in your life I'm not happy, maybe I have those things, and then you have to have a deep level of acceptance, kind of going into the second half. I never thought about that until you just said that that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, when you get to Richard Rohr's book, when you get there later this year, you'll see it and let me know, because it's just and it's. David White is another great writer who talks about this stuff so many, but for me too, and this comes back to your first question of like. So how did you make that mindset shift? I mean it was always evolving. I remember writing down like little scratch notes to myself in that year leading up to this decision to leave, and it took about a year of planning. And all of that because you know that's the first half of my stuff, how to figure out those logistics.
Speaker 2:I remember, like writing down lines from the Sufi poet Rumi, 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, my notebook that had my letterhead like my name and my fancy law firm on it, like I would just be scratch writing these notes to myself, and one of them is out beyond right doing and wrong doing. There is a field I'll meet you there, and it's just this. It's another encapsulation of this idea that, yes, there is this binary world in some ways, where there's rules and you can break them or you can not. You know, or you could follow them, but there's so much more, and so I think I always had. I always had both tracks going.
Speaker 2:It was just what was I feeding more at the time? And to get to law school and to get through the bar and to get into my law firm, I was very much feeding that kind of like the mindset that kept me right in that yep, check the next right box, yep, achieve the next thing, collect the next line for your resume. And I was also feeding the other. You know part of me too. It just that balance shifted. My nourishment started coming more from that other you know non-linear, non-binary place. At a certain point, so walk me through.
Speaker 1:You know, the moment you decided to take a chance. You know, as one of my mentors, jair Flatter, would say, jump off the 10 meter tower and go into kind of this entrepreneurial space. How did you discover your passion and your purpose? When was that spark that this is it.
Speaker 2:I don't think it was a slow burn and that's kind of along the lines of what I was saying. The two tracks were always playing out for me. So when I was a kid, when I was in high school and this is like the late 90s, you know, and the world looked different but I hated gym class and so my teacher, the gym teacher, like remember, they used to wheel out you might be younger than that, but used to wheel out TVs on these like metal frames.
Speaker 1:I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:They were like the big boxy TVs right and go from, like the history room to the gym room, and so she wheeled that in and they put on a yoga VHS tape and so if we didn't want to play dodgeball we could go and do this video. And so I kind of found the practice of yoga there and it was something that I kept going all through college and when I got to law school I really it was like my lifeline. It was the way I stayed sane and kept myself. You know it found that the wholeness at that time I probably would have called it balanced to not burn out.
Speaker 2:And then you know, the meditation piece of it is like, meditation is paying attention, right, it's paying attention and sitting in that space of inquiry and self understanding. And it's funny, that's the Socratic method, right? Socrates said know thyself, and that's how we teach law. School is asking questions. So I've always cared about the questions and I've always been parallel tracking these two parts of me. But I think at some point, the kind of I guess the spark, if there was one, was this moment, about three years into practicing law, where, like, I had a case that settled, I had a bad breakup, and these are the like.
Speaker 2:You gotta go through these thresholds to kind of get to that decision point. You know, stuff needs to fall, things need to fall apart, as Pema Chodron says, like, and I just looked up for the first time because my nose was so glued to the paper and the grindstone. I just looked up and I looked around and I was like, oh, I don't know if I want this for me and I didn't. And this is the thing about listening to your life is that so often the answers are going to annoy you, they're going to frustrate you, you're going to be like are you kidding me. I have this job security, I had make all this money, I have these great degrees. Everyone's so proud of me and this is what my life is telling me that I don't belong here, that the world actually didn't need me to be another corporate litigator. What now? Like that was not what I wanted to hear. Wow.
Speaker 1:On the one hand, that's such an amazing story though, so walk me through kind of you know, some of the most impactful lessons that you took from being a corporate litigator into kind of pursuing this space of being a mindful coach. What lessons were you able to pull upon that helped you through challenging times?
Speaker 2:Well, I think this comes back to the beginning of our conversation about leadership and how it's not just theoretical. Like I left my firm, I was living in Washington DC.
Speaker 2:I moved to Washington DC from Philadelphia to work at the slough firm and I stayed in Washington DC when I left and began teaching meditation and restorative yoga in Washington DC, which is like kind of like selling hot dogs at the baseball stadium right Like everyone, is stressed Everyone was a corporate litigator or worked on the hill or worked in the military like or worked for the state department or I mean this is like a high stress, fast-paced, high stakes city and so to start offering work that gave people relief and respite and restoration from that like hard edge of stress was just such a natural progression.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like this vocational work of just creating and holding space for myself and others to be. You know, that kind of it just started flowing and I think a lot of it had to do with where I was and how people could relate to my story. In a town like DC, I had people walk in off the streets oh, you're the lawyer, you're the lawyer, you get this. You know. You get what it feels like to have a fire drill land on your desk on a Friday at 5 pm and have it blow up your whole weekend.
Speaker 1:No, oh, that's happened so many times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I think that it just it made my life or made my work so much richer. My own lived experience and this is what I always say, not like I'm claiming any kind of wisdom for myself, but like information or knowledge, is great, but it's not until you pair it with experience that you can ever alchemize that into wisdom you know, or leadership or whatever you wanna call it. Something to share.
Speaker 1:Tell me things there. And there was one thing that you said. So Aristotle is a great quote that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. It all starts with us. We have to know who we are. But then you just talked about something.
Speaker 1:I call it the rule of traction, and this is so oftentimes people want to avoid creating resistance within their life. Resistance is required for change, because when we can create resistance, what does it do? It creates traction. Interaction is required for momentum. But when we gain momentum exactly what you were doing in DC with all of these individuals it turned into a ripple effect of where you had enough momentum gained.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter what kind of obstacle that you're going to encounter. In the military, there's four types of obstacles Block, turn, fix or disrupt. Three of those types are easily maneuvered around and that is the key to gain momentum. So life, when it does create more friction in your life, you can just easily blow through that, and I think that's a beautiful example of what you just said. When you can connect your passion and your purpose in life, people will naturally just gravitate towards you.
Speaker 1:But be okay in that space of creating traction and resistance in your life, because that is where the experience and that was another amazing thing you said the experience and the education come from. Maybe you are educated in something. Well, you have to go through that experience to truly understand it. You can teach me something and then I can read it, but I have to go do it. I have to actually be able to apply it. In the military we have it. It's called crawl, walk, run, crawl, show me walk, let me do it, run, let me do it and fail, because then I'll learn. So when I actually need to do that thing, I won't fail. Then that's an amazing example.
Speaker 2:I love everything you're teaching me about the military. This is fascinating for me too. Thank you, it's so good. I love learning, so so good. Yeah, I love that. You call it like traction or friction. I think of tension as well. Like that you know, and that is such a necessary part of like that creative tension to be able to kind of move through something and get to wherever you're going next. Yeah, that's necessary, but it's so uncomfortable. I mean, you don't like it at all.
Speaker 1:I had a guest on Jason Van Camp. He's the author of I'm Probably Gonna Totally Mess this Up, I think Deliberate Discomfort I'll have to look it up and just make sure but he talks about the concept that when we embrace that place of being uncomfortable, that is where we truly grow. And it's so key is that people will seek out all these endurance races and these uncomfortable situations, because that's where we grow. And the same is true in life. Whatever you want to achieve in, if you want to achieve success, you have to be able to put yourself in those points of where friction's naturally going to occur, because that's where the growth happens.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So walk me through where you are currently. Right now, what is your mission?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm on a mission to put the tools of immediate stress relief in as many hands as possible. That's the first part of the mission, because here's the thing about stress it is a real physiological experience we're having in our bodies. It impacts our health, our wellbeing, our sense of self, our decisions. It sucks right. Chronic and unmanaged, unminigated acute stress is killing us as a society. So it's like to put those tools in people's hands is like the first part of the mission. And then the second part is okay, once we get back to like a reclamation of our optimal zone of homeostasis and our nervous systems, like then the real work can start. And for me, the second part of that is not only helping people deal with their stress, but helping people start their own mini stress culture revolutions, which is really like. I think that I always knew I left big law because the high stress was getting to me. But it wasn't just that, it was the culture created around glorifying stress and the characteristics of fight, fight or freeze.
Speaker 2:I'm talking hustle culture. I'm talking always rushing. I'm talking grit your teeth and work harder. Sleep when you're dead, not when you're done. I mean, this is like where so much lives. And so I meet people at the point of stress, because we're all talking about it, we all know what it is, and so for me, it's like I think about like living a life of high stress and living in stress culture and subscribing to it in all of your daily doings feels like you're living in like this really cramped room and then being able to work with your stress, and the tool that I use for that is meditation and mindfulness. That's like the door wedge right it just like wedges the door of this cramped stress room open enough to see that everything is outside right, everything. And so, yeah, it's a very kind of easy, mild, low key mission that I'm on. That's what I'm on, thank you.
Speaker 1:All right team. Let's take a quick break from the podcast episode and I want to share a leadership tool or resource with you, and that is resiliency based leadership program. The RBLP's vision is to create a worldwide community of practice committed to building and leading resilient teams. There's three different types of certifications that they focus on, and that is front line supervisors, middle managers or senior leaders. So why do we need to build and lead resilient teams? Resilient teams are the key to individual and organizational growth, regardless of being in a military or in the civilian workforce. Building collective resilience teams exponentially increases our abilities to overcome adversity, adapt and then grow, and then bottom line up front. Resilient teams are just stronger together. That's a fact. This is something that I am certified in and that I truly believe in.
Speaker 1:The best part is it's probably a hundred percent free to you. So if you're in the military and you're active duty, you have up to $4,000 a year through the Army Creditorial Assistance Program to pay for these types of certifications. That will help you in your military career, but also when you transition out of the military. And if you work in a civilian organization, you have direct education benefits or tuition assistance that can help cover the cost to this. So here is some facts for you guys. 99% of the people that go through this recommended to other people. 89% of the people believe, after completing this course, that they will be better compensated and have better career longevity along the way. 97% are more confident after completing this and their leadership abilities, which ultimately leads to better mission command or autonomy within the workforce. And this one is the most important 96% of people believe that it will increase trust within the organization.
Speaker 1:So if you want to learn more, you can go into the show notes or click the link resilientbuildingleadercom and learn everything you need to know about the RBELP vision and mission and how to get started. And if you want to get started, use the discount code J-M-C-M-I-L-L-I-O-N no spaces or all caps, and this will be something that gives you an additional discount. And, yes, I do get compensated for this, but this is something that I genuinely believe in and is aligned with my core values and my mission of building more purposeful, accountable leaders. Let's go back to the podcast. Well, it's an inspiring mission. Going back to my definition of leadership and just creating a little bit of light in someone's life to inspire them enough to go seek change. And could you walk me through what is hustle culture like? How you define it? I think the stress culture.
Speaker 2:So this is like what I'm working on right now is trying to kind of put language to all of this. But the way I see it is that when we're in fight, flight or freeze right, like think of actually what's happening, like we go faster, we lift more, we go, we push harder, like all of these things are survival mechanisms. But when so many of us are stuck in a chronic state of stress, then all of these characteristics get solidified and glorified into values and norms. So we expect to be rushing right, we expect to be multitasking, we expect to be always available, we expect to always be able to make the Herculean effort required to like put out the fire, even if it's not required. And it means that a lot of us are burnout and going really fast and juggling a ton of balls and feeling like there is no other way. But our stress response is a survival mechanism and that means that a lot of us are living in survival mode.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I mean we're talking mid-March. Right now it's the three year anniversary of a lot of us getting flipped into survival mode and I think a lot of us are still carrying a lot of that chronic stress around, not processing it. It's still a heavy moment and the thing about stress is that it's not all bad and you can't make it go away. We need stress right, in the right amounts, at the right times in the right instances. You know this in the military right. But we also need to know how to override unnecessary stress responses, how to heal from the physiological effects of stress in our bodies and, honestly, stress is my sneaky way into having any kind of conversations about a spiritual life. Yeah, because we're comfortable talking about it and really we know. When we're walking around in stress mode and stress culture and stress state, everything feels clenched. It feels like we're holding our breath all the time. It feels like there's no space to actually then explore what it would mean to simply be present to this one life.
Speaker 1:There's something. I don't know if you've ever read the book Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, but there's a whole chapter devoted to kind of like our body as a chemical drug store in a way. So cortisol, for example. Cortisol is healthy in short bursts because it basically spikes adrenaline. Fight or flight Are we going to choose to fight or fight or flight in a stressful situation? But we also have dopamine, you know, chasing goals.
Speaker 1:Serotonin, which is a leadership, I believe, chemical, feeling good about doing things for other people, being a servant leader, and then oxytocin, which is kind of like the love chemical.
Speaker 1:But we have to be able to create that blend within our life because nowadays, I think and it's so true, like in American society, Western culture in general, we're put more and more and more and more stressful situation, and I was writing a blog article yesterday I think it's almost 4,000 ad advertisements that the average person encounters in a single day, so not including all the different stressors that you have in work within your family.
Speaker 1:Now you have all these outside influences that are trying to create that scarcity mentality. You need to get this, you need to get that, you need to get this, and then we have this cortisol. That's a slow drip, slow drip, slow drip, and I truly believe and that's one of my missions is to end toxic leadership and try to end that cortisol line, because cortisol will kill. If you do not take that out of your life, that will literally create high blood pressure, It'll create a heart attack, diabetes, all these different things. It leads to a deterioration of your health. So you have to be able to control that and that was very powerful and I wanted to make sure that I went back and I highlighted that.
Speaker 2:I love that, and that's the shorthand, that's my shorthand for stresses killing us and it might also be keeping us from living our lives. Yeah, right, and that's, I think, the crux of it.
Speaker 1:So why is mindfulness so important to leaders? And then, what is just one simple exercise, someone listening to a transformational leader like you that can apply it and lower stress in their lives.
Speaker 2:Today, after listening to this, John Kabat-Zinn has a great definition of mindfulness. He's like the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, one of the kind of like arbiters of that work over the last several decades. And he so this is my spin on what he says Mindfulness is simply paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, to the present moment, without the filter of good, bad, right or wrong judgment, story anything. It's relating to life as it is. And so, from the perspective of managing stress, when we practice mindfulness, it allows us to learn to be with something like right on that edge of discomfort, start needing to pounce right every single time. And so, when it comes to leadership, what a quality right to be able to be in this moment. What would that mean for any of us as people, as leaders? Does that mean we can listen? Does that mean that we can actually be where we say we are, instead of ordering groceries on our phone while we're in the meeting, you know? Does that mean that we could offer them like the deepest gift that we have to give in this lifetime, which is our attention, you know, simply being with the people we're with, doing what we're doing. So I think it's key for leaders, for all of us, for stress for any of it, for not missing this life.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's something that I'm always trying to demystify meditation of mindfulness in my work, because it's not like learning Latin or algebra. That's a good news, right, it's a remembering of our natural state. You know this. You have kids. Our kids come in, utterly present, right, utterly aware, captive, wide-eyed. That's who we are, right, that's who we are, and so it's a way to return. Let me think what's the simplest? Oh, the simplest practice, I know, is a hand to the heart, right, and then you can feel the rise and the fall of your chest as you breathe. You can feel the thump, thump, thump of your heart, and if you can add a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and even close the eyes and just take in less of the distractions around you, it can be as simple as that, and there are tools that we have access to. We don't need an app, we don't need notes Like it's this breath and it's this breath, and it could be that one too.
Speaker 1:I love that and I use that almost every day. Like before I'll go into a major meeting or presentation it doesn't matter what it is and this is how you know you care. Like my heart will just get fluttery, like okay, it's time to go. Good stress yeah.
Speaker 1:Time to go, josh. But every time I'll do that, you know, I'll on my own, I'll center myself and I call it stop. So I'll silence my mind, I'll take a tactical pause, observe and then pursue with purpose. But, like, at the end of the day, what I'm doing is I'm silencing my mind and just slowly practicing breathing three seconds in, three seconds out, and I'll do that until I feel my heart rate hit a steady state, and then that's when I know it's time to go execute. So I use that almost every day. And it's funny, if you would have talked to me three years ago, josh would be like nope, we're not doing that, we're going live. But now I'm accepting that Mindfulness is a part of being a great leader, being and you just said it two perfect things limiting distractions and actively listening. If we could just do that. How great the world would be. If we could do those two things.
Speaker 2:Well, so good, so good.
Speaker 1:So walk me through this stress school that you're working on right now and you're also are you working on a book?
Speaker 2:I am yes, I am.
Speaker 2:I'm working on a book about stress and stress culture and remembering our way back to who we really are. And stress school is an eight week mindfulness based stress reduction program that I developed that teaches those basic skills of practicing, paying attention and awareness and layering in the breathing and relaxation response exercises that will help you get into the parasympathetic part of your nervous system the rest, and relax and restore and attend in the friend part of who we are. So it walks you through those skills over the course of eight weeks but also helps you take a really kind of Socratic method, look into how stress is impacting your life, impacting your relationships, the choices you're making, and perhaps give you some information about you know next steps or how you might want to rearrange some things in your life. We can't do it all in eight weeks, but it's a great start and really what it is about is about giving you the tools that you will then will train and practice together and then you know you'll use them for the rest of your life, which is my unsexy promise.
Speaker 2:I love that it's like none of this is like okay, you're done, you graduated, you figured it out, all of your stress is solved. It's like no, we're just getting started.
Speaker 1:So that is the same mindset that I have with leadership is that leadership is a lifelong journey. It's not a destination. We don't achieve it when we take over a position or we get a new title or we have authority. It's continuous, it's throughout our entire lives. I see it in six distinct phases, but I feel that so many people kind of going back to the Western culture right, oh, I'm cured, I'm going to go back, and then, and they just forget everything that they've learned because they've achieved that fulfillment or how you like to say, I believe that that wholeness in that moment, and then they totally forget everything. They went and they get back into the world and then the world does the same thing, just bombard them and hits them with all these different distractions. So walk me through your podcast that you have to. What's the frequency with that? And then, what is the layout? What do you provide to listeners?
Speaker 2:I was. I really wanted to start a podcast when COVID hit, because I missed the experience of getting to sit in a real room with real people and teach and talk through these concepts and create the experience of pause and meditation.
Speaker 2:And it took me a while to get started. I mean, I had one young kid when COVID hit, and then we added another to the mix and finally, when my son my youngest son, who's one and a half now was like five weeks old, I was like I'm starting this podcast and so when he napped I would record the episodes. And so, by design, it's always been me just me on the podcast, using it as a place to have conversations like we're having except for I'm just talking to my people and, for most episodes, bring people through an experience of meditation, a practice of meditation within the episode.
Speaker 2:So that's my way of hitting my mission of putting the tools of immediate stress relief in as many hands as possible. Like, if you listen, you will have an experience of relaxation within the episode, and I structure the content around questions that my people are asking me about stress and stress culture. I just did. I actually had my first guest on and it was my husband and we were doing a part two to an episode that I put out about parenting stress and it had a really big response and so I brought my husband on to have a conversation with me about parenting stress and communication and stress. And so it's really coming from my people asking questions and me being able to answer those questions in a large format, context and always give people just like a tiny bit of peace, I hope, in a moment of the podcast, and I love it so much, it's so good, it's so much fun to be able to do that yeah.
Speaker 1:You remind me so much of. You know a good friend of mine, brianna Greenspan. She's the co-author of the book of affirmations of Miracle Morning and she believes in mindfulness, meditation, but also just affirmations. So what I'm gonna make sure that I do is connect you to, because I see some synergy there and she has such a very impactful mission too, of kind of creating this movement of Miracle Morning savers within schools. So silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing, but teaching it, which is essentially just a mindfulness tool to young children, because if we can equip them early on, then they can go and fight these lives, battles and be able to call BS on something if it's not aligned with where they're trying to grow.
Speaker 2:Right, oh, I love that, thank you. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1:So, as we kind of get towards the end of this podcast, I wanna go back full circle. What would be one of the most impactful pieces of advice that you would give to someone just going in corporate law? Everything that you've learned so far. What could you give someone?
Speaker 2:Pause, Pause. Make sure you're doing that regularly. Rest in the margins, Don't need to fill every space. It's so strange as a lawyer, you track your time down to the like every four minutes or whatever, and it's like this is this. I wrote a post about this one, so I have to put it on the podcast. So the Greeks had two different kinds of time Kronos and Chairas and the software we used to track our time at my law firm was called Kronos.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And Kronos is like. It's like the chronological time, it's the billable hour for the attorney, it's knowing that our meeting is at this time, but Kairas is when it's the time apart from time, it's the pause, it's the stepping outside to pay attention, to look around, to look within, and I think lawyering is a lot of Kronos. So make sure you're accessing that Kairas, that sacred time too, even if it's just five minutes out of a day, your busiest day.
Speaker 1:Rest in the margins. I don't think I've ever heard that and I'm now gonna overuse that all the time. Rest in the margins.
Speaker 2:It's so good. I think I got it from a New York Times article about rest, but it's just like yeah, rest, rest in the margins. Like you know, think about a book, the page of a book. If there were no margins, if there was no blank space, you couldn't gather any of that information, you couldn't take in any of that wisdom on the page.
Speaker 1:It's time for our final show segment that I like to call the Killer Bs. These are the same four questions that I ask every guest on the Tales of Leadership podcast Be brief, be brilliant, be present and be gone. Question one so what do you believe separates a good leader from an extraordinary leader?
Speaker 2:empathy, compassion, kindness, listening.
Speaker 1:A question, too, and you've already provided a lot to this question, but what is one resource that you would recommend to our listeners?
Speaker 2:Taking five minutes out of your day to sit with your hand on your heart and close your eyes and breathe. And if you can't sit, no problem, take yourself for a walk without your devices. Just try starting five minutes a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, question three if you could give yourself, when you were younger, a piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Oh dear one, be kinder, be kinder to yourself. It's all happening, and trust the timing of your life.
Speaker 1:So the final question how can our listeners find you and how can they add value to your mission?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, that's a good one. You can visit me at katharinezaccom. You can find the podcast there. You can find ways to reach out to me directly there and on Instagram at kathzac, the podcast is called Beyond Balance, so you can find that anywhere you listen to your podcasts. I am, you know this, josh, I'm not great on LinkedIn. I am there and you can find me, but if it takes me a while to respond to you.
Speaker 2:I just haven't seen your message yet. I try to choose where I show up in terms of tech, because otherwise it's too much stress for me. So go to the website. You can find a way to reach me directly there and I'd love if people listen to this episode and wanna check out Beyond Balance and share it. If you happen to know anyone else, if you happen to know anyone who's stressed. Yeah, there's no one in the world who's stressed no one.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, Catherine. This has been an amazing episode. Thank you for being intentional with me for this past hour and talking about one of my passions, which is leadership, and then talking about one of your passions too. I believe this has been a great episode. All right, team, it's time for our after action review. That was amazing episode with Catherine Zach, but what are the top three takeaways that you should have?
Speaker 1:Well, these are the top three takeaways that I took from this episode, and the first one is we have to understand the tools and how to maneuver those as a leader. So we're gonna be put into situations that are just thrusted in the chaos. We may have an academic sense on how to lead those organizations and how to be well within those organizations, but it comes down to taking that tool that we have and effectively using it on the battlefield to get to those desired effects. And I talk about this a lot, but it's throwing the book out. That is where the science and the academic of leadership come together. Can you take those principles that you've learned in a school situation or even within on the job training and apply that resource to the situation you're going through right now? Because no book definition of solving a complex problem exists, because life is messy and it's chaos, so we have to be able to understand the tools at our disposal and how to maneuver those tools on the battlefield. And the best metaphor that I always come up with is from an infantry perspective. I have all these arms rooms full of indirect fire systems and direct fire systems, but I don't have to necessarily use every single one. On every mission that I'm going after, or when I encounter the enemy on the battlefield, I use the correct weapon system to achieve the desired effects, and that comes down to the discretion of the leader, and that is what I believe creates ordinary and extraordinary leaders. Extraordinary, extraordinary leaders have that ability to use the right tool at the right time and maneuver it effectively on the battlefield.
Speaker 1:The next key takeaway that I have from this is success is not a linear path, and you have to kind of break that habit, especially where I'm in acquisitions right now. You may talk to everyone around you and they're like, hey, you got all the right degrees, you got all the right things, you're on the right path. But are you on the right path? Because only you can determine if you are making the right choices in your life and it comes down to just truly understanding who you are, and I was sharing through the church sermon that I said and, by the way, chris Hodges, church of the Highlands, birmingham, alabama if you're listening to this podcast and you're looking for a church, that is an amazing church and he provides online church services as well.
Speaker 1:But he broke down the Bible verse John, chapter three, all the way from verse one up to verse, I believe, 22. And it talks about that entire chapter in the Bible is so powerful. But it's so powerful because it talks about how we can be born again. You're not on a linear path in life. You can be born again. And remember we have a decisive point If we follow that linear path, eventually we're gonna get to a point of where we just do not feel fulfilled in life or we have that sense of wholeness, as Catherine likes to say, and that is the decisive point in our life.
Speaker 1:We have to understand how we're going to get around that and just know that you can be born again. That's the second key takeaway as a leader there's always another way. It may not be the best way to do it at the time, but there is always another way. And the final one that I have and it kind of feeds into the second one I just provided you is find your wholeness. I share my definition of fulfillment and we both agree, catherine and myself, that balance is a negative border because it requires a dopamine fuel to keep that. We're always focused on that pinnacle of having everything in our life perfectly balanced and when it does, maybe it only happens for a fleeting moment in time and then we're trying to chase that feeling again. But you have to be okay with how Catherine says wholeness accepting the season of life that you're in and just knowing that life is going to be okay, accepting the situation that you have and make the best of what you have, take those experiences and learn to turn that experience into wisdom. But just understand fulfillment and wholeness takes a long time because it takes maturity. But in order to do that and, I truly believe, to find fulfillment in your life, this is the mathematical formula that you have to solve what is your passion? What are you passionate about? Rule of three P's, and we're going back to that. What is your purpose and do you have a perspective of you, a strategy on how you want to get to that? So those three P's, when they are connected together, the sum of all those efforts, equal fulfillment in life.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, if you've gotten any value from today's episode, do me a favor, leave a comment, leave a review, subscribe, rate this podcast but, more importantly, share it with someone who is just starting out on their leadership journey. You can find me on all of the social media links, but also you can go to McMillianleadershipcoachingcom with the additional resource that I have, and those are monthly blogs that I list. I would love to hear your feedback on those and let me know how I can continue to provide you powerful content that is gonna make you a better leader. What I like to say become the leader that your team needs. As always, I'm your host, josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.