Meet Nicholas Whitaker with a special focus recently llaid-off tech workers, and those struggling with toxic teams.

Nicholas is passionate about helping people navigate the uncertainties accompanying major

life shifts.

With over a decade of experience in the tech industry, Nicholas understands the unique challenges those suddenly out of work face. That's exactly what happened to him after over a decade of working at Google. 

He has dedicated his life to coaching knowledge workers and founders through tough times, using mindfulness practices to help them find balance, calm, focus, and fulfillment. As a former Google employee, Nicholas played a significant role in scaling the company's global mindfulness program, gPause, and has extensive experience in mindfulness and meditation. 

Coping with layoffs can be a distressing experience, bringing feelings of uncertainty and fear about the future. However, they also present an opportunity for growth, transformation, and self-reflection. Mindfulness practices can play a key role in helping individuals process their emotions and maintain a sense of balance during this challenging period.

By being present and attentive to the moment, individuals can gain valuable insights and begin exploring new possibilities for personal and professional

growth. In his discussion with Brett Hill, Nicholas Whitaker described receiving the unexpected news of his layoff from Google via email at 3 a.m. on

a Friday. Through mindfulness and self-compassion, Whitaker could process his emotions, find support among friends and colleagues, and create a plan for the future.

His 5-year plan suddenly became a 5-week plan to find greater fulfillment and purpose in helping others facing layoffs or major life transitions.

Connect with Nicholas

You can reach out to Nicholas from his listing on the ⁠Mindful Coach Association.

His website is https://www.nicholaswhitaker.com

Sign up for his newsletter to stay informed about special offers and events.

Connect with Brett

You can reach out to Brett from his listing on the ⁠⁠Mindful Coach Association.⁠

And his main website at The Mindful Coach.

He works with coaches and other individuals 1:1, appears as a podcast guest, conducts webinars and teaches The Mindful Coach Method to coaches and other helping professionals.

Sign up to be notified about the podcast and other events.

Brett Hill

Hello, and welcome to the mindful coach podcast, a podcast where you'll meet the courageous coaches and helping professionals value mindfulness in their life and work and hear their inspiring stories firsthand. You'll hear about new technology that is breaking new ground, as well as discussions with experts to help you be more successful in your practice. It's going to be a lot of fun, and you're going to meet some remarkable people. And I'm your host, Brett Hill. I'm a mindful somatic coach and founder of the mindful coach Association, I meet a lot of coaches working with the mindful coach Association. I'm so inspired by their stories of the courageous work that they're doing that I created this podcast so you can hear them too. If you're aligned with this work, then join us at the mindful Coach association.com, where you can list your services for absolutely free and receive invitations to community meetings, where you can network and meet your colleagues. I hope you'll join us and now the mindful poets podcast. So I'm very, very excited to welcome to the show today. Nicholas Whittaker been a great time talking to him recently about the work that he's doing. And I felt like he's just got to be on the podcast and talk about some of the important work that he's up to. So by way of introduction, he's a change and transition coach. He has a special focus on recently laid off tech workers and I know you've been reading in hearing about the headlines on that and lately and it's it's it's a big deal. It really is he coaches knowledge workers and founders through the uncertainty and ambiguity of big pivots, layoffs leaves them absence sabbaticals, and other unprecedented times to find greater balance, calm, focus, energy, and fulfillment, which is a lot and it's a lot of goodness going on there. So I really appreciate having you on the show. How you doing, Nicholas?

Nicholas

I'm doing really well, Brett, thank you so much for having me. Of course, you know,

Brett Hill

when we talked about to the work that you were doing, and you mentioned, you were working so much with, with the people who've been laid off recently, and there's been big numbers going on with Amazon and Google Microsoft, just across the board, that being your specialty, I'm guessing that you've been kind of a busy guy.

Nicholas

I have been a busy guy. And unfortunately, I count myself among those folks as well. You know, I actually got laid off myself back in January from Google after 13 years in the tech industry. And, you know, I had always had coaching as kind of a side hustle, I had been doing mindfulness practice for a very long time, was doing facilitation and actually managing and helping run a lot of the well being and mindfulness programs at Google.

Brett Hill

So you were like, I mean, Google is famous for the Search Inside Yourself program. Were you a part of that organization or that effort?

Nicholas

Brett Hill

that's a big deal. What happened with that whole organization?

Nicholas

Yeah, well, so the G pas organization is, as far as I know, it's still a thing. I mean, it was always a grassroots kind of volunteer effort. It kind of bounced around a couple of different entities within Google, like different teams and organizations kind of held it as a program. And as a wonderful one. And Ross, he's actually managing the program still to this day. She's still at Google. But a large part of our leadership team, all of us were volunteers, were let go. So as part of this big layoff that happened in January 20, about 12,000 people who got laid off. And you know, as that happened, what I realized was the thing that I could offer the most to the community and the things that I could help people with the most was my coaching and mindfulness work. So instead of turning my attention to getting another tech job, and just going back into program or project management, I turned my side hustle into my full time hustle. And so here we are now and I have been really busy. You know, there's a lot of folks that are struggling right now. There's a lot of folks that are trying to figure out what comes next. And you know, I've got a bit of a speciality in this changing transition approach, and particularly bringing a mindfulness lens to it so it kind of was a perfect fit for my skills. And for the opportunity the moment here,

Brett Hill

did you know you're gonna be laid off? Or did you just how did that all occur?

Nicholas

Yeah, not not a great scenario, not not the best, best way that Google has ever managed something as far as I can tell, but yeah, I got an email at three o'clock in the morning on a Friday, you know, and I actually had no real indication that I specifically was gonna get laid off. But there was murmurings. You know, we had, Microsoft and Amazon had already announced a few things. You know, the the ball was rolling in the tech industry. And the fact that so many different companies were coming up with this 6% Number 6% of their staff was going to be let go, it was only a matter of time before it hit Google. The irony is that I had just had a conversation with my new team that I was about ready to join and the new manager that I was about ready to start recording to and we had just had a conversation about layoffs. She's like, I know, like, it probably don't have anything to worry about. We're a team that really helps this drive.

Brett Hill

I heard that before. Exactly, yeah. So

Nicholas

either I find myself at three o'clock in the morning with a with an email in my inbox, and actually didn't find it until I woke up that later that morning, grabbed my phone, very atypical of me and grabbed my phone on my way into the bathroom just to kind of check something that had a feeling that I needed to check and see what was going on. And as a whole list of messages from friends, text messages, and actually my old boss had messaged me, and he said, you know, are you safe? Are you okay? And my first thought here living in Colorado, where there's fires and shootings on fire is there. Yeah, I thought it was some kind of big thing that occurred. But no, it turns out, you know, I tried to log into my corporate account wasn't available, my phone, tried to log on my computer wasn't available there. And I was like, there might be a pattern here. And I quickly realized that like, there was something going on. So found the email found the severance letter, and there we are, you know, me and 12,000 other very talented people got let go.

Brett Hill

So sad. Alright, so here you are, you've been doing this work and get this sudden message you're laid off. And that's obviously going to be a lot to take in. What happens next? It's okay to ask,

Nicholas

yeah, no having to talk about it. You know, for me, I mean, in some ways, Brett, and I think I was really lucky, you know, because I had, I had literally a month or two prior had just done my five year plan. And it was like, Okay, I'm gonna put about five more years into big tech, I'm going to build these certain skills, and then I'm gonna launch my coaching plan. And that will be basically what I do in retirement and beyond. So I already had a visionary had kind of a course in mind in terms of what I was going to do, and just the five year plan turned into a five month plan. So it happened, I spent most of Friday actually really just interacting with friends and colleagues and all the well wishing that I was getting people reaching out to see if first of all, if I was laid off, because there just wasn't a lot of information, it was actually laid off for who wasn't. And then obviously, people reaching out for support. So I spent most of Friday doing that Saturday, and Sunday was, you know, a bit of emotional roller coaster and just processing everything that just had happened. And come Monday morning, it was like, All right, boot up, and we're gonna go start this new business. And for me, this is a striking opportunity of this intersection of the moment in time of what was occurring and the skill set that I had. So I had a sense of urgency around that. And I did a bit of basically a 60 days sprint building my company, until just recently, when I took a little mini vacation, that's what I've been at basically up to ever since

Brett Hill

can be a little bit more in depth sense of urgency, what was what was driving you there.

Nicholas

I think trying to be of service, you know, I've always been a run towards the fire kind of guy, you know, like, whether it's helping people, you know, in crisis, like, you know, helping somebody on the side of the road, actually, we just went on vacation, my wife and I, and we came through Lake Powell. So we had like, for some reason decided to drive their Tesla down into the sand. So like, we stopped what we were doing and spent an hour and a half recovering them out of the sand with our with our vehicle, you know, so for me it was it was twofold it was being of service, knowing that there's a lot of people that were maybe less resource than I am and that maybe were in worse situations than I am. And wanting to be there and being of service there. I think another thing was, I know from my own history, being of service and helping others and volunteering is a part of my own healing process. And it helped me process trauma and helps me process grief. So it was an obvious yes, for me, as opposed to like, what a lot of other folks have done, which makes sense for them. You know, it's like, let's get back into the job application route or like, let's just completely go offline for a period of time so that I can heal and process for me I'm an action oriented person. And that urgency I think was yeah, I need this as much as the folks that have just been in have been impacted by this need this as well.

Brett Hill

So you're using is there's a lot there in terms of the just the innate urge to be of service and then also having enough emotional intelligence to realize that not only can you be of service but this is important for you as Well,

Nicholas

absolutely, yeah. And I think for me, it's almost this selfishly. The second part is the heavier piece is like, I know I needed a process, I needed something to pour myself into, they gave me purpose and fulfillment and meaning going in and applying for jobs was not going to do that. So this for me made a lot of sense. It was like, finally had the opportunity to do to focus my attention on the things that really mattered to me, which is being of service and helping other people and helping other people discover mindfulness and meditation.

Brett Hill

And so do you think that your practice with mindfulness in your experience helped you navigate those waters? And if so, I'd like to, I'd like to understand a little bit more how that showed up for you?

Nicholas

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think it's been a complete godsend, you know, having that set of skills, I mean, not even just the for the the layoff itself, I'd say like going back, even the last two years, it's been a really tumultuous time, within Google. And within tech, in general, the pandemic did not, did not help, you know, a lot of these companies, they really weren't ready or poised to deal with a shift to remote work, and then a shift back to the office. And there's this very large amount of ambiguity there. And throughout the last two years, I mean, ironically, I was actually completing a teacher certification program for mindfulness meditation, I was completing some coaching training. So I was building these skills already. And it's really what has carried me through the entire pandemic so far. So when the when the event actually happened, when the layoffs actually occurred, of course, there was like the smell of emotion, and there was a lot of grief and pain, and that stuff was still dealing with to this day. But you know, underneath all of that was like this kind of very grounded equanimity of like, well, this is what it is, you know, and being able to be present to that experience and a sense into that, I think, gave me a lot of a an opportunity to, yeah, seek what I needed in that moment in very clear ways. And then take action in very, very clear ways as well, once I was ready to do that,

Brett Hill

to seek action in very clear ways. Like that. I'm using my own coaching intuition. Here's this, if that sounds like it might be a theme for you.

Nicholas

Yeah, I think it is, you know, I mean, for me, it's really important to understand the impulses behind action, and what's really driving choice and driving action in the first place. And then I think, in other variations of myself, and even myself, last year, I was going through a bit of a mental health and health crisis, my reflex reaction was to like pepper out hundreds of applications for other jobs, which went nowhere. And it made me feel horrible, and it really didn't move me in the direction that I needed to go. So when this event happened, and as I was experiencing all of the feelings that come up around it, you know, I was really sensing into giving myself space to feel into what was most important, like, what what, what did I need to to demarcate this period in time and to like, allow myself to move forward? And, to your point, you know, I think for me, a theme has always been helping, you know, reaching out being of service volunteering. And it just seemed like an obvious choice. And it was like, the loudest voice in the room at that time.

Brett Hill

And in the most resonant, right, in a way, I'm making amusing words for you here, but but Right, yeah, okay. So I get curious around how you got started in terms of mindfulness in terms of how that door opened for you. Did you have that background when you started Google? And this was just, you know, resonant interest that they had that you aligned with? Or did you discover it there?

Nicholas

Yeah, it was kind of a yes. And you know, so I had gone all the way back to like middle school and high school, I had an awareness of mindfulness. And meditation is very much an academic one, though. Like I've read Alan Watts. I think the first book that I picked up was actually Zen Mind, beginner's mind. And art is The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And these were like, within a big box, bookstore amongst all of the occult slash religion, books back in the 90s. It's kind of a group things. And I think that those two books actually one of them I had bought as a gift for a girlfriend that I was dating at the time. And I had read through those and found a little bit of an understanding of meditation from the Zen perspective and didn't really grok it really didn't understand exactly what all that meant. I just wasn't quite there yet. But through the years, I had dabbled with it, you know, so when I was in times of crisis, or when I was having anxiety, or if I was having a lot of difficulty, I would find myself gravitating towards meditation as the years went on. And once I moved to New York City, I got deeper involved in meditation practice. I was part of the Zen Buddhist center and Brooklyn, New York, and then the Shambala Center in Manhattan. But again, it was very casual. It was like every few weeks I would go I didn't have a daily meditation practice, per se. But I think it was like a few years later, when I was dealing with a lot of trauma after 911. And just a lot of trauma from my childhood, I was still processing a lot of this stuff, I found meditation as being something that was very helpful to deal with a lot of the challenges and swings of emotion that I was dealing with. So a buddy of mine, and I formed a organization called the sitting project. And the whole idea behind this was basically to sit in public and meditate. That's public. Yeah, just to kind of highlight that you can meditate anywhere, it doesn't have to be in an ashram or a temple on top of the mountain, you can do it in Time Square. So we dabbled with add a little bit. And it was right around that same period in time that I came across wisdom 2.0. So Soren gourd hammer and like this organization, 2.0. They actually came into Google, while I was still a contractor with Google at the time. And they were hosting an event and I got involved in helping to manage that event and kind of just be the docent or host of that for Google. And that kind of, I think planted the seed for me. And it was like, oh, wait a minute, like there's a role for and a place for meditation and mindfulness, even at work. And that's really kind of got the ball rolling. And then a few years after that I had become more regular. As an active practitioner of meditation and mindfulness, it was almost a daily basis at that point. And I had an opportunity to volunteer and contribute more to the G pause program. And I had mentioned earlier, and then over time, I kind of surrounded myself with more and more folks from the G pas and the surgeon side of yourself Korean community, I got trained in this things. And then I realized that it was an opportunity for me to bring my marketing and partnerships, skills to that organization to help scale it and make it more efficient. So it was a gradual kind of, like, accumulation over time. But I think it was, it was very much this kind of Kismet opportunity. Like as soon as I needed mindfulness and meditation to be in my life, it presented itself in different ways. And it kept coming back over and over and over again.

Brett Hill

Yeah, seems like you prepared the way there by, you know, kind of doing these touchstones with this early works. And Alan Watson kind of, you know, keeping in touch and there's a curiosity piece and reading and understanding and wanting to know, as the need arose, and the opportunity was present. You sort of just stepped into that. And there was a natural home for it there. It seemed like,

Nicholas

Yeah, that's exactly it, you know, and I think what I would add to that, too, I had mentioned previously, it was like when in times of crisis, I would gravitate myself towards meditation and mindfulness. And you know, I've talked about this on other podcasts. And even on my blog a couple of times, you know, I had had essentially like a panic attack, while I was on the road, a few years after I got hired full time at Google. And essentially, the role that I had at the time I was traveling three or four weeks out of the month, I was on the road constantly. I never saw my wife, I was hardly ever home. And I was traveling to four or five countries in a trip, you know. So it was like this very frenetic, very highly active role. And I found myself on a hotel room floor in Japan at one point, swearing that I was having heart attack. And turns out, it wasn't a heart attack, it was a panic attack. And the first thing that I reached for with a penetration video on YouTube. And that's what helped me kind of come down from that experience. And that I think, was what really kind of filament and in my mind, like this works. Yeah, it really matters. So ever since then, that became a regular part of my daily routine.

Brett Hill

Nicholas

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love the way you framed that too. Because, you know, I think for me, it was it was a series of moments that basically added up and cumulate accumulated to the point where I was like, I know I feel better when I do this regularly. And I know that when I'm in crisis, if I turn towards this, it helps. And those two things by themselves were enough to convince me I'm a pretty stubborn guy in general. This is something I need to actually do as a non negotiable

Brett Hill

to actually do, right. I love that. Yes. Yeah. It's not an idea. It doesn't work. It's just an idea. It's an interesting idea, but there's something you have to get on the bike. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so now you're in a situation where you're able to use these skills and use the actual life learnings that you've had to kind of ground this down with round this out and turn it into an opportunities, which in and of itself is a reframing of fairly significant proportions that a lot of people would be happy just to achieve. And so what I'm wondering about though, okay, someone calls you up and says, Hey, I've been laid off, how do you go about? What do you what do you do for them? How do you help that person?

Nicholas

Brett Hill

They haven't been history of layoffs, in their history of experience.

Nicholas

Yeah, I mean, Google never lay anybody off. And the history that I've been there in 13 years, I mean, not at the scale that they've done. So you know, a lot of these folks, like they're just not applied for a job in 13 years, or 14 years, or like, they just don't know what comes next. And there's an identity piece to that. So that's the bulk of the bulk of the conversations that I'm having with folks is like, how do you take advantage of this moment in time as a moment of reflection, as a moment of intention? To figure out well, what do you want to do next, now that you have a little bit of a runway, in most cases, now that you have this moment of disruption in your life? How do you use that as an opportunity to chart a new path or to chart the path that you truly wanted to do? That's a lot of the conversation that I have. Another big chunk of conversation that I have with folks is really around the identity piece. Who am I without this job without this title without this belonging to a community. So it's a lot of unpacking that and unwinding that, and trying to get people to a place of just stability, you know, to know that like whatever's happening in this moment is okay. It's temporary. We're in that Bardo, like liminal stage of life right now. And on the other side of it, the path will reveal itself and giving people a little bit of security and a little bit of sense of agency in that process.

Brett Hill

Nicholas

Yeah, so a lot of my work is kind of grounded in a handful of different philosophies. It's obviously as we're talking about, this is probably not surprising. The Buddhist psychology is a big component. Positive Psychology would be another large area, and then stoic philosophy would be kind of a third. So those are kind of the three legs of the stool that I work with folks, for the most part. A lot of it is really just kind of creating space for people to be able to express and to be able to put words to what their experience is. It's a challenge for people because a lot of people aren't able to put words to what the feelings are that they're having. There's a lot of feelings happening all at once. So a lot of what we're doing is really just trying to create space and slow that whole process down. I often do arrival practices with people to like allow them to settle into their experience, or usually close our session with a meditation of some sort as well. I encourage a lot of journaling and reflection throughout the process of our coaching work together. So they can kind of witness themselves in this moment as, as as if they were observing somebody in the wild, right. The idea really behind this is just to really people to get people familiar with the process as it unfolds and help them find ways to name their experience in a way that allows it to have space without judgment, without shame, and without trying to like minimize it, or push it away or stuff it down or quickly replace it with something else. So that's kind of like the the high level approach that I take. And then

Brett Hill

the key thing in that phrase that jumps at me is without them trying to push it away or fill it with something else, you just kind of creating a capacity to tend to just literally be with, as they say, you know that uncomfortableness and not race to fill the void if you filled the field that way, it's very difficult skill to develop over time.

Nicholas

Absolutely. And I think that's really what I bring most of my clients is it's kind of the way I describe it as a creating a scaffolding around the strengths and resources and resilience that they already have, you know, and it's not so much like, here's a bunch of other things to do. Here's a bunch of other techniques and workshops and stuff like that to do it's more like, let's, let's figure out what resources you currently have. Let's figure out what works for you what doesn't work for you. And let's simplify, let's just really strip away all the unnecessary bits and get down to the core of like, what is your experience in this moment? Can you be present to it? Can you can you can you allow it to be what it is? And and you know, that's that's basically?

Brett Hill

Well, that's a lot, right? And it's a lot and it's very, very aligned with the work that in my own training, the mindful coach method, one of the key tenants of the method is facilitate towards resourcefulness. So I'm trying to code when I'm coaching coaches, it's kind of like, well, you know, this guy, he's feeling all this anger. And do we want to lead him into the anger, but he's also really glad to be free of his yoke of the job that he had, that he didn't really like. And he feels liberated in a way to and I'm in my bias in a situation like that is to facilitate towards resourcefulness. Let them feel the freedom. And then once you really, really land in that and do somatic work, you know, you let them really feel that, then go back and look at the problem and see what it feels like from this resource plays and changes everything when they do that.

Nicholas

That's a beautiful strategy. Yeah. And I think I think it's such an important thing to note to Brett is like, we have internal resources, we have internal strengths. We've made it this far. That's why I often say to my clients, you know, if you've made it this far, something must be working. So not necessarily coming in and assuming that like, I'm the guru at the podium, or I'm gonna like infuse them with some new skill or? Yeah, it's like, let's just clear the space in a way that allows us natural resources to come up. And then gives you the ability to then turn your attention towards the things that are more challenging and difficult with the aid of somebody else's right there beside you.

Brett Hill

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think we just need somebody to remind us of our own resourcefulness. And even if I if I'm working with a client, sometimes I'll ask them, like, what, what has always been true for you about something that you'd like to do? Like you said, yourself, you know, you've always been someone who likes to help, right? And so and so it's like, that would be a source of you're in, that's in the end. That's where you landed in your resourcefulness is like I'm going to I'm going to activate that place where I've always been alive.

Nicholas

Yeah, and it's not it's not an accident. Two. I mean, I basically did my own practices and my own coaching methods on myself. To process that, I mean, it's like, I guess there's a benefit there, too, is like it's a battle tested, technology.

Brett Hill

field tested right field, exactly tested in the field under actual life circumstances. Yeah, that's really, really powerful stuff. How do people find you if they want to connect with you about the work that you're doing?

Nicholas

Yeah, well, there's, there's a couple of easy places to find me. LinkedIn is where I'm most active. Nicholas Whittaker, there's a couple other ones out there. They're imposters but if you can find me, in particular, I'm pretty active on there. And then also on my website, Nicholas whittaker.com. I've also I'm all over the internet. You know, if you just search my name and coach it should pop up. And I have a newsletter that if people are interested, they can sign up for it's the Sunday sit with Nicholas newsletter. It comes out every Sunday, and it's a way for us to engage that's off social media that's a little bit longer form. I provide resources, links to podcasts, all linked to this episode of course as well. And then gives me an opportunity to have more of an interactive dialogue with people. That's not an unconstrained way within social media.

Brett Hill

Beautiful. And also, I should add to listeners that you can also find his profile on the mindful Coach association.com. As listeners may know, we tend to interview coaches from the Association, and Nikolas is one of them. So you can just go to the website, mindful Coach association.com, look him up there. And there's all this contact information. So you can engage all these great coaches, particularly if you're a situation where you're struggling with the aftermath of these big life changes. And we've been talking about because there's a lot of it going on. So what do you see as the next thing I know that like there's been, there's been these layoffs happening. And there's was also, just before that the big news was the great resignation, wanting to connect to something that's more meaningful for our work?

Nicholas

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think I think it's really poignant. thing that you're highlighting there, you know, what I would say is, if you looked over the last few years, the pandemic, I think, really shifted people's perspective about what matters, both in the ways that they worked with from home. And suddenly for two years, I had a different work environment that they were in, and I'm speaking specifically of knowledge workers, obviously, there's a lot of folks that didn't have that privilege, and didn't have the opportunity. frontline workers, first responders, the folks that are out there, like still dealing with COVID have a different scenario. But even those folks, I think reevaluated like what really matters to them. I know a lot of folks that work in the restaurant industry that just bailed on it all together, because it became really miserable experience more so than it ever was to be in those environments. But a lot of us that work in offices, and that were knowledge workers, you know, I think what we realized was like the trappings of going into an office to, you know, sit in front of a computer, that you could just as easily sit in front of a computer at home, not being able to be with your children not being able to be with your pets, you know, like all of these things, I think really changed people's perspective about what they value and what matters to them. So the great resignation, you know, I think that it's really kind of a catchphrase, it was slapped on to a phenomenon that's been occurring for a really long time. And I think that phenomenon is people reevaluating and reassessing their relationship back to what you're saying earlier with Comey, like reevaluating what their relationship is to labor and to work and to corporations and to these entities, who, at the end of the day don't always have the individual's best interests in mind. So you saw quiet quitting, you saw the great resignation. And then the pendulum as it often does swing the bat swung back the other way and became more favorable towards employers. You know, that pendulum swings constantly. And it's only a matter of time until it swings back. And I think the tech industry is an interesting one. Because, you know, in the grand scheme of the economy right now, in the United States, the tech industry is kind of like imploding right now. But most of the rest of the economy is doing okay, you know, like, jobs are increasing. You know, there are layoffs and other industries that are happening right now. But generally speaking, there's a lot of movement that's happening in the economy, even despite inflation happening right now. And even despite the Fed raising interest rates and all this stuff,

Brett Hill

when you say, You mean, good stuff, and like the improving economy, yeah, yeah,

Nicholas

it's an improving economy, things are moving forward, people are getting still getting jobs, I think we're still like, generally speaking at the lowest unemployment rate that we've had, and like, many, many years. So I think I think what we're witnessing right now, and like probably what's going to happen in the near future here is it's going to be a continuation of this reevaluation. And what I hope to see is increased pressure on organizations that are toxic, or that are unhealthy to shape up, you know, and I think what we're probably going to end up seeing is like more and more competitiveness, where people are able to pick and choose the organizations and the industries that they want to work in and a little bit a little bit better way than they have been in the past. And I think that what we'll probably see are people who are going to be evaluating like, Is my well being more important than the bottom line of this company. And I think that's really what we saw with the great resignation is that people were realizing this is not a healthy environment for me, you know, I'm not feeling fulfilled, I'm not learning and growing. So I think that's going to continue. You know, I think another thing that's probably going to end up happening, and again, I really hope that it happens is kind of a resurgence of training and education for managers. And for people who are actually running these organizations. There's a group that I'm a part of called changing work, and we use the hashtag changing work. And the whole idea behind that is to bring these things that we're talking about today, into the workplace to help leaders and managers understand what trauma is, how to manage people through great change, a great transition, what it means to create a psychologically safe team and a psychologically safe environment for people to be able to thrive to be able to be productive. What I fear though, in the meantime, is it's gonna be a little bit more of like what we're seeing right now, and I was just reading recently, the company that I got laid off from, you know, they're like, you know, reducing the cafeteria. options that are available there, you know, getting rid of tape dispensers and staplers and things like that, not allowing people to refresh their computers more more regularly. So there's this cost cutting and there's a shaving down of things, in aid of a bump in share prices for a quarter, it's not a long term thinking. It's a very short term thinking. And I don't think that that's going to be a great outcome in the long run. So it'll be interesting to see. And it's hard to predict how these things occur. But it'll be really interesting to see how these organizations that are choosing to go this route, to lay people off to cut corners to cut costs in order to serve Wall Street, it'll be interesting to see where they end up, and what other kinds of entities and what other kinds of companies come up into into the into the forefront,

Brett Hill

if you will be interesting. I don't have a crystal ball.

Nicholas

I think there's a lot of possible opportunity here in terms of where things are going.

Brett Hill

These pining agree completely, there's difficult to say, because there's always this lag between, particularly with these large corporations in terms of a policy and then, you know, six months later, you see what happens. And it's gonna be very interesting. And of course, traditionally, there's a lot of pressure at the, at the upper levels of these organizations to produce those short term results. And often that has long term consequences, as you say, and I believe that you know, what's being called for, and I don't know if we'll make this transition, it's what you're saying, but is a wholesale overhaul of the way we structure organizations so that they incorporate as a part of their success model, not just Wall Street, but also the well being of the people that are in the organization and the people that they serve. And when you factor that in is like part of your quality, like a part of the quality of a product that we make is not only a part of the outcome of the whatever we're creating, whether it be a service or a product, but also how is it impacting the people who are creating servicing and consuming of services, I think once we get to a place where you have a more holistic view of those things, the world becomes a lot a better place to live. That's not going to be easy to do. But

Nicholas

it's going to be a lot of work. Yeah, but I think I think like that's where folks like ourselves and other practitioners of mindfulness and coaching come in, you know, and I do have a lot of hope that there's enough of a groundswell of people understanding that the ways in which business has occurred over the last many years is not sustainable, and it's not humane. And I do like to hold the faith that enough people are becoming aware of this and are standing up and saying, Enough is enough. And I think what we'll probably find more than anything, is that organizations that double down on Well, being that double down on work life balance, and that really focus on the well being of their teams will thrive and the organizations that don't, will likely not I mean, there's a lot of data that points to healthy teams are productive teams, and productive. Create revenue for companies.

Brett Hill

Yeah, I mean, if you want to be very mechanistic about it, it's like mindful people in general are have a capacity to be more resilient under stress than people who don't have those skills. And consequently, they are better in certain scenarios where we don't know what the future is going to bring. We don't know if there's going to be a pandemic, we don't know if there's going to be a turn down in business or relocation, we just don't know if it whatever it happens, you want a staff that can adapt and won't stress out or burnout. So yes to, you know, having those mindfulness skills and positive psychology skills and emotional intelligence skills, all that bundled together, because it changes not only the way you work in relationship to work, and hopefully, therefore, the organizations that are creating that work. Well, this has been such a great conversation. I've really enjoyed talking to you. So once again, you guys can find Nicholas Whitaker out there on the net on LinkedIn and the mindful coach association.com Be sure to look him up and engage. Did you say you had a podcast? I thought I heard you say that?

Nicholas

Not yet. But there is one coming I got a couple of things. Yeah, I've got a couple things coming up as a group coaching program that gonna be launching in May. I've also got a multi week, six week long mindfulness, journey and exploration of mindfulness. So people are interested in starting a mindfulness practice. It's a really easy way to do that among community, which is a way that I feel like it's always better to learn as amongst other people. So some point this year, I will be launching a podcast, I have some ideas in terms of what I want to cover and the people that I want to talk to, but I'm not announcing anything about that specifically.

Brett Hill

You know, so get on the mailing list, so you'll find out about it right? Exactly. Yeah, so perfect. So you find our listeners can find these details in the show notes. And you know, what else? Any parting comments or thoughts you would have? You want to say before we leave? Yeah, I appreciate

Nicholas

it. Well, first of all, Just thank you again for the opportunity to share and the opportunity to even just be a part of the mindful coaching method and all the work that you're doing. I was attracted to you through your work through LinkedIn. And they're just what you were putting out there. So I'm just really excited that you're out there doing these things, and you're offering these types of trainings to coaches and to other folks. But I think, you know, in terms of like, the types of people that I'm working with, and the people that are out there right now who are struggling with change, and transition, and trying to find purpose, and meaning and all of this right now. And I think the biggest thing that I could tell a few people is like to be present to your experience as much as you can be right now. You there's so much to learn about yourself in times of crisis. And I feel like the more aware we can be of our experiences while we're going through these transitions, the more it's going to help us later on in the future when another type of thing like this might happen. It's inevitable that you're going to encounter change and transition, but it's all about how you respond to that change and transition that makes a difference in your experience. So hang in there, it's gonna be okay. And if you need help reach out.

Brett Hill

Beautiful, wise words. Thank you so much. It's been great having you on the mindful coach podcast. Thanks so much. And that's a wrap for this edition of the mindful coach podcast. We hope you enjoyed this presentation. And if you did, follow us and leave us a review. If you're a coach or helping professional that values mindfulness in your work, browse over to mindful Coach association.com and create a free community profile describing your services so the world can find you and you'll be invited to exclusive community meetings where you can meet your colleagues. I'm your host, Brett Hill, founder of the mindful coach, association, coach and coach trainer teaching the mindful coach method. You can find out more about me at the mindful coach.com Until next time, stay present