Break, Mend and Ascend: The Inspiring Story of Dov Baron

Have you ever wondered how one can bounce back from life's gravest adversities and transform them into stepping stones for triumph? 

This episode is a testament to that as we engage in a stirring interaction with Dov Baron, a living example of resilience and self-awareness.

Dov, who started his journey in a Northern England ghetto, takes us through his exploration of various religious philosophies and psychology and how he turned a near-death experience into a defining moment of his life.

Revel in Dov's wisdom as he illustrates how being broken isn't a failure but a precious opportunity for growth. 

He emphasizes the importance of confronting our ego and darkness for personal development and underscores the necessity of understanding why we fall.

Further, Dov takes us on a journey through his battle against a spinal fusion diagnosis at 18 and how he overcame it through alternative medicine. 

Dov elaborates on the significance of mentors, self-care, and curiosity in his life as we wrap up. He offers us a glimpse into his self-care rituals and the profound influence of his mentors, including his most excellent mentor- his wife, Renuka. Lastly, we delve into a stimulating discussion about self-knowledge, trust, and creating a sense of belonging, leaving you with a renewed sense of self and leadership.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

We should be recording now. Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Rise From the Ashes. This is a podcast about people coming from adversity into triumph and success. If you'll listen to this, welcome. I have a very special guest today and he is a friend and he's a colleague of mine who has some extraordinary experiences with leadership and some amazing, inspirational story of resilience. I'd like to introduce you to Dov Barron. Dov, say hello to the world, please.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Thanks, baz. It's a pleasure to be here, it's an honor. I'm looking forward to serving you, serving the audience, and I always enjoy our conversation, so I know this was gonna be a good one.

Speaker 1: 0:50

So what? You do a lot under your umbrella of talents. What has it inspired you to really step up to your calling today?

Speaker 2: 1:04

In the form that it's in it is different than what was the original inspiration. The original inspiration, I think, came when I walked into the living room when I was 10 years old, in living in Northern England in a ghetto, seeing my mom cry. And I walked into the living room and my mom's crying and she's crying, she's pushing her glasses up, wiping the tears away and I'm like what's met her mom? And she points at the TV set and she says he's dead. I look at the TV and I'm I don't know this man. He doesn't. He doesn't play for many a night. He's not on Coronation Street. Who the hell is he? I don't know who he is. I'm listening and as I listen I hear.

Speaker 2: 1:48

I have a dream the one day and I felt myself like shudder inside and I don't know if I cognitively worked it out with that moment, but I began to ask my uncle who he was and found out about Martin Luther King and found out about how he had followed Gandhi's peaceful demonstrations, et cetera, et cetera, and I was moved by what became clear to me was what moved me was how did a black Christian minister you know, from a kid's point of view, on the other side of the world make my poor Jewish mom cry, and I became so deeply curious about this idea of impact, this idea that you could move people who you've never met Because I lived in a ghetto.

Speaker 2: 2:41

And the people who impacted you were the people who were gonna kick you in the cojones because you were a Jew right, or because you were black, or because you were Pakistani or whatever it might be. Those were people of influence. My teachers were people of influence, but these were all people I had a first-end interaction with, so to have that was for me, that was the catalyst that was the spark.

Speaker 2: 3:03

What was the defining moment for you?

Speaker 1: 3:07

after coming out of that and realizing that fire within you, and you saw your mom crying and then you saw that switch of how transition into what you, the journey you led you on.

Speaker 2: 3:23

First of all, my journey has been a very long as the song goes a long and winding journey, as it's been a long and as the song goes along and winding road. It originally started off as a spiritual journey. That was my first part. So that happened when I was seven years old. I set up bolt upright in the tent while camping at Blackpool or Rill or somewhere and frightened the crap out of my parents because I spoke in some foreign language, right, and I was feeling like I wasn't dreaming, it was something else. I didn't know what it was and I frightened my mom out and she shipped me off to the rabbis at Labavitch and that's where I began to study. And so that was the beginning of that journey. And then I traveled the world to study many different religious philosophies. So I studied Vedanta, which is Hindu philosophy, buddhism, the Tao, nostric and Coptic Christianity and Kabbalah, so all those, and from that I met amazing. I was traveling and spending time with living with monks and doing all the stuff that people talk about, and that was my life While running businesses. Because I needed to finance myself while running businesses and really got tired of people who could tell me which way my chakra was spinning but couldn't get their shit together to have a relationship or a business. So I became fascinated with psychology. Why do people do what they do? Because when I was very young 10 or 11 years old again I remember my aunt coming to visit us and she came in with a new boyfriend. Now my aunt was very smart and she was very beautiful and she dressed classy, which was rare from where I was. So she stood out. She stood out. Let's just without going into the metaphor she stood out well and she shows up with a new boyfriend and she's raving about this bloke, about how wonderful he is, and what was clear to me at that age was this is the same guy with a new face. You're repeating a cycle, and I could work that out at that age. And so I became fascinated with. This was the question that drove my life why do people do what they do, even when what they do doesn't make sense even to them? So that took me into psychology.

Speaker 2: 5:41

So I studied psychology, became a young end therapist, a practicing young end therapist. I had my own practice and I got really tired of people sitting on a couch and complaining. They got on my nerves too. So I started studying something called the psychology of excellence, which was in the very early 80s and that is now called leadership. But I studied with CEOs and athletes and a couple of entertainers and suddenly found a lot of people who were soulless, not because they were horrible, dark people, but because they'd never explored that part of themselves. So there was an emptiness that they were constantly trying to fill with something, with another accolade, another trophy, whatever it might be.

Speaker 2: 6:25

And so in 83, I was in a bookstore in Melbourne and a book. I reached out for a book and another book fell on me and I went, oh okay. So I picked it up and started reading it and it was my introduction to quantum physics and I became a complete nut for quantum physics. I started studying that. I didn't understand the math, still don't, but I understood all of it, everything about what it was saying, except the math. And that was the same time that I stumbled into neurosciences, because it was the very early days of neurosciences.

Speaker 2: 7:01

What crosses the blood-brain barrier? How does it cross the blood-brain barrier? How does cold as all affect the brain? How does cold as all affect the heart? Is there a connection between?

Speaker 2: 7:09

I started studying all these things and eventually I put that all together in a thesis around personal, emotional quantum resonance fields, these fields of energy and how we interact with each other, and goes into stuff from the heart, math and other people, like that Beautiful stuff and that synthesized down into the work that I do today, which is the emotional source code, and think of that as your emotional DNA. What and again, just to be clear before we go on, so everybody understands we used to think DNA was, it was at the core, meaning it was the primacy of DNA, it determined everything. What we now know, because of epigenetics that actually certain people don't realize this, but epigenetics started in the late 60s but because of epigenetics we understand that the DNA is turned on or turned off by its environment. So its environment is whatever's received through the receptors on the cells, and what's received on the receptors of the cells is the neurochemistry, so what the brain releases, so whatever your brain is releasing. So that was fascinating for me in understanding that, even though the emotional source code is the emotional DNA, that DNA can be shifted based on the environment.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Now, the environment is not just the people. You hang out with the environment. We all know the term you are what you eat and I would change that to say you are what you consume. So you're consuming social media, you're consuming CNN, fox, whatever it might be, and that affects the neurochemistry and that affects the cells and that affects your DNA. So it changes your physicality as well as your psychology. That's a very, actually, a short version of a very long story, although it was damn long and I'm sorry. No, it's fine.

Speaker 1: 9:05

You mentioned that the frequency changes is cellular structures.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Yes is.

Speaker 1: 9:13

I Know a bit about it I'm not an expert by any means but in my experience as well, that from my journey I Learned through quantum physics etc, doing what you're doing and the way you've put together, like the emotional, emotional source code, that's genius, because you condensed it into a, a Teaching or a way to pass this knowledge on. Yes, that takes many people years. Sometimes they never complete that work.

Speaker 2: 9:45

It's taken me almost 40. Okay, and I had marketing teams before and I've had great branding. People are like we can't help you, it's too complex. Yeah, and that was why I drove it so what was the switch over?

Speaker 1: 9:59

from finding that per, that team or that person that you could translate, what was it going on your head on, to a teachable platform?

Speaker 2: 10:11

The answer to that, baz, is that I have always had Therapists, coaches, mentors, guides, and I think if you don't have that, yeah, you're way behind the eight ball. Listen, I'm a pretty knowledgeable guy and I have a pretty Good influence. I'm never without a guide. The people, the people I work with, the most successful people in the world always have coaches. Yes, and so I've always had an advisory board Not advisory board has changed over the years, but it's between five and ten people and I gather them together on a regular basis and I say this is where I'm stuck. Yeah, and these are people I trust, who have no, nothing to gain from shooting me down and actually nothing to gain from bringing me up, other than that they love me, yeah, and so these are my. This is my language. It's not the truth. These are my family, yeah, and so they're not relayed to me by blood. They're just my family. They're my spiritual, soulful family, and so I can go them and say listen, this is where I'm really stuck. Here's, I'm getting in my own way. Can you help me? And by them coming at me constantly hard like this is not clear. This is not clear.

Speaker 2: 11:32

In 2015, my house burned down to the ground, just one of the minor things I've come through and One of the things that was really upsetting about it was about 3,000 handwritten testimonials were burned up from my live events, because I used to have a live event company and I was so upset about it for about 10 minutes and then I was like, oh, it's okay, it's good. And my missus, my, my queen Ren, she said to me how come you're suddenly all right about it? And I said because I realized something. She goes what I said Most of them I can sum up most of what every one of them said and she goes what is it? And I said dove changed my life and it's a terrible endorsement. That's what all my advisory board have been telling me along.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Yeah, you change people's lives, but what does that mean? We can't market. You changed your. You change people's lives because it's entirely subjective. So they're drilling down on me constantly has made me refine and refine and refine. And that's what's really helped me to get crystal clear in the work that I do with these, you know, political leaders, with business leaders, with artists and entertainers and athletes, because I can get them to go is it this or this? And they go. Oh, never thought about it. Great, let's go there.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Yeah, I love that distinction. It's so key that you have an advisory board. People have coaches, etc. But they don't look at Collective groups as a resource, and what you've done is gather trusted advisors who have nothing to gain or lose Mm-hmm and put them into a place that is beneficial not just for you, but also for them. That's pure genius. A lot of people don't thank you. A lot of our listeners love stories of adversity and.

Speaker 2: 13:26

I've got none of those. No, no, no no, it's all.

Speaker 1: 13:30

If there is there a specific time in your career or life that you've had to overcome something that is just really poignant. Stands out the surf people in this element.

Speaker 2: 13:42

There are, as I said, there are many, but the one that I'll bring up here is that in June 1990. So remember, I started on this journey of speaking and stuff in the 80s, in the mid 80s. So in June 1990 I was the most successful I'd ever been. I'd spoken all over Australia, I'd spoken all over Canada and northern US, I Was on TV, radio, magazines, all the rest of it. And in June 1990 I Was free climbing because I was an adrenaline junkie. At about 120 feet, which is approximately 12 stories, I reached for a rock. That rock dislodged a bigger rock that hit me in the face and sent me hurtling down at Maximum velocity onto the boulders below where I was smashed to pieces. So that was pretty much an adverse event. Yeah, I died five times during that Process, tried to bring me back, etc, etc, feeling like I was on the top of the world. I was so successful. I'll tell you, you will get this best where mother people, mother people won't.

Speaker 2: 14:47

One of the ways I knew I was really successful I had a Ford LTD. I had a big American car. See, you'll get that right. You get that because when you're from, when you're from England, there's all these tiny roads with tiny cars on them, and every now and then you see a rover, or you'd see a or a jag, or you might occasionally even see a Rolls-Royce, but you never saw big cars. But an American car would be like what the hell is this? And so I wanted this big Ford LTD. It didn't do miles to the gallon, it did gallons to the mile.

Speaker 2: 15:21

I Was not good for the, I was not good for the environment, so I was very successful and then it was all taken away and I was just pissed, I was angry and and that anger boiled over into everything. I walked away from everything and but let's remember, I'm a kid from a ghetto. I've been a boxer, I've been a martial artist, I've been a bodybuilder, I've been a leader of own companies, of ran companies in three consonants. You're not taking me down. I Kept so. When I was out what? My jaw was wide closed. I was out of the hospitals, my jaw is wide closed. And people who say to me how you doing? And I'd say I'm great, I'm coming back With my jaw wide closed, mm-hmm, I was full of shit, I Wasn't great. And there is no back. Nothing in life moves back, it moves forward. And he referenced you have to. The past is keeping you stuck.

Speaker 2: 16:25

Yeah it doesn't mean you don't love things and appreciate things. It means you absolutely love and appreciate them but you're not attached in any way to them. So I was always saying I'm coming back. And then my mates would take me out on a Saturday night or a Friday night and we'd have go out and I'd be with them and I'm a reasonably funny guy and I'd laugh and but I during this time I couldn't laugh and I would fake it and and I come home and I feel I've had a shitty night. I should have had a great night. Yeah, why am I so miserable? And Then one Saturday night the lads took me out and for the first time this is probably good nine months after I laughed and I thought, okay, I'm coming back. And I opened the kitchen door and as I opened the came up the back steps, open the kitchen door and the light from outside Shone across the kitchen floor and as it did it lit up the garbage all over. There was empty meatpacking, coffee grinds, empty cans, kitty litter. It was all festooned across the floor.

Speaker 2: 17:25

And that moment of joy and feeling like I could come back was immediately translated into rage. I was furious. I Was stomping through the house looking for the culprit that you made all this mess and it's stunk. I had this sense of I want to kill. It was that much. It wasn't anger, it was rage. And I walked into the living room. There's the culprit curled up on the couch all comfy and relaxed, and I lifted my hand. But I'm not a violent person. I've been in martial arts a bit in boxing men of the, but there's nothing about me. It's violent and I was a written. My hand is. That's not who I am like. There was a moment of sanity and and instead I picked, put my arms down and I picked up my cat into my arms, who was stone cold. The cat was dead. It had a December attack and that's what had caused all the mess and.

Speaker 2: 18:24

I held the cat in my arms and I fell to my knees and I began to weep.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Yeah and I wept and I wept and I wept. I only wept for a probably two or three minutes before I realized I'm not crying for the cat. I Never allowed myself to fully grieve the death of who I'd been and in that moment, on my knees, I I had this epiphany that there were three paths before me. One path was I could keep trying to come back. That wasn't working. The next path was I could stay here, a victim of these circumstances. I had a great victim story. That's a great story and it's a great excuse to not move any further. And that was the most seductive of the paths. And then the third path was the most difficult one. I'd already been in therapy for 15 years. I'd already taught all over the world. I'd already spent time with all these spiritual messes. I was a pretty quote enlightened guy. So what was I missing? If somebody had asked me the moment before I fell, do you know your purpose? I would have said yes, but I didn't. It was manufactured, and in that moment I realized the only way forward is to find out what's. Why am I truly here on the planet? What am I here to do? And I spent the next nine months looking for my purpose, not my why. Let's be clear here I love Simon Sinek's work, but not my why, but the why of my why. What is it that drives me? At an unconscious level? And I spent about nine months in that, which is an interesting gestation period before I rebirthed myself, and during that time my friend came to me and said you haven't spoken anywhere, you haven't been doing any writing, you haven't met with any clients, and I remember saying I'm done with that. And he said, yeah, I said I'm done, I have to let go of everything. And about two years after I fell, he was at one of my seminars. So obviously I was back doing seminars. And he said, hey, duff. And I said what? He goes. I thought you weren't doing this anymore. I said I'm not and he goes. I just watched you on stage, dude, you are, I go. No, I'm not and he goes. I don't understand. I go. I'm never going to do it the way I did it.

Speaker 2: 20:58

I was speaking before for applause. I was speaking before to be the hero. I was speaking before to be the savior. I have no interest in any of those things. Before before I fell, I wanted to be the next Tony Robbins. I have no interest in being the next Tony Robbins. Right, I have tons of respect for Tony, but I have no interest in that. That's not why I'm here. It was that moment, that Willingness and this is the key I know you understand this best, when most people won't which is the willingness to step into the darkness, as Joseph Campbell says. You must step into the, into the dark cave you fear most. There you must slay the dragon of your own psychology. And that's what we have to do, and that's what I had to do. That's what that moment with my cat was, this moment where joy comes back, is so seductive. Right, because so seductive? Because we believe we can go back.

Speaker 1: 21:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:56

But it's so. People say, oh, that form was to change your life. I'm like no, it didn't. It embedded me more in the ego identity I had of being that guy. That's why I kept walking around saying I'm great. But it was the moment with the cat and falling to my knees. That was the awakening that said I can't keep doing this, I've got to do something. I've got to do it differently. Even if it's I have to do something else, that would have been OK, but I have to do it. I have to come from a soulful place, and that's the work I do with my clients. When they these are people who are billionaires and they've got awards and they've got medals and they've got all kinds of things and they're like this shit happened. There's usually an awakening this shit happened. And I feel devastated and I'm like great, that's fantastic. And they go what do you mean? I said I'm not here to put Humpty, dumpty together again If you're broken on purpose, so that you can reveal the magnificence inside of you. Yeah, that's what the work is.

Speaker 1: 22:53

Yeah, I love that defining point there of you're broken inside. But that's a turning point is to find the real, true you. I've had experiences like that and I know of course certainly you have multiple times. But there's other things.

Speaker 2: 23:11

Yeah, there's been a couple. That was my fourth fall but of course, being Tough guy, yeah, I was not paying attention. The first three I grew up, as I said, in that environment I talked about. I was diagnosed at 18 with something called enclosing swan de lightis, which I don't expect anybody to know, but if you've ever walked down the street and you've seen somebody walking, you think how the hell do they do that? And the legs are here and the waist is there and they're bent over at the waist, looking down and walking. That's because their spine is fused. I was diagnosed with that and it's incurable. When I went yeah, no, I'm not buying that they told me I'd be in a wheelchair by the time I was 21.

Speaker 2: 23:52

And I decided I would leave the country and I would go study and I studied alternative things, including alternative medicine, and doing meditation and yoga and all those things, and went on to leg press 1100 pounds, which is not possible with that back. So that was, that was just one of them. There's so many of these, but again I want to reiterate so for people because I know they love stories of resilience. Now, if I may, I want to just point something out, because this is the trap of resilience. The theme song of resilience is Rocky right, no, I'm going to get up. Well, I'm coming back, right.

Speaker 2: 24:32

And so the theme quote of that is get knocked down seven times, get up eight. That's a stupid thing to do. Stop, pay attention. So if you're thinking you're resilient because you got knocked down seven, you got up eight, you're now building an identity on being a weeble, on being somebody who gets knocked down and springs back up. Get knocked down once. Stop, pay attention and ask why the hell am I knocked down? Yeah, what do I have to learn here? The knock down is not a failure, it's a lesson. But if you don't listen, you'll repeat the lesson.

Speaker 2: 25:08

I know I was thick as pig poop, just that, was it Right. I was resilient of the yin yang, but resilience isn't it. You have to be anti fragile, and anti fragility requires you to learn from and grow from the break. Yeah, and you know that because you've done that in your life, you've transformed your own life. From that very place of I'm broken open and it and it's not one, no, it's multiple, there's multiple and you go oh my God, thank God, it's over, it's not over. No, just another one. Because I always say I didn't fall 120 feet from a mountain and get and land on my face. That is what actually happened. But in reality, I fell 120 feet from a self-imposed pedestal and landed on my ego. Yeah, and my ego is not dead, it won't die. I'm not going to try and kill it, but it is always going to try and take the lead and when it does, I'll have a little fall.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:06

The only difference is I can pay attention now. So a twist of the ankle is a fall versus smashing myself to pieces because I'm not as thick as I used to be.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, and it's about paying attention to that ego and giving it in shape, although, like you said, not trying to kill it, because it's a part of your part of who we are.

Speaker 2: 26:26

It's important. It helps you survive. Of course, my ego got me through living in violence, crime, addiction, abuse. It got me through all that. That was fantastic. Yeah, was it appropriate? When I lived in an environment? Hell yeah, do I need it talking to best? No, no, this is my mate. I'm having a chat, it's OK. Like my ego can like bugger off.

Speaker 1: 26:47

Exactly, and that's one of the things I love and respect about you, because you've come from from adversity on multiple levels, but you're still very humble at heart and you're here to help others, which I love Just one of the things that really drew me to you as a person. Thank you, that's very kind, but that's all true and I don't it's not trying to put you anywhere up there. No, I understand.

Speaker 2: 27:09

But this is the other thing, that there's so many misconceptions. You and I had a conversation before about this Western Buddhism stuff that drives me nuts. Remember, I studied Buddhism and all you did? Yeah, and Western Buddhism, that drives me nuts, as is does Western stoicism. It becomes an excuse not to feel your feelings. And I lived with Buddhist monks and they got pissed off, they got angry. They felt their feelings, they just didn't, they didn't invest in them.

Speaker 2: 27:37

Yeah, that's the distinction is let yourself feel it, let yourself go beyond it. So it's OK, it's done. You don't walk around all day with a towel because you got wet in the shower this morning. You have a shower, you dry off and you go OK, I'm on. The rest of the day it's the same, with whatever's coming up, you let yourself be with it and then you finish with it. And this is it's not saying that's easy. No, it's not. Please understand. I know that some of the termiles you've been through, but, as that we talked about, they're easy to get caught in. Yeah, of course. Yeah, and you will get caught. Yeah, you will get caught in them longer than you want to. Mm, hmm, but as long as you are willing to be mindful of.

Speaker 2: 28:17

I'm here to learn what is, if this is anything other than pain and it is pain, what? But it's actually a teacher. What is it teaching me? What is the lesson here? What is the thing I've been ignoring that? This is weak. So my language is this I fell, and I say the fall was to wake me up from and to wake me up to. So my question to you is in your bankruptcy, in your divorce, in your sickness, in your whatever is that is your fault? What is it here to wake you up from? What have you been doing, unconsciously, that you might think is quite good? And what is it here to wake you up to? That is your soul crying out for expression.

Speaker 1: 29:07

That's huge. That's huge there, doth. And that leads me into my next question In the routines in the morning or rituals, do you have anything that you religiously every morning get up do, because it makes not just you feel good, but it sets your day up for success.

Speaker 2: 29:30

Yes, I really do believe in morning rituals, for exactly the reason you said. Now, you're a military man, so you learn to make your bed and you learn to. There are certain things I'm not, but I am from certain disciplines, yes. So for me, I get up in the morning and I wake up in the morning. First thing I do is drink a whole one of these, which is about two and a half liters of water. Number one it's number two. First, I have Celtic salt on my tongue to make that, because it contains a lot of magnesium, and magnesium is a water-hungry molecule, so when you take the water in it, it puts the water in the cells as opposed to in my belly. So that's first. Then, surprise, surprise, a tech pee, and then after that I do my breathing exercises. It's like Wim Hof, it's a Prana Yoga breathing technique that I do. After that, I do a 10 minute meditation. After that I go prep my coffee with oils and MCT oil, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 30:38

While that's prepping, I then do my ice bath. Now, I don't have an ice bath, so if you're going, oh, I'd like to do that, but I live in an apartment. What the hell am I gonna drain the thing? And I can't. I don't have buckets of ice that I can put in my tub.

Speaker 2: 30:51

So there is another technique, because the purpose of the there are many purposes to the ice bath, but one of them is to reset the vagus nerve. This is a nerve that runs here down your neck and it's the nerve that is impacted mostly by trauma. And it is my belief, and I can pretty much back it up, that all of us have some form of trauma and there is daily trauma the shit that happened yesterday and there is long historic trauma. By doing an ice bath for my, I put my face in, but I make sure that this part of my neck gets in. It resets the vagus nerve. So I do that three times.

Speaker 2: 31:35

Beyond holding my breath, I wait until I can feel panic, because feeling that panic come in and saying I'm controlling this, I'm calm, I can be calm. Now I should tell you that there is a point when my head comes out, it's not because I need breath. It comes out without any control of mine. It's okay, I'm past the panic, you're gonna drown. It's only head pops up. And I do that three times to set myself. From there I do 30 to 45 minutes of reading, but I also read throughout the day as well. So I read a bare minimum of an hour a day, but usually several hours a day. So that's my morning ritual.

Speaker 1: 32:21

Is there anything that really set that off? Was there a time you went? Actually, I need to get into some sort of organization in the morning because I'm just a clusterfucking daytime.

Speaker 2: 32:32

Yeah, it was really post-fall, yeah, post-fall. So I'd done a lot of disciplines before the fall. And there was a point in time again before the fall in the 80s when I was meditating four hours a day Two hours in the morning, one hour at lunch and one hour in the evening. But that became ridiculous and it was okay. It was part of my journey at that time, but it's not part of my life as a business person and an entrepreneur and somebody working. But what I realized was that how quickly I could get off track if I didn't have a process.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Now I will tell you that my morning ritual has changed and evolved. So the ice on my face, that's not been there for years and years. That's fairly new. In the last two years or so, one of the things I've always had as part of my ritual now it's not in the morning, but it was always in the morning which is journaling for half an hour by hand, not on a computer, not on a phone by hand, because it operates at a different part of the brain, and I just realized that I am more focused and more productive by doing that.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Now.

Speaker 2: 33:41

I admit that sometimes to be fair, so it re-understands. Sometimes I have a very early meeting. I have clients who are in different parts of the world, and if my client is in South Africa, right, they're late at night when I'm early in the morning. So my day starts very early and so the ritual gets messed up. But I'll still do it, it'll just be later. So don't turn yourself into some kind of robot that has to do it, because I don't think that helps. And the other thing I've become very religious about is that I have to have seven hours sleep, whereas when I was a workaholic lunatic, I was running on four and a half hours and telling everybody I'm right, right, I can do this, but it was nonsense. Now I could probably get away with it in my 20s and 30s, but I can't do that at my age. It's not good. If I wanna live longer, I have to make sure that I get enough sleep, that I'm healthy and my brain works well.

Speaker 1: 34:37

Yeah, it's important for self-care, especially when you're serving other people at that high level. She can't be depleted. Drain all the shot, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 34:46

And then you can shout to a client and go yeah, I'm fine whatever the problem with Baz, you know this I can show up looking fine. Yeah, this for military right. You can show up looking fine, but you're a bag of poop. Yeah, you can show up looking fine. But you can show up looking fine, but you'd never know it, because I can put on that mask, but immediately I put on that mask. I'm now in my ego, and if I'm in my ego, I'm no longer serving you in a place of flow, tapping into your emotional source code and helping you to sit. So no, can't do it.

Speaker 1: 35:21

With the experience that you've had, and there's an old saying on how you know it there are five people that we hang around with that we become. Has there been any particular mentors or role models in your life, as probably thousands when he stood out to you that you aspire not to be like no, but to be used as a standard or a gateway to get information to do what you do?

Speaker 2: 35:52

Yeah, one of the things I said I've always had mentors, but not all my mentors are alive. What I mean by that is they died a long time before me, before I came. So one of my greatest mentors is Khalil Gibran. There's a book called the Prophet. It's my Bible. I carry it with me, I read it, end to end, at least three times a year, but I read it all the time. It's my Bible and people are like what do you mean? Just read it, because it's like on love, on marriage, on friendship, on work, and there are these poetry style writings that for me. So Khalil Gibran has been a great influence on me, excuse me, as has obviously Martin Luther King, but I've had wonderful in-person mentors as well.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Pathasarajay, who was the Dean of the Vedants University in Bombay I became very good friends with, who really was a wonderful guide for me and his clarity was astounding to me, his clarity about living his life on a set of values in everything he did. So one of the things he talked to me about was how he really detested the taste of bitter melon. Most people don't know that fruit, but bitter melon is not nice. It's not, but it's very popular in Asia, very popular and he goes in curries and things. And he said I really dislike it, so I eat it at least once a week. Now it's actually very good for you. But it was like he understood that even disliking something was an ego thing. Right, and so he's. And I said to him so tell me why that matters. And he said because I want to live my life. And he there's a Vedantic quote that goes with it that I'm not going to. But he says I want to live my life understanding the beauty in all things, and so I must put myself in the things that I deem not beautiful. Now, what a great setup for dealing with that asshole who cut you off in traffic, yeah. Or that asshole who gave you bad service at the store Suddenly oh, you're my bitter melon, okay. So he was very powerful, bishop William Todd, who was, who taught me Coptic and Gnostic Christianity and was really a great awakening for me. I loved Willie Todd because he was a Glaswegian, who was a Glaswegian street fighter, who joined the RAF, who was an atheist, who ended up being an Orthodox Catholic Bishop, and I just loved his journey and he never lost any sense of humor. That was part of that, and so that inspired me greatly.

Speaker 2: 38:50

And I would also say one of the greatest inspirations of my life is my wife. I'm so blessed is my queen. Her level of warmth is a constant reminder to me that I can be kinder, I can be more compassionate, I can be more. She's incredibly intelligent. She works side by side with me, she's my business partner. We walk our clients through together, we do the work together, but she has a guy about her. Her name is Renuka, which is Fijian, and it means Mother Earth, and she has that energy. Oh, I feel so welcome. And she's got laser beam focus and she'd come at you. You're like, oh, I'm a little bit twitching because she's incredibly focused, but it's always done with this incredible love. So she's great inspiration to me and my greatest inspiration and guide today best because we've talked about it before, all those religions I studied, my, not my religion is curiosity.

Speaker 2: 39:58

I believe curiosity is the gateway to wisdom, it is the great gateway to love, it is a great way to compassion, it is the gateway to all things that I want in my life Curiosity. And so, therefore, my greatest mentor at this time is my three year old and she's my fifth of my six grandkids. So she's my. She's three years old, she's incredibly curious, she's insanely loving. And I'm taking her out of the elevator, bringing into that, and she just looks at me and she goes I love you so much, g dead. I'm G dead. I love you so much, g dead. And then my wife would gone to park. The car comes in two minutes later and she goes it's Adji, like she'd just seen her three minutes ago. She's so excited to be present with her.

Speaker 1: 40:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:51

Right and that presence, including with being pissed off or frustrated, like she is the Buddha, I say she's my Yoda. Like she's so present, she's so full of laughter and giggles and playfulness and joy and deep curiosity and at the same time wants to have very clear boundaries, which, of course, I'm encouraging. Like no G that. So like she always wants me to be with her and she goes sit here, g dad, I want to sit there. I want to sit there. But then every now and then I'll go to sit next to her and she goes no G, dad, don't sit here. She wants her own space. Okay, oh my God, if we could be like that. So she's an incredible teacher to me every single day, who wants some friendliness to people she doesn't know. She hasn't carried around any political bullshit, she isn't looking at people in red hats and judging them differently from people in blue hats. None of that. What a marvelous teacher.

Speaker 1: 41:57

I love that. I think the younger generation that are deemed innocent in a lot of ways can teach us so much about ourselves not just about the world, but about ourselves how we shout for other people because they don't have a filter. They'll just say what they think, and maybe that's who they are.

Speaker 2: 42:17

Yeah, you're getting the elevator with somebody who's got a big mole on their face and a two or three year old says what's that, mister? Whereas we, being very politically correct, we never mentioned that. But guess what, when a kid says it, what does the person say? The person says it's a mole. What's that? It's just something that happens on your skin, on some people's skin. Okay, oh, if I said that, I'll get cancelled, cancelled culture. No, it's pure. Yeah, we're not willing to see people as pure. We're always looking at people through an agenda, whether it's ours or theirs, as opposed to just going. What if this is just somebody being curious?

Speaker 1: 42:53

Yeah, yeah, I love that. What is your biggest leadership lesson? There's a lot of listeners that are very heavily into leadership and they're always wanting the next level. What has been your biggest leadership lesson over the course of your current multiple careers?

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yeah, I would say that my biggest leadership lesson is the lesson that I still do today, and it's the lesson that I have to live with every day, and that is you cannot lead unless you lead yourself, and you cannot lead yourself without a guide. So what does that mean? It means that to truly lead, I've got a course on creating a culture of belonging, and so, okay, this is for leaders, to create culture of belonging, but it's also for the people inside of the culture, because we're all leaders. Maybe you're a leader of your family or of your kids, or some community or what your church or whatever it might be. We're all in some kind of leadership role and you can't lead without self-knowledge. It's not possible. You can give orders, sure, you can do that, but you can't actually lead because leaders must go first. And what does that mean? That means you must know you and you must be, because here's the thing from a leadership position Trust.

Speaker 2: 44:24

If you're going to lead, you have to have trust. I think everybody would agree with that. Right, you can get people to follow your orders, but you can't lead them. In order to lead them, you have to have trust. So how do you gain trust? So I'll give you. Can I give you an exercise? Yes, so can you imagine or think about somebody you've known for, let's say, five or 10 years who is a deeply trusted, loyal friend? Yes, got someone Great. Can you think of somebody you've known about the same amount of time who is an acquaintance? Yes, okay, so picture them both in your head. What makes that one an acquaintance and the other one a deeply loyal, trusted friend?

Speaker 1: 45:07

You can't say time, because I've just cancelled that they one of them showed up in my life in a different way than the other one, consistently.

Speaker 2: 45:17

But what is that?

Speaker 1: 45:19

with love and compassion and they've listened to the issues and things we've experienced together and it's a shared experience.

Speaker 2: 45:33

So let me ask you a question how much do you know about the acquaintance versus? How much do you know about the deep, loyal friend? Oh, the loyal friend I know a lot more about, of course, because trust is built on reciprocal vulnerability. This is why you can feel immediate trust with somebody in 10 minutes and go I feel like I could know you all my life, because there's a reciprocal vulnerability, and reciprocal vulnerability can't happen without self awareness. So if you are going to lead and have people trust you, you have to have reciprocal vulnerability and as a leader, you have to show up vulnerable first. I can't say to my people let's be vulnerable, and then I say nothing. I got a lead from that place. Yeah, here's my screw up today. Here's how I failed. Here's what I'm looking to understand. Here's what I struggled with, here's what I struggled with in the past, and I can see it showing up now.

Speaker 2: 46:30

Yeah will you help me? The most powerful words you'll ever use as a leader is can you help me? Not here's what to do. The most powerful words you'll ever use as a leader is can you help me? And so this is why I only work with a very small amount of people, like a handful of private clients a year, because even the ones who say can you help me sometimes don't mean it because they want me to put Humpty Dumpty together again. But when you say can you help me, what's on the other side of that? What is it that's possible? My job is to help you bring home the disenfranchised parts of yourself, to return you to your soulful whole, so that you can. And it won't in it. People go this will this minimize my success? Oh no, it'll maximize your success because you've already got that process down. You're great. I applaud your success. Those systems. Now what happens if you bring in all the parts of you that you didn't have before?

Speaker 2: 47:36

Yeah it's magnified. But your brain, your ego, the survival mechanism says if you do that, you'll get crushed. No, you actually won't. It's a lie. You're going to explode, you're going to be magnificent and people are going to appreciate you and you're going to stop feeling that emptiness of success and feel the depth of soulful fulfillment.

Speaker 1: 47:58

That's a huge distinction. I want to respect your time and I want to say thank you very much for joining me today. You've been an awesome. Give us some awesome information. Is there anywhere that you want to send people, if they're inquiring about your business or even working with you, to see what you're up to?

Speaker 2: 48:15

Sure, thank you, baz. I appreciate that. The obvious place to go is my name, which is dovebarroncom it's right there on my shoulder if you're watching this on video and that's dovbaroncom. There you'll find everything, including my podcasts and links to my articles and all the other things, including how to work with me, whether you want to bring me into your company or organization, whether you want me to speak on the stage or work privately with me. Excuse me, as I said, I have two podcasts. You can find me there.

Speaker 2: 48:45

One of the things I would really recommend is you go to Corsify X so course just like the word course I-F-Y-Xcom forward slash belonging CorsifyXcom and there you can find out about my course on creating cultures of belonging. Now, what you should know about it is, of course, it's aimed at people in leadership. But here's the thing. It's that horrible testimonial, but I get it. If you go through this course, who are not leaders, go. I'm not a leader, I'm not in a leadership position. It changed my life because it's making you look inside. So if you're just like sensitive about this journey, go there. Do that course. Right, it's a lot less money than working with me privately and it'll walk you through in step-by-step process and it's really powerful, really insightful.

Speaker 2: 49:36

So go to CorsifyXcom, forward slash belonging. Go to DovBaroncom. You can look me up and if you just Google DovBaroncom you'll find me anywhere. And here's the other thing you can do. I know this is crazy, it's insane, but do it. You can email me privately. My private email Dov at DovBaroncom.

Speaker 2: 49:55

Yes, I do read those emails and if you've got a question for me, I'm happy to answer it. I'm here to serve you in some way, shape or form, and you know what I would also ask you to do. I would ask you to go on to Apple Podcasts and rate, review and subscribe to Bazzy's podcast here. I know you don't know what it takes, but I do.

Speaker 2: 50:17

There's a lot of work that goes in for this guy. He puts the time, the energy, the effort in to getting this podcast out there. So go on there, do those things rate, review, subscribe to the show and share it with other people. Don't hoard, there's plenty, there's abundance here. Hold it with others and you can write to me, dov at DovBaron, tell me what you got out of this show. And write to Bazzy and tell him. Put that in the review, right, and when I say that, not just with my show, not just my episode, rather, but with any episode. The guy puts the time, the energy in for you, no charge to you. It's a one-way street. Feel a little more abundant. Give some positive feedback.

Speaker 1: 50:55

Thank you very much for your time. I love you as a person and as for service in the world. Thank you very much. I'll see you next week. Same time, same place, 9am Monday mornings. This show goes out for myself. I am blessed and we all are blessed. Live with purpose and inspire with legacy.