Yosi Amram | The Power of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership

Srini Rao

 Yossi, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Yosi Amram

Thank you, thank you. I'm delighted and looking forward to what creative encounter we might have here. Unmistakably, I'm sure.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, you have a new book out called Spiritually Intelligent Leadership, all of which we will get into. And I know part of the answer to this question from having read the book, but I wanted to start by asking you, where are you born and raised? And what impact did that end up having on what you've ended up doing with both your life and your career?

Yosi Amram

Okay, thank you, thank you. So I was born and raised in Israel. And like all Israeli men, I was drafted into the military, even though I have kind of pacifist leanings. And I was thrown into the military. Luckily, it was a peaceful time in that region of the world, which is hard to believe. But it did happen while I was serving. And.

Surprisingly, as I saw myself as a shy, introverted kid, I found myself assuming leadership positions and having the fastest promotion record in the history of my regiment and winning a number of awards. So even though I excelled at the military, I really didn't like the whole notion of command and control and the way the military functions, which is necessary in battle. You don't have time to build consensus and

you know, ask for lots of opinions, you just have to move fast. And that's an efficient, effective way to be in battle. But it's really not good for the human spirit and soul. And so I resolved to someday try my hand at leading people and organizations based on different set of values that are more.

humane and that inspire and facilitate the growth of each individual. So that kind of became one of my lifelong aspirations which brought me to the US and going to school and so on. I can continue with my life story but that's kind of where it started.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, that is actually the reason I started with that question. So, you know, I probably had maybe one or two other guests here who'd served in the Israeli military. And I wonder, it was somebody who's got passive leanings. I imagine you're not alone in that sentiment, but yet it's required. Talk to me about, you know, why that is, because I think the idea that military service being as mandatory, like

The idea of something like that in the United States, I think people would find really kind of crazy, but it's the norm in your culture.

Yosi Amram

Well, it was the norm in Israel, yeah, because it's a small country and surrounded by many countries and people who wish to destroy it and eliminate it. So it wouldn't have survived. And yeah, I mean, this is a long thing and it's very timely right now. The whole what's going on in the war in Gaza and...

Zionism and Judaism and anti-semitism we're talking about a big issue and opening up a huge can of worms but so to speak but yeah, I mean the basic reality is that Israel is under constant threat and You know wouldn't exist if it not for a strong military that can defend it and as a result all

eligible men 18 to 21 are drafted. And you know, in other parts of the world, even in the US, there was a period of time when there was a draft. And of course, most Americans don't like it. And it didn't make sense when the US was going to fight wars in Vietnam or whatever. People are like, hey, why am I drafted to that? But you know, during Second World War or other times when

The U.S. was under severe threat and the volunteer army wasn't enough. You know, who knows what people will feel is justified.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I think particularly now to your point, you know, we're getting much more exposed to that region of the world in a way that we never have been. But I always wonder in terms of media in particular, when it comes to situations like this is, you know, the perception that media shapes, you know, with the American public and the narrative it creates versus the reality of the situation for somebody who has been there.

And obviously you mentioned that you were there during peacetime. But what do we not see about all of this?

Yosi Amram

Oh my god.

do we not see? There's so much, I mean, you know, I think the media is inherently biased and you know, there are different sides and I think it's hard to see the, you know, the history which is very complex and you know, the suffering that's happening on both sides and I...

I think we don't see the way in which the situation is really painful on all sides. I think the media most often tends to be pro one side or another, demonize one side or another. I think the situation is a little more complex, more nuanced. Certainly there are actors and agents there that you might...

consider evil and have no desire for peace. But I think most people in the region, most humans, you know, want to find a way to peace and they're suffering on all sides. But yeah, but you have radical groups that are, you know, creating a lot of problems.

Srini Rao

Yeah. So one thing that I wonder about, you know, you went to MIT, you worked in technology startups, and I've noticed this trend and I had, you're leaving the co-founder of Waze here as a guest too. And I remember this very distinctly when I was in college thinking, what is it with the Israelis in chat software? But it seems like Israel is a hotbed of technological innovation. And I wonder, one, why that is, and also what role does your own military experience play in all of that?

Yosi Amram

Yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, Israel as a nation is hugely innovative. I think the number of international patents filed by Israel surpasses the number of patents filed by the entire Western Europe, EU set of countries. So for a country with, you know, eight, nine million people compared to hundreds of millions of people in Europe, Israel creates more innovation.

So, you know, it's a good question. Why is that? And, you know, you can have lots of explanation. I'm not a sociologist. I'm not an anthropologist. But, you know, you can speculate. It does make sense that Israelis and Jews have been persecuted throughout history, and they've had to, you know, find ways to survive and thrive and do well. And they valued education.

It goes back to this notion of studying the Torah, the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the Talmudic interpretations, and disagreement, and arguments, as they say, for the sake of truth, for the sake of heaven. So built into the culture is this intellectual pursuit and deeper understanding of truth and reality. And originally it was around...

you know, scripture, but I think that continues and is embedded into the culture and the norms. And so as a result, lots of Israelis are innovative. And as they say, you know, you take two Jews and you have three opinions. And we've seen that you've seen that in Israel, the disagreements and the fights and politics.

Srini Rao

Yeah

Yosi Amram

in the months preceding the war where there was a lot of division between some of the policies the government was trying to institute and so on. So it's a very irreverent culture that likes to challenge and debate and argue and that leads to innovation and creativity as it does in teams in the tech world when there are

constructive tensions in a team as opposed to everybody lining up and you know And there's more creativity more diversity of opinion and out of that lots of new Creative ideas emerge and I think that's very much built into the culture and fabric of the Israeli society and psyche

Srini Rao

Yeah, I think it was recently I was reading a book called The Coming Wave, which was written by the founder of DeepMind. And he had talked about how militaries are actually engines of innovation and a good amount of innovation that we experience in our lives actually starts with military usage intent. I mean, the internet is a perfect example. And I think most of us don't think about that. But explain to me how a guy like you goes from the military.

to studying at MIT, to writing a book called Spiritually Intelligent Leadership. Talk me to the trajectory that leads you to this perspective.

Yosi Amram

Okay. Yeah. So, as I said, the military kind of awakened in me this desire to lead and organize people and teams around more humane values that facilitate and support the growth of each individual in a team context with a sense of belonging. So, my path for getting there, the way I dreamed of was that I was interested in science and math and physics and I excelled in

those subjects throughout high school. So I thought, okay, well, how am I going to someday lead a group of people with a common mission and vision and support their growth? And I thought, okay, you know, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I mean, it was the start of Silicon Valley in those days, companies like Fairchild and Intel and so on were getting going. And I thought, okay, someday I'll be an engineer. I'll develop some

some new patent or some idea and that will be my way to start a company and build an organization. So hence I came to MIT to study engineering and I actually quickly discovered that while I was reasonably good at it and I had a great straight A average and all of that, I did not enjoy sitting in front of the computer and...

programming and designing circuits or what have you all day. I more enjoyed the interaction with people and so on. So I decided that my path to leadership would be actually combining business and technology and hence I went and got an MBA at Harvard to kind of give me a sense of experience and perspective on the business side.

And then from there I joined a technology startup in Silicon Valley. It was a company called Rational Software. And I headed up their product marketing and saw it from product innovation without customers or revenue to being a profitable company. I left it. I became a venture capitalist. And the idea was to see if I can use that environment to find an idea, being exposed to lots of trends and ideas.

Yosi Amram

Out of that was born the idea for my first company, which was called Individual Ink. And Individual, the name stood for two things. One is for customizing and personalizing news. So Individual was the first company before the internet that created personalized interactive newspapers. And you would get your personal newspaper on your fax machine each morning.

And it was based on the topics and the people that you were interested in. We had machine learning software before that term became popular where you would rate the articles as relevant or not and based on that your profile would change and continue to adapt itself. So individual was doing this personalized news first on fax, then email, then internet, then ad supported as the technology evolved. This is...

The company started in the late 80s. You know, many people these days don't know what fax machines are, never use them. But that was the state of the art for delivering rapid information then. And it was much faster and more efficient than reading through trade journals and magazines like PC World or Computer World, PC magazines that would get published weekly or monthly and people would...

get stacks of magazines and have to flip through them to find what information is relevant for them. So we were tapping directly into electronic databases and wire services to deliver all of that. Anyway, so that was the idea of individualized news, but the other side of the word individual was a culture that supports each individual and their growth and potential. And we instituted, you know,

A 360 feedback process well before it was popular, all with the intention to support the growth of our employees. So it was a company that was near and dear to my heart, as you can imagine. It was kind of my guiding north star and aspiration since my late teen years in Israel and the military. So I was very, very passionate about it. And I was working.

Yosi Amram

70, 80 hours a week and was kind of getting burnt out somewhat and so it was a real rollercoaster ride and with the internet, you know, obviously our fax business was threatened, it became clear that all that information would be available for free on the internet with ad support and now we had a goldmine because we had people's interest profiles, what every advertiser wants to know.

But to transition from a subscription-based fax service to an ad-supported internet service wasn't easy, because we had to cannibalize our own children, so to speak, and our own revenue in order to build a bigger revenue stream that with a much larger audience. So that was very stressful. We managed to do that, and ultimately, the company went public.

And, you know, I was worth tens of millions of dollars and, you know, I sort of attained my dream. But somehow, some part of me, despite the fact that I was wealthy and healthy, at least physically, lost its meaning. And my mother had passed away during that time and I didn't really have the time to grieve. And through all of it, I somehow experienced some kind of loss of meaning.

what in the spiritual traditions called the dark night of the soul, which was a form of clinical depression, despite all the success. But in the midst of that, something happened and shifted. It's hard to explain. I was relaxed, receiving massage and so on. All of a sudden...

I had sort of what's called an awakening experience where I realized that everything is connected and the way we experience ourselves as separate individuals, again, skin encapsulated egos as they call it, what was false, that actually if you study physics now you understand that everything is connected. The force of gravity connects everything. Like right now my body, your body is connected to the earth through gravity.

Yosi Amram

the earth is connected to the sun through gravity. You know, the protons and the electrons and everything's connected through a magnetic electric field. So, you know, we're literally at the physical level, all interconnected, but I experienced it more spiritually and through consciousness. But that kind of blew my circuits, that understanding.

uh... so to speak blew my circuits and through me into uh... from the depression in the dark night of the soul into more of a manic episode and i was having my mind was racing i was having all these visions and downloads of where the internet was going and uh... i was uh... intent on making individual be the leader in getting there and basically what companies like uh...

Facebook and Google were doing years later. This is I'm talking about 1996 just the beginning of the internet was all coming to me and I wanted individual to do it all and I wanted to do it all Yesterday, so to speak. I had no patience. I wanted everything to be done rapidly my mind was racing and You know, I lost contact with my team and my board. They just couldn't keep up

And I was so preoccupied and consumed by my vision that I didn't pay very close attention to the fabric of the organization, making sure that it can execute on that. So, it was a very turbulent time and ultimately my board put me on a quote-unquote, voluntary leave of absence. It was nothing but voluntary, but they felt that I needed to calm down and take a break.

And being in the manic spiritual emergency that I was in, I was accepting none of that. So I fought them and I resigned. And they said they fired me. It was a big fiasco. Our stock price collapsed, several board members resigned and so on. So that was that spiritual awakening and...

Yosi Amram

Spiritual emergency that changed the direction of my life and I was like then for years I was trying to understand what is it that happened there? And how did? Was it just craziness or was there something real about my experience? Why was I going through this emotional? Rollercoaster, how did my identity get so lined up with the company? Who was I outside the company once I wasn't there and I was pushed out

So that ultimately led me to this going back to get a PhD and become a clinical psychologist and trying to understand what this spiritual insights I was having and this sense of interconnectedness and oneness that has been talked about for thousands of years across all the world's traditions.

And so it was my interest in leadership and spirituality and psychology that got me to pursue this doctorate. And I'll pause there if you want to ask a clarifying question. Otherwise I can keep rolling about how I got to spiritual intelligence and its parallels to emotional intelligence. But maybe I should take a breath here.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, well, I think that makes a perfect segue into the actual book itself. You open the book early on by saying, I'm not ready to yet explore the root causes of my work compulsion and how I've come to tie my self worth to my net worth. All I want is a quick fix and Prozac provides it. Lo and behold, my mood improves. It's like a bandaid over a bullet hole, but it helps. And I began writing the next intoxicating wave of the Internet's promise.

my fears miraculously disappear and I move decisively, pushing my company into the future. The blessed irony is the stress my ego generated actually catalyzed my dark night of the soul as well as my transcendent yet manic experiences, giving me a view of the reality beyond my ego. Its needs can never be met because it's based on a fundamental distortion, what Einstein called an optical illusion of consciousness, that we are discrete entities separate from the rest of existence.

So, you know, I think that one of the things that this brings up for me is something that often comes up when we talk to people who have a vast significant amounts of wealth and somehow end up in these situations. Because I think that there is a tendency in our culture to basically put wealth as sort of the beacon of achievement and, you know, fulfillment in our lives. So the thing is, it's almost like...

Yeah, okay, great. In my mind, I'm thinking somebody who doesn't has not reached that level of wealth might say, lovely, this all sounds good sounds like another rich enlightened person. Why is that like, why do we think that when we have not had that experience that you have had?

Yosi Amram

Why do we think that the answer is wealth? Just to be clear though, when I was pushed out of the company, our stock price collapsed, they brought in another CEO to recover. They, you know, it didn't quite work. The stock price continued to drift down. So a lot of my wealth actually evaporated.

And over time, luckily I had another company and I made some more money there and I invested in another startup. So I ended up doing well after all. But the point is that my spiritual emergency and all of that and then those insights came at the height of my wealth. But they continued when...

when I was no longer at that level of wealth, I wasn't starving by any means, but that's not really directly answering your question. Well, I mean, you know, in our culture, money is just, you know, a source of power. And you know, biologically, we're programmed...

you know to need resources to need food we feel insecure uh... and for a lot of people money is just assault resources security that ensures that all never be out of food all uh... i can have uh... and nice home in the safe neighborhood at satra and um... and then uh... you know there's the whole so social status hierarchy that comes with it that

can give us access to mates, you know, whether you're a man or a woman, you know, if you have money, if you're attractive. So at the instinctual level, I think money ties into our survival instinct and our sense of power and can give us a sense of safety. Now, obviously it's kind of a false sense of safety because we're still mortal and beyond a certain level.

Yosi Amram

money doesn't really buy us happiness or security existentially. So, I mean, I think all the research points that money can improve people's quality of life up to a certain level and I forget what it is. When they originally did the study, I think it was like $75,000 a year. Probably these days with inflation and several decades later, it might be higher.

But beyond that, there's no backing to the fact that it increases quality of life and happiness. It just can bring in more worries about what to do with it, not losing it, and it can become an addiction, thinking that, you know, I'll get more and more and more. But, you know, when our lives are empty of meaning and deeper meaning, then...

Money becomes something that we can chase and it can give us a sense of purpose. But, you know, it's like eating more popcorn. It tastes good, but ultimately it doesn't satisfy us.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, let's get into these seven dimensions of spiritually intelligent leadership, starting with the one that you just brought up, which was meaning. Meaning is always one of those things, I think, that is something we kind of dance around. It always feels very nebulous. You know, like if you talk to somebody like Simon Sinek, I remember when he told me what my why was, he was like, you're obsessed with people are good at unusual things. And I was like, that's great. What am I supposed to do with that? You know, 13 years later, I look back and say,

My entire career is a reflection of that. Every guest I've ever interviewed is a reflection of that. I realize that now, but at the time, it was this vague sort of nebulous statement. But you say the ability to mobilize a sense of meaning is not only central to wellbeing, quality of life, and long-term fulfillment, it's a cornerstone of a spiritual intelligence. And then you go on to talk about narratives, and you say the narratives we tell each other and ourselves have enormous power. They enable us to form communities, make sense of the world, and transmit meaning to ourselves and those we lead.

So let's talk about one, how we discover meaning and how we articulate that meaning through narrative.

Yosi Amram

Yeah, well, it's a good question and I wish there was a simple formula, but I think, you know, individually how we discover meaning is, you know, connecting with our unique authentic essence and all of us are gifted by life, by certain gifts. These days, people like to call them superpowers, but each of us have a unique set of talents, whether it's

you know, in music or in drawing or in math or in computer programming or whatever it might be. So we have some talents and capacities that life has gifted us. And when we can take those gifts and apply them in the service of life and the service of others, we actualize our potential and we use that.

to make a contribution, to make an impact. And that's when we feel, you know, that we're sort of, I'll use a cliche word, living our destiny. We're living what we're meant to do. Now, sometimes it's not readily available, visible to us up front. But as you pointed out, when you look in hindsight, you could see the trajectory, and some part of you was drawn to...

to do these interviews, these people, and you didn't even know what was guiding you. It's like the future was calling you in order to be born through you. And I'm paraphrasing Martin Buber's, the future is waiting to be born or something through you. So, you know.

So there's some part of us that calls us forth to actualize our potential, or actualize our gifts, our superpowers, because that's very satisfying. If I am gifted with playing musical instrument, obviously using that's gonna give me a sense of mastery and joy, and then if I see other people enjoying and buying my music and record, then I feel...

Yosi Amram

connected to them and I feel like I'm contributing to life and that's going to be very fulfilling and rewarding. I hope I'm making sense.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the other things that you say in this section on meaning is that when we see our failures and shortcomings as mistakes, we can find a way out of wallowing in our guilt and suffering and see them as opportunities to learn better ways to live in alignment with our values. And the first thought that comes to mind is easier said than done. And I'll tell you why, because one of my mentors told me this once. He said, you know, when you're going through a difficult time, it's the worst thing in the world,

because it's happening to you. And I feel like so often it's only, you know, in retrospect that we're able to see the opportunities that came from all of that. But while it's happening, it's incredibly difficult. So talk to me about how we navigate this when, you know, shit hits the fan, like in the moment.

Yosi Amram

Yeah, no, I think you raise a great point and it's exactly that. In hindsight, it's easy to see and when should hits in the moment, it's hard to see and we suffer. But, you know, what can help us is just that very knowledge that we have survived, you know, tragedies and catastrophes and a lot of pain and suffering, physical, emotional. And when we look back, we see that...

it actually served a purpose for the good. So that helps us develop a certain level of trust in life. And, you know, it's not Paul and Anish. We go through the suffering, it's going to be painful. But we have that basic trust that somehow it will be okay. We'll be okay and it will lead us something.

Somewhere one of my favorite things to do, you know on thanksgiving where everybody asks. Okay. What are you grateful for? And that's fine. We I invite people to go through a round like that But then to tell us a story of something that was horrible That happened to you that in hindsight you're grateful for and people talk about being fired from a job Or you know

whatever it may be, the health challenge that happens that gets them to rethink their lives priorities, like a heart attack or something, and then they realize, you know, I've been not paying attention to my heart, and that heart attack is what caused me to pay attention to my heart, and I realized I was working in a job that was meaningless to me.

Now, thankfully I didn't die from that heart attack and it was a wake up call and it changed the direction of my life and same with a job loss or whatever. When we're fired, you know, when we're having a heart attack, we're not gonna be thinking there, oh, this is great. I love it, you know, it's full of meaning and beauty. No, it's gonna be painful. We're gonna mourn the job loss. We're gonna be scared for our lives. But you know, that faith, that trust.

Yosi Amram

can support us in going through it. And then we'll discover the hidden blessings down the line.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about the next one, which is grace. You say that grace is expressed in terms of spiritually intelligent leadership is the ability to lead with dignity, beauty, and joy in such a way as to awaken hope, trust, celebration, and gratitude in ourselves and others. The ability rests on four essential competencies, trust, beauty, joy, and gratitude. So talk to me about the context of an individual as well as in an organization. How does somebody cultivate this capacity?

Yosi Amram

Well, we just talked about the first one, which is trust, you know, and trusting in ourselves, trusting in lives, trusting in the future. I mean, it's hard to, you know, hard to lead a group of people if you don't have trust or hope that what we're doing is going to work out in some way and have a positive impact. So you have to believe, like we said, that you're going through a tough time.

personally that you'll get to the other shore to the other side and you'll be okay and as an organization you have to as a leader you have to instill the sense of hope and optimism about the future that what we're doing is not futile. Beauty and joy I mean nourish us and with beauty and joy comes more creativity I think all the research supports that I think you're talking about creativity here.

And so as people have fun at work, they joke around, they bring in a sense of humor, they relax together, there's more and more creativity. And we can find the beauty in our work. It's not drudgery. I mean, normally we think that there's beauty, we watch a beautiful sunset, or we go on a hike in the woods, or at the top of a mountain, there's a great view, or we look at a piece of art in the museum, or at home, or a piece of music.

and beauty is readily available. And that's why humanity and all of us love music, love art, love nature because it awakens a sense of beauty. But it need not be limited to those places. Can there be beauty in a piece of software? Can there be beauty in a PowerPoint presentation or in a...

a memo or document or a way a team collaborates around a project in a meeting. And if you just, you could see a basketball team or a playing together and you see the beauty and the grace in which they're moving the ball between themselves and each other. And you just like wowed by the beauty, by the grace of their movement and the coordination. So there's no reason that we can't find beauty in.

Yosi Amram

in working with our teammates. And so if we bring more joy, more beauty, more trust and optimism, then we're more creative. We're more effective. Our life is more fulfilled. We have more energy. We're more inspired. And the research shows that people that are inspired, motivated like that are twice as productive as others. And the last piece you mentioned is gratitude. And...

You know, if we share and express gratitude both towards ourselves, like, okay, these great things happened to me today, it lifts our mood. If we share gratitude and appreciation with teammates in our work, then our relationships, our bonds deepen and the trust is deepened between team members. And, you know, we're building our bank account for when there's tension and disagreement. And so...

So it is at work, so it is in our home life, in our relationships, be romantic or otherwise. You know, all the research like John Gottman is the preeminent researcher in the field of marriage and relationships. You know, good relationships thrive when the ratio of positive feedback and appreciation to criticism and negative is at least five to one. So gratitude is super important for healthy...

relationships everywhere at home and at work. So I'm just kind of touching on all these qualities in this domain.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Let's talk about the next one, which is the inner directed dimension of spiritually intelligent leadership, which as you say is the ability to align with your inner compass, which rests on four essential qualities, centeredness, integrity, confidence, and freedom. And I think that this one in particular strikes me because we live in a world where you have access to instant validation on demand. There's a sort of paradox of the fact that we have all this.

technology at our fingertips that allows us to express, you know, our creative impulses in a way that we never could before, yet it's all done in a strange way of in pursuit of external validation. Like, of course, I want more people to listen to the conversation you and I are having. So talking about how we resolve that tension between our need for validation and cultivating this inner dimension that you're talking about.

Yosi Amram

Inter-directedness. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a challenge. I mean, you know But going back to sort of understanding it psychologically as infants You know all the goodies are provided to us externally, you know I mean we need milk and food and nourish more nourishment externally We don't really have a sense of self or any sense of self-esteem. So mom and dad and our

primary caregivers or whatever it is. I'm sorry, I'm kind of gender, what have you. But the mothering and fathering persons in our lives are providing us the validation for who we are and what we are. But as we grow, we need to differentiate and individuate to use psychological terms. And as leaders, we have to be

Now, that's not to say that we don't listen to others or take input or what have you, but being a leader, we're not being a politician that just asking for approval. I mean, that's going to weaken us. If I look for my ultimate source of validation externally, then, then.

You know, I'm dependent on others. It's not empowering. It's not energizing. So we have to find, you know, our truth, our values, and stand our ground while also being open to others. And it's that yin-yang quality of confidence with humility. People think, okay, if you're confident, then...

You're not open to others, you're not listening. I think that's very far from the truth because if you're secure in yourself and your inherent value, then, you know, your self-esteem, your sense of value is not dependent on others' validation. You might like it. Like, I'd like people to buy my book. I'd like people to listen to this interview.

Yosi Amram

because this is what I've set up as my purpose to help awaken greater spiritual intelligence in the world and in myself and I'm using that through and if this book doesn't sell or people aren't interested or don't resonate, then I have to, it doesn't mean that my life is meaningless, it just means that maybe I need to do something different and not.

not write a book about leadership and spiritual intelligence, but some other book, which I'll write someday about spiritually intelligent relationships and in romantic sense. So maybe that will be more interesting to people. I don't know, but I can learn from that if not many people find this relevant. Fortunately, so far I'm getting great feedback and people find it very helpful and so on. But I'm just saying.

I care about getting the feedback externally, but I'm not making my deepest sense of worth dependent on that, because that's just going to be disempowering.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so in the interest of time, I want to go through the other two that are really interesting to me. I mean, we've spoken quite a bit about community on the podcast, but I think the presence dimension of full attention, focus, clarity of intention, embodied power to your engagements and interactions is really interesting because I think this is about more than being productive. There's so much more to what you're talking about here than, oh,

Yosi Amram

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Hey, being able to be focused on what you do increases your productivity gets you into flow. But you're talking about a lot more depth here in terms of how it impacts everything from our interactions with other people to our interactions with the community and how we explore this. But one of the things you say here, which I think really kind of segues from what we were talking about earlier is that goals offer a necessary yardstick for measuring performance and progress. But it's also important to forget.

not to forget that they lead us towards a success versus failure mindset. We either meet our goal or not. Furthermore, goals focus our attention on a future outcome, not on how to observe and apply our efforts in the moment. So how do you balance those two things together with having, you know, this sort of future goal while also being present enough to do the work that will get you to that future without getting completely attached or caught up in the outcome.

Yosi Amram

Yeah, no, it's great. So you need the goals like, okay.

You know, you have a goal, you're on a sailboat and going through the sea and you want to get to the some island or some shore and you set your sight on that, right? But to get there, you need, so you chart a path, right? You chart a path, the wind, depending on the wind, you're gonna go zigzag, however you're gonna tack or whatever and so you have, you take that bigger goal and you set.

smaller goals and then you need your rudder. You need your rudder and your rudder is your intention. So, your intention is what keeps you pointed in the right direction when the wind and the currents and the storms at sea throw you off. So, you know, you want to build a company, you want to get to.

this year's plan, this is going to be the revenue goal or whatever it is, this is the product shipment goal. So you have that goal. You say by the end of the year we want to be here, there and whatever. But you know, to get there you translate that. You need a team, you need people, you need everybody to be productive. So now you're having a one-on-one with a teammate or an employee or a supervisor, whatever it is.

You want to be clear on your intention in that meeting. It could be with a customer. You're trying to build rapport or whatever. So you can't be thinking, oh, I want to meet my quota for the year of a million dollars of revenue. No, I've got this customer prospect in front of me, and my intention is to build rapport with him, to understand his needs, so that I can come back with a proposal to un-

Yosi Amram

Explain how my product fits his needs so you know I need my long-term goal for the year of how much sales I want to make but moment to moment I need to be clear on my intention and return to that and this is a challenge because we're bombarded with stimuli with emails and text messages and all the stuff and So being present with who and what is in front of us is the greatest

thing we can give to ourselves and that person. There's nothing worse like if right now, I'm here with you, right? And if I was thinking about my goal is to sell so many tens of thousands of copies of my book, that's not gonna help my interaction with you. I need to be present with you, listen to your questions, think my intention is to connect with you, answer you clearly. And so my goal is...

is set aside. It's really my intention in the moment that matters to my presence.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, let's finish this up by talking about the last two dimensions with our truth, which are truth and wisdom. And one of the things you say about truth is that our capacity to respond skillfully and adequately to any situation is only possible to the extent that we're open to the truth of what's happening both within ourselves and externally. Full engagement with truth in and of itself requires openness. And what I think is far more challenging for a lot of people is

Yosi Amram

Uh huh.

Srini Rao

being open to what's happening externally, because cognitive biases get in the way. For example, somebody might have heard something you said and shut this off simply because of confirmation bias. They might have disliked something because of you. And this is something I've come to recognize in my own self. And sometimes the truth of what's happening externally is unpleasant. It's not necessarily what you wanna hear. And if there's one thing that I learned from my mentor who was incredibly tough on me at times was that

He would tell me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. And even though what I wanted to hear felt good, what I needed to hear was good in the long run.

Yosi Amram

Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, you know, in some sense, it's obvious, you know, if I open my eyes and I look around and I see the wall in my room.

painted, you know, let's say pink and I don't like it being painted pink. And I say, no, it's not pink, but I really like it yellow. I have to acknowledge that it's currently pink before I can do anything to make it yellow the way I like it. But if I'm like in denial of what it is, then I can't respond to the situation. Now this sounds silly and simple minded, but.

As you point out, our egos like to be right. And so we have a confirmation bias. And if some of the truth or reality or facts were presented, you know, don't sit well with us, then we turn away. We don't want to listen because it shakes our sense of self and the security that we feel. Like I know the truth and I'm right.

And this is a constant challenge to our ego, is our need to be right. And that's kind of what underlies this confirmation bias that we have. Now, good science, if you study the philosophy of science, science progresses by refuting preexisting theories, you know. I mean, there was Newtonian physics and.

Everything was working, but then there were all these things that double split experiment and all these anomalies that didn't fill that truth and some scientists kind of like well There's a problem that can't be a true experiment But when you they took that into account then they come up with a more better theory that explains more so we progress by refuting old theories and but

Yosi Amram

We don't like to do it because we like to be right and it shakes us up to not know. Oh, well, Newtonian physics doesn't work. So, you know, we're not as smart and knowledgeable as we'd like to think we are.

Srini Rao

down. Well, let's finish this up by talking about intuition. Intuition is one of those things that also I think is, you know, used a lot as a buzzword, completely misunderstood by most people, myself included. I remember I had Rebecca Heiss here wrote a book called Instinct. And I will ask you a question very similar to the one I asked, you know, her, you know, there's always this sort of advice to, you know, follow your intuition, follow your instinct. And my question was, what if your instinct sucks, but your ego is too

big to recognize that it does. So same question as it relates to intuition, because I think that intuition seems always to be one of those very nebulous things that is hard to define.

Yosi Amram

Yeah, well, I mean, I think intuition is important, but, you know, it's also doing the right analysis and triangulating. So, you know, we have all kinds of impulses and how to discern where they're coming from. And if it's just an impulse, is just an ego, is it just convenient? You know, and that requires sort of...

discernment and judgment and a sense of integrity. And it's a big topic. One of the things that I, there's a lot of wisdom in our bodies and intelligence. And if we learn how to tune in, and then we can find out whether, quote unquote, that instinct, that intuition is really coming from a deep place within us, from our higher self.

Or is it coming from something more egoic and we tend to feel more in alignment, more spacious, more open when it's coming from something deeper and truer that is with integrity, with our essence, with our, you know, our deeper truth. So, yeah, it's not like, okay, my instinct says this. It's like,

You know, you have to do the analysis beforehand and that is, you know, so you're triangulating and not just blindly following your instinct. I hope I'm making sense.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, I the triangulation thing reminded me of Ray Dalio's book principles, where he talks about that a whole idea where, you know, he's trying to make a decision, he gets insight, it has something to do with him having to have a surgery. And he goes to three different doctors and by the third doctor, he finds a way to like, you know, he gets three different opinions, it turns out the third doctor was spot on and he avoids like years of hell because he was willing to triangulate. Like that always stayed with me.

Yosi Amram

Uh-huh.

Yosi Amram

Yeah, yeah, that's a good story. It's a good story. So yeah, the decision is important and you'd get three opinions and three doctors and synthesize them. And then, but you know, as I talk in the book, there are ways to connect to our higher self, our future self, track our body, see if where we're leaning is, it generates a sense of alignment and openness.

or a contraction which says, oh, we're not entirely at peace with this decision. Some part of us is not aligned, not resonant with that. So yeah, so it's our mind, the intelligence of our body, the intelligence of our higher self that we can bring together, particularly if it's an important decision. Now, if you're choosing between vanilla or chocolate, you know, you can just do whatever you feel like.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, this has been really insightful and thought provoking as I expected it would be. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Yosi Amram

that makes someone unmistakably creative.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Yosi Amram

Oh, well, I think someone that has the courage and the inspiration to be their unique authentic self, to live their purpose and their calling, their destiny, and, you know, where they are wholeheartedly devoted to their.

to their craft, to that calling. When we have that passionate, wholehearted devotion and we live in integrity with that calling, then we're unstoppable because it's not about our ego anymore. We reduce ourselves to zero in a sense. And our self-esteem, our self-worth is not...

on the line. So all our energy, all our focus is on that aspiration, that calling, and that expression of our unique authentic self. Everybody else is taken, so you know, might as well be our unique authentic self, and live in alignment and devotion to that.

Srini Rao

Yeah, amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your book, your work, and everything else that you're up to?

Yosi Amram

Oh, thank you, thank you. So I have a website, as you might expect. It's simply yosiamram.net, as my name is spelled, y-o-s-i-a-m-r-a-m. Again, two M's like Mary, dot net. And that's kind of the Umbrella website. There's a...

There's a page for the book. There's a page for free events called Awakening Spiritual Intelligence that happens once a month. There's a bunch of resources. There's a link to a website that offers free assessments for spiritual intelligence where people can get the profile of their strengths and opportunities to grow with tips along the way.

the dimensions, the dimensions we mentioned. So anyway, that's kind of the gateway place to connect with me in yoseamram.net. And it's been delightful. Thank you for your questions and curiosity. And it sounds like you've tapped into some amazing people and resources. I'm honored to be here be in this conversation with you.

Srini Rao

 can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.