There was a moment on a retreat in Napa where Aaron Hendon realized something that had been true for years but he had never actually seen. He had the marriage, the kids, the business doing better every single year, and underneath all of it, a low hum of worry that never let up. He calls it the Jaws music.

That moment cracked open everything we talk about in this episode. Aaron spent thirty years building one of Seattle's top real estate teams before training as a mindfulness instructor, and what he shares here is not the version of mindfulness you are picturing. No incense, no hour of sitting cross legged with an empty mind. He walks through what is actually happening in your brain when you build a real practice, why most gratitude habits fail before they start, and the framework from his new book that explains why.

We also get into something every business owner will recognize, the myth that you can rise to the occasion when things get hard. Aaron makes the case that you actually sink to the level of your preparation, and what that means for how you show up with a difficult client or a deal that falls apart.

A few things that stayed with me:

• The line between hustle that produces results and hustle that quietly feeds anxiety
• Why his own gratitude practice does not start with a gratitude list
• What changed in his sales team's performance once he trained them in this
• Why multitasking costs you nearly half your effectiveness, and what to do instead
• A simple way to reset your attention that has nothing to do with sitting still

Aaron's new book, How to Live a Grateful Life in a F*d Up World, and Aaron can be found at: https://aaronhendon.com/

In appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by checking this presentation page - you won’t regret it.

AND … Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky listener!

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Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode

of Relationships Rule. Today, I'm speaking with Aaron Hendon,

who has spent 30 years building one of Seattle's top real estate

teams while carrying a quiet weight underneath the success.

Today, he's a certified mindfulness instructor and

best-selling author, and has just released a book that

reframes gratitude as something that you train rather than

something that you wait for. That kind of fascinates me.

We're going to talk about what happens when high performers

stop hustling their way through life and start actually showing

up for it, and what that shift means for how we build

relationships in business. So, with that, welcome to the show,

Erin.

Janice, thanks so much for having me. I'm really

excited about this.

You're you're very welcome. So, I wanted to

start right in with like I'm picturing someone who, in your

past life, we'll call it, when you were really full on into

your real estate career, that you had it all figured out on

paper. You're closing deals, you're running a team, you're

hitting every number, and underneath all of that, there's

constant hum of anxiety that no one ever talked about.

Yeah, I think that's really standard. You

know, the more I work with people and and performers,

that's the standard, and you know we call it hustle culture.

Yes,

you know that's it's the common phrasing for it,

and it really is that. And and in a lot of ways, let's you know

if you if I tell the truth, hustle and grinding it out

produces results. It absolutely produces results. And in the

beginning of any process, you know, there's a lot of grinding

required. I don't have a problem with it. It's just there's a

ceiling to it, and it it feeds. It doesn't just. It feeds

anxiety. It it

it

feeds that sort of gnawing. I need more, you know.

You know,

it's funny because it makes me think of, in

a way, I I sort of I don't know if I ever had it the same way.

Maybe I did, but you know, when I see my little granddaughter,

who has this brain that never turns off, and I can feel her

constantly, you know, her little heart never stops beating so

fast, and she's always on to the to the next thing. That we we do

this in business, this hustle thing, because it feeds us

something. It's exciting and whatever, but we don't realize

the damage it might be doing.

Yeah, and I don't know that we do it because it's

exciting. We do it because we don't, we don't train our brains

for calm, for being centered. We just we're. It's. I'm gonna say

it's lazy, but I don't mean it in a shameful way,

I don't. We don't know any better.

Yeah, it's but it's you know, it's a little bit

like eating Doritos because you like Doritos and they're around,

and then you keep buying them and they're around and you know

you shouldn't eat them, but they're around, and so I'm just

going to keep you, and you don't have any agency, agency of you

just don't have any agency in the matter, and we don't train

ourselves for agency. Is the thing.

This is true for

me.

So, so what was the thing or the moment or when

did things actually shift for you?

Yeah. Okay. So the I was at a retreat with my wife,

who I love. We married 28 years, and she's my best friend. And

great relationship. I have the relationship of my dreams, and I

have two kids, and they're they both speak to each other, and

they speak to us, and they're great. You know, 20 and 23.

Okay.

And my business makes six figures at least every

year, more than that, you know. Every year gets better, better,

better. So I'm like living the dream. You know, this is the

dream for me. This is everything. I'm at this retreat

in Napa, and all of a sudden, I noticed something that was

always there, but I hadn't. You know, when you notice, you know

how like when your in-laws are coming over. You see your house

differently.

Yeah, that's funny.

You're like, oh, look at that. That's not

actually. I got to repair that. I saw my life differently for a

moment. Like it was always there, but I hadn't really seen

it. It was the Jaws music in the background, though. Dan, don't

know. Yeah. And I had this moment where I realized that the

game I was playing in life that gave me the jaws music was get

enough, get enough, you know. I had enough money, enough time,

enough stuff. Then, then. Then I'd be happy. Then I wouldn't

worry. If I got enough, I wouldn't worry.

Okay.

And in thinking about it, it was insane. It's an

insane proposition. It's not. It's not even a game. It's not.

It's not only a game you can't win. It's a game. You know, I

have kids, and I, God forbid, something happens to him where I

no longer have them to worry about. I mean, I it's not a game

I want to win, you know. And I thought, okay, well, if that's

the game I'm playing, because I am very clear for myself that

you always win the game you're playing. If you want to know

what game you're playing, look at the results you have, and

that's the game you're playing. You always get the results of

the game you're playing.

That sounds very much like a landmark thing. I

have to. It is a. It is. That's where I got it. But I find it to

be

very true. Yes. I. I don't believe. No one should

believe anything I say. I mean, just check it out. But that's.

And I got all right. Well, I have the results of getting you

know that game. There's never enough. I have the results of

that.

Right.

What's another game I could play? And I

realized that part of the problem I had was I couldn't

just rest my mind on things I was grateful for. I have all

these things to be grateful for. I have this great life, wife,

kids, money, time. It's unbelievable, and I can't be

satisfied with any of it. I can't be grateful for it,

really. And I thought if I could, and the metaphor came up

later, but it really works. Is my brain is like a feral dog?

It's an untrained dog. We go to lazy back to lazy, but it's an

untrained dog, and you know it chases every thought, every

random thought down to its cataclysmic conclusion and

everything. Barking at the mailman, barking at ghosts, and

I thought I could train my brain. I could train my

attention. I could train where I rest my attention. That's what

meditation does, and I knew that because I had meditated, you

know, learned to meditate in my 20s and stopped for a while,

stopped for a long time. But thought, okay, that's what

meditation is. Let me go back to that, and I started meditating

again, and I loved it, and it was just this huge opening for

me. And I decided to get trained as a meditation instructor, so I

could train my team, my sales team, in it. And I did, and two

things happened. One is I stopped worrying, like it went

away, like the weight on my chest, the jaws music just

stopped. Because

you had this new practice, or yeah,

because I could train my attention. My attention

was no longer a barking dog, just barking at every squirrel,

everything that came by. It just wasn't looking. It was no longer

simply looking for problems.

Interesting,

and it could just rest on the way it is in this

moment. You know the way my feet feel on the floor, and then I

put together a training and I trained my team in it, and we

increased. We more than doubled our sales. It's 160% And

what did you see in them that that made that

shift? Well,

they got calmer. They got they could listen. They

got less worried. You know, in why when I train salespeople in

this now, which I do, every salesperson will tell you people

buy from people they know, like, and trust. And if you don't need

them to do something, like I don't need you to buy from me, I

can be here for what you need. That's trustworthy. And when,

and in real estate, this is the most expensive, least perform,

most complex, transact, most emotionally impactful

transaction of their life. This is a upsetting, you know,

discombobulating transaction. So if I can be grounded, if I don't

need anything from you, Janice, and I can just be here to listen

and be a space grounded, you're going to trust me more, and they

stopped chasing and started attracting. It was, and it's,

and every time I train a salesperson, this happens. They

don't necessarily all double their sales, but it's really

reliable that they increase their performance while lowering

their stress while lowering their worry.

Did you have a lot of resistance when you

started training the first your sales team?

I had a lot of resistance myself when I started

training. You know, there's only resistance. That's that's that

you know the brain resists any kind of training in the

beginning, and yes, so I resisted, and then when I, we'll

talk about how you get through resistance. But then I, you

know, and then yeah, there's a whole level at which you know,

people hear it as woo woo.

Yes, yes. So there's well, especially real

estate sales. Just

any salespeople.

Yeah, yeah, salespeople. They know

everything anyway.

Right. They already know everything. Yeah.

And there's a whole there's a contingent of real estate for

sure that are woo law of attraction that space.

Okay. Which

they're already that way. Yeah. Which is great.

I'm I I am both in both camps, I am I am that woo is science and

science is like the there's a great book called No Mind No

Problem. It's the how neuropsychology is catching up

to Buddhism, and it describes the phenomena. So you know,

there's this world I can stand in either world, science or woo,

about

it. Okay,

and yeah, and anyone who you know didn't want

to participate didn't have to. You couldn't, can't force

people,

right? So, so you you talk about the the brain

science then. So, what's actually happening in someone's

brain when they build a real mindfulness practice?

You. grow your prefrontal cortex. You grow the

part of your brain that's responsible for rational

reasoning thinking. You increase the neural pathways in your

prefrontal cortex, and you decrease the activity in your

amygdala. Your fight, flight, or freeze mechanism becomes less

active. So you're like you're, and it's funny that you that

it's a great question, and it's that's the that's the answer,

and people still have you know you don't question if you lift

weights will your muscles grow,

and and they lie about that too, but yeah,

yeah, and or if you do cardio, will you increase

your cardiovascular health?

Yeah,

or if you change your diet, will you change your

physiology? No one questions those things. No one's like, I

don't know if diet and exercise really do change the body. No

one's got an argument about that.

No,

but and no one who meditates would argue with me

about what I just said about it growing your brain in that way.

But people who haven't tried meditation or succeeded at have

successfully meditated question that, and it is as physical of a

change in the brain. It's measurable by MRIs. It's

measured now. It is not woo-woo. That is, you're actually

changing your brain's capacity to reason under pressure.

I mean, I I tried. I I remember years ago

going to a meditation class, and it was somebody that I knew that

was doing it, and I went. I guess a series of classes, but I

never continued. And I think I always, I don't know, as if if I

resisted openly, or whether you know I was telling myself all

the wrong stories. I don't have time for this. This isn't doing

anything for me. Blah blah blah, and and you talk about. I think

I think I read that you you don't have to do it for a long

time. Start small, and and don't worry about what comes up in

your brain? Just let it come up and and let it go away, right?

Let it just.

That's right.

Okay.

So there's a bunch of misconceptions about

meditation, and and so I don't have time is always the first.

But you don't have time for anything. Yeah. Okay. That's

always the first thing that comes up. And I called and

checked with Instagram, and they will not kick you off the

platform if you take 10 minutes away from scrolling, so you have

the you have the 10 minutes, okay? Yeah, and 10 minutes a

day, and I am serious about this. 10 minutes a day is

sufficient that in six to eight weeks, those results that I just

talked about happen.

And does it matter when or or the set is set

up for it? No, no,

no. In fact, people say, "Do you should I

meditate every morning? And my answer is always only if that

works for you.

Okay.

Like I have a, I live on an island, and you got a

ferry commute off, and it's a 20 minute drop. It's a 20 minute

boat ride, and that would be a great time to do it. If you if

you already commute on public transport, great. Do it that. Do

it any time. Do it before you leave the car and go back into

the house. It does not matter. So that's one. So yeah, you

don't have to have a. If having a schedule works for you,

yeah,

good point. I'll do it, but don't pretend I

missed it this morning, so I can't do it.

So and and that's really it. You don't have to

have the perfect ideal setup for

it. No, no, you don't. You don't need to. So

that's okay. So then we get down to really even before we get to

the 10 minutes, you got to get to what people think meditation

is. Okay, okay.

And when you say meditate, or you text someone, I

started meditating. Your phone is going to give you a choice to

do. A little cross-legged figure as the as the emoji.

Yes, right. The lotus. People think

meditation is sitting cross-legged on a

cushion.

Yeah.

With incense for an hour with an empty mind.

Right. Exactly. When I say

meditation, that's what you think.

Yes.

Okay. That's not what. That's a kind. But here's

a meditation you could do, and anyone could do this. Do you

drink coffee or tea in the morning?

Tea,

tea. So you can sit with your cup of tea in a

quiet spot and look at your cup of tea and feel the warmth in

your hand and notice the maybe a little leaf got loose. Notice

the bag and maybe there's some color to the top, and it feels

this way in your hand. And then notice what your hands feel like

as it lifts, and notice the temperature as it gets to your

lips, and how hot it is, and sweet it is, and the flavor on

your tongue before you swallow. And you put it down, and you

notice the steam and the light in the steam in the tub, and you

feel it now, and you drink your cup of tea, just like that.

Yeah,

that will produce the same results as sitting with

your eyes closed, meditating.

So, so what I hear from that and kind of like

is that if you just talk of it as mindfulness, being aware of

what's around you and what you're doing, it doesn't feel

as onerous.

Yeah, as onerous, right?

Yeah. Here's here's the there's a difference

between mindfulness and meditation. Okay, that is a very

intensive mindfulness practice. Doing 10 minutes, and it's

closer to meditation. But I always look at it like this:

Mindfulness is how we live our life. Meditation is like going

to the gym. You don't go to the gym to get good at lifting

round, iron, heavy things, unless you're an Olympic

weightlifter. You go to the gym to get to lift heavy, iron

things so that you can lift your grandkid when you're 85. You

don't go to the gym to get good at going to the gym, and you

don't meditate to get good at meditating. You meditate so you

can live mindfully.

Oh, that's nice. That's that's a. I like that.

Okay. Yeah. And all meditation is. All is is a

set period of time where you are training your attention to rest

where you put it. So the metaphor back to the dog

metaphor because this really works for people, and this is

this then gets down. There's two other problem, you know, things

that people have around meditation, and one of them will

get answered in this. If you ever train a puppy,

no.

Okay, you train. My daughter

has, so I okay. Great

train a puppy by putting it in the crate, yeah,

and then it wanders out of the crate, and you pick it up and

you put it back in the crate,

yeah,

and then it wanders out of the crate, and

you put it back in the crate. And you're friendly with it, and

you don't yell at the puppy for getting out of the crate. In

fact, if the puppy doesn't try to get out of the crate, you

can't train it to stay in the crate.

Right.

You can't train a dog that doesn't bark not to

bark.

Yeah.

You got to catch it when it's barking, and then

you put it back in the crate, and you do that for enough time,

and then eventually you wind up with a well-trained dog, a

happier dog, and a dog that's your best friend. And I don't

know people that think their brain is their best friend

because you don't have a trained brain. You have a feral. You

have a brain that will chase every ding and every buzz and

every and everything. Now is geared to to capture your

attention. You know, Google spent $200 million on

determining what shade of 42 shades of blue would increase

the clickability of that button.

Scary.

You and I are in are part of a testings

phenomenon. where our ability to choose for ourselves is tested

in every single way possible.

Yeah.

If you can, so back to the dog. If you can

train your brain to rest its awareness on something, say your

breath or your cup of tea, and every time your mind, so you'll

take a breath in, and before you take a breath out, you're making

a list. Puppy's out of the crate. Put the put your

attention back on your breath, and take another breath in, and

then before you breathe the breath out, you're finishing

that argument with that guy on the internet three weeks ago. I

can't believe they said that. I mean, I know what they should

have said. I know, and now you're four minutes, and you

catch yourself. Okay, put the puppy back in the box, back to

the breath, and you do that for 10 minutes. The mind wandering

is not the problem. There is no time. In your meditation

history, where you will ever get to a non-wandering mind, that is

not a thing.

Okay.

There is no empty mind. The Dalai Lama does not

have an empty mind when he meditates.

Okay.

There is no such thing. So people say my mind

wanders too much. No, that's like saying my puppy keeps

barking at the mailman. No, that's the that's the training

ground. That's where you get trained to rest your attention

where you put it, not where it goes by itself, because the

default mode network, what neuroscientists call the resting

state of the brain, when you're not actively engaged in

something, and it's just whatever you're you're not

actively engaging it. It will engage itself in narration and

storytelling about the situation. And given the brain's

job is to keep you safe, it's looking for threats and failing

to find any threats because there's very few tigers and

bushes anymore, but there are emails. It will find a threat

and make up a story about it, and that's what you call you.

But that's not you. You're the one listening to it, and if you

meditate, you can watch yourself listen to it. to it. There

becomes a you and an

it. There becomes

a you and the thoughts it's having, and you

can watch it like stepping behind a waterfall and seeing

the water come in front of you. The water is never going to

stop. The thoughts are never going to stop.

So you don't have to try and solve anything or

change anything. Nothing. Nothing. Yeah.

No. In fact, anytime you're trying to solve

it, that's you not being on the breath. Just right. Even those

times where you think, "Oh, that meditation was so good. Okay,

we'll come back to the breath. There's no good or bad

meditation.

Right. There's no. So there's

just noticing.

Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about your book, your

new book, which I think will have launched by the time this

episode launches in a few weeks. It's called "How to Live a

Grateful Life in an Effed Up World, and unfortunately, I

can't have the power of that word in this podcast. But I

think my audience gets the idea how to live a grateful life in

an effed up world, and it's built around a framework that

you call the five A's. And I wanted to know if you would

share those with us.

Sure. So, just to go back to the the name for a

second, okay? It's it's it's I called it that because it's sort

of as a, I don't know, a position I guess or a stance to

juxtapose it to toxic positivity to all the just good vibe stuff

that's out, you know, like there's very little room for us

to acknowledge things that aren't working, you know. Then

you're negative, and then you're what? No, it's all good. No, be

just be grateful. Make a list of things you're grateful for, but

you don't have any way to hold all the unworkability, and the

world is pretty messed up. There's a lot of unworkability,

and and every day seems to be saying hold my beard to

yesterday's unworkability. Watch this.

Yeah.

So if you don't have a way to hold that, you

never really get the gratitude happens occasionally. You know,

you hold your grandson, right? You see a little puppy. You have

a great glass of wine. You look in the eyes of your loved one.

Gratitude happens, but how do we get access to it when things are

messed up?

Okay, that's

the question I wanted to get to.

Okay,

and the five A's will do that.

Okay, perfect.

So the first, the five A's are awareness,

allowance, acceptance, appreciation, and then attitude

of gratitude, or just attitude. So, awareness-that's the what's

my cup of tea feel like in my hand? What's my breath feel like

as it rises and falls on my chest? And what's my what do my

feet feel like on the floor? Awareness, just aware,

non-judgmental awareness, noticing. That feels like

that feels. Sorry to interrupt you. That feels

like the Eckhart toy.

Very much so.

Yeah. Okay. Very

much so.

Okay. Just

what is this moment like?

Yeah.

I have this tension in my chest. I have a

headache. I have this pain in my between my eyes, a lump in my

throat. I experience joy, whatever,

right?

All of it, all of it, any of it. Just being aware

and developing the capacity. To just simply be aware of the

moment, in the moment. Period. That's fundamental. That's the

first step. That's breath awareness one and one. This is

what the air feels like in my chest. This is what the air

feels like in my nostrils. 10 minutes a day. Awareness. Just

developing the muscle for awareness. Then there's

allowance. This feels this way in my chest. The upset that I

experienced when my spouse said this. I'm no longer fighting

with reality. I'm not. No longer saying it's. I. It shouldn't be

this way. It's raining. It's raining. You know. I look. A

five year old has this relationship to it's raining,

right? When they don't get to go to the beach, right? I remember

big problem I had not going to the beach one day with my family

when it was raining. A child fights reality that way. Totally

normal. You fully functioning adult, little bit weird when you

think about it like that. That you don't have it be look the

political situation's the political situation and the

people treat people this way, and AI is what all of it. It is

how it is. We don't allowance isn't the same thing as

agreement. It's not the same thing as choosing. It's not.

It's not the same thing. This is the way I like it. You're not

saying I like it. You're just saying I'm no longer fighting

reality. It is this way, and you can't change anything that you

don't allow.

And that's not necessarily accepting

it. Accepting it is different. Accepting it is

the next step. So the way I distinguish the difference

between allowance and acceptances if you brought a

shirt to the dry cleaner, they would would could allow you into

the building, but if they didn't accept the shirt, it wouldn't be

getting clean.

Yeah,

they have to accept

it. Yeah, okay.

You need to accept it next. So you've allowed it.

It exists the way it exists. My wife exists the way she exists.

Then this is, you know, inside relationships rule.

Yeah.

How much of the of the unworkability in

relationships is from you resisting the way someone

is? Yeah. Yeah. Is yes, I get it.

Not the way I heard them. No, no, this is the

way they are.

Yeah.

Okay. We'll get to that too, right? But that's

awareness. Is wait a minute? They're not that way. I heard

that. That's what I heard.

Yeah.

Right. So I'm allowing that. I'm allowing

myself to be allowing the judgment to be my judgment. It's

not who I am, but I have a. There's a judgment here, and I

notice that I'm aware of that. I allow that, and then I accept

it. This is happening in my life. Where is this happening in

my life? This is happening in my life. Not acquiescence. It's not

surrender. It's not resignation. It's not. It's simply saying

this is happening, and it's happening in my life, and I have

something to say about it. I have may not have anything to

say about the rain, but I have everything to say about how I

interact with the rain.

Right. So, yeah, it's not what it is. It's how we

choose to deal with it.

That's right. I accept that I'm. This is. I have

some say about this.

Okay.

And one. And those are by far the three in the

book, and in the live cohorts that I teach, that the book was

an outcome of in how to live a grateful life. We don't even get

to gratitude till week seven. We send six weeks because this is

where the just good vibes crowd misses the boat. There's no

conversation for developing the capacity to be with things the

way they are. There's just some hope that my writing, my car, my

wife, my dog that I'm grateful for over and over over in a book

is somehow going to overtake me when the deal falls through. But

the deal fell through. I'm not getting that money.

Yeah,

that person's not getting that house. That's

what's happening right now. If I don't accept that, I have no

power in the situation. I can only be at the effect of the

situation, and no gratitude could be possible for me there,

but once I've practiced and trained my brain in allowance,

awareness, allowance, and acceptance, I can then

authentically begin to look at the situation and say, "Okay.

And you don't want to rush to this. You can't skip steps, and

you can't move on until the experience is real for you. And

and you'll know when it's real for you because you know when

things are real for you. Doesn't mean it doesn't slip. Doesn't

mean you don't need. But you will then be able to

authentically ask, "Is there something here I can appreciate?

I can appreciate my own courage for sitting through it. I can

appreciate that I got that business in the first place. I

can appreciate a lot. Go ahead.

Sorry, I was just thinking. So, in that sort of

situation, I mean, you have. It's not all about you. It's

about you being that person to step your client through it. For

example,

completely. And I can't step them through it if

I'm reactivated. They're paying me to be their guide.

Yeah.

If I'm lost, if I am not in acceptance, if I

haven't gotten at least to acceptance,

yeah,

I have no shot. Yeah, because now you

have to think fast and you have to say, you

know, okay, this is the way it is. What's next? Yeah, and I.

So the more I practice that, the more

trustworthy I become because I'm the guiding rock here. I'm the

person that can be with their upset. I don't coach them to

accept it. No, but I. I mean, at some point I will, but only

after they allow it to be the way it is. Then you can begin to

ask, "What can I appreciate about this? And there's a list

of things you could rest your awareness on that you appreciate

about it. And then from there, now you've eliminated all the

resistance. Okay, you are aware, allow, accept. You've begun to

consider what can I appreciate? And inside that, like when you

let go of a cork you've been holding underwater, it just pops

up. Gratitude just pops up, and I define gratitude as

appreciating something as a gift. When you appreciate

something as a gift, that experience is what we call

gratitude. So not only do I appreciate it, but appreciate it

as a gift to me. So you can appreciate things, but if you

don't consider it a gift, you'd miss the experience of

gratitude. And when you start to tap into this. It's all a

miracle. I mean, you know, the this that's this struck me 23

years ago when my daughter was born, but I don't think there's

anyone who's ever seen a human being born that wasn't in the

presence of a miracle.

Yeah, right.

I don't think anyone looks at a woman giving

birth and thinks, "Oh, that's not a miracle.

Yeah,

that's a miracle, and I don't think it's question.

Like I said, I just don't think that's questionable. And if

that's a miracle, the single most common phenomenon in a

living being's life being born. You haven't met anyone who

wasn't born.

Okay, I don't want to get too esoteric here.

Okay, good, but but my

point is, there's just you could wind up being

grateful for a lot,

right? You know, it's funny. I I watched this

silly thing today when I was having my tea instead of looking

at the tea in my cup on Instagram, and it was somebody

said that she tried to repost this or something, and Instagram

wouldn't let her. But somehow she managed to post to get it up

there, and it was a video of somebody. I guess they were in a

car, and as they were slowly going by people on the sidewalk

that were walking in a busy street, this woman was reaching

out and saying, "Hey, I love your coat today, or you've got

such a great son, right? And she was showing appreciation for

people and doing the the cool stuff, and and how I lit people

up-you could just see yes,

empowering catcalling, empowering empowered

catcalling. I've seen it. Okay, yeah,

but it-it was kind of, it kind of really

reminded me that you can go through life or go through your

day and never appreciate, never show the gratitude to other

people, and that not only makes their day, but it kind of makes

yours too.

Well, and now let's just go back to

relationships rule. Tell me a relationship you have where

you're being in the presence of the gift that that person is to

you is a there's a downside to that. Tell me where there's a

downside to that. Tell me where that's not going to empower the

relationship. Where you can get yourself in a space of even this

angry client, even this person who's really upset that you

can't sort yourself out. Your puppy well enough to get my

gosh! There is a human being over there.

Well, you know there are times when I'm not

seeing. I'm being really honest here. When I'm not seeing that

gratitude, that that the positive. Plenty of times,

right? I'm seeing the thing that's frustrating me right now,

or making me angry, and and what does that serve?

It's it's who does

it serve? Nobody,

nobody, nothing. It's it's your default mode

network. It's your brain, yeah, doing its job, protecting you.

And there's and it's on one hand. I mean, it's one hand

great. It's doing its job. It's protecting you from upset, from

disappointment, from rejection, all the fear of phoning, all the

stuff that you know. I won't ask her out. I I don't want to. I'm

scared. All that stuff. It's designed to justify you're not

acting in a way that's threatening. It's doing its job,

and like we said, it's a little bit lazy on our part to not have

trained our brain in the first place to be able to distinguish

between a real threat and a made-up one, and to be able to.

So the way the way I've got this sort of wired for myself now is,

if you develop an agency of attention, like I can rest my

attention where I say I want it,

okay.

I can rest it on what I'm great. I can find the

space, right? Which, you know, I get into plenty of fights with

my wife where it's not that way, right? Just yesterday, just

yesterday, I was like, oh man, did I feel disrespected? I was

like, took me like 10 hours to get unhooked from it, but oh, I

forgot where I was going with that. I just got rehooked about

my wife's thing. That was funny. Ram Dass used to say, "If you

think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

Like that's that's where your buttons are going to get pushed

The most, you know, but where did I start that thought? Well,

we're talking about putting your attention

where it needs

to be. Oh, right, right, right. If you can, if you

can rest your attention, if you have agency of attention, you

can fulfill your intentions. See, everyone has agency of

intention, right? You got a ton of intentions. You intend to

wait particular amount. You intend to be great with your

spouse. You intend to be present at dinner, and then you find

yourself on your phone under the table texting about the meeting

tomorrow.

Yeah,

no problem with agency of intention. You have

sticky notes about it. Intentions are clear, but if you

don't have agency of attention, you can't fulfill on

it. That just reminds me of when my daughter

was little, and we're standing in the kitchen, and I guess I'm

trying to make dinner, and she asks me a question, and I'm busy

focused on making dinner, and I think it was like from the

mouths of babe kind babes kind of thing where she said, you

know, I'll or she wanted to tell me a story about something that

happened at school. I think that's what it was, and she

said, "Mom, I'll tell you when you're listening, right?

Right.

Yeah, because it wasn't going to happen then.

Because my attention wasn't in the right place. Actually,

that's right. Yeah.

It's great, and you know, you have an intention

to be wonderful with your daughter. No one's like, ah, I

have an intention to be shitty with them. Sorry, sorry, to to

be bad with them. Um, but we don't have agency of attention,

even enough attention to say, "Hey, honey, I'm not listening

now. I'm doing something else.

Yes, exactly. Can we? Can we do?

You know?

Yeah. Like

that's everything, you know. And your daughter is a

great example too, because, and I cover this in the book, and

this

is one

of the things that you can train yourself out of,

is the myth of multitasking.

Yes,

you know we all think, but we all know when the

other person on the other end of the phone is is scrolling the

internet.

Yeah, yeah. There's no such thing really,

and I always thought I was a multitasker, but it's really

doing one thing right after the other. It's it's it's

task switching is the way the the way the brain

works, and you lose 40% of your effectiveness.

Yeah, the

science behind it is 40%

So I feel like I have to wrap things up time

wise, but I do feel like there's so much more we could talk

about. So I want to just ask you one thing. So if someone's in

the middle of a genuinely difficult business relationship,

a difficult client, a deal falling apart, a partnership

under strain. How does a mindfulness practice actually

help in that moment, rather than just after the fact?

It's a great question, and I would say it's

in the the answers in the in the. Common ground that the Navy

SEALs and the Buddhists share. Wow.

Okay.

They both have the same orientation, and they say

we don't rise to the occasion. We sink to the level of our

preparation. So, have you prepared meditation,

mindfulness, practicing raises the floor that you will sink to

during upsets?

That's good.

So if you're not, so the 10 minutes a day. Do you

do you know who James McCracken is? Admiral McCracken.

No,

he gave a TED. He he gave a commencement speech at

University of Texas at.

I may have heard it actually. Now that you yeah

about

making your bed, the most he was the Navy SEAL

commander in Osama bin Laden. Yeah, it's a really multi

million views, but he talks about the most important thing a

seal does is most most important lesson you learn is make your

bed, because at the end of the day, you can come home and see,

I did that. I'm one of those

people. I have to make my bed.

Even a bad day, you come home to a made bed.

Yeah,

meditation is making your bed.

Okay.

Even during a bad day, you come home, and your bed

is made. Your brain is your attention is trainable, but

you've got to start. And you and the number one rule. Okay. So

here's how people can get into it, Janice. The number one rule

is you can't do it wrong. You can't do it wrong. Just put the

intention on it. Even if you forget and you remember one time

during the day, oh, I should meditate, and then you don't do

it. Even the moment that you thought of it, that's worth

celebrating. You know, it's like learning how to walk, Janice.

This is the last metaphor, and then we can wrap up. When you

taught your daughter daughter to how to walk two daughters how to

walk. This is how you did it. Every time she stood up, you

cheered. If she fell, you cheered. Yeah. If she fell

forward, you yelled like he's she's walking. She fell forward,

and you were like, "You're walking, good, yay! Every

attempt was met with a celebration. No coaching, no

corrective criticism, no anything. Never was there a

moment where you thought, "Well, she's just not going to be a

walker. Never a moment where you would have had she had language

accepted from her. Well, listen, Mom. I like being carried. I'm

not a walk. Never. There was never anything but celebration.

Every everything was met with. I've yet to meet the adult that

treats learning something new with 1/100 of that grace. Every

attempt is worth celebrating. You take one mindful breath. You

meditated.

Yeah.

You you drank half your tea. You, the mind

wandering doesn't even count as a failure. The mind wandering

and noticing your mind wandering is the success. I just mean the

amount of time on task. Any amount of time on task is worth

celebrating. You keep that orientation to it. You'll be

able to break through whatever you couldn't break through the

first time you tried to meditate.

It's inspiring. I do say that it's inspiring.

Before we go, just tell my audience where they're going to

be able to find your book and name it again the right the way

we have to do it here, and and then where they can find you,

yes. Great,

all of it in the same place. aaronhinden.com.

It's all there. They can find me. The courses I lead, the

books, everything is [email protected]. Links

to my Substack, all to my blogs, everything. aaronhinden.com, and

the book is How to Live a Grateful Life in an Effed Up

World,

and it'll

be out sometime August is when I have to now

start saying. I was saying July for so long, but oh,

it's hard, isn't it? I know we're

at the 20th, right? So

that's okay. It'll happen when it's meant to,

right? So, yeah, 21st today.

21st, good. See later.

Yeah. So, I think it's inspiring, Erin, to think

of the fact that success and peace of mind, success and peace

of mind, are not automatically the same thing, and that the

relationships that we build in business are only as strong as

the presence we bring to them, and and for me, it's all about

relationships. So I think that it's important that I'm going to

look at one thing you said. I I highlighted one of the concepts

in your book is gratitude is a strategic advantage.

Very much so.

Yeah, and I love that. Because I think that's, I

mean, you know, I'm I'm getting on, but I'm still learning

things, and I love that. I love that there's still things that

we can learn and that we can improve on, and bring to the

work that we do. So, yeah, I like that one a lot, and I

appreciate where you're coming from because I think that you're

still so much, you know, you're you're helping other business

people, other salespeople see the value in this beautiful

mindfulness practice and meditation that you that you

teach, and I want to thank you. Thank you for enlightening me

and our audience, and I hope that my audience, I hope that

you, that my listeners are going to and watch and viewers are

going to see the value in taking the time to sit with that and to

sit with, you know, what it can do for you. Yeah, so great,

Dennis. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's

been a pleasure, and I look forward to our future endeavors.

Yeah, me too. Thank you so much. And to my

audience, remember to check out Aaron's new book and to check

his website, AaronHandon.com, and let's talk a little bit more

about that in the future.

Great.

Stay connected and be remembered. Bye.