Rather than treating healing as a "soft" idea, Raj and Nilima walk through the book's seven steps and explore how inner state shapes judgment, patience, courage, and long-term thinking -- in business, investing, and life. Along the way, they connect the "Wise Fool" archetype and the idea of Shakti to Conscious Capitalism, Rule-Breaking optimism, and the kind of leadership that compounds over time.
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A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on Jan. 14, 2026.
David Gardner: Leadership is having a moment and not always a great one. We see it in business, we see it in markets, we see it in headlines, people in positions of responsibility making fast decisions, loud decisions, sometimes successful, often costly, not always from a centered place, which raises an interesting question for investors, entrepreneurs, and humans alike. What if the biggest leadership risk today isn't a lack of intelligence or ambition, but a lack of wholeness? Today's conversation is about healing leaders, not as a soft idea, but as a serious one, about how interste shapes judgment, about why long term optimism, courage against the crowd, and sustainable compounding financial and otherwise may depend more on who we are than what we know. I'm joined by Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat co-authors of Healing Leaders, a book that's just coming out this month. We're going to talk about burnout and meaning, the wise fool archetype and how healing can show up as better decisions in business, in investing, and in life. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.
Raj Sisodia is a longtime friend and a globally recognized thinker on leadership and business purpose. He's the co founder of the conscious capitalism movement, a professor, researcher, and author whose work has shaped how many of us think about values driven companies, long term thinking, and leadership that actually endures. Nilima Bhat is the founder and director of Shakti leadership and the Shakti Mission, a global goodwill ambassador with the World Union and a professor of conscious leadership most recently at technological de [inaudible]. Her work focuses on inner power, resilience, and what she calls Shakti, the creative life force behind wise, courageous leadership. Raj, Nilima, Happy New Year, if it's not too late to still say that and the delight to be with you this week.
Raj Sisodia: Thank you, David. Great to be with you again.
Nilima Bhat: Thank you, David. I love the intro.
David Gardner: Raj, Nilima, I think the first question that is an easy one for me to ask and maybe not so easy to answer, but why does this book need to exist now? What are you seeing across leaders, founders, investors, executives that makes you say something deeper than strategy might be breaking?
Raj Sisodia: David, I look at the world that we're in right now and it feels like the need for healing is paramount. There's a tremendous amount of suffering. There's a tremendous number of open wounds. It seems like out there people are reactive, people are doing things that are causing suffering for others, acting out of ego, acting out of greed, acting out of fear. All kinds of things are happening in every arena, whether it's in business or politics or even interpersonal. The need for healing is always there, but I think it feels especially pronounced in the world today in the aftermath of the pandemic and then with all of the things that are going on geopolitically around the world, and seems like these tectonic shifts that are happening that are creating more suffering and the need for more healing.
Nilima Bhat: I would add to that, we see so much toxicity around us. We see so much unconscious behavior around us. As we record sitting here in Pondicherry, India, I'm seeing what's happening in Minnesota in the US, and it's just one more story like that. The most compassionate way to understand bad behavior is that it is trauma impacted behavior. What if human beings are essentially good, and we just act out and behave terribly toward our fellow creatures because we are traumatized, is not our natural behavior. What if we look at it that way? Then the most compassionate way to say, how do we heal our traumatized psyche, each one of us one life at a time, one leader at a time, so that we show up as better human beings and cause a healing rather than hurting? I think that's really at the heart of this work.
David Gardner: Raj and Nilima specifically with the book now coming up with seven steps to healing. How did the book project come together? Were you always planning to do this? How long have you worked together? I'm just curious about the genesis of the book itself.
Raj Sisodia: For me, the seeds for this particular book were planted seven years ago in actually 2018, the year that I turned 60. That was a pretty significant milestone in human life. I think, generally, for me, certainly, it was a time to take stock and look back and try to make sense of things. It was also the year I was writing the book The Healing Organization. This word healing had gained some weight for me. It was something that really spoke to me, perhaps because of something that I needed within me. It started out as an acronym for the qualities of a great purpose. We use healing as the word. But then I started exploring the idea that actually healing is something that businesses should be about, that the way we normally do business creates a lot of unnecessary suffering, and business in general is responsible for a lot of unnecessary suffering in this world, in addition to all the positive things that obviously that capitalism has given us. But in exploring that idea and writing that book, ultimately, it became clear that the source of healing or suffering in a business is other leaders, whether you have a business that creates suffering in the world or one that creates healing depends very greatly on what's happening with the leader. The leader hasn't healed themselves, and they're going to create suffering in the world. It seemed like an actual extension for me to extend that into my own healing. I was writing that book and I had the entire summer blocked out for writing retreats. Four of my women friends, including Nilima basically stopped me in my tracks and said, If you're writing a book about healing, you have to work on your own healing before you can do that. Initially, I resisted, but then I said, yes, and I delayed the book by five months. I had all these experiences, including going to the MLS, the high Himalayas on the border of India and Tibet with Nilima and the Shakti spiritual journey for 10 days over there. That's where I had my 60th birthday in the seat of some of the deepest Buddhist wisdom in the world. I went to a silent retreat in upstate New York, place called Peace Village. That's where I received these downloads. T
he seven steps we're going to talk about today actually came to me in the course of those four days of silence, and I had 45 pages of notes about a variety of different things. You know when you're in silence, you can actually connect to source and receive wisdom. I also went to the Amazon Rain Forest with the Pachamama Alliance and Lind Twist, our friend who was on our board of conscious capitalism, and I really connected to nature there and the wisdom of the indigenous people around healing as well. I got a lot of deep insights about healing from that. I also worked with the coach. All of these things kind of came together to create the ground for this. But those seven steps, in a way, were sitting there for a few years while I went through my own healing process and in a way, tested those ideas. I had to go through each of them myself over these years. Then, ultimately, Nilima and I three or so years ago, were in Mexico, and we were talking about a program that I was going to be teaching and was looking for what should be the content of that. It was about. Who do you have to be in order to teach conscious capitalism or conscious business? As a professor, this was a workshop for professors. We had already done the knowing and doing part of it. We had already taken them through workshops about the concepts of conscious capitalism, about how do you consult in that arena. But then who do you need to be? That's where we said, let's create something around these seven steps. It started as a three day workshop and now has become this book.
Nilima Bhat: Yes, so as Raj may have mentioned, we have these two streams coming together. While he was on his journey to this book, my journey was my first book was My Cancer is Me, the journey from Illness to Wholeness, which is essentially an integrative medicine and a holistic health approach to heal through cancer. My second book is Shakti Leadership, Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business. Then I realized we need a third book. I need a third book because while I'm teaching leaders to become conscious leaders through Shakti leadership, I realize most leaders are not even at ground level in order to raise their game. They are actually wounded and traumatized, and they need to do a lot of inner work to even get to base cam before they can raise their leadership game. I remember telling Raj, it's almost as if I need to put together my book on healing through disease like cancer lifestyle issues, which is a very holistic approach. I need to put together becoming a leader and finding meaning and purpose and living into that. I need to put that together now, and the third book should be Therapy for Leaders because we need to offer just like the 12 step program for AA and so on. I said, we need a program for leaders because every leader I know carries some version of wound and trauma, which is actually blocking them and sliding them back. Every time they are ready to grow, they actually get hobbled. We were looking for a framework. When I wrote Shakti leadership, I had the five Panchakosha physical, vital, mental, psychic, spiritual, which is an integral yoga approach. You have to heal at five levels. When I wrote Shakti leadership, it was the five elements model of presence, power, wholeness, flexibility, congruence. We are looking for a model around which we can gather the core ideas of what it takes to heal as a ida. That's when Raj shared the seven steps that had come to him, and I said, that's it. That's the framework. Through that framework, we can really curate the best practices you and I have discovered and lived from around the world across geographies and ancient wisdom, modern practices, and really gave leaders a summary that they can put into work themselves. That's how this book came for me.
David Gardner: Thank you. We're going to go through those seven steps right now. Let's start with the first one, and I'm going to turn it back to you, Nilima, for this first one. I would also like you briefly just to explain Shakti, which is a word that's relatively new to most of our listeners, me included, just so we understand where we're coming from. Then let's get right into transformative Step number 1.
Nilima Bhat: Shakti is the innate power of existence. It's the creative energy, the evolutionary force that is innate to nature, innate to creation, innate to existence. If you say the self aware universe, that actually this universe is self conscious and has a direction where it's going. This is a profound spiritual insight from many traditions, but certainly from India which says the ground of being the true nature of reality is Shiva or Brahman, which is pure consciousness. But it's not just an inert witness presence behind everything. There is also a creative force that then evolves the true nature of reality into everything that it can be, all that it holds potential within itself. The oneness that can then become the multiplicity, takes an energy a force, and that is called Shakti. How do I bring it to leadership is because I realize leadership is a power game. It's all about who's in power, who lost power, and do you have the power to drive change? Why work from ego based power, wing loose power and snatch it from someone else to rise to the top when there is enough for everybody? You are living in an ocean of power and there is more than enough for everybody. That was the idea. How do you tell the world and how do you tell leaders that you don't have to grab power if there is enough deep inside yourself? If you can find your core values, if you can find your life purpose, you then tap into the Shakti that drives you.
David Gardner: That's a new word and a new concept. I'm sure, for a lot of us, for me, included. I can certainly see things that I recognize from my own cultural background that connect with that. As I look over your seven steps, which we're going to talk through now, you have worded these very simply and very globally and very humanly. I think everyone who's going to read Healing Leaders is going to appreciate that. Let's start with Step number 1.
Nilima Bhat: Step number 1 is know yourself. I think it's also credited to Socrates or it's certainly the Greek wisdom tradition. Know thyself. Know yourself is Step 1. Do you even know who you are, because we carry our identity without ever having examined it? When I unpack my identity my gender is very almost core to how I hold myself in the world. My nationality, my race is right there in who I am. When you realize that you're made up of layers of selves that come from the identity you hold, you also then realize some of it privileges you and some of it underprivileges you. Getting to know that it's not an equal world out there, so you need to know who you are so that you can come from your best power place. It begins with know yourself.
David Gardner: I like that one too, and my recollection is that on, on the Greek Oracle at Delphi, it was reputed to have been scrolled on the temple right there, Know Thyself, as you said, Nilima. That's a great base to start. From strip away the masks we wear as leaders, recognize who we truly are. Raj, do you think that the average person understands that? What is our general self awareness? When you come across leaders, if you were giving a grade to the leaders you've coached or met over the years, 0-10 on average, how are we doing it knowing ourselves?
Raj Sisodia: I think we know ourselves more at a superficial level, as Nilima said in the arena of identities, all the different identities that we have. As you said, religion or gender or even your profession or your educational background or whatever it might be. But there's a deeper knowing beyond that. There's your identity, and then there's your essence. Like, who are you as this unique being before all of these tags got put on you through culture and through education and circumstances of your birth, etc, the fact is that every single one of us is different and is unique. There are 8 billion of us alive today. There are 109 billion that have already died, come and gone. No two are alike. Knowing the essence of what makes me me and what makes you you, which was pretty evident even at an early age. Parents can see that their children are quite different. They have different qualities and different values and different things that appeal to them and so forth. I think knowing yourself at a very deep level is to understand your own uniqueness so that you can bring that uniqueness as your gift into the world. That's the idea. It's your gift to yourself and to the world, and that unique combination of things is really what you are here to manifest, ultimately. Knowing that is very important and not getting as Nilima says, hold your identities lightly. They're just these tags. They don't ultimately mean as much, but no deep down below that, who are you really? What is your essence? I would say most people are not really there because we don't really talk about that. We don't understand that very much. It's all about the credentials and the degrees and all of the other identifiers that we have.
David Gardner: Yeah, what was your college major, Raj?
Raj Sisodia: Now that I'm an electrical engineer, how much of that have. Those are all just milestones along the way. They will give me define us, in any way.
David Gardner: What's step number 2, Raj?
Raj Sisodia: Step Number 2 is to love yourself. It's not automatic that if you know yourself, you're going to love yourself. Some people like Bruce slipped on estimates that 80-90% of people do not love themselves. Why would that be? Why would you not love yourself? Because we get all messages from the world. In my case, my father played a big role in that, I didn't know my father until I was seven. I was brought up by my mother. In a way, she was a single parent to me. By nature and by nature, I'm more like my mother, in many ways. My father is the opposite of that. When he came back into I life and I was 7-years-old, he had gone to Canada to get his PhD. He saw this kid who was the opposite of him. Every quality in me just felt like a weakness to him. The message I got from him was that you're too trusting, you shouldn't trust anybody. You're too peace loving, you need to be rough and tough. You're too idealistic. You can't survive like that. In the world, you need to be pragmatic, etc. Everything about me that seemed to come naturally, that was part of my nature was framed as a weakness. When that message comes from your father, you tend to believe it.
For decades, really, that was my, programming to say all of these qualities or things that are natural to me are weaknesses, and I need to strive to be the opposite of who I am. That is not a place for people to feel happy or fulfilled, trying to be the opposite of who you are. Took me very long time to recognize those as my gifts. They're not liabilities. They're really assets, those things. That I have to cultivate those. Of course, there's always room to grow. Once you start to love yourself, then you can actually grow from that place. Maybe there are things that I need to cultivate that are not natural to me, that are good also to have. But it starts with that idea that ultimately, if you don't love yourself, then you're not going to take care of yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally. We need to cultivate self acceptance, self compassion, and ultimately self love, so that we can then also, what the lack of being able to love yourself does is isolates you because you are not able to receive the love of others if you feel unworthy of your own love. The subconscious programming is that somebody claims to love me but they don't really know me. Because I know me, and I don't love me. You end up isolating yourself in that way. There are many many consequences when we do not love ourselves, and then, that gets projected into the world, in terms of aggression and violence and so forth. Ultimately, a lot of those things come from a lack of self love as well.
David Gardner: Thank you for that. I guess a lot of it is about embracing all parts of ourselves, Raj Nilima. I think it's easy for us to love ourselves at our best to recognize what are great traits and all of our best achievements. If we have a spouse or partner, presumably, they love us. Why wouldn't we love us, too? But I think part of what you're saying is that we all have a shadow side. We have things that we're not proud of about ourselves. We have things that we've done that we wish we hadn't done. I guess it's mainly about embracing all parts. Of course, we could do an entire podcast just on this important topic, but there are five other steps that we need to move on to in order to really fully see the work that you all have put out there this month out to the world, Healing Leaders is the book. Let's move on to step Number 3. Nilima, if I have it right, I think it's be yourself. We need to know ourselves. We need to love ourselves. Next Step 3, be ourselves.
Nilima Bhat: Yeah, in a way, these steps are like telescoped into each other. Like you can't fully know yourself if you also don't love yourself and you can't fully love yourself, if you can't be yourself, and so on. They're all interconnected. You can start anywhere and then catch up with the rest. Be yourself. The focus is that the master key of presence. Can you have the confidence to take off the masks and stand in your essence, stand in your presence, and really make yourself a person to be safe with. You can reveal your vulnerability where you have nothing to defend, nothing to promote, nothing to fear, and you can fully show up as you are in that moment, confident that your essence is enough. This is it, the be yourself so that you give permission to others to also show up in their authentic way and not feel that they have to pretend to be something they are not. There's a whole process on how to cultivate presents and show up as a present leader through all your situations. That is a practice that we offer in this tip.
David Gardner: I want to talk a little bit more about that, because this is a book that isn't out yet. I have not read the book yet, so I'm just as an interested, curious reader. Raj and Nilima, I'm assuming that when we're going through a step like be yourself, of course, I think about impostor syndrome, a lot of people talk about how they're not being themselves. They feel like they need to be something else in order to be accepted, I can imagine many leaders might start from that place. Then some people say, Raj, fake it till you make. Perhaps that's a real dynamic that if you really do try to embody something that you don't feel that you are, but you do that for long enough, maybe you become that, which is circular reasoning in some ways for me. But let me ask you, are there tools within a chapter like this within your book in order for me to score myself to know, how do I know if I really love myself adequately or is it possible to love oneself too much? I'm just curious how we can gauge. I would say these very introspective steps. How can we gauge that we're progressing and that we're at the place?
Nilima Bhat: There are plenty of practices in the book, including assessments for self. At the end of it, every step adds up and you will have a sense of assessing yourself. If you are honest and low on self deception, once you read the material, you can't pretend you don't know it. Like, you can't unsee it.
Raj Sisodia: To add on the be yourself. Part of it is stop acting, take off your masks, be the same person. Many of us have different personas. We're one way with our spouse, one way with our children, one way with our parents, one way with the people we report to, people who report to us, how we are with our friends. Can we drop all of that and just be yourself, just be who you are at all times. You don't have to switch all these different masks and cultivating that presence. The third part of it is to understand this need for authenticity and attachment at the same time. Authenticity is being yourself, being able to say what on your mind, being able to express your emotions. Being true to yourself. Attachment is our human need to be connected to others, to have the approval and the love of others, especially our parents. Now, there should not be at tension between these two things. Authenticity and attachment are both vital needs. They're both survival needs for us. We have to be true to who we are. Without attachment, we humans cannot live. We cannot survive. When we are born, we are literally dependent on others, even to hold our necks out. We can't even forget about feeding ourselves.
Unlike other species, which become pretty self reliant very early. Attachment is a survival necessity. We need it, but so is authenticity. If we don't speak out, when we see danger, then we could die. If we don't communicate that. We need both of these, and the problem is that very often we are forced to choose. As a child, I was in a way, forced to give up my authenticity for the sake of attachment. If I wanted my father to accept me and to approve of me, I had to give up being who I was. I could not really express myself in that way. That is not something that you should be forced to do in life, especially with children, but anywhere, we need to be able to be authentic and we need to be able to be attached at the same time to know that we are loved and accepted for who we are. That's a very important element, especially for us as parents to know that our children should feel that they can be authentic. They don't have to be the so called good child all the time, to conform to what we think the way they're supposed to behave. The combination of authenticity and attachment is very important in being yourself.
David Gardner: I was just reading the essays of Montagne, the great French essayist of a few centuries ago, Raj. One of his quotes, of course, it's in French, but translated to English, he wrote, For my part, I shall take care, if I can, that my death discover nothing that my life has not first and openly declared. I think it's a very idealistic view of things, but surely, if you are being yourself, then people will not be highly surprised by any aspect of you as more facts come out from family and friends about us each at our death. Let's return back to life, though, as we move on to step Number 4. Again, to summarize, know yourself, love yourself, be yourself. Raj, what is next?
Raj Sisodia: Next one is choose yourself. This one is a little less obvious. I would say, compared to the other ones, you've heard those other phrases before, probably. Choose yourself. That idea came to me actually at that silent retreat where because you're in complete silence, there's no communication of any allowed. Even at meal times, when you line up to get your food, you're not allowed to point and say, I want this, but not that. You put your tray out there and they just put food in your. You don't even make eye contact. It occurred to me that's a metaphor for life that life is not a buffet. There's no menu that you can order off. You can't say, I'll have this father and this mother and I'll be born into this religion in this country, at this time in history and this socioeconomic status. I'll have this education and none of it. You don't get to control any of that. You're given a tray full of stuff, and this is your curriculum for this life. You are meant to have these parents and be born at this time and have these challenging experiences and difficult people in your life. Some of that food may appear unappetizing, and some of it may taste bitter, but you need all of it. It's your curriculum. It's going to shape you into who you're meant to be and direct you toward the work you're meant to do in this lifetime. That's, it's a mental framing. But many of us, including myself, we can become victims of our own life. Like, for a long time, my inner dialogue was, why did I have such a harsh and distant father? I never got hugged, I never got picked up. My friends, fathers are so kind, etc. I felt like a victim in that sense. Why was I born into this very harsh, feudal warrior class cast culture in India? It was extremely abusive and harsh. All of that made me feel like a victim that somehow I was dealt a bad hand. But it took me a long time to realize that those were actually gifts for me, that there's something deep there for me to learn from that experience.
For example, if I had not been born into that warrior class, extremely misogynistic, feudal, hyper patriarchal system, then I would not have had the sensitivity around the issues of the feminine. To be able to write the book Shakti Leadership with Nilima. There was a direct connection that I could make between many of those experiences and then what turned out to be important aspects of my life and my work. You start to choose your past, you step out of victimhood by saying, I choose to be born there. I choose to have that father, I choose to have my special needs son. I choose to have all of these things because I can't go back and change my past. I might as well choose it. Otherwise, I'll be a victim to it. There's almost a proactive act of embracing something that is already there, but now you can find the gift in it. Otherwise, you can't find any gifts in it.
David Gardner: That really connects well with another author, I highly esteem. That's Shirzad Chamine his book, Positive Intelligence, which has certainly come on to this podcast and something that recurs. Shirzad encouraging all of us to reframe anything bad in our lives. By the way, it's not often so easy to do. It's one thing to say, it's another thing to do, but everything is a gift and an opportunity, he would say. I think in so many words, I think I just heard you say that, too, Raj, which makes me think it is a powerful global timelessly important sentiment. As we choose ourselves, choose into the leadership story that we've been given. I'm reflecting, Raj and Nilima that I know this is for leaders. Healing Leaders is the title of the book. But I think you've written that for all of us. I feel as if we all could know love, be ourselves, choose ourselves that we have three more steps to cover. Briefly, let me ask what's the difference between a leader and a non leader in your parlance.
Nilima Bhat: Actually, the idea is that we are all leaders. At a minimum, we have to lead ourselves instead of having life lead us randomly. Ultimately, we are all leaders. We all have self leadership as a responsibility given to us by life. Having said that, there are enough self help books generally. If we wanted to write a book that will have greater impact, we thought, change is made by changemakers. The world needs change. Changemakers are leaders. If we can help them heal and empower them, then they will go out there and change the world. This is why we speak to leaders.
David Gardner: Thank you, and that's very well said. Let's continue on then, Nilima to Step Number 5. What is Step Number 5?
Nilima Bhat: To complete our Step Number 4, which is choose yourself, there's this thing about choose your past, but then there's also about choosing your present and choosing your future. We really lay out the hero journey and the call to adventure that every crisis that's happening to you in the present or any challenge that may come up in the future, instead of reacting to it, why not lean into it? Think of it as a call to adventure, and say, yes. Choose the adventure. It moves toward the fifth step from there. The fifth step is express yourself. This is about discovering your life purpose, discovering your true purpose, your deeper purpose, not just a job, not just a paycheck, but really getting in touch with your core values, your natural gifts and talents, discovering what is it that is your heartbreak that keeps you up at night, discovering what's your bliss that you would jump out of bed for whether or not you got paid for it. It's some version of an Ikigai, I guess, but we've been teaching this before Ikigai as a book became famous. We've put this framework in the book. How do you discover your higher purpose and start living into it? That is express yourself.
David Gardner: Thank you, Nilima. Share with me a little bit more in that chapter, that section of the book. What would be an example of either an assessment or a tool that you're handing me as your reader to help me understand how better to express myself. Keep in mind, you're speaking to many listeners who hear things from me, like, you should be an optimist. That's the best way to play the long game of life investing as well, by the way, or they're hearing me say, you should be a fool. You should be a fool, because going against conventional wisdom is often where real value is created in life. As you coach us to express ourselves, what thoughts or tools do you have in mind for us?
Nilima Bhat: We go at it both with the cognitive self and then the more intuitive higher self. The cognitive version is a four quadrant worksheet. Basically, that's in the book that says, what is it that life trained you for? What is it that you are innately good at? What is it that is your bliss? What is it that you think the world needs and breaks your heart? Then you start getting a sense of somewhere my higher purpose brings these four things together. Then we take you through what's called a higher self dialogue. This comes from Roberto Assagioli's psychosynthesis work, it comes from Egyptian wisdom, Hemetic Wisdom that we have a human self, but we also have a higher self. There's a very beautiful guided visualization where as the human self, you ask your higher self, who am I? Why am I here, basically? What's my higher purpose? Then you stand in your higher self, and you channel your own wisdom back to your human self. This is something that we conduct live in our workshops, but we've also offered it as a tool in the book so people can just read out the script to themselves and play it. I've also offered the free meditations and visualizations on our website, so people can download from there as well.
David Gardner: Wonderful. Thank you for that. Friends, we have two more steps. We're knowing ourselves, loving ourselves, we're being ourselves, choosing ourselves and expressing ourselves. Nilima, what is Step Number 6?
Nilima Bhat: Step Number 6 is, complete yourself. Which essentially means becoming whole and this is, I think, the kernel of the entire work. How do we achieve psychological wholeness? Carl Jung would call it the fourfold self. We sum it down to say, we have these four polarities inside us, which arise out of our psychosomatic drives so you have a parent self in you the elder, and you have a child self in you. If you follow Eric Byrne and transactional analysis, coming into aware adulthood means knowing when to tap into your inner elder, your parent, when to tap into your inner healthy child but that's not it. You also have the other complimentarity, which is the Yin Yang, the masculine feminine, the anima animus. Even Young would say that the apprentice piece is to integrate the ego shadow or the parent and child self, but the masterpiece is to integrate the anima animus. How do you find your healthy masculine side? How do you find your healthy feminine side? How do you put them together? Psychological wholeness is cultivating that inner holy family, the family reunion of your inner elder, your inner child, your inner masculine, your inner man, and your inner feminine, your inner woman. What I call becoming the wise fool of tough love so there you go. The wise is the inner elder. The fool is the inner child, which is all about your work. How do you become that wise fool so that you can speak truth to power. You can stay curious. You can have a sense of wonder, and you can be the truth teller. The kid who says the emperor is naked. That wise fool, but equally, the tough love. Not just be tough all the time, but equally not be love all the time, because then all your boundaries get crossed over all the time. That healthy, beautiful balance makes you a complete person so that's what we mean by complete yourself.
David Gardner: Thank you for that explanation, Nilima, Raj I'm thinking about business leadership and conscious business and conscious capitalism. I'm thinking about Nilima, Raj the purpose of your book, which is to help leaders heal. I let off with the word burnout, which we hear a lot about these days, we hear phrases like digital exhaustion. People are starting to write books about how social media is making us lose sleep at night. I'm curious, is the completion of oneself. Is integration is wholeness, is that at the root of what's missing? When you see these stories and these other works about exhaustion and burnout, is this what brings it all together, or Raj, will it be step Number 7? Help me understand how you address your thoughts about burnout in leaders today, especially in business.
Raj Sisodia: I think burnout is a reflection of, first of all, we're overextended, trying to do too much. That's a reality for many of us, but also that we are doing things that are not resonant with our being. We're not being true to ourselves, we're doing work that doesn't matter to us, and therefore we don't have access to that spiritual energy that drives us when we are on purpose. A lot of these steps would address those dimensions as well. If you're doing work that is on purpose, if you're doing work that you love, you love yourself. All of those will reduce the incidence of burnout, but there could be elements of burnout that are outside of that. Of course, we then get to the last step of this seventh step, which is heal yourself. Ultimately, the whole journey is toward healing yourself. Everything is a part of healing yourself and this has three dimensions again. We talk about heal your story, heal your body, and heal your psychic wounds and traumas. Healing your story is very simple. Life is so much about how we explain it to ourselves, how we make sense of it. If you think of your life as a victim, then you're going to frame it in a certain way. You're going to highlight all the ways in which you were victimized. Those are true things, but it creates a certain energy. You could also frame your life as a hero. Here are all the things I overcame. That's also a true story, but it's still limiting in a way. The third way to think about it is your story as a learner. Here's what happened. Here's how I grew from it, and here's what I learned from it that I evolved. That's the most empowering version of that so we encourage people to frame your life story as a learner and somebody perpetually growing. Second part is heal your body. Most of us don't pay adequate attention. I myself included to our bodies we just take them for granted. This is where we are living, we live inside this body. It's like our house and we do so much for our physical houses to maintain them, but we don't do much for this until it really breaks down when you get older.
Can you heal your body and understand what the body needs and all the incredible aspects of the body that we just take for granted. I've started doing that. We spent three weeks at the end of every year. Now, and then I wear that retreat, focusing just on that. The big piece there is healing your psychological wounds and traumas. About 13 million Americans have PTSD. They've been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. I believe everybody has some degree of PTSI, post traumatic stress injury. What do you mean by that? Life is hard. For all of us. Things happen. There are traumatic experiences that every one of us goes through as children or even as adults. There are things that happen in our family of origin. There's personal trauma that happens to us so what is personal trauma? Things that happened directly to you? That should not have happened or bad things that should not have happened, traumatic things, right? Whether it was abuse or neglect, whatever it is. On the other side of that, there are good things that should have happened that were necessary for your development, but did not happen. Children in orphanage who don't get picked up and held, that's a trauma that gets imprinted on them because that is something that is essential to their development so that's your personal trauma. We have to identify and recognize where we actually had trauma in our lives. Then there's family trauma, things that happened to your parents before you were born, but you are impacted by that. It's clear to see how if your mother was traumatized, if your father was traumatized at some point and they didn't do anything to heal it, clearly, it's going to impact you. You grew up in the energetic field created by that trauma, in the shadow of that trauma. Then there is ancestral trauma. Things that happen generations ago in your lineage, the new research on epigenetics is revealing that the things that impact you today when you have irrational fears, for example, fear of dogs or fear of confined spaces or whatever it might be, fear of heights, that there could be something in your lineage where somebody had a traumatic death or an incident associated with that, and that then impacts gene expression, which gets then transmitted over generations. We have to understand what trauma is sitting in our lineage. Then there's collective trauma. If you just think back to the pandemic.
That was a global trauma that for some of us, it was easier than for others, but for many people, it was extremely traumatic. These are all the different sources of trauma, and most people tend to minimize their own trauma because they say, I didn't go to Afghanistan and I didn't go to Iraq and I wasn't the first to responder, so why should I whine about my little problems when other people have it so much worse? Just because somebody else has a bigger trauma doesn't mean your trauma is erased or that it doesn't have any impact on you. The fact is we are all carrying it around and so what most of us do is that we hide it, we don't acknowledge it, we minimize it, but then it's still affecting us. Then we have to numb it. Why is there such an epidemic out there of numbing whether it's alcohol or marijuana or drugs of many different kinds? These are all numbing mechanisms for us not to feel what's really here, and give us some momentary relief, so we get the short-term high, but then we get the long-term low because you had a few hours of relief, but then you're back to where you were, and that trauma is still sitting inside you that's, as I said, the common response. Most people don't acknowledge their trauma, and they just try to run it. We aggressively market all the numbing mechanisms in the world to people. That was the story of my father really. My father had to have three or four drinks every day just to feel any joy or lightness, because he had tremendous trauma in his life that he never did anything. Then he had to take sleeping pills to get to sleep at night. There's a healthy, constructive way, which is to reveal it and feel it in order to begin to heal it.
Nothing can be healed without actually talking about it, without bringing it into the open. We have to bring traumas into the open, talk about them. In my case, I've written a book about my life which has many of those traumas in them. You don't have to be that public, but you have to talk about them, not just to a therapist, but in general. You have to talk about it with your loved ones, family, etc. Then the good news is we are living at a time when there are many modalities available for helping to heal trauma. The work of Gabor Mate and many others EMDR, and even now with psychedelics, MDMA is being very helpful for people with PTSD, etc. There's many avenues available. The beautiful thing about this is that if you are able to hear your trauma, then there's a wonderful gift on the other side. It's called post traumatic growth that you are now stronger as a human being because you had a trauma and healed it. Then if you never had any trauma in the first place, the people who are the strongest in the world are those who have gone through. Significant things and heal themselves. People who have sailed through life and have not a scratch on them are probably not that strong. The Japanese have a beautiful metaphor for this. It's called Kintsugi the art of precious scars. When a piece of pottery breaks, they don't discard it, they put it back together using a blend of gold, dust, and glue. Now you have a work of art, a piece of pottery that looks beautiful, and it is stronger than the original piece of pottery because you have strengthened it along its fork lines. That's what happens to us the scars that we carry and heal, they actually now make us stronger in those places so now we can become a healer in the world for others.
David Gardner: That is a great metaphor, and we're nearly at close, but we're not going to close on that great metaphor, even though it would be a great close because I have one more question for you each before I let you go. Raj, here's my final question for you. A lot of people will hear the word healing, see it in your book title, see it in this week's podcast and think that's soft. You're arguing almost the opposite that it's a strategic advantage. Can you make that case briefly to a skeptical CEO listening right now or an investor who would say something like I'm here buying and selling pieces of companies. Why do I care about healing?
Raj Sisodia: Why you do things matters and understanding the motivations. I believe everything we do should come from a place of love. Too many business decisions, investing decisions come from fear or greed. Can we make those decisions from a place of love, and you can't do that until you heal yourself. If you want to make better decisions that are going to have better consequences in the long-term for everybody and not just financial, but in all the dimensions, then we have to operate with love, and in order to do that, we have to heal ourselves, because if we don't we end up inflicting suffering on ourselves. It starts with ourselves and as a leader, it gets amplified into the world 1,000 fold or 1 million fold, because of the impact that we have on others. I believe a sacred responsibility for leaders to work on their own healing if they want to have a positive impact, and they must. As leaders, you have to want to have a positive impact on the world.
David Gardner: Beautifully expressed, Raj, and you're reminding me of your previous book, The Healing Organization. Again, for somebody who is very business focused this week, who's thinking, how could I make this live, breathe in my organization, healing myself first. Then what can that mean for the people around me? Raj's book, The Healing Organization, you and I, Raj, had a Rule Breaker Investing podcast together. I was checking October 23, 2019, for anybody who'd like to go back and listen to what I trust will be some timeless words from us both about healing organizations, especially from you since you wrote it.
Raj Sisodia: Motley Fool is one of the chapters in that book.
David Gardner: Thank you for that, Raj. I'd even forgotten that, and I'm delighted. That credit to my brother Tom, not to me. My final question for you, Nilima is, if someone listening right now, enjoying our conversation wants to in addition to buying your book, Healing Leaders, Seven Steps to Recovery of Self. If they just want to get started simply, do something in the next 90 days that would enable them to start practicing healing leadership for themselves, maybe as an entrepreneur or we have a lot of investors listening or we're all humans. What is a concrete behavior you might suggest we could start with?
Nilima Bhat: I think just be kind, practice kindness. That itself is hard work. It sounds simple, and it's so easy to get caught in our usual task orientation, but to just remember that I'm working with human beings. Everything, at the end of the day, there's a human behind everything and can I be kind? Can I be aware of the human being in every situation and not just be task focused?
David Gardner: That is a wonderful way to close this week, and I will put out there my regular listeners will know this. In my own parlance, when I think about the core values, in this case, of our country, the United States of America, I have five of them. I won't throw them down now, but maybe a surprising one. It feels surprising sometimes these days, but I think it's very important. I think one of the core values of the United States of America is kindness. I really believe that we're an incredibly generous civilization. Many of our best businesses, I think about whether it's Chick-fil-A or Patagonia, or there are so many different companies and leaders I've come across Raj knows so many of them here in the US, and I see kindness at the heart of that. I want to make sure that we're reminded of that. I'm just going to only elevate what you said in closing Nilima during this time in our country, the year 2026, we're at the start of a new year. I hope we will all take to heart your words about that simple thing we can each do from one day to the next. The book is Healing Leaders Seven Steps to Recovery of Self it gave me the excuse to meet back with an old friend today, Raj Sisodia, and make a new friend today, Nilima. I want to thank you both graciously for your time. I wish you the best with this new book, which is just out this month in the United States of America, Healing Leaders Seven Steps to recovery of Self Raj and Nilima, this will be my final line. I'll give you an opportunity to give one of your own, but mine is Fool on.
Raj Sisodia: Thank you so much, David. I really enjoyed being with you as always. You're a delight to be around. As I said earlier, let love be our guiding principle. Just every day, every hour, remind yourself, am I coming from love right now? Kindness will follow, obviously.
Nilima Bhat: I would like to add what someone from our Shakti fellowship once said, I want to express my full potential. She meant to write full potential, but she wrote fool potential. That's it our fool archetype is going to redeem us. We have to return to innocence and remember our sense of wonder and get back to being children again and not take ourselves so seriously.
