I’m joined for a conversation by Monique Borst, an entrepreneur, advisor and performance coach with 15 years in senior leadership positions. Monique has said, "Our businesses and personal lives are a mirror reflection of where we are on our own self-development journey, and can only be as successful as we are aware and in control of our thoughts and emotions."Together, we’ll unpack what it means to lead with strength and empathy, to balance resilience with grace, and to embrace vulnerability ...
The following interview is with distinguished neurosurgeon Dr. James Doty and it's a listen that is likely to make you feel a bit stronger and make you think more deeply about leadership, your daily habits, and the gift of life. I have been following Dr. Doty's work for about a decade and was deeply honored for this chance to learn from the master himself. He is a compassion researcher, NY Times bestselling author, and philanthropist. Dr. Doty is also a clinical professor of neurosurgery and ...
This episode is about the paradox of putting healing and performance in the same sentence. Join me for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Phil Maffetone, a visionary in endurance sports for over four decades, an author, musician, and coach. Known for his MAF Method, which emphasizes aerobic training and fat-burning, Phil’s approach has helped athletes achieve world class level of performance. However this method applies to every-body out there to create more sovereignty, health and happiness....
Welcome to a new season of the Sisu Lab podcast! In this episode, I got heart to heart with emotional intelligence and wellbeing expert, Dr. Emma Seppälä. We dove into the mortal mortar life, took a dip the river of life force and finally, circled into the gentle powers we all possess within to elevate our humans condition: We talked about sovereignty.Big word.It will change and challenge your world.Sovereignty is also the primary topic (and name) of Emma's book that comes out next week....
In the spirit of the season, here's a true gift from Aalto University in Finland in the form of an introduction to a framework called systems intelligence (SI). While the name might feel a even a bit cerebral, this work has deeply changed my personal overlook on life and relationships some ten years ago. It's also the practice to which I root my sisu to raise it from only a quality of surviving hardship to an expression of leadership with a hope of creating something of higher good around us....
By now researchers have made wonderful strides in mapping the mental and physiological side of human capacity. We understand how muscles grow and endure, how fatigue plays into our vitality, and we also have a plethora of concepts (such as resilience, perseverance, mental toughness, grit and so on) to help us describe the curious landscape of what makes humans endure. What we know less about is the life energy behind this enduring and persevering that becomes visible usually only when we are ...
Sisu speaks of the extra reserves within individuals everywhere to endure challenges and take action against slim odds. However, while sisu denotes extraordinary power to overcome the extraordinary and do the extraordinary, it can also end up creating extraordinary problems. This would most likely happen with mindless sisu that is out of balance, is done at all cost, and happens usually when we are out of touch with our blind spots.The possible negative outcomes of unbalanced or hard sisu inc...
Welcome to a new episode in which we muse on how to deal with life's headwinds - and how to do it with less damage and more grace. Take aways from ultra running that apply to everyday life (thanks, fellow adventurer & runner Annastiina Hintsa) and a note on deep-seated humility, as well as making our awareness and body our allies in the process.For this episode, finally after years of procrastination (not as bad as the Ironman which took 16 years to conquer) I learned to do sound editing ...
Dear sisu pilgrim, I hope you are well and held by all the courage ands compassion that makes up your unique you. This episode is a slowing down to feel into...grief; a recognition of that something gentle and sometimes heavy within us, buried deep into the cellular wombs of our experiences and too often bypassed by constant doing and going. I share some of my favourite poems and introduce the concept of "edge emotions" by Drs. Kaisu Mälkki and Larry Green.For those in the woods right now: lo...
This is a 23 minute calm and guided meditation to help you relax and calm your nervous system, connect to your breath, and set an intention. There is no background music or sounds and there is an additional 45 seconds for silence after the session ends, so that you can integrate back slowly. No intro or outdo in this episode for that reason either to not startle your nervous system when it is relaxed.In tough times, your parasympathetic nervous system is an ally you want to turn to. Meditatio...
Sisu is an interconnected matter. Rarely is your sisu only your sisu or my sisu solely my sisu. One of the main findings of the ultra run field work portion of my PhD on sisu is the idea of sisu that exists, and is born from, the space in-between you and I. This episode is about how we inspire strength and fortitude in each other. Furthermore, our own sisu can be inspired by the strength we see and witness in others and their actions, and this impact can extend to drawing strength from ...
The sphere of life force is what I call the space within which we operate before hitting the sisu threshold; our outer boundary of inner strength. Ideally, you want this area to be as wide as possible. This episode describes how to expand it through everyday life and how I use it in daily life and to prepare for challenges during extra long ultra runs.Show notes:"if you know the way broadly you will see it in all things" - Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese samurai, 1584-1645). Book recommendat...
"The important thing is not your process. The important thing is your process for improving your process." (Ryan Todd). In this episode we start to dig into our stories of sisu (a practice introduced in the previous episode) to build our personal manual for navigating tough times. The key is to not continue to rely on sisu to appear randomly (which happens too because it is life force whose job is to keep you alive) or in ways that leave unnecessary damage its wake due to unwise over-extensio...
In this episode I share some of the background to the very early days of researching sisu, what the word means, and I present the idea of using the upcoming podcast series as a journey into your own sisu.If you wish, prepare by getting a special notebook (for ease of access and retrieval of the tools) dedicated to collecting material, stories, best practices and other notes relevant to you to get intimate with your own sisu: what it means, where have you displayed it, what stands in its way, ...
In this introductory episode of Sisu Lab, I briefly describe the Finnish construct sisu and invite you to take a walk with me to its higher expression as graceful strength that allows you to endure, excel, and even elevate through tough times. At the end I read a short excerpt from my upcoming book.Thanks for listening and stay tuned for a ride into the formidable fibres of human fortitude!Support the showSisu is a reserve of inner strength but it's also a way for us to know ourselves and imp...