Paradoxes of peace and performance

‍Mo Dhaliwal

[00:00:00] Welcome to High Agency, where we ignite conversations that drive change and spark momentum towards transformative action and professional mastery. In the high-pressure world of business leadership, where decisions can make or break entire companies, stress isn’t just a side effect, it’s a constant. But what’s the real cost of all that pressure on the people at the top? The data tells a really tough story. So picture a group of startup founders, the innovative, driven minds that have this outsized impact on the economy and the world. Now consider that nearly 75% of them are quietly dealing with mental health issues. It’s a reality check that reminds us even those who seem to have it all together are carrying some heavy mental burdens. And it doesn’t get better. It doesn’t get better as you move up. A shocking 82% of CEOs show signs of burnout. And this isn’t just about being tired. It’s exhaustion that seeps into every part of their lives. They’re so-called tireless leaders, but they’re fighting their own very real struggles. And if you look at their workloads, it kind of makes sense. CEOs are clocking in around 72. 5 hours a week on average. And that’s before you add in all of the after-hours. They’re: not even about their hour’s demands and the psychological burdens they carry of these massive responsibilities and often the chaos that they need to wrestle with. It’s a relentless schedule that barely leaves any room to breathe, let alone to recharge. And to cope, they’re met with the same clichéd advice that so many of us have heard. Prioritize yourself, meditate, delegate more. Its advice that sounds good, but it isn't really a priority. It’s a priority when business is at stake. So we have to ask, in a world that’s always demanding more from its leaders, how are they supposed to stay sane? Are there actual ways to manage the stress? Or is burnout just the cost of doing business at the top? Well, my guest today is trying to show them a better way. She works with high-performing executives, CEOs, and founders to rise above this tsunami of stress, to eliminate overwhelm, and to find peace, and thereby unlock even greater capacities for productivity. I’m joined by inventor and visionary Amrita Ahuja. She’s the driving force behind Groundwork. Her lifelong entrepreneurship journey spans design, health, marketing, taking her from Silicon Valley to Qatar to the Pacific Northwest. And as an executive coach for CEOs, she developed Groundwork, a holistic framework, addressing both internal and external factors affecting successful people. Her revolutionary approach aims to combat burnout and overwhelm through various formats, including coaching, workshops, and online courses. Amrita is changing the game for productivity and peace, creating a paradigm shift in how we live and in how we work. Welcome, Amrita.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:03:17] Thank you so much.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:03:18] So this is a conversation we've been meaning to have for some time.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:03:22] Yes.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:03:22] And it's also a conversation we've had many times.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:03:25] Yes.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[ 00:03:25 ] So before we get into it, because I am really interested in unpacking what it means to balance peace and productivity, because when you talk to anybody that is in a fast growth startup or a high level CEO, the two are actually in conflict. And you're trying to show people how to integrate these things. But before we get that, how do you even arrive here? Like, what was the genesis? What was the genesis for Groundwork? Why did you start it? Why you and why now?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:04:02] I mean, ironically, it's funny. A lot of the work that I teach has people starting with where they started in their own childhood, because a lot of the gifts that we have come from a place of deep suffering that we experience at young ages. And so that's definitely where my journey started. And it started with being raised in survival mode is how I describe it. So mixed race, kid growing on the outskirts of Montreal. And by the time I was 18, we had been evicted or moved over 20 times.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:04:32] So that was survival.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:04:33] That was survival mode. Exactly. And watching my father trying to achieve success and trying to make it in business had me just look at wanting to do things differently because he had been pushing so hard to achieve status and trying to achieve success, that as he failed at doing that, he fell into deeper and deeper levels of depression and anxiety. And so I watched him kind of go through a mental health crisis. We didn’t have those words then, but that’s what it was. Mental health crisis. And then going to Silicon Valley in my early 20s, dropping out of college and working in a startup in what was supposed to be the pinnacle of innovation and creativity, and then realizing very quickly that everyone in the valley was just anxious and depressed and in survival mode. And I was like, oh, my God, I' m going to be in survival mode again. And in this reactivity, that was causing them to even lose sight of why they started in the first place. And so that was really where the beginning of my journey started, because I started looking at all these kinds of frameworks. I started studying different frameworks, reading all kinds of books, getting my hands on anything I possibly could, developing myself and looking at what my own internal drivers were and wanting to figure out a way to produce in the world and get things done, but not without my mental faculties intact, without this idea of having a healthy mindset and being stable at inside as I' m acting in the world, as I' m doing.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:06:08] Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting you have that experience in the valley because we like hearing success stories. Yeah. And we only ever focus on success stories. Right. And I think that’s quite natural, especially in business, because you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, its optimism that drives things forward. And I think it' d be rather chilling and depressing, and potentially discouraging if, you know, the common narrative was actually about exploring, for example, the amount of like suicidal ideation that happens amongst, you know, startup founders that are pressed there at the wall and trying to make things happen with very little. Yes. And then, you know, even with, like, high-performing CEOs, you look at the roles that they reach. And there actually an Inc.com article from earlier this year that actually did a study. They presented some research, and the name of the article was dying to reach the Top. And it had some, like, really chilling, you know, information and stats in there. Like, for example, you know, company performance actually dictated, like, CEOs' mortality, right, within a couple of years, where if they, you know, late-stage career, the company is performing badly. On average, they’re dying two years faster than their counterparts, right? And, you know, on the one hand, you look at it, and you, you know, it sounds kind of shocking. But then I think we've kind of, you know, tricked ourselves or kind of shielded ourselves from the realities of it, which is that, you know, we spend, like, a third of our lives in these spaces. And compared to everything else that we do, this is probably the most intense interaction that we have. And why wouldn’t it have this massive outsized impact on your life, right? But, you know, so in Silicon Valley, you had these experiences, and you saw a lot of that. And you, I guess, to some level, decided that that’s not for you. But then, you know, why did you go there in the first place? Like, what were you trying to do? Because you left school for a reason. You joined a startup for a reason. Yeah. To achieve something.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:08:23] Yes.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:08:24] So what attracted you in the first place?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:08:26] I mean, I had big goals and big dreams, which is, I think, usually the fuel, right? And I loved the chaos. I thought the chaos was cool. I thought it was cool to kill yourself and be busy and, like, you know, die on the cross of trying to achieve something. There was something about that that was just, like, embedded in my thinking from that. Well, probably from our society, as we know, right?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:08:48] There'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:08:49] s so many ways that we're taught that are incorrect to think about what true success is. And believing that the external world was going to make me feel okay. Like, if I just got this thing done, if I just achieved a certain level of success, then I'd feel okay inside. So breaking that illusion was a 15-year journey.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:05] Oh, wait. Like, that's not, like That’s

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:09:07] not how it works, Mo. What?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:09] If we finish the thing, that's not going to fill the Oh, that's weird.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:09:13] Darn it, hey?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:13] Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:09:14] The lies. Yeah. So breaking that illusion and working with the people around me and taking that modality on for myself is a big part of my journey of going, okay, yeah, I definitely want to produce. I want to achieve things. But I don't want that to be the means to me achieving peace inside, which is really what I'm after. So then how do I achieve peace and produce? And how do I have those two things not be mutually exclusive?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:44] Yeah. And, you know, so I've had some challenges even in, I think, myself. You know, bringing myself to this idea of making peace compatible with productivity. Yeah. Because we also chase dopamine to some extent. Yes. Right? So there's a bit of a high from a chaos. There's a bit of a high from that urgency. Right? But increasingly, I've also been seeing, you know, where it’s detrimental. Right? Like, I myself have experienced long periods where you're going for so long and you're actually been on a bit of a decline performance-wise, but you don't notice it.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:10:19] Right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:10:20] And then eventually you look around and you say, actually, wow, I've been exhausted for months. But kind of like the boiling a frog effect. Yeah. Because it was so incremental for so long. That'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:10:29] s right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:10:29] You actually don't realize how diminished you are. Yeah. Right? In some ways, I think in my own life, it would have been, you know, perhaps healthier to actually have like some specific like mental breakdown.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:10:39] Yes. Yes.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:10:40] Or like just flip out because at least it'd be visible. Yes. And then you can run in and do something about it, yeah. But I don't think that, you know, there' s in the current context, I don' t think there' s, there's been a place to actually have this conversation because there' s, there's a gap for knowledge and appreciation of what you' re describing for sure. But then it's also been sort of filled in badly by a lot of tropes. Totally. And that's also why I kind of called that out. And I saw you smirking a little bit when I mentioned, you know, meditation and taking care of yourself because I don't mean to discount these things. Yeah. Right. But they've just been repeated to us. I mean. Yeah. Repeated to me, yeah. Right. Of, you know, you should meditate in this. And like, yeah, you know, you try it, but then something comes up and that's the last thing you do. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:11:29] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:11:29] And so beyond, you know, this thick layer of tropes of what you're supposed to do and all the self-help stuff, it's easy to write it off. Yeah. Right. And not really look at it. So how have you been, I guess, interacting with, you know, the CEOs, the founders, the companies you work with?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:11:48] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:11:48] And how do you get them over that hump? Yeah. Because, you know, like early on, your wiring was the same, right? My wiring, I think, to a large extent, still, like, I know better, but I don't do better. Yeah. So to a large extent, my wiring is still the same. Yeah. But how do you get them to understand that this idea of peace and productivity, in your view, shouldn’t be at odds?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:12:09] Yeah. I’m going to backtrack a little bit on what you said earlier, which is it often takes us, because we’re operating urgency, and urgency becomes, like you said, you’re getting the constant dopamine hit.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:12:20] Mm-hmm.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:12:21] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the urgent thing actually has to occur to have the awakening that something needs to change. So ironically, it almost takes an emergency to occur for most people before they hit a wall and they're like, ' okay, something's not working here, something's not right.' And usually, to answer the question that you just asked, it’s deeply existential. Like, it’s not just I need another tip or tool. I need to figure out how to meditate in the morning, and that’s going to fix all my problems, just like you said. And the reason I smirked is because I agree with you. Like, the life. The last thing someone needs who’s high-performing is another tip. Like, just go set a new set of goals.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:12:58] Yeah. Add this to your list of things to do.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:13:00] Add this to your list of things to do, and then you'll be okay. And it. Like, no, it’s a complete overhaul to the mindset of the person and a reconnection needed to tap into that place inside that’s, like, going to give meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction again. And creativity is going to arise again. Because it’s true. Like, what is the point of just producing? If you’re doing it without that experience along the way, it’s so futile. Like, the to-do list is never going to end. And so you’re just going to be chasing something constantly. And at some point, you'll not feel okay, hopefully. Hopefully, at some point in your career, you'll interrupt that. And it’s okay that that. What it took to get there. Like, that I' m not at odds with. If you needed to just put your head down and you needed to drown in emails for a bit and your inbox felt completely ridiculous for several years, but you got to a certain place with it, no problem. But at some point, you'll probably want to retrieve a certain level of peace to master what's next in your life, to actually be masterful at what you're up to in your own field and in your own industry. Because you're likely not going to be able to get to the next level of performance from the same place as just pushing, pushing, pushing. And then on the flip side of that, numb-ing out to get relief. Like, thrashing between those two. Two places, which is the degrees of the stress response we see at groundwork. Pushing harder to get things done and then numbing out on the flip side to get relief. That's exhausting.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:14:32] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, grind culture was sold pretty hard for a long time. Yeah. And I like what you said thereof, you know, this idea that what got you here won’t get you there.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:14:45] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:14:46] And at the sort of like the ultra-high success level, you actually do see the other side, right? Because grind culture worked for a while and both Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, love them or hate them, but they both describe it, right? Of like the diminishing returns that kind of, you know, get to the top of that peak. But then both of them and others who have had to find peace, transition, different ways of managing. And from there, then break through to the next level. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:15:15] And you literally see a whole generation of people now who are rejecting it. Like it's society- wide. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:15:21] Yeah. And look, you know, what got you here won’t get you there. But the idea that even if you have to put your head down and just grind for a while, get through it and then retrieve and, you know, it' s almost like a recovery program that you Re- describing, right? For burnt out CEOs. But to retrieve some of that peace, it’s so easy to continue postponing that and deferring it sort of forever, right? Yeah. Like there’s this, you know, meme that went around that I really resonated. What that said something like, what was it? Oh, adulthood is saying things should slow down in a few weeks, every week until you die. And I really kind of felt that because I've caught myself saying that, like, like when, why would it slow down? This is life. We're in it. Like I haven’t, I haven’t planned for anything to slow down. And, you know, and I think it A few and far between the leaders that actually work at that level, building that in.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:16:20] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:21] Well, I' m going to actually share an anecdote. And I think this is a really interesting story because so I was at Collision two years ago in Toronto and I was having lunch with this gentleman named Jesse Chudda, CEO and founder of Axtria, you know, incredible company. They do, you know, sales analytics and enablement for pharmaceutical sales. Yeah. And, you know, we're sitting there talking and I was kind of congratulating him because I think they had crossed like 40 or 50 million dollars in revenue or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Re just a rocket ship, right? They’re going. And I was sort of congratulating him on the success of the company and, you know, what they're actually doing financially. And he paused for a minute and he said, he goes, look, he goes, I' m really proud of the company, but I'm more proud of how we did it than what we did.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:17:08] So cool. Right. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:17:09] And I was like, OK, what do you mean? So he proceeded to tell me that since he founded this company years ago, that his deal with his board and his investors. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:17:28] Wow. So cool. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:17:30] And it was written in stone. And as he was telling the story, I think he saw some disbelief in my face because I was already doing the math. I'm like, OK, 10 weeks, you know, you do like two here, three there. You can break it up, maybe some of the holidays. And he goes, it was 10 weeks together.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:17:43] Right. Wow.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:17:44] Right. And I'm still doing the math in my head. I' m like, OK, yeah, you're probably, you know, that's a good intention. You know, there's probably some times when you had to. And I think he was just sitting there reading my face. And the next thing he said was, he goes, in 17 years, we've never canceled any of our plans for those 10 weeks. And he said there was one occasion where I had to send my family ahead of me because it was a deal closed. Things got delayed. And I showed up a few days later. Wow. Right. Once in 17 years. Yeah. But otherwise, his commitment held firm. Yeah. And he just built that in and, you know, set up the expectations. And I don' t think you can fault his performance because I think they had like 400 percent growth or something one year, like just wildly successful company. But that's a rarity. Like, I've never talked to anybody actually beyond him of, you know, company founders, startup founders, you know, even CEOs that I've talked to. They'll mention vacations and trips and maybe some downtime. But I've yet to talk to somebody with such a deep commitment to family vacation as this man held.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:18:47] Do you think he sacrificed? Any revenue for that?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:18:50] I mean, you would think it's probably pretty marginal. Yeah. Because, I mean, they're, you know, a monster in their market. Yeah. Right. And, you know, like he was doing these 10 week vacations during these meteoric rises. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's like, OK, if they weren't at 98 percent, maybe they could have been 99. Like, I don't know. Yeah. Right. It's hard to say. But even if that was the case. Right. Here you have a case. Of someone who said, you know, my family's a priority. Yeah. He. S had these amazing vacations and trips with his kids and his wife, like all over the world.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:19:26] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:26] And so that was worth it. Yeah. Right.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:19:28] Beautiful.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:29] And unfortunately, like I'm not like maybe there's studies that exist out there. And this is one data point. Obviously, nobody's done like a longitudinal study of this sort of decision making. But on the other side, I wonder if his performance improved because of.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:19:44] As a result of that.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:45] Yeah. As a result,

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:19:46] Setting that well-being as a standard.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:48] Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:19:48] Absolutely.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:49] And so I wonder if that affected his decision making. If that much clarity, if that gives you something. Right.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:19:54] I mean, my theory is that it does.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:56] Yeah. So, no, I mean. That’s exactly it. You have an interesting thesis there.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:20:00] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:20:00] But where have you seen this play out? Like, where have you worked with somebody, coached somebody where the piece that you promised actually delivered the productivity as well?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:20:10] Yes. I think that when when they're when the people I work with get a handle on the chaos. And clarity begins to take hold. And then what we're seeking on an ongoing basis is the state of clarity. It changes everything. It changes how you make decisions. It changes how you interact with people. It changes the capacity to respond to new ideas and actually hear the idea and integrate the idea, and then act on the idea. And that that actually creates, I think, a level of innovation that's not possible if you’re just. Obviously in real life. Reactivity, right? You're just like responding to immediate needs and the important and urgent Stephen Covey quadrant one stuff, right? So it's not my theory. It’s many people’s theory. I mean, Stephen Covey talked about this in great depth, a lot of his career about what the results are of being proactive minded. So yeah, I see, I see it all the time. It, you know, it' As a slow trickle because, in the beginning, you start to see the person kind of reckon with how long they've been in that kind of survival state and how deeply that' s affected them mentally, emotionally. And there’s a lot of like almost grief that comes up. Like people are grieving so much lost time and lost time with family, lost time with themselves, their own health, their own wellbeing. And then after that, they begin to see the impact of it on the people around them. And. And then when they start operating from this new place, you kind of, you have a sense of hopelessness or hope resurface, a sense of hope resurface in them. And then things change after that. Sometimes people have to make a decision at that point to see if they want to keep going with the status quo. Sometimes it actually means scaling down and scaling back and, and testing things at a different level. But often the renewal of energy that comes through allows them to produce in a different way. So the results that we see are definitely like an increase in performance, but it’s not, it’s a different kind of measure. We’re almost having to reinvent entirely how we measure it. If you’re measuring it purely from revenue, then that’s different. But if you’re measuring it based on, am I fulfilling on the outcome of my life. s work and my mission in the world, then. Then I would say, absolutely. I see it every time. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:22:52] What's the, uh, like you've mentioned survival mode a few times now. Um, but I feel like, you know, that's kind of like the, the word is kind of the tip of the iceberg. Um, and you described some of your early childhood experiences of, you know, uh, experiencing financial precarity, but what is survival mode? Like, what does it, what does it mean to exist in that place?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:23:14] Yeah. I mean, typically it's a state of reactivity. And you can think about it as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Fight, flight, freeze were the, um, you know, most, most of us know what those are like. Fawn was studied later only in the last 20 years have they described fawn as a response, which is a people- pleasing tendency. So you abdicate your own needs to meet the needs of another. They studied women. That's how they found it. But ironically, almost all of the executives that I work with that are male have a very strong fawn response, which I always find really interesting. So it’s a big one to see, am I reacting from that place or am I reacting from, or am I responding? I shouldn't say reacting from clarity, focus. Am I connected to what I'm doing? Um, but yeah, when you're in survival mode, it So very myopic, it's tension- based, it's resistance- based, and it's very challenging to make clear decisions when you're in that state. And so a lot of the work that I do is getting people to move out of that state. s one of the things that I' re in that state, and again, a lot of the awareness that they have in the beginning is like, ' I don' t know' that I've ever not been in survival mode. It's the first kind of thing that occurs.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:24:26] I just, I have a career.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:24:28] Yeah, exactly.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:24:29] That's my job.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:24:30] Yeah, exactly. My job is to show up and firefight, but that' Where does the exhaustion come from. And that’s probably not why people started the thing that they were doing in the first place. You know, chaos is like, it’s great fuel, right? To get started on something. And most very successful people or high- performing people, they don’t know how to do it. And so people I only got to work with, you know, that are more experienced at it or more experienced performers are really good at surfing the wave of chaos, right? Um, and so they think that that’s the place to perform from. And so the idea of having peace as they're performing seems completely absurd because it, it, it can almost sound like it I' m going to slow them down and it's not going to make getting things done. Like it’s not actually going to get that result. Like you’re not gonna be able to get things done from that place.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:25:13] So, I mean, that, that was my initial resistance to the idea. Yeah. Right. Because when you’re trying to get things done in the world and somebody comes along and starts talking about, you know, something that sounds really placid and peaceful and quiet. The thing that would be, I think, screaming in an entrepreneur’s mind is that’s going to slow us down. Yeah. Right. This is sounding like a vacation, not like productivity. Yeah. Right. So how do you overcome that? Because I imagine that the people who come to you, you know, likely are dealing with a level of stress and overwhelm where maybe things are untenable. Yeah. And they’re looking for a painkiller. Yeah. But a lot of people just aren't. And they just see that as the norm. And anything, any conversation, any narrative that is outside of just, you know, what have you built? What have you done? What have you shipped? Is seen as a distraction. Yes. And something else slowing you down. Yes. Right. So how do you overcome that? How do you overcome that hurdle?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:26:13] Yeah. I mean, the new analogy that I’m using now is peace is not a pond. It’s a river. And so when you have peace, the experience of that productivity in that state can actually be one that’s fast and has a lot of momentum to it and is highly productive. It’s kind of like getting into the jet way of life. You know, you’re plugging into a different zone and you’re operating from an entirely different place and a place of deeper awareness. It’s open. It’s not myopic, which is what survival mode gives us. It’s non-resistant. So now challenges that come don’t feel like you’re having to fight your way through the challenges. You’re just responding.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:26:54] So as you're describing it, this is sounding a lot like what I think some people have called the flow state. Yeah. Exactly. And I know there's some thinking about how the flow state is achieved and, you know, how you're supposed to sort of. You know, how you're supposed to set the conditions to create that for yourself. And they tend to be around, you know, focus and environment and, you know, setting the conditions properly for flow state. But again, quite often they seem like sort of like aesthetic modifications. Yes, exactly. Totally. And just changing some of the attributes. Yeah. Because I know for myself, I can change all of the, you know.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:27:33] Get the right project management system in place. Yeah. Right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:27:35] The environment is decluttered.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:27:38] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:27:38] You know, I've focused everything down. I'm on, you know, like a daily. I like computer that only has, you know, a very, you know, simple window open. So all I can do is write.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:27:48] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:27:48] Like I can do all those things. Yes. But when I sit down, I know that I'm still the same fucking tornado.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:27:53] Yes. Yes. Right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:27:55] That is now trying to do this. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so, like, again, you know, a lot of this sounds attractive. Yeah. But the initial conversation. Right. And again, I’ m not trying to solve your sales strategy right now. Yeah. But I feel like the initial conversation. The initial conversation would still be, well, this sounds good. Yeah. You know, maybe I’ll get to it. But it’s another thing to do. Right. Of, you know, how do you actually bring someone into the process when really superficially what it looks like is just you’re adding more things for them to do. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:28:29] I mean, I often joke that I' m teaching spirituality under the guise of productivity. Right. So how I'm getting people in is, do you need to manage your email inbox? You know, is it out of control? Are you not able to get to the important projects? Is your well-being not in check? You know, all of those kinds of very standard productivity speak stuff.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:28:53] You could be the cult of inbox zero. Exactly. That's fantastic.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:28:56] Yeah. I could just focus on that and make peace with that. And it's not that. It's very much not that. It’s really actually about organizing your entire consciousness. And I think the solution has to be twofold. It has to be the internal. It has to be the internal state, which is what we've been talking about so far, and it also does have to be the external stuff like you do have to keep your environment in check. You do have to have systems in place and a set of tools in place that really work for you so that you can actually manage all of it. So the illusion is like, if it's just this one little piece that I correct, then I’ll have the whole solution. But the way that I’ m looking at it is it’s all of it. We have to actually account for all of it. And yes, that can be overwhelming. It can be overwhelming in the beginning to someone who’s already overwhelmed, but that’s why you do have to reach a bit of a crisis in order to find me, because I’ m not interested in convincing you that you need a new way. I don’t have time for that myself. If you know you need the new way, then great, let'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:29:56] Let'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:29:57] s do things differently and let's make the transition. I mean, I see the transition happen in 12 weekly sessions. Like I've now systemized it enough that there's a point of no return after me working with someone for 12 weeks in a row. So even I have my own systems down enough that I can replicate what I'm doing and actually create a real change, both at the internal level and also at the external level and how they' re managing their to-do' s and their emails and different things like that. But yeah, I'm definitely not going to be convincing anyone. And that's why I've been word of mouth so far. And I haven’ I’ve figured out how to scale what I'm doing. That's been a big problem, as you know, because it really does take someone going, ‘Holy shit,’ you need to go talk to Amrita. But she’s going to solve this. Just trust me on this. Don’t ask questions.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:30:45] Wow.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:30:45] And that's how people find me.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:30:47] Yeah. Yeah, I can see that because it's a pretty rare combination, right, of people that have reached an impasse where their life, their stress level, it’s untenable. Yeah. And somebody has a message out there of let's organize your consciousness is what you said.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:31:06] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:31:06] You said it so flippantly, but that is a pretty massive statement. Yes.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:31:09] I know.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:31:11] Like, I just I twinged a little bit when you said it. I'm like, oh, God, organize my consciousness. That sounds like a lot of work.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:31:17] Especially if you're a high performer, because likely you have ADHD if you’re a high performer. You’re just you’re slightly neurodivergent. You’re super smart. All the people that I work with are highly, highly, highly intelligent people.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:31:29] Well, thank you.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:31:30] Yeah. And it’s just the truth of it. Like, I just see it as like this is what we're dealing with. You know, I kind of have like my persona for the person that I work with. It’s like these things. You know, and so when I’m problem solving with them, I’ m having to problem solve by getting through the intelligence and then getting to the deeper thing that's driving behind that. And it takes quite a bit of navigating to do that effectively as a good coach. Right. So I' m having to, like, deal with all their objections that they' re throwing my way of like, I've tried the thing and I've read the book and I've done. But and I have this excuse and that excuse and, you know, all the things.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:32:06] Yeah. I've done GTD. Yeah, exactly. I have superhuman. Now, yeah, exactly.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:32:11] Yeah. So really getting back to basics of like, OK, great. You have all that. And what we’re trying to do is actually embed a set of principles and completely revamp your mindset and the way that you view what you’re dealing with. So it’s a much deeper conversation.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:32:31] How has that conversation changed?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:32:33] In what way? What do you mean?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:32:35] Like, you've been at this for last 10 plus years. Yeah. And. My personal experience has been that it feels like anyways, that the level of noise has been greatly amplified. Yeah. I'm finding it more difficult to tease the signal out of the noise that is, I feel, you know, pointed at me like a fire hose to my face all the time.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:33:02] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:33:02] And that's just on the information side. But how is your conversation and the people that you work with? How has that evolved over the past decade?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:33:09] Yeah, you're right in saying that there' s just actually just so much more there's so much more speed, there's so much more information, so much more access to information. I mean, now with AI and all that, it's just like it's wild. Right. And you're supposed to keep up with everything right now. So it's changed in terms of, like, the volume of the chaos, perhaps that people are seeing the expectations, I think, are the same. But obviously, as you increase the volume of chaos, the expectations also increase with that. I would say that the way it I've changed in terms of how I've been able to address it is because originally I was only dealing at the external level. Originally, when I started this work, I was only working at the level of systems and looking at systems and people's personal performance and how they were.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:33:55] What systems?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:33:56] Systems for how to manage the chaos, how to manage email, how to manage to- do’s, tasks, how to manage communications, how to manage ideas, and how to manage the calendar. Which is a big part of the work that I teach, right, is how to manage time. So everything that'

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:34:10] s in the productivity and collaboration. Exactly. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:34:13] And then I started to realize that even though I was showing people this beautifully elegant way of getting things done, that was so well designed and simple. And like, why shouldn't everybody just do things this way? It's so obvious. Realizing that when they were opening up their email inbox, they were having like a jerk response, a knee- jerk response to like stress. They were just they were drowning in stress and they were having a deeply stressful experience of moving through the minutes of the day. And so then I started to look at, OK, what's the internal aspect to this? What are the psychological factors and what do we need to do at the level of mental, emotional, behavioral in order to solve holistically for this thing?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:34:57] So, you know, that's really interesting because, believe it or not, I think it was something like a decade ago. I did actually implement GTD. Yeah. Getting things done, read the book, did all that. Yeah. Um, even bought some software that promised to like work really well with, um, you know, the principles laid out in that. And what I experienced, um, I didn't realize or I didn't give it a name until like years later. But for a period of time, I was doing a lot and not feeling any better.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:35:31] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:35:31] And it wasn't until years later that, um, I met somebody else that had sort of gone through something similarly. Yeah. Beating themselves over the head, feeling really bad for not doing more and getting it all done and what have you. And they said to me, they' re like, you know, GTD will help you organize what you' re doing, but it's not ever going to make you consider why you' re doing that stuff.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:35:52] Yeah. Right. That's right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:35:53] So if you're a frenzied person, it'll probably organize your existing frenzy. And in some ways, actually, maybe even amplify their frenzy because now you've got a great system to just shove all the random things into. Exactly. And just be in a constant state of doing stuff. Yeah. Right. I'm just doing shit all the time. Uh, but it doesn't actually have you at any point addressing what's triggering some of the actions you’re taking. That'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:36:15] s right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:36:15] And whether they're meaningful, whether they're aligned, it's just, you want to do a bunch of stuff. Here's a way you can do that. Plus even more stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:36:23] And that might've worked 10 years ago for people. And I think it did. It had a certain level of success, but yeah, it only gets you so far. There's no doubt about it. And the psychological factors that I see are, you know, you can't, you actually can' So, to step over them. If you want true productivity.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:36:39] So, and, and after that, it was actually interesting because, um, I discovered this program called Mission Control that seemed to be kind of the opposite in some ways because it started entirely with the psychological, right? Yeah. Um, so.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:36:54] That system starts with a full day on, you're never going to get it all done. Like so much of it is context.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:37:01] Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:37:02] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:37:02] Yeah. So, you know, with this stuff out there, like whether it's getting things done, which was massive, uh, for its, its period, um, and Mission Control, which is, I think far more niche. And I know there So many things in between, but how do you sort of arrive at your way of doing things? Uh, what were your influences? And when you were trying to solve this for yourself, like, didn't you like look out into the world and see if something already exists or somebody is already addressing what you're talking about?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:37:29] I didn't. I mean, I did, I shouldn't say in terms of my own personal development, I developed myself at multiple levels and when I started off, you know, I had no relationship to what it meant to keep my promises about anything. I mean, I tell the story of being a flight attendant when I was 19 for a couple of years and the plane being fully loaded with all the passengers and all the flight crew and like me just like bolting through the airport to try and get there on time. So the plane could leave. Of course I was late in the plane left late, and this was like a regular occurrence. Like, that's what I mean by no relationship to time or being on time or keeping my promises or giving my word to anything. And so when I was in my early twenties and dropped out of college and went to, went to the valley, I realized very quickly that that was not a good way to be in life and it was not a good way to be in business. And if I was going to be in business, I I had to have to clean that up pretty fast. So, among that, I learned all kinds of things. I learned to meditate, to calm my mind, to actually dip into what was going on inside. And I looked at many different modalities around flow state stuff. And, and then continued to study, like, you know, I think I've read the seven habits of highly effective people probably seven times, like just embedding that thinking into myself, into my psyche. And so that's really where that all came from. But having said that, I think that one of the major struggles for people who are high performers is the constant feeling that they’re: not good enough because they can’t do everything that they intend to do.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:39:05] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:39:06] Mm-hmm. When you start to deal with things at that level and you start to dismantle that as being true, then all of a sudden you have more freedom to actually execute because you’re not being run by this constant fear, which is great for getting things started. And sometimes we need that, but it’s not sustainable. It’s not a sustainable way to produce. And it’s also a detriment to, I think, again, being able to maximize potential. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And true productivity ideally would dismantle any fear that you have around not getting it all done. And so a big part of the work that I teach is a powerful relationship to what you’re not doing and actually deciding consciously, like, 'no', I' m not doing these things. Yes, they’re great ideas. Yeah, I probably should have intellectual privilege. I probably should have property and I probably should throw more parties for alumni and I probably should, I don’t know, do all the things I intend to do. And if I'm in reality about that, I' m not actually going to get to it. And that’s where the peace comes from. Its like, 'I am not superhuman.' There are a certain amount of hours in the day. There As a certain amount of things I'm capable of. And if my well-being is intact and things are taken care of, then I have to decide what I’ m not doing. And I have to make peace with that. And that’s like not, it’s not a normal conversation in our society right now.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:40:42] No, it isn't. Because I mean, like, we live in the world of stretch goals.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:40:48] Yes.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:40:49] Right. Yeah. So it isn’t even that we're supposed to manage things well. It's like our entire intent for managing them well is so that we can actually achieve a stretch goal.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:41:01] Yeah, exactly.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:41:02] So how do we reconcile those things? Right.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:41:04] I was just going to say. Like, if you don’t know how to stretch, then you’re probably not right for this kind of thing. Like, that already has to be in place. You already know to push yourself. You already know how to put things out there that may or may not actually work. Like, you're already good at testing and pushing and doing hard things. That's not the issue.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:41:24] And that's why you work with high performers.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:41:25] Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Because what we want to do is then take that gift, because that’s a huge gift. And that’s what makes someone a high performer. It’s what makes someone an executive, a founder, a leader. And just keep that in check. It’s good to keep pushing that boundary. We want to do that. But not at the effect of peace of mind. Not without losing that stability inside.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:41:51] What are your influences now? Like, I've seen your program evolve. I've seen how the practice has changed over the years. Yeah. Where do you go for inspiration? How do you study this? Because I've seen this kind of turn into an area of practice and an area of study for you. Yeah. But where do you go? Like, are there materials? Are there people? Yeah. Who are your influences in this?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:42:18] There's many influences. When we look at the stress response pattern framework, which is the first part of the work that we do with folks, that was inspired by systemic family constellation work. And my own journey with that over the course of two years of really looking at myself. And I think that've learned over the course of a lot of my life internally and noticing where the drivers were coming from. In terms of, yeah, inspirations for that as well, Gabor Maté' s work on pain and that we don't escape pain and that actually the degree to which we' re in touch with our pain makes us, gives us a capacity to lead and to perform, actually.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:43:00] Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:43:01] And Harvard Business Review just released an article. I wouldn't say just, it It has been probably two years now, where they are now like very explicit about that leaders who are the most high- performing and the most effective at what they do are deeply in touch with their experience of their own suffering and their own pain. And so, yeah. And so integrating that into our experience is part of the work that we teach at Groundwork. And then, yeah, there's many inspirations. I mean, I'm always looking at stuff right now. I'm, you know, deeply studying Osho. And I've. I’ve worked with my own practice in transcendental meditation and dropping into a place beyond thought, really sitting with myself at the level of true peace and understanding that state as an embodied experience, not just as a mental one.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:43:51] So when I'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:43:52] m teaching, when I'm teaching, it's not because it's something I've conjured up in my mind or I'm thinking about as a theory. It’s because I have an embodied experience of it in my day-to- day life.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:01] And that'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:44:02] s what I want for others, you know.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:06] And and how is it going? Like, are you able to talk about some of the people that you're working with? Or maybe can you share a story in abstract terms if you don’t want to obviously name them and the various public company that they might be running?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:44:22] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:44:23] But but where have you seen it make an impact?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:44:25] Yeah. I mean, I just as an example, and I can’t I wouldn’t have anyone’s permission at this point. I would have had to ask. But just as an example, I got an audio. You know, this morning, pretty regular for me to get audio notes from the people I work with and someone was they were behaving. They realized that they were behaving badly towards one of their direct reports and they were feeling disappointment and almost being punishing in their tone. And I had had a long conversation with them around what it means to be a leader, you know, that being a leader means you’re the one. And if you’re going to be the one, you can' To be coming from your own internal pain and projecting that. And I think that' Even if there are some practical things to solve for there, like even if logically that person is not managing their job properly, you can' t be coming from this fear- based pain- based place with that to deal with something tactically. You want to deal with it with neutrality.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:45:20] And that'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:45:21] s how you’re, you know, ideally, that's how you're empowering the people around you. But anyways, I got this voice note this morning saying that they had dropped in, which is a practice of groundwork. We drop into the experience of pain that we're having when we see a survival response show up. And I always find it amazing because I will often get voice notes of these leaders who are, I'm talking like leading on the cutting edge of their own industries, making millions of dollars in revenue, managing huge teams of people, very networked, who are, you know, crying and deeply in touch with their own suffering and seeing how much it's driving them. And then releasing that over time and coming back to clarity and then having more grace with the people around them and actually seeing the fruits of their labor when they'Re bringing that grace to developing the people around them in a different way. And yeah, the results are palpable for sure. But it's hard to measure because its experience- based. A lot of it is experience- based. And I haven't done the work either to like track data on it, which I probably should do. That's also a parked item. For me right now, it's something I'm not doing right now. I'm not prioritizing, but definitely tracking the behavior and getting data around that is something that I intend to do in the future.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:43] Yeah. Well, even in the absence of that performance data of how it’s impacted the CEOs you work with, the need is pretty visible. Like just in the run up to this conversation, I was looking at the stats. I mentioned some of them in the opening. Yeah. But between burnout, mental health issues, the impact on lifespan, there is a countless amount of research articles and even interpretations of those that are showing up in modern publications talking about how all there' s this, you know, incredible amount of data and study being done on how negatively impacted high performers are by their positions. Yes. So it’s like this huge volcano and everybody’s pointing at it.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:47:32] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:47:32] And in fact, one thing. Something said that something like fifty- five percent of CEOs had indicated that they had some sort of negative mental health event in twenty twenty- four. Yeah. And that is already up like twenty- four points from twenty twenty- three. Yeah.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:47:50] Right.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:47:51] So something's happened in a year. Yeah. That has. And we're not talking about small, medium-sized businesses. Yeah. We're talking about enterprise, large- scale executives and CEOs that are saying that their mental health and how they show up and how their lives are being lived, the stress that they're dealing with is actually getting worse.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:48:11] Yeah. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:48:11] So the need is ever present. Yeah. But we are still at that stage, I guess, where we haven' t done enough work and perhaps just hasn't been enough study around how to impact that and what the results that impact can actually be.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:48:25] Yeah, exactly. And that’s why right now I'm measuring it by the experience that people are having, the feedback that I' m getting, you know, the testimonials or whatever you want to call it. Because the survival- based way of leading has a lot of these leaders living in their heads completely, you know, they' re looping on strategies, they' re over- strategizing constantly, they' re over- engineering their calendar, they' re always looking for, like, the next thing that. So going to hopefully save them, they're over managing the people around them, and then again, they’re pushing, pushing, pushing and then numbing out.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:48:57] Oh, that doesn't sound familiar at all.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:48:59] Right. Yeah, exactly. Major survival response. So then when they’re in. re in, caught in that trap, and they’re pulled out of their bodies, and they’re living in their heads, how are they supposed to think creatively and problem solve from that place? I mean, they’re going to get a certain, again, they'll get certain problems solved, but it'll be solved from a certain place, which will get you a certain kind of result. And when you start to think of the possibility of doing things a different way, it does take a leap of faith, because you actually have to trust that by relaxing that state. re still going to get results.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:49:36] And potentially break through to something new.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:49:39] Exactly. Exactly. And in my case, I've seen it time and time again, like repeatedly, and at multiple levels, at the personal level as well, like in their relationships with people around them, with their families. This the same executive that I was just telling you that sent me this audio note this morning, realized that the way he managed and the way he manages his team is the way he manages his children. And it is not working. He is not getting the results he wants with his children. And so, yeah, the epiphanies come at all levels, because how you do one thing is how you do everything. And integrity is a state of being. And so we're solving for that. And then the outfall of that hopefully affects multiple areas of life. Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:50:28] So if somebody wanted to learn more about you, about Groundwork. Where should they go?

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:50:35] You should probably go to the website, groundwork. Xyz, and then schedule a call with me. And I can walk them through the framework and show them how they can learn the work. But we primarily do three things. So we do a one-on-one coaching program, which is the most effective way to learn our work. There’s no doubt about that. We have an online course for folks who need it to be accessible. And then finally, we go into teams and we train teams in the principles of the system and we implement with coaches. And it’s great for teams, because it gives folks a shared language. You’re speaking the same language. You’re thinking about things from the same place. Your prioritization comes from the same place. And then also, it’s kind of fun, because people will know when someone I'm saying that a stress response. A team member can very quickly see, okay, that person’s kind of in a survival state.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:28] I'

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:51:28] m maybe going to just hold off on this question.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:30] Potentially be a bit more empathetic. Exactly.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:51:32] Yeah. And mitigate overwhelm. Mm-hmm. Right? Because you’re not like caking things on top of things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You’re actually just stepping it back just slightly enough to make sure that you’re doing things from the right place. Doing things from the right place. That’s what it’s all about.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:46] Got it.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:51:46] Yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:47] All right. Well, thank you, Armitha.

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Amrita Ahuja

[00:51:48] Thanks for having me.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:51:51] Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about. That was High Agency. Like and subscribe, and we will see you next time.