Dr. Ron Stotts has been meditating for decades, and he shares some of the foundational building blocks of being able to transformatively lead. Learn about "big mind", "STOP", and how to breathe. We touch on emotional intelligence, self-compassion, other compassion, and more. Dr. Ron Stotts, PhD explores what is possible for individuals, organizations, nations, and the world. He guides people into the highest levels of conscious leadership where they create a 40% percent increase in productivity and profit through creating what are referred to as “learning” or “developmental” organizations to bring out the best of all the stake holders involved. Dr. Stotts is a three-time best-selling author, has a Ph.D. in psychology, is a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic, and has been a meditation teacher for decades.
Dr. Ron Stotts has been meditating for decades, and he shares some of the foundational building blocks of being able to transformatively lead. Learn about "big mind", "STOP", and how to breathe. We touch on emotional intelligence, self-compassion, other compassion, and more. Dr. Ron Stotts, PhD explores what is possible for individuals, organizations, nations, and the world. He guides people into the highest levels of conscious leadership where they create a 40% percent increase in productivity and profit through creating what are referred to as “learning” or “developmental” organizations to bring out the best of all the stake holders involved. Dr. Stotts is a three-time best-selling author, has a Ph.D. in psychology, is a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic, and has been a meditation teacher for decades.
Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Welcome back to SEE HEAR FEEL. Today, I am very glad to be with Dr. Ron Stotts. Dr. Ron Stotts, PhD explores what is possible for individuals, organizations, nations, and the world. He guides people into the highest levels of conscious leadership, where they create a 40 percent increase in productivity and profit through creating what are referred to as "learning" or "developmental" organizations to bring out the best of all the stakeholders involved. Dr. Stotts is a three time best selling author, has a PhD in psychology, is a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine, and has been a meditation teacher for decades. So welcome to Ron.
Ron Stotts: Thank you very much.
Christine Ko: Could we first start off with a personal anecdote?
Ron Stotts: A funny thing happened with me. I was with one of my mentors, it was Buckminster Fuller, who was a well known author and thought leader back in the 70s and 80s, and [00:01:00] I was on stage with him. We had a close relationship, he knew I was very much into meditation and everything, but this one particular time we were on stage at a big event, and all of a sudden he stopped in the middle of this talk, a few hundred people out in front of us, and he looks up. He's 87 and I'm 27, so he's comfortable, I'm not. And he held it for quite a while, and then he came right back in and started up again. That evening when we were having some hot chocolate in front of the fire, I felt bold enough to ask him what was going on with that.
And he said, oh, I was just accessing higher levels of thinking and awareness and information. And I gave him, what do you mean? look. The fun thing was, I was very good at meditation. I could quiet my mind. And he said, when you meditate and you quiet your mind, from that quiet place, you can literally just express what you need or what you want, whether that's an idea, a solution, a design, a concept of any kind.
And for me, it was such a strange thing, [00:02:00] because I thought, okay, being in the silence was it. But he just opened up this huge venue of opportunity and levels of thinking that I had never considered. I call that big mind now, and that's just my pet name for it.
Christine Ko: Cool. How can you access big mind?
Ron Stotts: A lot of times when people come to me, they're very left brain logical, they try really hard, they've efforted. The IQ is very high because that's what got them into the schools that they needed to, that got them the jobs they needed to. But IQ really doesn't sustain us after we get those jobs. It's the emotional intelligence, it's the ability to focus and to really access different parts of the brain, different brain frequencies, if you will, so that you can access higher levels of thinking. Most of the time people go through life accessing those different brain frequencies in different situations, perhaps when they're meditating or being quiet or sleeping or whatever it might be. But when you get the mind quiet [00:03:00] and focused and you are able to really put out there what your request is for information and access from your highest mobility, you're accessing the best of all of those frequencies, not just one dimension of who and what you might be.
It's a process, because you have to learn to trust. You have to really begin to learn to breathe, to take the time to heal your own emotional backlog, re-parent that inner child, if you will. And that part is really foundational. You develop emotional intelligence, you develop mindfulness. Your brain literally neurologically is rewiring itself in that process. Integrated whole brain thinking allows you higher levels of creativity, imagination, intuition.
Your thinking becomes not just about yourself. You've gone through self healing, but now you're also connecting with others and interested in how to support them.
Christine Ko: Very nice. Thank you, you explained it well. You mentioned emotional intelligence a couple [00:04:00] of times. Could you define what that means to you and what you mean by it?
Ron Stotts: Yeah. I think it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Just paying attention, becoming more self aware, and becoming aware of what you're feeling, and how those feelings are direct in your life, is the beginning of emotional intelligence. But emotional intelligence from my perspective and in my work, I really take people down into their childhood so they can begin to see where these emotions come from, what the source of this emotional backlog is, and how they can heal that so that those emotions just aren't popping up randomly and distracting them throughout their life.
Emotional healing, that childhood reprogramming, if you will, allows them to be much more focused, their minds much quieter, they're much more aware of their feelings, and their feelings literally become indicators, rather than, if they're feeling fear or they're feeling [00:05:00] anger or anything like that. They aren't reacting to that, they're just using that as an indicator. It's a helpful indicator that tells them what's going on in their life. They learn to breathe into that, look deeper at what's really probably ready to be healed and how to access the next part of themselves that they need to really go past whatever that struggle, that efforting, might have been about.
Christine Ko: It sounds like it's necessary to go into someone's childhood.
Ron Stotts: It's not necessary unless you want to have control of your mind.
Christine Ko: Okay, but so in order to have control of your mind...
Ron Stotts: We only are aware of about five percent of our thoughts. And so that means there's another 95 percent of our thoughts that we're completely unaware of. They're in our subconscious. And of course, that emotional backlog, all the things that we didn't know how to deal with as a child, or nobody helped us with, or we just weren't mature enough to handle, that we shoved into that inner cave, and hid away so that we'd be acceptable and loved by others. They have really [00:06:00] full reign to distract us, to waylay us and take us off track.
Christine Ko: Yeah. It sounds like hard work. Worthwhile, but hard work. Is there a way that someone could get started with that?
Ron Stotts: It's interesting you say that because I think a lot of people do feel like it's hard work, but from my perspective, it's much harder work to carry all that along with you and to be distracted and never know really what you want, to not really be able to maintain your focus, to not be able to concentrate, to just use a small portion of your mind to become an expert at something so you feel safe.
While it seems uncomfortable and difficult, it actually makes your life so much easier that it's well worthwhile. A child wants love more than anything else, and they want unconditional love, and they'll do whatever it takes to get it. You just have to look at what did you do to get that, as much love as you could from your family of origin and through life as you got older.[00:07:00]
We really feel safe up in our head. We feel more comfortable up there trying to be logical and linear and that's how we can control life. But it really disconnects us from the best of who and what we are. And so really most people's definition of control is really, from my perspective, out of control, because they've just cut themselves off from so much of who or what they are.
Christine Ko: So it sounds like a important question would be, what did you do to get love when you were younger?
Ron Stotts: It's the key question, it really is, because that program for getting love is what's running your life.
Christine Ko: Okay. I would say, if I relate this to like myself, but I think a lot of people in health care, a lot of high achieving individuals, it's achievement, it's, grades, when you're younger. Activities, trophies, getting a degree, going to a certain school, getting another degree, getting a certain [00:08:00] residency somewhere if you're in medicine, et cetera, et cetera.
Ron Stotts: Where did all those desires come from? Why do we have all those desires?
Christine Ko: I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, I'm Korean American, and for a lot of Asians in general, but definitely Korean Americans, many of them, including my family, my parents definitely were like education, education, education! You do well in school. And I do know for sure, I remember definitely feeling like this, that love was conditional.
Ron Stotts: The problem is that you're always then looking outside of yourself for answers. You're looking outside of yourself for acceptance. Who should I be? How should I be? How do I feel? What do I feel? Who do I need to be to get accepted and loved? That looking outside of yourself takes you away from ever looking deep within and healing. A mentor of mine, Joseph Campbell, famous quote, you have to enter the cave within to [00:09:00] find the treasure that you seek. That cave within is where you held all of the emotional backlog, all the anger for not getting what you want, the fear, the hurt, the shame, all of those things that you just didn't feel safe to acknowledge and express. You weren't taught to do that. You have to go into that cave and acknowledge, express, and heal all those things. The more you do, the more connection you have within yourself. The treasure in that cave is really yourself, to really discover how to love yourself unconditionally, because that's really the only place you're ever going to find it.
Christine Ko: Yes. I fully agree. I think I'm a reformed "achievement oriented, fixed mindset" kind of person.
Ron Stotts: The problem was you don't develop the emotional intelligence that you need to be a higher level leader. You're a good little worker bee, but you really haven't learned to open up your heart. You haven't learned to open up your mind. You haven't learned to connect with yourself and others. And that's, I think, what life's about.
Christine Ko: [00:10:00] I totally agree. As a reformed human being, like I just said, that actually is a good deal why I'm even doing this podcast, because the very first episode was actually on emotional intelligence with David Caruso. I didn't even know about emotional intelligence much of my life. I started learning more about trying to be aware of my feelings when my daughter was in kindergarten. So that's 11 years ago now. Cause she came home with a mood meter. What am I feeling today? What are my emotions? And at first I was like, okay slightly silly. And then I realized it was hard because I was thinking, what is my emotion right now? And I realized, I know like happy, sad, mad, and it's like about it.
Ron Stotts: Yeah. Becoming more self-aware. It's from that higher level of self-awareness that you become more aware of others. And in that connection and awareness of [00:11:00] others, you discover that your relationship with yourself is really reflected in your relationship with others. The more healed and whole and self-accepting and loving you are, the more that is mirrored with others, the more patient you are, the more supportive.
Christine Ko: Yes, absolutely. What you just said touches on self compassion and other compassion, I think. I spoke to a couple experts or researchers. They research self compassion and other compassion. And it was interesting because it makes sense, but they said that really working that muscle of self compassion or, either way, or other compassion, really it works both ways. So if you are really hard on yourself, you tend to be hard on others. If you have self compassion for yourself, you can usually have compassion for others. I think that's true. I think it reflects in the people around me, the people that are meanest to themselves are actually pretty hard on others as well.
Ron Stotts: If you can begin to connect and create a [00:12:00] safe, supportive environment for people to work in, they begin to trust you. They begin to listen to you. They'll give more of themselves to the job.
Christine Ko: Do you have any tips for how to respond rather than be reactive?
Ron Stotts: Yeah, there's quick fixes for subtle things. Really just taking a moment. Something comes into your life, whether it's an outer thing or inner thought or whatever it might be, comes into your life and it jars you in some way, disrupts you in some way.
In that moment, if we can, just stop for a moment. Just literally stop and take a breath. And in that moment of presence, being curious and being open you just really look around and go, what's really going on? From that place of curiosity, looking at, is this my reacting from some childhood issue? Is it something that outwardly I need to be concerned about? And so you begin to recognize, oh, this is what's going on. This is my best next [00:13:00] option. And now I'm going to proceed on that optimal step that's available to me. Now I call it the stop process we created back in the 70s. Stop. Take several deep breaths. O, observe. See what's going on. And P, proceed on your best next step. If you keep doing that throughout your life, what you'll find is you're developing a lifestyle of mindfulness because you can become more aware. You're creating a transition between what's going on and your reactivity to it. Because you're not reacting, you're acting. You're just taking action.
Christine Ko: I like it. What would you say to doctors who are notoriously too busy to even really process their daily lives?
Ron Stotts: I think you have to notice that something isn't working. I think you have to notice that there's pain points in your life that just are holding you back, keeping you from having the life that [00:14:00] you want, from even seeing what you really want. That pain point is really the first thing people have to recognize. In other words, I'm not happy, or my life's not working the way that I want it to, or I don't know what I'm feeling, I'm not breathing. When people recognize they're not breathing, that's a fairly basic aspect of being a person on the planet. Learn to breathe, and then start paying attention, and then be curious. Just count your breath. As you're breathing in, count to four, as you're breathing out, count to four. If you really want to slow it down and be more present, then breathe in to four, hold in four, breathe out to four, and hold out four.
And so you have to pay enough attention. You have to slow down enough to notice I'm not breathing. I have to slow down enough to recognize that most people are having the same thoughts going through their mind every day, and that's a complete waste of a life. You have to recognize, okay, that's not living. That's [00:15:00] survival. That's fear based survival. You have to recognize, I want more. And that's when they begin to open up to, what is it you really want? What's most important to you? What are your values? What are your directions in life?
Learning to pay attention, learning to take care of yourself. The Dalai Lama says his religion is kindness. Kindness to yourself, then of course, as we spoke of, really gets extended to others. If you want to be a great parent, learn to love yourself, because then that love will be a part of your parenting, and your children will feel that. And that's what will make them the best. That's what will take care of them better than anything else.
Christine Ko: I agree with you. Absolutely. On that parenting thing. And I think it's true for doctors as well. A doctor who loves himself, herself, themselves, I think is the better doctor than someone who is just surviving.
Ron Stotts: Yeah, they look at things in the bigger [00:16:00] picture. They're not just trying to get out of the office and to see the next patient. They're really present with that patient and taking a look at what's not really working in their life. Because I see it, especially in the medical profession, they're looking for a box to put these symptoms into.
And once they find that box, then they go, okay, this is what you do. And so they don't look deeper, they don't look at really the whole picture, they don't look at what that patient really needs. Because they don't have the time, and they don't have the time because they don't have the level of consciousness to be present and make their life different.
Christine Ko: Yes. Do you have any final thoughts?
Ron Stotts: My little agenda in the world at this point in my life is, how do we create a more conscious and caring world for everybody? Take the time to to slow down. And I'm not talking about throughout your life, but take moments to slow down, take moments in nature, take moments wherever you can find them, and really begin to create a relationship with yourself. Care about [00:17:00] yourself, pay attention to yourself. What do you need? If your body is hurting, that's your body communicating to you. If you have certain thoughts going on, that's a part of your psychology or history or childhood that's communicating to you. Learn to listen to those things. Because they have vital information for your health.
Learn to love yourself. Learn to take care of yourself. If you're not breathing, that's not taking care of yourself.
Christine Ko: Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this with me.
Ron Stotts: I enjoyed it.