(upbeat music) - Folks, I'm about to introduce you to someone we interviewed, Mary Gamba, my colleague and I interviewed Satyen Raja the author of this book, "Accelerated Evolution, Well, what is that, how is it relevant?

Well, that's what I wanted to find out, and that's what Mary and I did when we talked to Satyen Raja about his view of leadership, his view of the workplace, and how it's changed and how people need to be treated.

And frankly, he talked about mixed martial arts and Bruce Lee as someone who taught him about being a leader and transformative, very deep ways of touching and connecting with people.

I didn't understand all of it, but I think it can make a difference for you.

Satyen Raja right here.

- Welcome back to Lessons in Leadership.

Thank you so much again for joining us today, and we are thrilled to have with us Satyen Raja, CEO and Founder, WarriorSage Trainings.

Satyen, thank you so much for joining us today.

- Good morning, thanks for having me here, Mary and Steve, looking forward to sharing with you today.

- Absolutely, and speaking of sharing, please tell us what is WarriorSage trainings?

We'll talk about your books in a little bit, but just talk a little bit about the training and the coaching that you do.

- Our organization, we train CEOs and executive teams, C-suite teams, to really cross the finish line to be deeply aligned, going from chaos to coherence, and really, I create super teams in any type of organizations that are here to make big impact.

We dial up the teams on the inside out so that the effects that they have in the world are very profound, impactful, but they're all done in a new paradigm without struggle, without strain, without overwhelm coming from, let's say, another level of attunement from within.

- Yeah, no, and I have a question regarding that though.

When it comes to that attunement that you're talking about and the struggle coming from within, how did your training and your approach to training, how is it impacted by COVID?

Right, you couldn't have more chaos in those three years than that.

Talk a little bit about how your training and your approach to that evolved.

- Well, you know, with the warrior philosophy, I come from a warrior sage lineage.

That's my martial arts background, and in the warrior sage philosophy, there is no obstacle.

Whatever comes our way is something to take advantage of.

And so when we have that dialed in, that whatever challenge comes upon us, it's not something that crush us, slow us down.

As Bruce Lee said, you must flow like water when you hit a rock.

Don't stop, don't freeze, don't gasp, don't brace, embrace.

And so that's what we train our leaders to do, to embrace whatever is in front of them.

Now, most of the challenges we have are mental, psychological.

When we shift those, when we make an attune within, then what happens is what used to be a problem now is a huge opportunity, and that's what's been happening with the teams I've been leading, the organizations I've been leading and supporting over the last few years.

- Lemme follow up on that.

For those of us who have not been trained in the mixed martial arts and do not have the- - Steve, you're telling me you have not been trained in the mixed martial arts?

- No, I enjoy watching UFC fights and I enjoy mixed martial arts, but you are not messing with the money maker here.

- Hey, Steve, one thing before you move on, I actually took many, many years of karate.

That is probably something else that you did not know about me, so yeah.

- Fantastic, another martial artist.

- There's a whole thing they do.

You gotta take your shoes off.

- In the warrior arts, we're taught to have a strong spine and an open heart.

So the warrior is a strong spine that uncollapsible spirit within us, and that's what we cultivate.

So in our trainings, what we do is with CEOs and executives, we take 'em through duress training, helping them stay calm in the center of the storm.

You can do mindfulness and all that, but that's pretty beginner stuff nowadays.

What we need to do is really anchor people in their true self.

When we're anchored in who we really are, then what happens is we're far more agile, we're far more resilient, but when we're identified with our ego, the roles we play, the faces we put on in the corporate or business world, and we're not coming from who we truly are, that it's easy to get knocked down and stay down.

But when we cultivate that strong warrior spine that resiliency within, and we open our heart, then we attune to our intuition because intuition, not only tactics, is what's really needed in the business world right now.

We need to tap into the feminine wisdom, which is inherent in all of us, which is that attunement to people, the human dynamics in the organization, I've discovered that's the most important thing in our families, most important thing in our organizations and government is the quality, the power, the beauty, the joy of the human dynamics inside.

And if that's faltering, so is the (indistinct).

- Yeah, why is that feminine wisdom?

- Well, because the feminine has a lot to do with the embodiment and the flow of connection within us.

And the masculine has a lot to do with attainment, realization.

Next goal attainment, breakthrough, breaking through challenges, but that's fantastic in the business world, but it's become imbalanced to the place where self destroying ourselves.

You know, I work with a lot of business leaders.

On the outside, things are great, amazing success, billionaires.

On the inside, there's all types of challenges.

It has lots to do with relationship, with family dynamics with their children because of the overexertion in one area of their life, it affects another area of their life.

It's detrimental.

- Is it about balance, is it about balance and wellness in the end?

- Balance, wellness, equilibrium, but also of spirit, which means tuning into our deeper purpose.

In India, we call it our dharma.

In the warrior traditions we call it, what's our purpose for living.

When we discover and open to that and marry that with our business purpose, our success purpose, then we become a whole individual.

We're not fragmented within ourselves.

- Yeah, but Satyen, I have a question about that when it comes to, this all sounds good and great.

Absolutely, I'm a firm believer.

Steve and I talk all the time about how I state my intentions every day before I start my day.

But where does the bottom line come in, right?

For these CEOs, for the presidents of organizations, where do they balance making sure that they are making all ends meet, right?

No money, no mission, while also staying in tune with this culture that you're talking about.

Don't they sometimes conflict?

- Hold on, hold on one second, one second while you answer that, I now have to bring in for our other organization together with Mary, $3.6 million a year, or we're gonna have a problem.

That's real.

It doesn't feel especially spiritual to me, in all candor, I have to get it done, so please help me.

- Absolutely, well, all the top leaders that I know have been along the path and have, you know, attained levels of success, they recognize their internal state makes a huge difference on what's going outside.

They already recognize that life is a mirror reality.

If I'm frowning on the outside, if I'm frowning, the mirror is gonna reflect a frown.

If I'm smiling and positive and intentional on the inside, the mirror reflects that the same.

The frown doesn't turn into a smile, when we look into a mirror, the smile reflects back a smile.

In the same way, our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual alignment.

When we have that dialed in, and that's a simple thing to do, it's not as onerous as we think.

We already have that inner alignment.

We just gotta get back on board with it.

We already have the navigation masking within us.

We've lost touch with that navigation.

We're using some other GPS outside of ourselves.

- Hold on, time out.

How does that help, or how does that relate to me having to bring in $3.6 million a year to keep our engine going, that's real.

- Absolutely, we've done this dozens of times in the company.

What we do is we take a look at the company, we take a look at the individuals, the leaders, and we say, okay, what are the biggest challenges right now, could be in the financial world.

We look brass tacks, we start with the pain.

We start with where's the biggest problems in the company?

Then when we boil down to it, it has a lot to do with limiting beliefs.

All the impressions from the past of what can be attained, limitations in some team members, some are really brilliant.

They're like, we can achieve it.

Some go we can't, and they're holding back.

There's breaks on.

So what we do is we go into the mind, we go into the subconscious of our leadership and we transform it so that those obstacles that used to be ceilings are now gone.

When you have a team that's coherent, when the obstacles are gone in their limiting mindsets, then what happens is the goals come to us.

It's less strain and struggle, less push, less yang power and more yin power where the actual fulfillment comes our way.

And the paradox is, you know, at first it's hard to believe if you're coming from a traditional mindset business, which I have for decades, right?

I come from a family lineage of business people.

I had to break away from that paradigm of over burning out, overstressing.

Yeah, we made lots of money, but the results were pretty poor on the inside.

So now I've realized that when we have equilibrium in our lives and in our teams, what happens is they perform way better.

They're healthier, they're happier, they're joyful, and they're way more loyal, and they go the extra mile big time.

And that's what crosses the finish line.

- Real quick, Fred, the name of the book, Accelerated Evolution.

Good stuff, a lot to think about, and we appreciate you joining us on Lessons in Leadership, thanks so much.

- It's wonderful to be here, thank you, Steve.

Thank you, Mary, have a wonderful day.

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