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My little nephew loves this
movie called <i>The Red Panda</i>. And
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in it, it basically has this
girl. She basically meditates to
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calm herself down, because if
she doesn't, she'll get very
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angry and explode into a red
panda. So these techniques of
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basic emotional regulation can
be taught from a really young
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age. You've probably heard of
that study about, don't eat the
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marshmallow. So when people,
you know, are able to have that
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sort of self control, there are
all these benefits in life.
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- Welcome to <i>The Ripple Effect</i>,
the podcast that takes you on a
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journey through the minds of
Wharton faculty. I'm your host,
00:00:32
Dan Loney, and in each episode,
we'll be diving deep into the
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inspiration behind the
groundbreaking research that
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Wharton professors have
conducted and exploring how
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their findings resonate with the
world today.
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- Well, when you talk
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about wellness in the workplace,
there are obviously traditional
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elements that are focused on,
like employee health. But one of
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the things added into the mix in
recent years is the concept of
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mindfulness. Lindsey Cameron is
an Assistant Professor of
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Management here at the Wharton
School, and has done research on
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this area, and she joins me here
in studio. Great to see you
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again. How are you?
- I'm great. How you doing?
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So I guess let's
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start out with the concept
itself. And you know, some
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people may know about it, others
may not. When you think about
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the concept of mindfulness, how
do you best describe it?
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What's happening right now in
the present moment. So where are
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your feet? Where's your back?
How's the quality of your
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breath. Present moment awareness.
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And then, so in the scope of
bringing it and thinking about
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it in the scope of the
workplace, how does that
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connection come together?
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So it depends a bit about what your
job is. You know, what does it
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mean to be fully in the present
moment? If you're a call center
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rep, it's that right before you
pick up the call, taking that
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breath. How are you going to
interact with that client? If
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you're— you know, Kobe Bryant was
a great meditator. Really well
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known for what he did. And for
him, that moment of presence,
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when he's at the free throw
line, taking that shot. So it's
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just about being present in
whatever your core task is at work.
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How much. then. have companies—
and I guess part of this ties
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into the pandemic and thinking
about employee health in
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general, but how much have they
thought about the concept of
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mindfulness as a component of
the health of their employees?
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I would say it probably started in
the late 2010s. Early, late 2000s—
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late 2000s, early 2010s, is when
I really saw a big uptick about
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mindfulness in the workplace.
You know, many of the CEOs of the
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big health insurance companies,
like Aetna, started doing big
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rollouts of their mindfulness
programs. But you know, Jon
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Kabat-Zinn started in the '70s
and '80s teaching mindfulness-
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based structure reduction. It has a
lot of research behind it. So
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it's been well used, you know,
across many different
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industries. And when I served in
Iraq, you know, I meditated
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there too, and that was, you
know, early 2000s
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so in the scope of working every
day in the office, mindfulness
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could be probably a few
different things,
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depending on the individual, correct?
- Exactly.
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I mean, there's this
misconception that mindfulness
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is, you've got to be on that
meditation cushion, like, near a
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lake, you know, going "hmm" every
day. And that is the more
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traditional, Eastern,
contemplative version of
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mindfulness. But many of the
ways it's been secularized and
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brought it into the West,
there are ways where you can
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incorporate it much more easily
into your everyday life.
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What was it that first had you
interested in looking at
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mindfulness in connection with
the workplace, and how
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companies are viewing that
relationship with the employee right now?
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So I served in our war in Iraq
in 2007-2008, and that was sort
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of common practice, of things
that were offered to people
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deployed, was these mindfulness
techniques. And it was actually
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a fair amount of research that
shows that, you know, Special
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Forces, before they— if they go
out, before they go out, if they
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meditate, there's like a jump
in sort of their executive
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functioning. Even for people who
are about to do the GRE, that we
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are seeing increases in their scores
that they meditate. So there are
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these programs that were offered
about mindfulness when I was
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deployed, which started my
personal interest. Then the
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academic interest came much
later.
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So when you're talking about mindfulness
in the workplace, then, the
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benefits, obviously, for the
individual, can be very, very
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strong. But for the company,
when they're thinking about
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having mindfulness in the
genre of the workday, they're
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thinking about— I mean,
companies think about bottom
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line benefits. So there's
probably a healthcare benefit
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that that, you know, aids them
in terms of what they're
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providing for their employees.
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Right. I— you know, I think at
the baseline, you would say
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something like, people would
have lower neuroticism, more
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emotional stability, if they're
doing mindfulness. But what, you
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know, my research was also
showing, what are the intra-
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personal benefits? How does
it benefit other people? So I
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looked at call center reps, and—
to see, if they meditated, does
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that improve customer
satisfaction scores of people on
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the other line? Does that
improve morale among people and
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their teammates? So I think if
you can— you can— yes, there are
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individual bottom line benefits,
but there's a way in which
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there are also group and team
benefits. And then there's
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another line of research that
looks at, you know, medical
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teams are less likely to make
errors if there are these
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collective mindfulness
practices. So there's multiple
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benefits of being able to be
focused at the private level, so—
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at the personal level—
so that the organization can
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receive some sort of a benefit
too.
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And companies are understanding more
and more that it could be just a
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couple of minutes at a time, but
giving that employee that
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opportunity to go down that
path, you know, just to have
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maybe that— that small break, and
the benefits can be obviously
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substantial moving forward in
the course of a day.
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Right. You know, companies do all
different types of
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interventions. There's no one
size approach fits all. I've
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seen some where they've been the
traditional six to eight week
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Jon Kabat-Zinn, NBSR
programs. But what I worked on
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in my experiments, in my research, are
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these more on the spot
interventions. So what can you
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do for two to three minutes, you
know, over two to three weeks,
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to sort of build up that muscle
and put in those reps?
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I know that you originally did this
research back in 2019. Since
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then, we've obviously had the
pandemic, and the pandemic
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changed, I think, a lot of
people's thought process about a
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lot within the office. How do
you think the pandemic impacted
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the need for, or at least the
thought process
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around mindfulness?
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I can't say anything has
changed. You know, mindfulness
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is 5, 6, 7, 8000 years old. Like,
this is a contemplative
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practice. It might seem like
it's new to the West, but it's
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helped people throughout the
millennia. So when you look at
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the pandemic, yes, that
was, you know, a shock that
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happened. But these are just
core tools that the research
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says have lots of
benefits for both individuals,
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groups and organizations.
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And it seems like there is more of a
connection or an understanding
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about mindfulness in general. I
mentioned to you before we
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started this, my kids, when they
were little, their school had a
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mindfulness class that they went
to once a week. And so it's not
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just businesses that are
starting to understand this.
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There are so many other segments
of our life that are—
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are maybe incorporating this.
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Right. I don't know if you know,
my little nephew
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loves this movie called <i>The Red
Panda</i>.
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And in it, it basically
has this girl. She basically
00:07:12
meditates to calm herself down,
because if she doesn't, she'll
00:07:15
get very angry and explode into
a red panda. So these techniques
00:07:19
of basic emotional regulation
can be taught from a really
00:07:22
young age. You've probably heard
of that study about, don't eat
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the marshmallow. And so when
people, you know, are able to have
00:07:28
that sort of self control, there
are all these benefits in life,
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but the way— you know,
mindfulness is just another way
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to have emotional regulation. To—
allow you to separate and have a
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gap between a stimulus and a
response. And that's something
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we need at any age of our life.
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And I guess in any age when
people are feeling pressure,
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even when they're feeling
pressure in their work that they
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do every day, it's great to have
these tools available to them,
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to be able to divert for a
second or two
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and then kind of regroup.
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Exactly. I mean, yes, the
pandemic was just one recent
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crisis. But I mean, life is all
about weathering one on one
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crisis after another. So no,
these are core tools that can
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help you at any age through any
time.
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So then, how important then does
this become for companies when
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they think about the overall
landscape of the type of
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healthcare program that they're
bringing forward
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for their employees?
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So I see it as, it should be a core
benefit that the company should
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offer. The question is, in what
form really makes sense? Are you
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doing the type of work where you
want to pay for people to take a
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six-to-eight-week training out—
you know, class, and that might
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really work in a medical
environment. We see lots of
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results that show if you can
have these sort of interventions
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happen, people are more likely
to do heedful interrelating and
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look at SOPs and checklists very
quickly— you know, carefully, to
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make sure there are not medical
errors. That's one bigger type
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of investment. Versus, do you just
give people a subscription to
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something like Headspace or Muse,
or any of these apps. So there's
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a lot of different variations
about how you implement a
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mindfulness program, and there's
also different types of
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mindfulness. And so another
thing that my research has shown
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is that, like, loving kindness
meditation, which is where you
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sort of beam loving kindness and
goodwill to people, can have a
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different set of outcomes versus
if you're doing just focused
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breath. So it can really be
organization-specific, what
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they're going to choose to
implement.
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Does— does the concept of
mindfulness gain any benefit by
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the community that you have
within your office, and— and being
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there. And— I mean, because
there's obviously a larger
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conversation around remote work
and being in the office right
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now, and I know if there's a
component of that that comes
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into play.
- You know, that's
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a really good question. You
know, there's a critique that a
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lot of these mindfulness
practices have been
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McDonald-ized. You know, there's
a way they've been stripped down
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from their— their traditional
context. And I'm actually very
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active in an ashram and a
sangha, and I'm ordained. So
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there's a way in which I really
practice in community that isn't
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translated a lot into the
organizational setting. My
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research has shown that it can
be effective, even—and not just
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my research, others as well—
shows it can be effective when
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it's not— when it's practiced
individually. So, in this remote
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environment. But someone who's
traditional in these practices
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would say that's not the real
benefit, because there, the
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goal for mindfulness is not to
be better at your work or to get
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higher performance scores. It's
to reach enlightenment and to
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end suffering.
- Right. So
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off of the research you did in
2019, how have you looked to try
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and follow up, or what other
areas are you looking to try and
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follow up, to continue and
advance this understanding?
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Oh, that's really exciting. I'm glad
you brought that up, because I'm
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just starting this project, and
so I'd be interested in talking
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to people who are interested.
This is in coordination with the
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Mack Center, our center here for
innovation. And you've probably
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seen a lot about psychedelics in
the news, which is—
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traditionally, it's been used as
a medicine in a lot of
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indigenous spiritual
communities. It's being used
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more in the West, sometimes
spiritually, sometimes
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recreationally, sometimes
therapeutically. But what
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psychedelics do is it creates a
sense— a sense of deep
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mindfulness in the person, and
also a sense of ego dissolution,
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so that people become less me-
centered and can be more other-
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centered. So this research,
which I'm doing with a postdoc,
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Elena Wong here at Wharton, is
about how you can induce
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mindfulness through these people
who are doing maybe these
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psilocybin retreats. And then
what are the impacts
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for tech workers? What is it, the
impact for innovation and
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leadership? And there have been
quite a few recent articles in
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<i>Wired</i>, in <i>The New York Times</i>,
that have been talking about
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tech CEOs going these sort of
retreats, taking psilocybin and
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then having insights to move
their company forward. So that's
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the research I'm looking into
the new— the new space.
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So it's interesting you bring
that up. Because I think we've
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talked about this in the scope
of the employee, but there's an
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element of what mindfulness can
bring to the executive, to the
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leader of companies as well.
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There is. I mean, this is all
anecdotal, you know. If you sort
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of read the recent articles in
<i>The Times</i> and <i>Wired</i>. But they
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talk about a great more sense of
openness, risk taking, higher
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amounts of creativity, anything
that you want a senior
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leadership to have. To be open
hearted and open minded. These
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sort of in-depth meditation
immersion experiences, which
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often happen in a group as well,
seem to be a catalyst for that.
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Lindsey, great to talk to you.
Thanks very much.
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It's great talking to you, too.
00:12:12
Thank you. Lindsey Cameron,
Assistant Professor of
00:12:14
Management here at the Wharton
School.
00:12:17
Thank you for listening
00:12:18
to <i>The Ripple Effect</i>. We hope
you found this episode
00:12:20
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00:12:24
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00:12:27
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