Jamie Leno Zimron - Stress Less / Prosper More: Effortless Power for Unprecedented Success! (A3118)

Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thanks very much for joining us. Welcome to the show, and I'm really excited about my next guest. Um, she is Jamie Leno Zimron, and we're going to talk about the key I way. And Jamie's joining us from San Francisco. We're going to talk about stressing less and prospering more, uh, creating effortless power for unprecedented success at work on the golf course at home, you name it. I need it, especially on the golf course and at work. So Jamie, thanks very much for joining us and welcome to the show. Well, thanks for the invitation to be here, Bill. My pleasure. You're, uh, uh, you're, you're a member of Visage International, which means that you, uh, you network and talk and speak for a lot of business owners, uh, and what do you generally, uh, what is the, the keyI way? How did you get started with that? Tell us a little bit about you and your background. Well, I started playing golf when I was 7. You'll be happy to know I was a state national junior golf champion, and then I went to, yeah, I went to Stanford University rather than play on the tour. It was way back when, uh, just a little before Title IX kicked in, but I didn't have a golf scholarship and when I was at Stanford, I started training in Aikido, which is known as the martial art of peace, and it was quite a heyday at the time. Joan Baez was training the instructors since become one of the top American. Senses worldwide, so it was a great time to be training and then I did my master's work in clinical psychology and sort of somatic body oriented psychology and and body work, fitness work, and I opened my own aikido school when I was 25 in San Francisco, so I started teaching then. And I had opportunities to help introduce Aikido to the Soviet Union to be a leader in the women's martial arts movement. I've co-founded varying projects and organizations, including the Association of Women Martial Arts Instructors, the Middle East Aikido Peace Project, and then I came back to golf when I was living in San Diego about 1520 years ago and rejoined the LPGA as a teaching professional, and the Ki Kii Golf was born. It was a great blend and Integration of psychology, fitness, body mind mastery with playing better golf, and the leadership and corporate work kicked in about 5 or 6 years ago and I just really wanted to get these teachings out to people of power and influence and to continue to help make the world a more peaceful place and everybody to feel healthier and succeed more and have more fun doing it. It's tremendous background and then you've got a, a great, uh, you know, great amount of experience in Aikido and um martial arts. Tell our listeners a little bit about, that might not be familiar with what aikido is, uh, what does it entail? Well, Aikido is made up of three conjure characters in Chinese and Japanese. The first is I, AI, and it means love, which we can In a practical way used to mean harmony, unity, oneness, synchronization when everything's working together in an integrated way. And then key is chi. People are familiar with tai chi. It means life energy concepts. These are things we don't really have words for quite in English in the way that they understand them in the east, but our life energy is, it's just something we're born with. It's what we live in. It's all around us. Dr. Deepak Chopra calls it this intelligent energy soup that we live in. And that we're made of and the way we experience and express our life energy is through 4 universal faculties. Everybody knows them and has them. That's our mind, our body, our emotions, and our spirit. And do is also T A O spelled in Chinese oro in Japanese. It means the way, capital W. So the Kiwei aikido is this way of operating so that all of our systems are well and they're all working in harmony. And we discovered that we're in charge of it. We're the masters of our energy, so how we use our energy becomes very, very important, and it helps to have our mind and our emotions and our body oriented and saying the same things. We know what it's like when they're not working well together, and it's really a basic principle. It's a good orchestra needs to have harmony. Uh, your gears in your car need to work together, otherwise they, they scrape and they grind and they fall, uh, into, you know, disrepair. Uh, we have problems then and same thing happens, happens in our bodies. I mean, even a good football player here's football, a violent sport, but operating in this peaceful, harmonious way, those are the teams that really make it to the top. When I think of uh American business and American business leaders, I very rarely think of, of life, our love and she these days. How, how is America business, is it just too competitive? Has it gone astray and is it creating so much stress that it's, it's, it's hurting and killing people? Well, you said it. I didn't, but I think that we could um make a good case for that, and we definitely see that health suffers very much under this kind of, um, just, uh, a sort of an unnatural stress and We find in the business world, I think that those people that we can work together with and when there is, um, a synchronization, a harmony, corporate cultures that are supportive, um, that where everybody's working well together, people are valued, people are, um, you know, they're, they're able to have their minds meet and to be creative, you see some great things, um, even the Google campus. For example, they people are riding around on bicycles. 20, I hear 20% of their work time is their own time, so they have autonomy. They get just as long as they get their work done, they're not under a punching time clocks. They have healthy food. If you need to take your kid out to the to the doctor, you can do that. And things like that really enable people to to be human and to be healthy, and you see unprecedented success in companies. Well, you know, we see a lot of, uh, these days for our audience, uh, age 50 plus business owners and a lot of them are contemplating family business transitions or, um, you know, moving their business leadership to other, um, individuals within the company, big transitions in place, OK? And so, but, but if they. The my question is, are they coming from the the right place today? Uh, could they adopt something like this as how long is it? Take if someone says I really want to learn about Aikido, I imagine it's a life, it's a life learning experience, lifelong learning experience, but uh if more companies and families adopted these types of things together, would there be a more harmonious transition, uh, a better customer experience, a better family experience? That, that's just what I'm kind of pondering. Well, that's exactly the idea, and that's really what the TIA, TI business trainings, even TI golf training is all about. I realized a long time ago after having my own dojo, my own aikido school for over 15 years that I was serving those people in my dojo, which was, you know, a, a relatively small number of people, and I still continued to teach a Aikido in many schools all over. But I wanted to get these teachings out in a bigger way to more people because I know that most people aren't going to go to a dojo and put on a white uniform and go through all the things that we go to go through in martial arts training. However, the principles are so universal and so powerful for martial arts that everybody really can, can tap into them and this key, this energy, it's not something you have to go. Anywhere to get. We all, we all have it and with, you know, some basic training and I mean basic, not in that hard military sense. I mean just some essential vital stuff that everybody can learn and I'm able to convey it in even a few hours. This is some of the work I'm doing in visage and with corporate groups is that in a few hours people can really learn the what can happen when they get centered when they. Grounded when they are connected to their bodies, when they breathe and relax, when they can unify their systems with with proper focus and start to work in a way that's more harmonious and blending rather than resistant and afraid or divisive, and they can move to a state of flow. One of my premises is that pardon, pardon the words, but the old bumper sticker that shit happens, that shift needs to happen. And this sort of, you know, shouldn't stress happen. They're going to happen. They happen all day long. We need to be aware when that's happening, how we're being effective and effective in negative ways, and then be able to shift so that we're back to the centered balance, more sort of zone, better performance zone, a place where we're feeling better, where the things that are. out of our minds and our mouths are more positive and constructive when we have those skills, and that's really translating martial arts into into our our business practices, how we're out there on the golf course, how we're relating in our relationships and with our kids and our families, things just really start to go better. We all respond more positively. Mhm. Yeah, it's just, it's another, it's a focal point. It's a focal point for your mind, body, and spirit, and all of that type of thing, and I really like the idea of it. Now, your work is, is very experiential. Uh, what does that look like and why do you feel that's such an essential element in your talks and trainings? Well, experiential means that it's not just up there in our heads, right? I'm not just talking at people and we're not just trying to get it into the the mental level. It can be too abstract or something we can't actually put into our living. So experiential for me, um, there's a great quote from Albert Einstein. In fact, I started out a lot of my talks with it, and here's this quote from this very smart intellectual says Learning is experience. All the rest is just information. And so for me that means that I like to get people up and on their feet. I give them instructions that there's, you know, it's a, you know, a guided thing. But when people actually can experience their energy and what they're like when things are not working in harmony, how to unify themselves, how to feel centered and grounded, how to actually relax, and then I set up interactive exercises so people can experience. Powerful they naturally are and how to shift from a a tense struggling state in golf we would call that killing the ball, you know, getting tense in our upper body and trying to kill the ball and that doesn't work, we sort of tighten up and try to kill it harder and then we knock ourselves off balance and the ball goes spinning out of control. And so when we can feel that and experience that and then go, oh wait, if I In my belly, I get connected to my legs and my feet. I move in proper sequence from the lower through the upper body. I relax with tension and I breathe and I use full body power. It's amazing and people, in fact, when I who I talk to, I always give everybody a money back guarantee that somewhere in the next 2 or 3 hours every single person in the room, 100% success rate. Everybody will have an aha, wow, that's amazing. Oh, that's incredible experience and sure enough, all throughout those few hours it's like, oh, no money back, no money back. People are exclaiming all over the place and the thing is when they feel it they get it. And I want people to really get it. It's a kind of learning that's that's fun. It makes it easier to learn and harder to forget. You don't have to take notes. It's there in your body. You felt it. You're convinced. Nobody has to persuade you, and you go, Wow. And then it becomes something that's actually useful for you, which is what's most important. That's great. I I really like the sound of that. Now tell us a little bit more about uh so somatics and why does both a smart mind and body approach to mastery um especially important in our cyber age? Well, we really are in this cyber age, which means virtual reality. And what's virtual reality, it's like disembodied, right? I mean, people are dating, they haven't even met the person, and it's very important. Ultimately, they, they need to get together and actually see and feel and smell and touch the person. So, so much of the time we are up in our heads, and I think even more so than ever. There's even this new medical condition called device neck because we're bent over from our necks looking at our, our phones and our, and our pads and stuff, or tablets, our computers. And being in our heads so much we get really disconnected from the body and we've also in our sort of Judeo-Christian culture been disconnected from the body. It's got kind of a, you know, a bad rap and a bad rap like that's not the place to be and it's the reality is that the one and only thing that's with us from the minute we're born to the minute we die is our body. And that means that our bodies register everything that ever happens to us and assigns meaning as well so that we can tap into memories, beliefs, emotions, everything is there in the body, and this is really the field of somatics. Soma means the body in Greek, and when we bring in that somatic dimension. All of a sudden we feel so much more alive and human because we're not just a head, we're not just a mind. That's part of us, but we really need to include the body and it's almost like this huge untapped source of knowledge of wisdom of information and a place that we can go to to actually allow changes to happen in our mind and emotions. I think a lot of people have the experience that it's hard to just change their mind as much as they write affirmations or tell themselves to think differently, it's hard. It's hard to change our feelings like I'm angry, I'm, I'm angry. I don't know how to change that, or I'm sad. I'm just, I am, but when We start to get centered and grounded and calm and lift our heads and balance things out. It's amazing how that clears our mental and emotional faculty so that our actually our mental and emotional intelligence is restored, goes back up, and we start to have the The kinds of thoughts and feelings that that can lead us to better places and where we've been kind of stuck, and I like to intervene at the body level. It's immediate. It's powerful and so this is really what thematics is about and why this mind body approach, it's not a California thing. It's not a new age thing. It's really a human thing and I. And I, you know, I travel the world and I've been with people in all kinds of places and levels of society, of work, of, of countries of religions, and you know what, this stuff really and truly is universal. Jamie, how would you describe your vestige talk for chairs that might be listening in about 2 minutes or less? Well, Stress Less Prosper More is really my foundational program. It leads to peaceful power leadership and more harmonious conflict resolution work, but, um, the idea in Stress Less Prosper More is I usually send out. Something to the chairs the day before our talks so that they can get it to their members and I asked a couple of questions. How do you look, sound, and feel when you're stressed out and we're dealing with the sort of the bad stress area, not the stress that's all inspiring and motivational. It gives us that extra energy, but where we tip over into the negative stress. So how do you look, sound, and feel, and how is that affecting the environment in your company, in your home, and inside your own body? And so we start to bring that out and you know this is like identifying the, the pain and the problem, right? And people really realize, hmm, we've heard a lot about stress, but it's really affecting me and from there we start to move into some more information about stress itself and realize that we're, I call it operating under the influence, the biochemicals of stress and just like we get a DUI, we should get an LUI leading under stress or a PUI parenting under stress or GUI golfing. And, and then we start moving into, OK, and we need to make a shift and how would we do that? Here's the body mind technology to do that. Um, I guess I've kind of synthesized what 30, 40 years of of aikido of psychology, of fitness, of somatics and uh golf, etc. into this body mind technology that's useful for everybody. It's not hard to do and you know, it's free. You don't have to go anywhere. It's it's using yourself better. And so this is the training that we do and then we see how that can apply in very difficult or stress causing situations. I think you can imagine on the golf course really easily, right? Let's say you're, you're standing on the tee. It's a par 3, and there's just the tea, green grass, and the green, no problem. But now you're standing on the tee and there's the tea, green grass, a water hazard, giant bunkers, trees. All these hazards long grass and you're like, ah, it starts to like mess you up to get you uncentered, to get you nervous, to trigger those biochemicals. All of a sudden you can't make the same swing because it's it's affected all your systems. So you want to be more the keyI golfer, the master golfer who can get yourself reentered, refocused, and make the swings you need to make regardless of those outer factors that are trying to uncenter you and mess you up. Well, it's a fascinating topic. It's been, uh, you describe it wonderfully and I really, uh, would love to learn more about it myself and I'm going to definitely uh look into your website, which is the TIA, spelled T H E. KIAI WAY.com. And Jamie, I would love to have you on the show again to talk more about some of these things. I think we just scratched the surface today, but uh I really appreciate you coming on the show today and sharing with us. Oh, absolutely, um, I really enjoy talking about it and, and I see so much in so many places how much this is helping people and it's not really rocket science and yet it, it, and it's so much common sense and yet it comes as like almost enlightening. It's like, oh wow, and then you find out I can really do this. I can incorporate this and and start getting results and that that just brings me a lot of joy and I think helps. Helps the individuals in the world and our companies, everything become a better place. Again, thanks so much for joining us. It's been very fascinating, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. You're listening to one of many shows on Exitcoachradio.com. 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