Inspired Execution

Chet Kapoor:

Welcome back to the Inspired Execution Podcast. Each episode shares the experience and learnings of a world-class leader on their journey to success. The guests on this podcast are bold, brilliant, and not afraid to change. As you navigate your own path we hope you feel inspired by the stories, lessons learned, and the vision of the future.

Today, we are excited to welcome Dr. Shauna Shapiro to the podcast. Shauna is a psychologist, author, and a professor who specializes in mindfulness and self-compassion. When she was studying in Thailand and Nepal, she adopted the mantra, "What you practice grows stronger." You are going to love hearing Shauna's incredible journey and insights, being mindful every day, the difference between compassion and empathy, and how science has proven the importance of having fun at work. Shauna, welcome to the Inspired Execution Podcast.

Dr. Shauna Shapiro:

Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.

Chet:

I watched your TED Talk on mindfulness. You have an incredible story that led you to becoming an author, getting a PhD and a professor. Can you share a bit of your journey?

Shauna:

It was kind of an unexpected one, and it's been a long road, but I was introduced to mindfulness when I was 17 years old. I had spinal fusion surgery, so I had a metal rod put in my spine. What happened actually is I had scoliosis, but it was perfectly fine. And I went in for a routine appointment and the doctor said my spine had curved so much it was going to puncture my lungs, and we had to operate. So overnight I went from this healthy, active teenager. I was captain of my volleyball team to lying in a hospital bed, unable to walk, and I was in the hospital bed for six months and I was in a lot of pain. It was difficult to turn my head. I had to learn how to walk again. But what really was kind of creating suffering was my mind.

I was so afraid, so afraid that I'd always be in pain, afraid that I wouldn't walk normally, afraid that no one would like me. I was 17, and also I had so many regrets, so many fears about my future, but also so many kind of ruminations about my past. I wish I'd done this or if only I had done that. And I started getting really depressed and really anxious, and I just didn't have the tools to cope. I was 17, so at that time my father gave me a book. It's called Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. I see you've read it. And I'll never forget, the very first line said, "Whatever's happened to you, it's already happened. The only thing that matters is now what?" And it was as if this path opened up and I didn't feel as stuck anymore.

There was some sense of hope. And so I started practicing mindfulness and reading about mindfulness. I read every book I could and started noticing a few changes. There was these little gaps in between my anxious and depressed thoughts. And I'll never forget, one day my mom opened the window to my bedroom and I smelled the ocean air and I grew up on the ocean, and I don't ever remember smelling the ocean air through my window. And I remember this moment of just being fully present, not afraid, not in pain. So once I healed a bit about two years later, actually, I went to Thailand and Nepal to study meditation because it had really helped me through that time. And the experiences I had in the monasteries there really changed my life. And so when I came back to America, I said, "I need to study this scientifically." So I finished my undergraduate at Duke University, graduate summa cum laude, went on to get my PhD, became a professor, and have really spent the last 25 years researching mindfulness and seeing how it can help others.

Chet:

That's an awesome story. I often say that the body is an analog device, not a digital device. It doesn't turn on and off. And a lot of people forget the mind's part of our body. We separate the two, but it is part of our being. What would you say, because you said the thing about mindfulness is there is no, "Hey, I meditated for 10 minutes. I was mindful 18 times today and tomorrow I'll see the change." It takes a while. So the gaps you talked about between being anxious and being depressed, can you expand on that? What should people expect to us starting this journey?

Shauna:

Yeah, it's such a good point. You can't instantly light up the good and turn off the bad and really change and transformation, they're a process. They take time, like you said. In fact, one of my favorite things that I say to my patients and my students is what you practice grows stronger. And we know this with neuroplasticity. It's our repeated thoughts, behaviors, emotions that actually shape our brain. And this requires time so that every time I practice a moment of mindfulness or a moment of peace, I'm carving out that pathway and simultaneously I'm pruning away the habitual anxious thought. So it's this process, and the other thing that I want to say that I think is so important, you mentioned meditation and mindfulness. So right in the very beginning for people who are beginning this journey is just to explain the difference. They're used interchangeably, but they are relatively distinct.

Chet:

Yes.

Shauna:

So meditation is the exercise. It's like going to the gym and lifting weights so that I can build my muscles. Mindfulness is a way of being. It's a way of living. And so if I go to the gym and I lift weights, lifting weights isn't really that important. What's important is I can come home and pick up my son or pick up my groceries. And so we meditate so that we can be present and compassionate and wise during every moment of our life. So I define mindfulness as this way of paying attention and meditation is the exercise to cultivate our ability to pay attention.

Chet:

Do you find that people who are advanced in their path, who've done a lot of this for a long time, they drop meditation and are just perpetually mindful?

Shauna:

Yeah, it's a great question and it's interesting. So I have many, many incredible teachers who I've worked with over these years, and there are some who say that they have kind of let go of the quote, formal meditation practice and the mindfulness is really kind of integrated into their daily life in such a profound way. Now, those teachers say they still do take some time each year to go on silent retreat where there's this really dedicated almost bootcamp of meditation. So that's one kind of way of doing it. I also have teachers that say, "Being human and living in this culture, the conditioning is so strong that they need that daily practice to kind of help them remember." And I kind of fall into that camp where if I don't meditate, I notice a different quality of my attention throughout the day. And for me, really, that's kind of the hallmark of spiritual practice is we forget and then we remember, then we forget, and then we remember. And that's kind of part of being human, is that we're not perfect.

Chet:

So part of being human in 2023 is not escaping technology and devices and distractions that go with it, right? You talk a lot about using technology mindfully and proactively instead of reactively. Give us your perspective on that.

Shauna:
Yes, I think it's so important. So many people have kind of made technology the bad guy, and I think that's a mistake. I think technology is neutral and it really depends on how we use it. And so what I often teach about is being proactive. So not feeling like I have to check my email or my phone every second, but finding times during the day. So for me, I never check email first thing in the morning because that's a time where my mind is really clear and that's when I write, that's when I meditate, that's when I do my harder tasks. And so I schedule time. I don't look at social media, I don't look at the news except for scheduled times of day. And so in that way, I am more in choice. And I think that's what's really important as we continue to develop even more and more complex technologies. I mean, we're all facing this revolution in artificial intelligence, and we're needing to be very thoughtful in how to approach it and to really approach it proactively instead of reactively.

Chet:

No, I agree. Totally agree. And then a lot of people are not fresh early in the morning. They're fresh late at night, but try to use the way whatever works for you, but be proactive about it rather than being reactive. That's the critical part. Is that fair?

Shauna:

Absolutely. And I just want to add one piece you mentioned kind of early in the morning and late at night, and I just want to mention, there's some new research that's really compelling out of UC San Francisco, Elissa Epel's laboratory, and what they found is your mood in the morning and your mood in the evening are the best predictors of your overall health. They predict the length of your telomeres, they predict the health of your mitochondria. So it's a really important time to protect. So I always recommend that you kind of protect yourself from technology those first five minutes of the day and the last five minutes, and to really use that time for meditation or prayer or journaling or gratitude or something that is really in alignment with cultivating health.

Chet:

Or just staring at the ceiling.

Shauna:

Absolutely, you can stare-

Chet:

That can be a mindful experience.

Shauna:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Chet:

So what is the one tip that every listener should be starting out your day? Is it don't touch your phone, or is it the last thing you just said, which is use the first five minutes to kind of get into a state where you're grateful and you're meditating or something like that?

Shauna:

Yes. And I like how you phrased that because possibly grabbing your phone and calling your mom and telling her how much you love her in those first five minutes could be the most beautiful and connecting thing you could do. So my invitation is, again, technology's not good or bad, but to be mindful, to be intentional about how you use this time to protect it. And so the invitation is really to think of what will... Especially, first thing in the morning, the brain is in an alpha theta state, which means it's very trainable. It's very suggestible. And so to really think about what do I want to cultivate? What do I want to carve out? And so again, gratitude, compassion, joy, connection, generosity. And like you said, we can do this in many, many different ways, including using our technology but to be intentional.

Chet:

One of the things that I talk about, and I definitely practice it, I would say at least six days or seven, every now and then, you have to be reactive. But the critical thing is the first hour of the day, you should try to be 100% proactive. You should choose what you choose to do and not react to, "I got an email, I need to read the news, I want to see the weather." You just need to make sure that... And if you do, just make sure you don't react to it. You can read an email but not let it affect you. And if you get to that point, but try to be as proactive as possible. It certainly works for me. But every now and then I find I slip right, and I'm like, "Oh, I didn't like what that said." And so I'm sure other people feel that way as well.

Shauna:

Yeah. And I think that's really wise. And again, I think it all comes back to intention. So often we live our lives kind of on automatic pilot just going through the motions. And I think bringing back some intentionality where we really think about kind of in what direction do I want to set my compass? How do I want to be living my life? How do I want to be living this next hour, this next day? And for me, that's a really important practice that I do every morning is really setting an intention.

Chet:

So you are an expert on compassion. People often use compassion, empathy interchangeably, but research shows that there's a difference. So what is the difference and why is it important?

Shauna:

Yeah, this is actually a pretty recent discovery out of Switzerland, maybe about three years ago in Tania Singer's lab. And what they discovered is when they hooked people up to all these different physiological monitors to look at brain scans and heart reactivity, what they found is when people were practicing compassion, the positive and reward centers lit up. When they were practicing empathy, their pain centers lit up. And so it helped us realize that there is a different kind of physiological mechanism to these two words that we often interchange. So empathy, if we define it as this ability to sense what someone else is feeling. So if I see someone in pain, my mirror neurons let me know, "Oh, ow they're in pain." And the way they let me know that is at a subacute level, it lights up my pain center.

So you can imagine over time, if we are constantly feeling empathy for our coworkers, if we're leaders for our entire team, that it could leave us burnt out and overwhelmed. Compassion, on the other hand, you need empathy. You need to know someone's in pain to feel compassion for them. But then you use the empathy as a gateway to activate this kind of desire to help, this care for someone, your love for someone. And when you are in a state of compassion, the positive reward, even the neural circuitry of joy gets lit up. So I think it's one of the most important things for leaders to understand is how I think often in the medical profession, what doctors were taught is, "Oh, empathy will make you burn out so dissociate and disconnect and don't care." And I think what we're finding from science is it's the exact opposite. Let yourself care, that care is going to be your protective suit.

Chet:

I've often said that leading is about touching the human heart or moving the human heart, because that's the essence of leadership. You can bring them with their minds and things like that, but if you get them by the hearts, they will do wonderful things. Concept of compassion into the workplace.

Shauna:

Yeah, there's been so many wonderful demonstrations, but the one that I think is most important and often the hardest for leaders is learning to practice compassion for themselves, this skill, this art of self-compassion. And I feel like as leaders, they hold themselves to such high standards of perfection, of responsibility, and there's just very little room for error. And what they don't realize is the harm that that's causing them and also their team, because what that models is that mistakes are not okay. And so one of the first steps I take when I'm working with leaders in terms of bringing this into a company or organization is to start with themselves and to start practicing self-compassion. And the impact I've seen has been profound.

Chet:

What has been the impact? Have you found that a leader behaves like X and then realizes that they need to be compassionate to themselves and then they show up differently? If so, how do they show up differently in a general way?

Shauna:

Yeah. So what I've seen, and we've also done research on this, is leaders who are more compassionate with themselves are rated by their team as more compassionate, more generous, more forgiving, but also more effective and more productive. So that's what I find fascinating. In fact, when the team perceives the leader as stressed and kind of hard on themselves, they also perceive the leader as ineffective and not compassionate. And so almost paradoxically, by being kind to yourself, you are a more effective leader because I think a lot of people I work with are like, "Oh, I don't want to practice self-compassion because I don't want to lose my edge." And we have all these misconceptions that self-compassion is actually a strength and it's a skill that we can cultivate.

Chet:

And do you think the reason people are not compassionate is because it is not part of... We don't talk about it enough. It's not part of how leaders are taught. You go in, you look at MBAs, you look at what happens in school, it's like you need to be tough as nails, and instead of it's okay to say, "I'm human and I too screw up and I'm going to give myself the space to screw up, because if I don't make the space, I certainly will only be pretending when other people do."

Shauna:

Yeah, it's completely counterculture and radical to be self-compassion. And it's definitely not taught. It's not encouraged, and yet just what you said is so beautiful, which is we're not being authentic if we're pretending that we don't make mistakes. That self-compassion also gives us permission to be authentic and to be real, and I think that is really the essence of a powerful leader.

Chet:

I do find that, I'll bring in the gender discussion into this a little bit, but I do find that women have a easier time with being compassionate to themselves and hence in their leadership style than men do. Would you say that's the case?

Shauna:
Well, the research actually shows it's not the case.

Chet:

Wow.

Shauna:

Yes. So women definitely are rated as more compassionate to others. So you're right there, there is a gender difference, but not toward themselves. It's pretty equally that people are hard on themselves.

Chet:

I actually think that this is something that people should spend more time talking about, and I've always said, and you're bringing up something that is something that's true to me as I talk to young entrepreneurs, college kids, as well as people at DataStax, you can only be the best version of yourself, and the best version of yourself is the one you continue to improve on. And I think it's not about being somebody else because you can't. Would you agree with that?

Shauna:

100%. And it's not only not being someone else, it's also not being perfect. I love that you just said that it's the best version of yourself as you continue to evolve and grow. And that if you think about it, perfection isn't possible. And in fact, perfection is the antithesis of evolution. If you're perfect, there's no more room for growth. And so all of us being human, we're on this journey of growth and transformation and learning. And so you want to model that as a leader.

Chet:

So you have a magic wand and you can wave it, and you can give one gift to every leader that you interact with, just one, and they magically have it. What would you give them?

Shauna:

Oh, I'm going to take that magic wand if I only have one, and I'm going to say, "I'm going to give this to everyone in the whole world," especially-

Chet:

Great. Great.

Shauna:

Not just leaders, I want to give it to all of our children. Someone just asked me this, I have four teenagers, and they said, "What do you most want for your children?" And so it's the same answer, which is that they love themselves, that they're on their own team, to be their own inner ally instead of this inner enemy. It's really self-compassion. It's this knowing that you're worthy, that you're good enough and who you are, that best version of yourself is enough.

Chet:

Yeah, no, that's beautiful. That is beautiful. Team self, I'm going to call it team self.

Shauna:

Yeah, team self.

Chet:

I have always believed that having fun at work is super important. I always talk about the three reasons why I do what I do is I love the problems I solve, I love the people I do it with. And then to ensure that having fun doing it right and all equal parts. You have co-authored a study on learning from positive experiences. What were your findings?

Shauna:

Yeah. This is one of my favorite studies, and I want to really honor Dr. Rick Hanson, who was the lead investigator on it, and an incredible researcher and scientist. But basically what we found, a couple things. One is, and this shouldn't be a surprise, but when you're in a positive state, it actually turns on the learning centers of the brain. So often in the workplace, we use fear and shame and pressure and urgency to motivate people. That does not work in the long run. That actually shuts down the learning center, shuts down creativity, and what we found is that positive emotions, including fun and play, turn on the learning centers, turn on creativity. In fact, I did another study at Stanford University where we showed that the openness to experience and the acceptance, qualities of mindfulness are what predicted the ability to creatively problem solve in engineers at Stanford.

So this positive moods, they are what open us to greater creativity and greater learning. So I think that's really important. The second thing that we talked about is that oftentimes when we are having a positive or pleasant experience, we kind of gloss over it, and it's really important to pause and savor that and actually encode it into our long-term memory because most of our memories are filled with fears and traumas. And if someone gives you a review at work and they gave you 15 positives and one negative, you spend the next week obsessing about that one negative. And so we're trying to kind of shift this negativity bias, and the way to do it is by starting to pay attention to even mildly pleasant experiences, and then to really savor them by engaging our senses, engaging the sight smells, and when you do that, it acts as these little hooks into your long-term memory. So the more present I am, the more it gets encoded, and once it becomes part of my long-term memory, it's part of my chemical soup. It's part of who I am.

Chet:

I want to go back to a quote you had in the beginning, which was you said something about practice. There was a one line quote that you had. What was it?

Shauna:

What you practice grows stronger. What you practice grows stronger.

Chet:

What you practice grows stronger. I think that should be applied to everything, including fun, right? Because I think the hooks make a difference. I think it's all awesome. I'm going to move to the rapid fire questions now. What is your favorite mindfulness app?

Shauna:

Well, I have two. Is that okay? So one-

Chet:

That's great.

Shauna:

I love Sam Harris. His app is wonderful, Waking Up, so great. And then another one is called Virtusan, and it's one I'm working on with Andrew Huberman, and it's been really extraordinary, so I've been really impressed with that group.

Chet:

I haven't tried the second one, but I will.

Shauna:

Okay.

Chet:

The toughest question a student has ever asked you?

Shauna:

The toughest I would say is why do bad things happen in this world, especially to good people? I have never quite found the right answer. I've worked with a lot of people who experienced trauma, and that's always one that's hard for me.

Chet:

What's the best answer that has worked? I know different things work for different people, but what is one that has actually worked?

Shauna:

Yeah, I think one is acknowledging the pain before even going to the answer because the reason they're asking is because in so much pain, and so for me, the best answer has always been, "You're really suffering right now." To really kind of connect on that level just by naming an emotion, it really what we found, it calms down the physiology and then in terms of the complexity and mystery of life, and that even if bad things happen and we don't have control of them, we do have control of our next moment and how we respond, and still in the face of huge trauma and suffering, I never feel like it's an adequate answer.

Chet:

One podcast that has changed your perspective?

Shauna:

Well, I was just listening to Andrew Huberman's podcast about psilocybin, and it was very, very interesting. That was this morning.

Chet:

Your favorite quote from one of your books?

Shauna:

From one of my books?

Chet:

Yeah.

Shauna:

I think I gave it to you earlier. It's that quote about perfection. It's that perfection is the antithesis of evolution. That one I've repeated to myself many, many times being a recovering perfectionist, just to remind myself that my goal is growth, not perfection.

Chet:

Who and what inspires you?

Shauna:

Well, my grandpa is the person that has always inspired me the most in the whole world, possibly because he's the most open-minded, curious man I've ever met. He never went to, not never, but he didn't go to high school or college. He had to work at starting at age 16 to support his family, but when he was 38, he decided to go back to high school and then go to college. He went to UCLA, and then he got a perfect score on his SAT and went and got his PhD in mathematics, became a math professor, was a professor until he was from 45 until 85 for 40 years. In the meantime, he trained my uncle who won the Fields Medal in mathematics, and on top of all of that, my grandpa, grandpa Ben, he wrote my most read paper with me. He co-authored with about mechanisms of mindfulness, and even though it wasn't his field, his brain was so creative and so open that I just learned the most from him.

Chet:

That is so awesome. What advice would you share with a younger version of yourself?

Shauna:

It sounds so cliche, but it's really, I wish that I had been kinder to myself at a younger age, and I wish that I knew at that time that no matter what mistakes I'd made, it was never too late to change. I think for so much of my early life, I felt like I had already messed up and it was too late, and neuroplasticity for me has been the most hopeful message of the last 400 years of brain science because it shows us that we're all capable of change no matter what.

Chet:

Oh, that's awesome. Shauna, this has been great. Like we talked about before, this is different. Most of our Inspired Execution Podcast are with operational folks who are actually either running companies or are technology leaders. This has been great. I think we're going to have to have you back soon and go deeper in one of these, because as we talked about before, this is a subject that a lot of people don't approach with a open mind. They think of this as, I'll use a word that may not be the appropriate word, but hokey, right? They don't think that this is part of what makes them a better leader or just a better individual contributor in their work life, in their personal life and things like that.

So I think all the folks, and I think you would agree with this, everybody that has practices mindfulness in whatever form they want to, while they're running, while they're walking, while they're having a cup of tea, while they're meditating, whatever it might be, would say that it actually transforms them and makes them a better human being and brings a better version of themselves. I would love to spend more time talking to you more about that so that our listeners can benefit from it.

Shauna:

I would love that.

Chet:

Awesome. Thank you very much again for being on the podcast.

Shauna:

Thank you.