🚀 Breathe.

Guest

117

We have to understand the way the brain is rewired is the language in which we speak and the thoughts that we think. As we start to notice our triggers, as we start to notice what is impeding us moving forward, and we start to kind of get curious about those stories of exclusion. How we can rewire is by shifting into a different set of neurochemicals by getting those needs met.

In this episode

What does neurobiology have to do with leadership?

Everything! 

In episode #117, Rajkumari Neogy shares how the left and right hemispheres of the brain communicate in the workforce and how to use resonant language. 

Rajkumari is an epigenetic coach and executive consultant focused on the intersection of neurobiology, culture and empathy in today’s business world. She has worked with high-powered, worldwide organizations for more than two decades, training leaders at Google, Facebook, Adobe, Indeed, Slack, Salesforce and numerous others. 

We also dive into transgenerational trauma, inclusive leadership and second-hand trauma. 

Tune in to hear all about Rajkumari’s leadership journey and the lessons learned along the way!


Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the podcast with your colleagues.


04:02

Can we take a moment to pause?

07:58

Using resonate language

12:13

Transgenerational trauma

20:47

Neutralizing the effects of transgenerational trauma

24:05

Inclusive leadership

29:15

Building accountability

33:15

Second-hand trauma

36:31

Even though I’m feeling X, I’m grateful for Y


Resources


Transcript

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  00:31

Rajkumari Welcome to the show.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  04:04

Thanks for having me, Aydin.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  04:05

Yeah, very good to have you on excited to dig in with you today. I know you’ve had a pretty extensive leadership career. You’ve worked as an epigenetic coach for quite a number of years. You’ve worked with folks at SLAC, Twilio, Google, Facebook, and more. And today, you’re the founder of AI restart. And one of the things we like to do on the show, the very beginning is start off by talking about mistakes. Do you remember when you first started managing and leading teams? What were some of the early mistakes that you used to make?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  04:36

Well, I’ll bring up one that I’ve most most recently may not used to make. But you know, part of what I do as an executive coach is to really invite leaders to self reflect and to create cultures of psychological safety. And that’s really essential and definition of psychological safety is being able to take risks interpersonally I was working with a vendor a couple of years ago. And one of the things that we were talking about is to be able to really invite that reflection conversations, to take real time feedback, if you will. And there was a moment when his team had actually made a, I think, significant error. And it was posted on social media. So this was under my profile under my reputation. And it went out to my entire network with this error. And I was stunned as you could possibly imagine. I just became really concerned, and also very angry, to be honest. And so I gave him a call. And I was attempting to speak calmly, but that did not actually happen. What was so beautiful about this moment was that because we had a prior relationship established, because we had already agreed that we wanted to really put psychological safety in the forefront of every conversation and every interaction and invited real time feedback, he actually said, Hey, Rajkumari, can I just take a pause here for both of us? Can I invite us to take a pause, I’m noticing that there’s some tension in the conversation, and I get that this was an error. And I’m wondering if we could navigate this just a little bit differently? And I said, Absolutely. Thank you so much for calling that out. I’m going to take a breath. Ah, no one’s died. Nothing’s on fire. Yes, it’s horrible if this happened, and we can come back from this 100% In a week, no one’s gonna remember what gaff was posted on social media. And I think being able to have that level of transparency and safety with one another is so key. So me and my micromanaging moments.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  06:52

Yeah, that’s awesome. What was the phrase that they use? Again, I thought that was very well put,

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  06:57

it was something around. And this is resonant language. This is stuff that I teach that I invite my vendors, the people who report to me directly to really use with me as well, because that’s how we actually create cultures of appreciation is when we use resonant language. So he said, Hey, Raj, Cory, I’m just wondering if we can take a pause here for a moment, I’m noticing that there’s tension in the conversation. And I’m wondering if we can just kind of take a breath and reposition or of course, correct, or I can’t rember exactly what he said this, but but it was something to that nature. And it really got me into a place of slowing down. It got me into a place of immediate self reflection. And it got me into a place of connecting back to myself. And as opposed to spiraling out of control with anxiety because something went wrong.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  07:48

So what great language I’m noticing some tension in this conversation, I’m wondering if we can pause and take a moment to reflect and look at this scenario, again, what is resonant language? Or how do you define it?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  08:01

So before I answer that, so notice how he didn’t say, Hey, I’m noticing that you’ve been really aggressive right now, or I’m noticing that you’re coming off a little strong right now. Or I’m noticing that you’re being a bleep expletive right now, or he didn’t say any of that, right. And he really just kind of named the experience. And what he was noticing in that experience, resident language is right hemisphere language. So every single one of us that has two hemispheres, and not every one of us does, but most of us do. each hemisphere speaks completely differently. So the left hemisphere speaks transactionally. And the right hemisphere speaks relationally. The right hemisphere is where we do relationships, the right hemisphere is where we speak from empathy. This is where we can step into compassion, the right hemisphere gives us the big picture, and allows us to see the interconnectedness of all things. Whereas the left hemisphere is really this very narrow view, which we need. Because when we’re looking for things that are missing, when we’re doing some comparison, when we’re evaluating, we really need to be able to get into the granular level of things. That’s how we build things. That’s how we know that things are not working. But we need both. And when we’re really trying to cultivate trust, when are really building powerful and sustainable relationships. We need to be able to prioritize relational language to really make that connection to really create that bridge between two people or more.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  09:30

That’s awesome. So resonant language is language of the right hemisphere. Are there other examples or other words that one can use that trigger right hemisphere, or trigger our right hemisphere? And do you typically use it in in these tense situations where you’re trying to calm the situation more?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  09:50

Absolutely. I would invite people who are curious to learn about resonant language to come to my one of my courses. One of the courses is called Understanding humans at work. It’s a leadership course it’s four weeks Islam. And the other is the biology of belonging bootcamp, which is a deep dive into one’s own epigenetics, which we’ll get to later. And really kind of understand how we’re showing up in terms of the trauma that we’re carrying trans generationally. So relevant language is when we prioritize speaking from feelings and needs in a way that allows us to access tactical empathy. Tactical empathy is a term that Chris Voss, the author of never split the difference talks about. But Daniel Goleman, actually, really is, if you will, the instigator of emotional intelligence. And so tactical empathy is three parts is there’s three parts here, there’s noticing the feelings and the unmet needs in the moment, naming those feelings and unmet needs in the moment, just as my vendor did, and then allowing us to take action and move towards that. So being able to notice a name feelings and unmet needs is a right hemisphere experience, moving into action, in any capacity is a left hemisphere experience, combining the two creates a really solid languaging tool that allows the individual all the parties to come forward in the conversation.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  11:20

That’s very well put noticing, naming and taking action. And it seems like starting with the right hemisphere and ending with the left hemisphere there,

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  11:28

it depends. It really depends on who your audience’s, if I’m working with the CFO, or you know, head of engineering, I probably will start with the left hemisphere. Because if I start with the right hemisphere, I might piss them off, then we’re not speaking the same language right off the bat. And so what I want to do is really be able to connect with them, and meet them where they are shook from my audience and really kind of speak their language, if you will, and then invite them to come over to the right hemisphere. It’s really an art. It’s really a dance. If I’m speaking to people in HR, or in, you know, heads of DNI, I probably most likely will start in the right hemisphere. It just depends on who my audience is, again, and who I’m talking to. Yeah,

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  12:11

that makes sense into you use some other terms as well. Right before we got to resident language. You talked about transgenerational trauma, and also epigenetic coaching. We were talking right before we hit record here and how the bulk of your practice or one of your specializations effectively is epigenetic coaching. So maybe let’s start with that. What is epigenetic coaching?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  12:35

Yeah, so we’ll start with epigenetics. What’s epigenetics? So epigenetics is a relatively newer science that allows us to understand that our genes get turned on or off or expressed based on our environment, or the behaviors in which we’re engaging. So you can think of it as any stress that one experiences in their environment, or any stress, having to engage with someone is actually impacting their cellular biology. The research also shows that we carry those stressors, trends generationally, according to the source that is cited, whether it’s Rachel Yehuda, for example, she said, It’s 210 years, if it’s Dr. Joy to grew, it’s 300 years. And if it’s romantic, if it’s 490 or so, it really doesn’t matter how many centuries of traits, tragedies and traumas we’re carrying in our cellular biology. It’s important understand that every single one of us on the planet is carrying the hardships and the difficulties and the stories of exclusion from not only our parents and grandparents, but even beyond that. And to be able to understand that those stories of exclusion that our parents, grandparents, etc. Experienced, are titrating into our own cellular nervous system, and impacting how we show up and how we are triggered by everyday situations, everyday occurrences, and how that impacts who we are as leaders. Yeah, that’s

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  14:08

super interesting. So basically, if my grandfather experienced something in the environment, a stressor that was significant enough, it may have impacted his genetics or activated certain genes. And that carries on from generation to generation. So I might be impacted, even though I was never there. I never impacted it never knew about that environmental stimulus that caused that stress response. But somehow, my genes also reflect that.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  14:35

Absolutely hear story, a great story about that. So I’m coaching a founder, this founder is taking 30 interviews with investors because they’re fundraising. And the founder comes to me and says, Roger, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m in these meetings. The meetings are going great. The investors love us. They love what we’re selling what we’re putting together I leave the meetings, and it’s crickets, I just don’t understand what we quickly know, because I’m working with this founder for a couple of years here and doing epigenetic coaching is that the founders mother’s father, so the founders grandfather on the maternal side, was in a concentration camp. This means that there is now so much stress and anxiety around being seen, because their life was literally at stake. And so this fear of being seen, has titrated to the founder, where they’re having these great meetings, they forget about the founder after they leave the meetings. What is this? And so we do the epigenetic coaching, to shift the nervous system to alleviate the stress literally around being seen. We did two sessions around this. And six weeks later, the founder got three and a half million in funding. That’s how quick it can be. And I can tell you story after story after story like this constantly.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  16:02

I guess what it is, is you wouldn’t otherwise know unless you do some serious digging to try and understand why you feel that way. Or certain thoughts, or psychologies are triggered because of other actions unless you do this type of digging. And how easy is it to find? I mean, to go back? I mean, in this particular case, we’re talking about a pretty significant stressor. But how easy is it to find your attribute something like this to basically like your ancestors or someone who lived before you?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  16:37

That’s a great question naturally. So I just want to do a quick plug for my Badri of belonging bootcamp that is free. It’s a 12 week course, where we do a deep dive into one’s epigenetics and how that might be impeding one’s potentiality and or success. It starts September 23, nine o’clock Pacific time. And again, it’s free to the public, I am so committed to doing this work that I’m offering it at no charge. Notice the patterning in the relationship between you and your father. When we’re talking about epigenetics, we’re looking through the lens of the biological parents. So noticing the relationship between you and your father, I would write down five words that describe that noticing the relationship between you and your mother, I would write down five words around that, if you were adopted and don’t know, I would still do the very best that you can. And if you grew up with a different type of caretaker, that’s not your biological parents, I would just notice that and write and do the very best that you can come to the boot camp, I’ll help you out with that. And then write down five words with your father and his parents, the relationship between your father and his father and father and his mother, and do the same thing for your mother. And that will start to give you very quickly the patterning that’s been titrated. Back to you. Got it?

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  18:00

Yeah. So I guess what’s interesting about this, quite a few things, but one of which I wanted to point out was that this is different than saying, Oh, my father was say, laid off when, you know, I was growing up. And I saw that, and I saw how it impacted him. And as results, I’m very sensitive to these sorts of things. This could be a series of things that I never experienced directly or was not there. But I may have heard stories about later on. Does it ever happen where you were not even aware and you had to go digging? And then you find out something that you did not even know this story of or her does not go that far, typically.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  18:41

Absolutely. After my second company crashed and burned. I was talking about this to my father. And my father had just foreclosed on. I think it was at the time of $4 million home at the time 2008 When things were and then things were selling like hotcakes right before the bust. And it kind of having this conversation. I later learned that my grandfather, my dad’s dad had lost his house in India. And this conversation also surfaced that my great grandfather was a wealthy land owner in present day Bangladesh, and lost all of his land to the British, and was forced out of where we originally came from. And so you can very quickly see this pattern that I wasn’t even aware of. And yet I was still having this loyalty, this unconscious loyalty, if you will, to losing everything and starting from scratch again. And it was mind blowing, was really really mind blowing in that moment that that that kind of came to my awareness. Hey

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  19:49

there. Just a quick note before we move on to the next part, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably already doing one on one meetings. But here’s the thing we all know that one on one meetings are the Most Powerful, but at the same time, the most misunderstood concept in practice and management. That’s why we’ve spent over a year compiling the best information, the best expert advice into this beautifully designed 90 Plus page ebook. Now, don’t worry, it’s not single spaced font, you know, lots of tax. There’s a lot of pictures. It’s nice, easily consumable information, we spent so much time building it. And the great news is that it’s completely free. So head on over to Fellow.app slash blog to download the Definitive Guide on one on ones. It’s there for you. We hope you enjoy it. And let us know what you think. And with that said, let’s go back to the interview. A lot of the coaching then and this is where I guess the term transgenerational trauma comes from it’s this trauma effectively affecting generation to generation. And so is a lot of that coaching than around you’re basically neutralizing the effect of these things and and can you truly neutralize them if they are genetic in nature to some extent.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  21:09

So the research shows that when someone experiences exclusion, the pain centers in the brain light up. So it’s like being kicked in the shin. It’s like being punched in the gut. And exclusion causes a very, very significant shame response, even if we don’t notice it, or even if we’re not aware of it, shame, the response of shame triggers a huge cortisol dump effect. It’s the biggest cortisol dump in the body. When we experience shame, even if we don’t notice that we’re experiencing shame. This is really important because when we talk about stories of exclusion, stories of loss, stories of difficulty, and hardship and having to endure that, it actually means that neurochemically we’re carrying generational shame. We’re carrying generational shame, that is continually secreting cycles of cortisol, even unbeknownst to us. That’s how we repeat the cycles. So what we’re shifting is not a thought pattern, or a way of being in the world. We’re shifting the neuro chemistry, we’re surfacing that shame through stories of exclusion. It’s how we know how to get there. And then we very gently rewire that neurochemical experience. Paul Zak, who is a neuro economist, has a phenomenal article in the Harvard Business Review, review, I think, from 2016, or 2017, called the neuroscience of trust. And when high trust teams are engaged, their blood is filled with oxytocin. The research now shows that not only is trust, oxytocin inducing, but so is connection. So as community, so it’s transparency, so as vulnerability. And what we now know from a neurobiological lens, is that different needs secrete different neuro chemicals. When we have a sense of autonomy or purpose, it’s dopamine. When we feel seen or heard, we’re secreting serotonin. When we have a sense of playfulness in the workplace, or secreting endogenous opioids, we have a sense of good company, human self connection and love. We have endogenous opioids, so we aren’t walking pharmacies of neuro chemicals. And we have to understand that the way the brain is rewired is the language in which we speak and the thoughts that we think. So as we start to notice our triggers, as we start to notice what is impeding us moving forward. And we start to kind of get curious about those stories of exclusion. How we can rewire is by shifting into a different set of neurochemicals by getting those needs met.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  24:05

So you brought up the concept of exclusive leadership and inclusive leadership. I’d love to maybe dig in more into that. And if you have any stories or examples of how you can shift from one to the other, or an example where you saw that happen. I think that would be super instructive, as well.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  24:24

Well, I’ll be very clear that I did not mention exclusive leadership. That’s not a term I use. I talk about exclusion. That

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  24:30

was definitely a me thing, adding it there. Yeah,

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  24:34

I think for me, what’s really important understand is that the left hemisphere doesn’t actually have a sense of self. And the right hemisphere is where we do relationships. And in the moments of stress, if we find ourselves in this left hemisphere, and if we find ourselves in this transactional place, then it’s very possible that we could We find ourselves behaving in ways that are exclusionary. And that looks like the following, blaming, gaslighting, micromanaging, bullying, trying to take control snapping at people. And when we’re able to take a deep breath, that breath allows us to reconnect to our bodies, it allows us to kind of very gently slide over to the right hemisphere. Think about, for example, if you’ve ever been in a meeting that’s an hour or two hours long, and you’re brainstorming, and you’re collaborating, and you’re having a great time trying to problem solve, and then the meeting ends, and all of a sudden, you’re like, Oh, I feel the bathroom, or Oh, my God, I’m hungry. Right? That is a literal shift from the left to the right, the left hemisphere doesn’t have a sense of self. And how it integrates new information is through blame. And so when we have this blame experience, we get a high off of it, because we secrete dopamine, and it creates distance. blaming someone obviously doesn’t feel good. But what’s really interesting about blaming others is it creates a distance in the conversation, whereas the right hemisphere is about bridging those gaps. And creating a sense of closeness, that however, however, what resonant language through empathy, relationality, whatever that might be. And so being able to go to the right hemisphere gym, and to practice rewiring, by speaking from a place of feelings, by speaking from a place of needs, it’s a whole different world.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  26:36

So if we were to try and talk about an example, and just get very tactical here, let’s take your example of the two hour meeting. And there’s a part where you’re about to lay blame on someone for something, results are poor, and you want to blame, say, the sales team for not hitting their numbers as an example. So what is another way to approach that, so that you don’t go down that track,

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  27:02

I’ll give you a real life example. So I have a producer, my producer organizes leaders from around the world where I interview them. And we actually hire studios, wherever that leader lives, and we invite that leader to go be at the studio. So we have a really professional experience. My producer organized an incredible while you’re in London, and booked the studio, and the calendar invite never made it on to the leaders calendar through their executive assistant. Now, that is my producers responsibility. Even if the executive assistant ever responded to my producer, it still falls on the shoulders of my producer to get it right. So the meeting never happened, the recording never happened. And I met with my producer for breakfast the very next day. And the resonant language that I used with my producer, were things like the following. So what happened? He tells me what happens. And I started to kind of dig a little deeper, how can we do this differently moving forward. Because when this occurs, right, it reflects on us in a way that doesn’t feel aligned to my values, to our branding, and to our commitment. And when we position it in this way, my producer has now the ability to be accountable. If I’m blaming him and telling him, you did it wrong. Don’t ever let this happen. Again, he can say he’s sorry. But there isn’t that accountability piece where he wants to do it differently. So that makes sense. By inviting him into the conversation, by inviting him through creating this resonant language, we are now really building this bridge together and partnering on how to do it differently moving forward.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  28:51

Yeah, I think this makes a lot of sense from the perspective of really getting them to be part of the solution. And by making them part of the solution. That’s definitely a much more inclusive way of handling it. But also, you’re getting buy in and feeling and creating psychological safety and trust and all of those things, you can definitely get to a much better outcome. And I see that. One question I had, though, just around this was, What about just the concept of accountability? And how do you make sure that people continue to be accountable and take ownership for mistakes that also do happen? You know, is that important? Or does this like potentially, you know, is there a danger of softening it so much that you miss out on accountability that might otherwise be taken? That’s such

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  29:41

an interesting question. I’m so interested by the sentence structure of softening it that you miss out on accountability. How, how could one do so? When one is direct, unkind, right? There’s avoiding a conversation so accountability doesn’t have to happen. But what’s really interesting of accountability is there’s a sign So that as well. So, Jaak Panksepp has a book called Affective Neuroscience, and his body of work is about the circuits of emotion and motivation. And in the right hemisphere, we have the circuits of care, and play and fear and rage and disgust and panic, grief. And these are all hardwired in every single one of us. And the panic grief circuit really allows us to have a sense of self awareness, a panic grief circuit really allows us to pick up on social cues, and to provide support as needed. Now, what’s really interesting about the panic grief circuit is we do sadness in this circuit, we do shame in this circuit. And it allows us to mourn when things don’t go well. If we have a campaign, or a project that doesn’t quite hit the numbers we were hoping for, right? Or the outcome that we desired, then we can actually have a retrospective and mourn what went wrong and then course correct. But if we have a frozen panic grief circuit, if we have a muted panic grief circuit based on trauma, for whatever reason, then it becomes really hard for us to mourn anything. And if it’s really hard for us to express grief about something that went wrong, it’s almost impossible for us to be accountable. So not being able to receive feedback is a direct correlation to being accountable, and not being able to receive feedback is tied to the pack racer.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  31:40

Yeah, I think that definitely clarifies it more for me, when I was thinking about your example, the way that I was thinking that I would have approached it, if I was the producer that screwed up, was I would have come to you and I would say, you know, Rajkumari, this was my mistake, here’s what happened. I take ownership for this, let’s talk about how to this is what I think we should do so that it doesn’t happen. But there’s just like this incidents of saying that no, this is on me. This was my error here. And you know, here’s what went wrong. And I just wonder, and maybe this is not too much of an issue. But I just wonder if the immediate response is, okay, like, if there isn’t an opportunity for people to take that ownership as well. And to recognize that this was something that was expected and then went counter to expectation, I wonder if it takes away from learning how to go from there to the better place more effectively. So it’s really that one extra step, which I would say like, I wouldn’t change anything about what you said to the producer. If I were the producer, I would come in. And I would also acknowledge that this was my blender in this particular case, and this is how I’m going to change it.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  32:51

Right? Absolutely. And to be clear, he did do that. But it was a big deal that this recording didn’t happen. We lost a lot of money, obviously, right from the studio and the time, the credibility and the reputation from my perspective for the leader, etc. So absolutely. I wanted to make sure that we we got things nailed down pretty tightly. Okay.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  33:11

Okay. So that part of the conversation also happened. So that’s good to hear. Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I think that definitely clarifies it. I did want to ask you about one more topic. Before we jump into our final question, which is, you and I were chatting about this previously, and you were talking about how people are not really burnt out anymore. And what most of us are feeling is something slightly different. We’d love for you to explain what that different feeling is?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  33:38

Well, I think people definitely are still experiencing burnout, when burnout has to deal with the work related stressors, right? Like, let’s say, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re a couple people short on the team, we’re onboarding and we have to do our job plus onboarding, that’s a lot of stress, right? That could absolutely result in burnout. But I think burnout has become a catch all term at this point. I think we’re, you know, coming up on three years, two and a half, three years into a pandemic. You know, we’re experiencing political climate that is very challenging in this country. I think there’s a lot of violence that’s happening around the world that is both shocking and difficult and heartbreaking to experience. And I think what people may not have the vernacular for, is something called secondhand trauma. I was actually talking to a doctor, a medical doctor who’s focused on a conference called Early Childhood Mental Health. I’m going to be working with them on epigenetics. And this particular doctor was talking about secondhand trauma and how it’s really important that social workers and therapists and caregivers in the field of mental health has resources accessible in order to work with their secondhand traumas. I quickly said, Well, what will what is that? And so he started to explain how just being present listening to other people’s difficulties can easily impact the person listening and take on the effects of secondhand trauma. And I just got really intense. I said, Wait a minute, this is what I do all day long. Can I have secondary trauma? And he said, 100%. In fact, here’s a book that you should read, and really kind of, you know, determine whether or not you are. And the book is called trauma stewardship. And the author’s name is Laura van der nuit. Lipski, and she just wrote a book also called the age of overwhelm. And I definitely have second hand trauma, because I’ve worked with transgenerational trauma every single day as a coach, but it really kind of made me pause and look at where we are as a global collective that maybe it’s not so much burnout as we think it is. Maybe it’s really the effects of secondhand trauma, and how there’s a constant wave of things happening in the news cycle that just feels untenable at some point.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  36:09

You know, sometimes I think it’s just healthier to shut everything off and ignore it. But of course, that’s not super easy, because even if you did that you’re going to talk to other people, and other people will have not done that. And yeah, it’s definitely challenging. So many things to worry about. Also, second hand trauma to the mix. Makes it ever more challenging example, Rajkumari, this has been very insightful. We’ve talked about epigenetic coaching. We’ve talked about transgenerational trauma, resonant language, exclusion, and also being an inclusive leader. So many different things that we’ve touched on today. One final question that we like to ask all the guests on our show is, for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their craft, are there any final tips, tricks, or parting words of wisdom that you would leave them with?

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  36:58

I would definitely up their resonant language game. One of the ways in which you can do this right off the bat is to use this sense, I’m gonna give you the sentence right now. Write it down, copy it down. It is the following. Whenever there’s a moment of stress that you’re experiencing, whenever there’s a trigger, you can leave the meeting, you can leave the conversation, leave the situation, and say this to yourself, even though I’m feeling and then fill in the blank, tired, exhausted, frustrated, irritated, concerned, overwhelmed, anxious, so go with anxious, even though I’m feeling anxious, that’s the cortisol piece there. The neurochemical shift will be into endogenous opioids and oxytocin. Even though I’m feeling anxious, I’m really grateful. And then you fill in the blank, that I have water that I’m going out to dinner tonight, that I get to hang out with my friends, that I get to go watch movie after work. Again, something so simple, but that gratitude shift is going to move you back into connection with yourself. And it’s going to help recreate that cortisol shift into a oxytocin and endogenous opioid moment. So even though I’m feeling blank, I’m really grateful blank.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  38:15

That’s great advice. And a great place to end is Rajkumari. Thanks so much for doing this.

Rajkumari Neogy (Coach)  38:21

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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