Mindfulness: Authentically Me - Featuring Neil Lawrence

PITY PARTY OVER

Neil Lawrence is a well-being and transformational coach who reminds us about the importance of self-acceptance and authenticity to find purpose in life.

Neil shares how mindfulness has helped him navigate neurodivergence as well as chronic conditions that have profoundly impacted his life, like Fibromyalgia and PSTD.

Neil emphasizes the idea that everyone is good enough as they are, countering societal pressures that often lead to a sense of inadequacy, which heavily affects minority groups like neurodivergent individuals and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: Have you always known what you want to do professionally?

Neil Lawrence: No, I coach creatives. I'm a writer myself. I coach execs, I coach leaders. I do lots of career coaching. I coach kids. And honestly, that idea of having the career and the career plan, it's so antithetical to me. I'm kind of careful where I say it, but I do honestly believe that's not the way it goes.

I became intentional about the work I did when I became a coach, everything before it. And even then, it was still like, I don't really know what was getting myself into before then.

Third generation immigrant. My community was, this is the generation that has to make it to middle class. I'm sure you know about the UK and just how class obsessed and hierarchically obsessed they are. So, you know, I went to university that wasn't approved of by my community 'cause it wasn't one of the ones. But essentially I kind of fell into everything I did until I became a coach and intentionally became a writer.

Stephen Matini: What you just described is what happens, I think to most people. Very few people know from the very beginning what they wanted to do. And you said at some point you made more intentional choices. Do you think it, is it possible to make intentional choices early on on our lives or it just that we have to go through a bunch of stuff before we actually understand?

Neil Lawrence: That's a good question. I think our society has got everything the wrong way around. I think there are systemic reasons for that and in the UK I think there's political reasons for that.

We are a nation obsessed with success, passion being driven, having the career, having the title. And actually I kind of find myself asking what for, I think work is important. I probably am a workaholic, but in my mind I don't think it's that important. It doesn't define who I am. It's something that I spend a lot of my life doing.

I think those people know what they want to do at an early age and are quite driven. I'm passionate about it. I'm not judgmental about that. I'm more on alert for the fact that everybody feels like they have to.

And so many people feel they're failing because of it. And particularly since Covid and the pandemic hit and people are even more desperately trying to support the system that now has so many holes and gaps in it that it's unsustainable.

I'm seeing as a coach, I'm seeing a lot of really worn out, unhappy, confused people. So three or four things got me too intentional. One facing up to the fact that I was disabled.

Two, realizing that I was living with PTSD as well as fibromyalgia and like I've just, it's interesting you're saying about not sleeping.

So I've literally just come up my whole weekend's been decimated by PTSD this weekend. It's just like I didn't exist for about 36 hours and you know, it's a big something and then I've told this story a billion times, but basically me and my husband were, we're on a very narrow and congested motorway about five years ago and it was dangerous driving conditions and I, we shouldn't be here.

So still being here when I shouldn't be here also is quite a good motivate. So I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, by the way, as a way of finding out who you are.

But I think all those things coalesced and I'm being bullied within the education sector and, and the values of working within that for 25 years and realizing just how misaligned they were.

As I came to the conclusion that, you know, in UK education's really about two things. It's about hierarchy and it's about institutionalized bullying. All of that coalesced and drew me towards coaching the course I did with a company called Catalyst one Four. I'm still super supervised by them now. Demi one four who's the the founder and the kind of person who's my supervisor as well. They had a big mindfulness element to it that was really important to me as well.

So, you know, I dunno if this long answer is giving you kind of what you want, but certainly my experience of waking up day to day means that now whatever's on, even if I'm stressed, it's like it is, it feels like purpose and it feels like I'm doing what I should be doing.

Stephen Matini: So basically we are sold a big lie.

Neil Lawrence: Yes. What we're told is we need to work so many hours, we need to have a micromanaged plan. We need to keep improving and keep adding to our skillset and we are not good enough. That's kind of, and we'll never be good enough. So we have to keep going.

What I see from the people I coach and as as was saying, it's you know, sort of really broad spectrum of people is when they realize they don't have to work this hard, they are more than their job title. If they don't do this course and get this next qualification and people don't congratulate them on social media, they still might be working really well. Trying to be really careful say. That, oh, I haven't done my post this morning either. That's when I see the difference of people going, oh my, my motto is do less, plan less be less.

Stephen Matini: But I love it connected to what you're saying. For me, what helps me is reminding myself, why am I doing this? You know, am I doing it because I am enjoying myself and obviously, you know, work is, work is not vacation, but what is the, the reason why I'm doing it? Because that really changes everything. It changes how you are in a situation. It changes how you work, it changes how you feel about stuff. If it's all about getting there, the results, how is it gonna land on people? It may spoil the whole journey, not completely. Definitely it did it for me.

Neil Lawrence: I do wonder whether lots of us are on a journey or just constantly looking at destinations. Either those that have gone already that stick with us or those that we're heading to. I do wonder about that. And obviously that's the mindfulness bit, which is also nicely packaged these days as a kind of CBT tick box, which is not at all where I'm at with it or how I practice it and work with people that I coach either.

But focusing on the now is the important thing. Set the intention. Obviously we plan, but we leave enough in the hands of trust that we will know when to make the gut decision. The right people will come to us if we're open to it. It always sounds a bit vague and wooly doesn't it, when people who, when people say this stuff or, or it's easily, you know, certain phrase I hate soft skills is an insult.

Likewise, you know, when people talk about mindfulness being quite wooly and it's about clearing your mind so you have the clarity to make the decisions you need to as and when they happen rather than trying to look ahead and put everything in place before you get there. You missing on the journey there.

Stephen Matini: How did you get into mindfulness? Do you remember the first time that got into your life?

Neil Lawrence: In the days when I was still muck schooling, I worked with this wonderful counselor and we were running a couple of groups for young men at the point where I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

That's when I started meditating and used this app, which was a very basic, this is how you know, the three steps, three basic mindfulness techniques. And then from there I started to practice it and I kind of got it. But then I came across two teachers, two American teachers, one called Tara Brack and the second one called Jack Kornfield with a cape.

They're really down to earth, they're really funny, they're really compassionate and they are very switched on in terms of systems and what's happening in the world around and, and they don't shy away from any of that. And my jaw kind of dropped open, suddenly there was a kind of spiritual link to the work I was doing and that's when as I continued to practice, a light switched on.

I can remember the very moment, you know, Jack Hall Phil's written a book called After the Ecstasy of the Laundry. It's something like that, which is about his experience of kind of becoming a Budd monk and then coming back to America and just kind of the day-to-day going, oh, and I have this half term off where I was really connecting and really starting to feel compassion for other people and doors were opening and I went back to work and got these like 25 emails all about admin and systems and process that completely obfuscated working with young people or connecting with them or making a difference.

And I really felt this disconnection. It was like, how the hell am I supposed to do this? So I realized I'd also have to find a wave surviving day-to-day systems that didn't really reach into making compassionate connections and being able to make a difference in that way. So from that moment onwards, things change.

Stephen Matini: One of the ways that I have introduced mindfulness in the corporate world, which by the way for many, many, many years in depends on the situation, but it has always been welcomed really warmly to my surprise. But when people ask me more information and a bizarre way that I have to introduce it so they understand it is, it's basically implementing the lean process to your mind so that you think less and you focus on what matters. Okay, okay. Yeah. So you're gonna be more efficient.

Run your mind. I like that. I've, well my, my experience of business-wise right across the board, the place where it's happened most has been kind of post 360 audit. It's exactly that. I think when you're coaching and especially with something like something that's an emotionally charged as a 360 or or any kind of review of performance that people are really open to what's gonna make this feel less like I an imposter And mindfulness is a really powerful way of introducing that. So yeah, I've shifted lots of, lots of copies of radical compassion particularly and radical acceptance.

Stephen Matini: What does compassion mean to you?

Neil Lawrence: I'm a change maker just in case it's not clear already. I've always been motivated by advocacy in terms of the work I do. So it's always been important to me to kind of have that sensibility.

When lockdown happened, it was an interesting experience for me watching the way the rest of the world reacted to not being able to leave the house and the way that people completely still ignored disabled people that can't go out. And I suddenly realized if I didn't gain some compassion quick that I was just gonna hate the universe.

So I literally introduced compassion meditation, meta meditation, much more loving kindness. Meditation is much more part of my day to day and and again, intentionally wanted to build all that soft care. And by the time toilet roll gators I like to call it happened in the UK and you know, people were just like literally fighting to get stuff off the shelves.

I just, I thought it was a really interesting image anyway, that people have to buy something to feel in control of a situation where uncertainty is slapping them across the face. I just felt this huge sadness that it's deep pain and sadness and I can't manage it all the time and that's okay 'cause that's why we practice meditation. We don't surpass it. But that's what impassion means to me. That ability

Stephen Matini: For different reasons. So many people these days seem to go through a mess up out of sadness, anger. These past few years have been really difficult for many, many, many different reasons. How do you switch from feeling sad and angry to feeling compassionate? Do you use mindfulness? Is it anything else that you do specifically?

Neil Lawrence: It is mindfulness because that retrains the brain. And also I've studied psych psychodynamic psychotherapy. You've either got someone in front of you, you take the toilet roll gate as an example. You've either got someone in front of you who's really angry and selfish and doesn't care about anyone else and look at these people.

So you either get that or you can see that someone is desperate and that desperation is leading them to literally lash out. And if people's defensiveness is because they feel they're gonna be attacked. And I do believe that's what it is, there's a lot of fight, flight, freeze response.

And if you can see that, keep yourself safe because you're in the line of fire of somebody else who's not coping. That's not necessarily safe place to be emotionally or physically sometimes. But at the same time to recognize what you are seeing, that actually that violence or language or the selfishness isn't selfishness. It's desperation.

We seem to be obsessed with becoming self-aware and lots of the self-help stuff is about self-awareness, but none of it is about how we heal afterwards. So I think we've got loads of people that are becoming more self-aware and are really quite thin skinned as a result because they don't have the tools they need to actually look after themselves because that's not the wellbeing marketplace is it.

Stephen Matini: It's interesting when you talked about before about the notion of labels, I think I've read it on your website, when you talk about your values, like one of your, your values that you cherish is being real and you wrote, we are far more than a labels. Labels should not be boxes. We should know who we are beneath. It feels like an oxymoron such as we are trying to be inclusive, we want to recognize diversity of thinking, of political diversity and such and such. But rather than feeling more inclusive, it's almost like we are fragmenting, you know, we are separating even further and further. So what would you say that is a healthy approach to labels if you should use, if you should use them at all?

Neil Lawrence: Thank you for the way you framed that question. 'cause We are on serious dangerous ground with even approaching this as, you know, because people's stories and the history of people's stories who've not been treated with respect or worse have been treated with aggression and violence and exclusion. Whatever community is, they matter.

All those stories matter. And the right that people have to expect better from that of course is paramount. But I think where we've got to is it's your fault and what are you gonna do about it? As a way of talking about previous experience, again, the, so mindfulness would say that we can become overdependent on the label.

All these things that actually describe who I am, they are things that I do or they are parts of my physical or emotional landscape. I think it's about holding onto it lightly and we should reach out to others with that and the strength in numbers.

So leaning into, you know, I'm not com I've, I've always found I'm never comfortable in the, the label community that I've been part that that I go to. Because yes, we need to be talking and yes, other people should know what our experiences is, but I just kind of have this feeling that really truly connecting with someone and deeply listening to them. If someone else is doing that, then your experience is being shared.

That's the way to do it. And what's been lost is the idea of community at the moment and people joining together. I'm sure it suits the system for us to be this divided, you know, certainly suits the uk you know, while we're all bickering then life can go on as normal elsewhere.

But actually we need to be joining together and listening to each other's experiences. At some point we have to stop the idea of hierarchy. And I feel like that's a dangerous thing to say. I'm just waiting for the kickback whenever I say that.

Stephen Matini: If we all listen to each other's experiences, what would you say that people would be able to hear to be the same in common?

Neil Lawrence: I'm practicing it as a kind of think about it now. So I'm, I'm aware that I'm slowing my body down, that I am slowing my thought process down and opening up even across a zoom link to you Stephen. 'cause I do that.

And allowing space for what you are saying to emotionally connect with me rather than just this, be a podcast interview if you like. There's something about that because what's needed will come from the conversation again, if we just trust that the other person is not the enemy, if the other person is the solution, then being able to think together and recognize there might be differences of opinion. But if we stop this thing of entitlement, which has become a noose around on x, I think it will be helpful. I mean, yes there are basic human rights that all of us should be have equal access to, but also there are very serious differences of experience.

Like my, so thinking about disability, my, I hate the word normal, but let's just use it for sake of argument. My normal wouldn't be someone else's for me. Yesterday we took the dog out for a walk, which we haven't done for a couple of weeks 'cause he's developed arthritis.

And during that walk my legs went, fibro wise again as a result of the PTSD episode that I'd had the day before the, the fibromyalgia kind of intensified. I was literally staggering around looking probably like I'd had about 10 points of, of Guinness or something and kind of laughing about that. And I said, and I said to my partner, I can't believe I've got used to this.

This is like, I was thinking about people that maybe hide when they're in that situation, but just the freedom to stagger and to nurture myself when I got back home 'cause I was in pain. So there's something about being able to relate to each other's experiences I keep writing on, on LinkedIn at the moment.

I've noticed when I'm doing these posts, don't call me brave, don't feel sorry for me. I'm not asking for that. I'm not asking for you. I'm just sharing. It's like this is not a judge, it's not a valued judgment to be had about this. Can you connect with where I'm at without feeling the need to do anything or judge.

Stephen Matini: The one thought we can call it compassion that I have Oftentimes that put things in perspective is when I become mindful of the fact that all of us bear this humongous question mark, which is the journey of life. You know, we bear this thing of eventually one day we are gonna die. That's a huge thing to go through life, you know, so many question marks and as you said the beauty of life, but also the, the tremendous challenges of life that inevitably sooner or later all of us are going to face. You know? And when I look around and I feel lonely and I look at people that I don't know thinking, oh wow, they really share my same destiny. Eventually at some point they're gonna run through the same thoughts. And I feel so compassionate. I feel, oh my God, I, I wonder how they're going to feel. I wonder how they're going to react. I wonder if they're going to feel as lonely as I do. That thought for me really does the trick every single time that I get angry or, or something. You know what? Underneath this is our common destiny, our shared journey. And it really is the same and really put me in a different perspective. It somehow helps me calming down it to be more understanding of people.

Neil Lawrence: I love that Steve. It makes me realize it's, so, there was that moment wasn't there at the beginning of lockdown where it looked like people were gonna reach for a kinder life afterwards.

And looking at it from a mindfulness perspective or a Buddhist perspective, we have this moment where we could no longer pretend we could micromanage life and being faced with, you know, they, one is that life is uncertain and two, that it's finite. We're faced with this real understanding of both of those things.

The fact that people have rushed back into to try and recreate the life there was before. When we don't have the resources we have before even, and it was too much then makes me feel really, really sad. There was a moment where if we could bear the uncertainty and bear that realization that we're all gonna die and live with that fruitfully, that life could actually become different.

But it seems like we can't, what mind, again, not mindfulness has been able to do is make me realize that home is me. And that's true for all of us. You know? So being at home is being at home with me at that point. I wanna open the door and let other people in and need and want to have a really rich number of connections of friends and work colleagues.

So I think, I think there's something about that. It's a struggle, but the idea that I don't matter, I'd find that really, really reassuring. That doesn't mean I can't make a difference, that I don't have great connections, but you know, I'm here I live, I'll die. I said don't need to need a legacy. I don't need to have this amazing trajectory that has done X, y, and z. I just need to be able to be here.

I'm lucky enough to still be here after surviving that car crash. So every day's a blessing, every minute's a blessing. If I can reach into it and see it and nothing else matters, acceptance then actually opens the brain up to being able to think about what we can really do.

So what, when I was growing up, my first crush, remember it so clearly was Michael J. Fox, she'll also tell you how old I'm and him kind of disappearing off the screen in the late eighties, early nineties. But reemerging in his spin city, which was the sitcom he came back to do is is written by Bill Lawrence. I love Bill Lawrence. He did Scrubs, he's done Ted Lasso recently shrinking. And Michael J. Fox is so funny in that, so, so funny. And then finding out when he, you know, spoke about Parkinson's for the first time and now I realize as a middle aged guy, God he was young, he was really, really young.

And that recent incredible documentary, you know, that's shown on Apple plus that he did about his his journey. I find that so inspirational. Here's, here's the guy that for the first I, I remember it, I went to see back to the future, I remember being in the cinema, I just couldn't take my eyes off the screen and then crying on the bus on the way back going, oh my God, I like guys even wrote a jokey country in Western song in the sixth form about him.

There's this deep, this kind of connection that I kind of feel just, just kind of watching. Not in a stalky one, but I find his whole journey and the fact that, you know, his marriage has survived all of that and his kids love him so much. It just, I find to me about that inspirational even down to his mobility.

'Cause You know, he drops a lot. He falls a lot and dyspraxia is quite a big part of what I've got. But you know, very clumsy. If my chronic fatigue is really high, yeah, I can trip over things. And I was in the middle of teaching and I fell asleep while I was talking maybe, maybe so bored, but boring myself, but actually felt my eyes going. It's like, oh my god, this is serious. And I'm being told I couldn't take a cup of coffee into an invigoration once as well.

And I was like, and you don't understand I need this coffee. They were like, no, it's against the rules. And I said, okay, but I'm warning you I'll probably fall asleep. And probably did. I think there's something about that acceptance piece which doesn't yeah. Which doesn't mean being passive and certainly not in terms of advocacy around disability or whatever positive world we can find that hasn't got a dis in it around it. My mobility.

Stephen Matini: I'm curious about something that I read when I did some, a bit of research about you, the notion of finishing, which is, you know, people struggling with completing task. Does this fit in any way, shape and form with what we are talking about?

Neil Lawrence: Yeah, I think so. You know, the idea of niching I found really difficult when I started in business and, and set my own company. Because I do work across the board and I work on a wide range of different kind of issues from very personal ones to, you know, very, very career focused ones and everything in between.

And it felt like a good fit, particularly after working with someone who's living with A DHD who specifically had that issue around how to either not get too hyper-focused or then how to give the brain the nugget it needed to keep going to get something done.

So I kind of put it in there. But we now live in a world where people are petrified of finishing anything. Everything, you know, things feel so daunting and overwhelming partly 'cause I think the number of things that we're expected to do on any given day is, is is far too much.

And the number of interactions and the, and the avenues for interacting again is far too much. We've definitely gone for quantity over quality of communication. I think the pandemic has really not the stuffing out of everyone in terms of the idea of getting stuff done. It's started off as a kind of recognition for me as a neurodivergent as well. My dyscalculia means that sometimes I lack focus, sometimes I forget what I'm talking about.

Sometimes I find it hard to put things in a logical sequence and definitely organization in terms of time, date, where I need to be. All of that have to input that into my brain. 'cause The bit that where wires should be isn't there. And I'd, I'd done it. And I remember being surprised about 10 years ago when both my husband and one of my closest friends said, you are the most organized person I know, but because my brain is chaos, I don't see it that way, but actually it's true.

And then I thought, well actually I'm probably a good person to be kind of helping people with this stuff. So it started from a neurodivergent perspective, but now it feels like it's a, it's a global problem that there's far too much and people feel under prepared for doing it.

So for me it's about confidence, about giving people the confidence but then crucially for them to work out that they have the skills there all along. If someone had been there and it had been a safe enough environment for the, for them to be able to dig in. It's not that I don't give tools, obviously I do, but only if someone else hasn't got what they need. And most people do most of the time. So reintroduce the idea that we can do stuff and actually we can say no and we can rebuild the world, our world so that it's manageable.

Stephen Matini: If I had to use a label for you, if I have to, I would say that you are exquisitely British in the way you self-deprecate yourself, your sense of humor. Yeah. That, that's, that's probably the only one that I would use.

Neil Lawrence: That's interesting. And I've been, I've been told that before as well. And maybe there is a bit of me putting myself down before someone else does. I think more these days it's, it's the opposite. I kind of, it's not that I think I'm important, we've already covered that.

But I do think that when it comes to white elephants, I'm really good at spotting them. And my life path has given me skills and care enough to be able to really help an enormous number of people, an enormous number of contexts, which yet is bad marketing copy, but is great in terms of what I actually do. So even when I am putting myself down, I kind of, I, I don't feel that, I feel like I'm able to have enormous impact and I'm wanna do much more of it too. You know, this is still year three, year four of my journey with this.

So I feel really positive about that. I don't have a filter for that stuff and I don't understand why other people would. So, you know, I will say things like, I had a really bad experience with PTSD this weekend and now I've got the fibro repercussions. I probably say that two or three times today. And I see people get nervous, particularly if I'm working, I'm working for them. Like bosses gonna go, especially in the wellbeing industry. It's like we're all supposed to show we're shiny and I have nothing wrong with this.

What is the point of that? You know? Oh yeah. But if, you know, if you with PTSD, people won't trust. You're like, well I'm surviving it. So for me it's just the logical thing and I want to bring those white elephants out. That's important to me. 'cause Those are the things that oppress me when people don't talk about them.

Some people can't talk about them, I don't think. It's not like, I think everybody has to, and I've had that particularly in the L-G-B-T-Q community. Like you have to come out. No, I don't. I can choose where and when I do it, thank you. But I do think just being able to be honest and open with the stuff that's important to me or just feels like it's not talked about is I find, I find that helpful.

Stephen Matini: Neil, I have one last question, which I always love to, to ask. We, we talked about so many different things and all these things are interconnected among all these things. Is there anything in particular that you think there are listeners should be pay attention to as a biggest takeaway from the conversation from your point of view?

Neil Lawrence: I think I would go to the, to my two little photos that I use on LinkedIn a lot. So one, do less plan, less be less. And the second one connected to that is that you are good enough. I'm good enough. And so are you, let's just start from that and then see what happens.

Stephen Matini: That's beautiful. Thank you Neil. This is wonderful. Thank you so much for this lovely conversation. Thank you.