>>Female Presenter: Thanks everyone for tuning
in today, whether you're on video conference
or live here at the campus.
Couple logistics before we get started.
My name is Rachel O'Meara.
I'm a Wellness Champion for the Optimize Your
Life series.
I work out of San Francisco, but as part of
the Optimize Your Life series, this is a global
initiative that helps to keep all Googlers
healthy, whether it's mental or physical types
of health.
So, we're really excited to have Mark Thornton
here today to talk.
There will also be time at the end for questions.
So for anyone who has a question in the audience,
you can use the mic that will be in the center
aisle, or if you're on video conference, if
you can wait 'till the end that would be great.
And we'll take your question that Mark will
repeat.
So, a couple things to talk about just before
I hand the microphone over to Mark.
There is a couple things to be aware of as
this is one of the talks of the Health series.
You can find out a lot about what's happening
for future talks at go slash O-Y-L.
And they also have a Google+ page you can
follow.
There's also, anyone who's interested, can
also sign up to be a fellow Wellness Champion.
And all that means is you're an advocate to
help bring people in to speak that you feel
would be worthy to come in and share their
insights.
And you can sign up at go slash goto slash
wellness champions.
So, first a bit about Mark.
A couple points I want to highlight.
And I have to admit, this is not how I would
have introduced him when I met him at Burning
Man last year.
[laughter]
But it's worth plugging.
So, Mark is the former Chief Operating Officer
at JP Morgan private bank.
And he's also the best-selling author of "Meditation
in a New York Minute."
We do have some copies of that available here
just for five dollars.
We do have a limited supply.
So if we run out, they are taking names for
future purchases that, I think, we'll get
the book in about two weeks.
And that's for the Mountain View folks.
And Mark also works with clients like Wharton
Business School, Harvard, and INSEAD.
So without further ado, please welcome Mark
Thornton.
[applause]
>>Mark Thornton: Oh, good.
Thank you.
Can you all hear me OK?
OK, great.
Thank you.
So, a quick question.
How many of you are brand new to meditation?
Just raise your hand.
Wonderful.
How many of you have a very serious, rigorous,
committed daily practice?
Great.
How many of you tried meditation before and
found it just incredibly frustrating?
Great.
Thank you.
So, my name is Mark Thornton.
And really, the purpose of today is to share
with you as much information as I can.
I think when I was 26 years old and I'm from
Australia originally and I was in London,
and I would describe myself as a hyped-up,
caffeine-addicted, stress junkie.
I was so stressed that I was grinding my teeth
at night and I had to wear a mouth guard.
I also started to lose my hair.
So, I was 26 and thinking, "I'm gonna be bald
and toothless by 30."
[laughter]
I'm glad you all laughed at that.
Nothing wrong with bald and toothless, but
it really prompted quite a deep inquiring.
At the same time in my life, my father had
just been diagnosed with cancer.
And he linked very much the last three years
of job stress with his illness.
So, I was gonna be bald and toothless by 30.
There was a chance I might not make it to
30.
So, I went on a particular search.
And my search had to end up in India.
But there, I was passionate about trying to
find spiritual techniques that I could work
with every single day.
So, as a COO, I didn't have five minutes to
spend with my girlfriend, let alone low disposition,
mantras, candles, ambient whale music, all
that sort of stuff.
So I was very fortunate.
I met a teacher and he taught me practices
that I could do anywhere, anytime, and that
were really as powerful as taking retreats
and living in the Himalayas and those sort
of things.
So, I want to share as much of that with you
as possible.
Does that sound interesting?
No one wants to talk about tantric sex or
something like that?
[laughter]
That's the advanced course and it's very,
very expensive.
But fun.
Very fun, too.
[laughter]
So, I come bearing some good news because
meditation has gone from weird and funky and
we now have on your side some really incredible
examples of institutions that are on board
with this revolution.
So, I teach at places like INSEAD.
I teach at Wharton Business School.
I teach at Harvard Law School.
Elite firms like McKinsey & Co. are now introducing
meditation as a key practice for associate
partners and partners.
If you look at the top five cancer hospitals
in the US, all of them mention meditation,
not as a cure, but as a complementary alternative
practice.
It's the same with the top five heart hospitals.
And in terms of science--I won't go into this
too much--but we have like a thousand plus
studies on the scientific benefits of meditation.
And I'm almost a bit embarrassed because I
was asked by the US Army to come up with a
list of the benefits of meditation and the
science behind it.
And as I was compiling all the data, I felt
like a fantasist.
Like, I was saying, "Well, not only can it
reduce stress, it helps you with decision-making,
[chuckles] reduces your mental activity, helps
you with focus.
It helps you with all this stuff."
Pages and pages of scientific benefits.
So, there's a lot of stuff there.
Typically, what I teach in companies, the
results of staff and teams typically get is
the capacity to do more with less.
They have an idea of better resilience, a
greater capacity to focus on what's really,
really important to them.
Also, the sense of a master mindset, like
no matter what throws at you, you have the
capacity, the poise, the balance, the alignment
to really cope with it in a masterful way.
If you don't do this, it's more of the same--a
sense of job fatigue, a sense of the in-tray
is too, too big and I can't source it, complete
energy depletion.
So, this is some of the benefits.
There was a famous study by Towers Perrin.
It reviewed 90 thousand employees for different
companies, different industries.
And they found out that 20 percent of them
were fully engaged, going above and beyond.
Forty percent were enrolled, which means capable
but not really at peak performance.
And 38 percent were disengaged and disenchanted.
So, it means that if this was a football team,
two would be really engaged, nine are not,
and four are either on the sidelines or looking
the other way.
So, I wanna share with you some signs.
And the signs are emerging and they are becoming
more and more encouraging.
The signs used to be confusing.
[laughter]
But we have some really interesting things.
Check this out.
From Harvard Business Review, look at what
is the number one top article that people
were reading.
"A Roadmap to a Life that Matters."
And increasingly, peak performance leaders
and teams are focusing on questions of not
just delivery, not just execution, not just
efficiency, but how do you create a life that
matters for you and your team and your company
and the planet.
The other exciting news you have on your side
is a strange ally, a strange institution of
the US Army.
The US Army has just introduced a program--it's
been going on for a year and a half--and it's
called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.
With more than a decade at war, the Army is
finding that soldiers are coming back and
PTSD is a really, really big issue for them.
So, the Army has now redefined what it means
to be Army strong.
So to be Army strong, they're defined as five
key domains--family, physical, social, emotional,
and spiritual.
So every member of the Armed Forces is going
through a psychometric testing to identify
each soldier's capacity in depth and strength
in those five different domains.
The remedial 25 percent are given additional
training to boost up their strength.
And the top five percent become teachers.
I saw this when I was teaching at Fort Hood,
which is the largest Army base in the US.
I was teaching a leadership team.
And the guy showed me this and I said, "I've
been trying to share this message to Wall
Street people for years."
And here, the US Army is coming out and saying
soldiers need to have emotional intelligence.
Soldiers need to have spiritual dimension
as a key part of how they define their strength.
So, you probably know this, but one of the
things I think when I talk with top teams
is your next step at Google, your next outbreak
of top performance, it's not gonna come from
working harder.
If you're at Google or JP Morgan, you are
already working more hours than you can possibly
handle.
So, working harder is not gonna get it.
And the New York Times wrote an article that
said that the cost of job stress in terms
of absenteeism and lost productivity, health
costs, was more than a trillion dollars annually.
The National Institute of Occupational Health
and Safety said that the health costs alone,
which means people actually end up in hospital
or seeing a medical practitioner, is 200 billion
dollars.
That's roughly the economic cost of Hurricane
Katrina every year.
Another study said that 50 percent of Americans
suffer from anxiety.
And there was a great long-standing study
from the State of Massachusetts Department
of Education Health and Welfare, which said
that America's number one killer, which is
heart attack, happens most frequently on one
day of the week.
Have a guess what day that is.
>>Audience: Monday.
>>Mark Thornton: Very good.
And not only one particular day, but most
frequently at one specific time on that day.
Have a guess what time that is.
[audience murmurs in response]
>>Mark Thornton: Nine AM.
Exactly.
So work, literally, is killing us.
Which means we've mastered two speeds--fast
and crashing.
[laughter]
The second myth that I tell every top leader
is the myth that stress equals results.
This is a big one.
And I was talking with the managing director
from a pharmaceutical company in London last
week.
And she argued this point with me.
It turns out, I found out that she's actually
on six month's leave because of burn-out.
This myth is so prevalent that even if you
have hit the wall and you're burnt out, that
you're still addicted to this fantasy that
stress creates results.
So stress, the definition of stress, is a
physical, chemical, or emotional factor that
causes bodily or mental tension and may be
a factor in disease causation.
Awesome.
You don't want this stuff to be what gets
you your results.
The opposite is true.
The less stress you have as a peak performer,
more happiness, more results, better health.
And the key insight for this is if you speak
to any peak performing athlete, you say, "Tell
me about the link between stress and results,"
they'll look at you strange and say, "Well,
there is no correlation."
Or, they try and reduce the stress.
I'll give you an example.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is the
coach for the Swedish Winter Olympic team,
Runne Gustafson, and we did some trainings
together.
And he said that he trained specifically cross-country
skiers.
What he noticed was when he reduced the signs
and symptoms of stress, lower heart rate,
lower respiratory rate, those sort of things,
his skiers could ski further and faster.
Now, the idea is if you're already at peak
performance, you've already got enough effort
on top of that.
The only people I know who need more stress
is maybe the United States Postal Service.
[laughter]
They probably need more stress.
[laughter] But not folks at Google.
And the mistake is always been that--.
It's like looking at a car.
And people have just noticed that when the
car is revving and there's a lot of effort
with the engine, there's a lot of exhaust
coming out.
And I've concluded that the exhaust is running
the car.
It's like if you're studying leadership and
you go and you peer into the toilet of a leader,--
[laughter]
and you stick your finger in and you go--.
[Mark Thornton sniffs]
This is what's driving the leader.
It's not.
Stress is a by-product.
It's a waste product.
You have complete permission now to reduce
it.
The mistake is thinking that this is driving
this.
So, what gets results from peak performing
athletes is not effort, but optimum effort.
If you think about a tennis player at Wimbledon,
the difference between a winning shot and
a losing shot is infinitesimally small.
So, it's that absolute optimum effort.
Too much effort--losing shot.
So, it's optimum effort we're going through.
And I'll talk more about that in a moment.
The other myth is that meditation is too hard.
We're gonna break that myth for you.
So, meditation is.
So, I also just wanna with you, before I get
into the definition of meditation, is that
I wanna share a story about my--I think it
was probably the worst day in my career at
JP Morgan.
I'd just been made COO.
We had bought a bank called Robert Fleming
in London.
And pretty much it was a disaster.
We were exactly a year over schedule--a year
behind schedule.
We were ten million pounds over budget.
And the portfolio management trading team
that we'd brought in, they hated us.
They were a conservative English boutique
thing.
And I thought the brash Americans were taking
them over.
So, 40 percent of their portfolio managers,
including the people who are driving the majority
of the revenue, wanted to leave.
So, that was my first day as COO.
So what I did was I took action.
I called meetings.
I shouted when I needed to shout.
I did stuff.
But then, someone came to me and said, "How
can you be so calm?"
And I realized with a shock that I actually
was.
That actually, after years of meditation practice,
what I'd learned is to take action from that
place of center.
Now, I wasn't asleep under my desk.
I wasn't in a Lotus position and I wasn't
avoiding things.
I didn't ask people to light candles.
I used to work on the training room floor.
So, it's a busy environment.
So, I share that because there's a real way
in which these practices I wanna share with
you can become an integral part of your every
day.
So, what is meditation?
So, meditation is the effortless resting of
your attention on your center, on your core,
on your heart.
And by heart, I don't mean as in the sense
of your physical heart--the muscle.
I don't mean it in terms of some Eastern practices
about the heart's center.
I mean it in terms of the phrase, "the heart
of the matter."
To get to the heart of the matter is to get
to the essence.
So, to explain it, I'll share with you a model
of--.
And this isn't specifically true.
It's more like a metaphor.
But it was created two and a half thousand
years ago by an Indian sage called Patanjali.
And he shared this model of how you are made
up as a person.
I'm not sure if you can see this up there,
but--.
OK.
So, this is you, a badly drawn you.
But he said this represents your physical
body.
And this is quite a dense quality.
You can see it.
You can touch it.
And this is the outside of the body.
And this is the inside.
What also seems to be true is that if you
close your eyes, what you're aware of is there's
another layer of who you are, which is thoughts.
And deeper than that now is there's another
layer of feeling.
And there's other different layers.
But as Patanjali said as you drop deeper and
deeper inside now, he said there was a place
that you end up that was that he called the
center.
Now, everyone in this room had many, many
experiences of the place called center, many,
many times.
You've experienced when you've gone for a
walk in nature.
You've experienced it when you've been relaxing
watching the sunset.
Maybe it's an inspiring art.
Maybe you've written a beautiful book.
It's looking at the eyes of the beloved.
It's holding a child--that first gaze you
have.
Maybe it's like that total absorption in a
task that you love doing.
So, I just wanna ask you when you experience
those, what are those qualities that you experience
when you experience that center?
Let's just call them out.
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: Love.
>>Mark Thornton: Love.
Beautiful.
Love.
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Peace.
>>Mark Thornton: What else?
Wonder.
Gorgeous.
Thank you.
What else?
Warmth?
Thank you.
Yes.
What else?
Presence?
Beautiful.
Thank you.
What else?
>>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER#3: Tranquility.
>>Mark Thornton: Tranquility.
Thank you.
So, it is this body's passionate belief that
what the world needs most now is leaders and
people who can access these qualities wherever
they are.
And this, in my humble opinion, is business
critical, mission critical.
If you have access to these qualities that
are already inside you, then nothing has to
be manufactured or created.
Then, how you lead will be radically, radically
different.
A leader who can connect with the quality
and frequency of love, he will lead his or
her team differently.
You will ask different questions.
You will have different visions about the
future for your team, your company, your planet.
So, all of meditation is, is simply pathways
to directly access this unchanging deep part
of who you really are.
And these pathways that are Buddhist, Zen,
Hindu, Christian, different practices, breath,
body, mantra, tantra, all these different
paths are simply doorways into the direct
essence of who you are.
Does that make sense?
[chuckles] Great.
So, I've completely lost where I am.
So, the first thing is this sounds very nice
and wonderful, but how do you build that into
your every day?
So, the first thing is to, what I call, O-W-F-P,
which is the optimal work flow pattern.
And there really are some incredibly dazzling
slides, which portray this very beautifully.
[chuckles] We just don't have access to them
at the moment.
>>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER#4: It's coming.
>>Mark Thornton: So, I wanna show you an example
of really how this can happen.
And the explicit invitation here is that everyone
in this room has at least an hour every day
that you can be practicing.
Now, does that sound like a lot?
Good.
It is a lot.
But in the "Meditation in a New York Minute,"
what we're doing is we are doing an hour a
day cumulatively, not consecutively.
And what I mean by that is taking two seconds
by the water cooler and breathe differently.
As you're walking from meeting to meeting,
take using those times to shift your breath.
When you're standing in line at Starbuck's,
rather than over-thinking, over processing,
over-analyzing everything, just listening
to your own mental code of spam, there's a
way in which you can use those moments, which
I call a "dead time" to really take time to
connect very deeply.
And the reason why I'm so excited to share
that is because for years I struggled with
trying to do 20 minutes in the morning, 20
minutes at nighttime.
And it was just--.
I couldn't do it.
So, I kept beating myself up that I wasn't
deep enough.
I wasn't committed enough.
I didn't have the willpower.
It turned out, I just had the wrong set of
practices.
And my excitement is that when I could do
these micro doses cumulatively up to an hour
a day, that was as profound as sitting in
a cave.
It was as transformative, it was as easy to
access these qualities.
And the reason is that the mind, which is
this code which keeps producing output--and
some of it's genius, most of it's average,
and a lot of it is quite destructive and limiting
and real spam--it needs to be that constant
interruption throughout the day is what the
mind needs.
Twenty minutes in the morning is great.
You get peaceful.
And then you have like, 15 hours of sheer
adrenaline rush, caffeine-fueled anxiety.
And 20 minutes at night.
But in this way, we're really trying to break
this up.
So, just a visual example of this is the old
approach to doing your job and leading was
Hamburger Hill.
We're gonna be like the US Marines.
We're gonna take it at any cost.
The new approach is finding a moment of center.
She's a karate person.
I don't know why.
But, yeah.
Taking a moment of calm.
And from that place of center, then you can
take massive action.
Then, you have perspective to move a different
range of movements.
You also become Asian, strangely.
[laughter]
Which is--.
I don't know why that is.
Really the production values here are not
good.
[laughter]
So, moment of calm.
Lots of action.
And the key thing is returning to that center,
to that place of calm.
So, it's not an "either/or," but it's an "and"
in both.
I wanna show you an example of a 70-pound
pit bull versus a cat to show how you can
have alignment and center in the midst of
intense activity.
[laughter]
How cool was that with the little paws?
But she's completely composed.
So, what this means for you is-- this O-W-F-P--means
that you're continually interrupting and continually
making breaks.
So, there are practices that we can do when
you're talking to someone, you can find a
way to be more grounded.
When you're presenting in a meeting, you can
find a way to become more centered.
Or, as walking to and from meetings, you can
use that rather than just to mentally rehearse
a whole lot of bad stuff, you can introduce
new programs, new codes that are more supportive
of this type of quality.
I apologize to dog lovers.
That's that.
The other really important thing is with stress,
you are only ever stressed by three things.
That's it.
Period.
The first one is you don't have the skills.
So, you're a newly appointed manager and you
haven't been trained on how to delegate, how
to do feedback reviews.
The second thing is you just don't have the
resources.
So, you have the skill, but you don't have
the money or time.
For example, with people, to help you deliver
it.
But most importantly is the mindset, the values,
the beliefs to really deliver on that.
That's the only three things.
Like with sports, the reason why I love the
last set so much is you can have people with
the same experience, same age, background
experience, same skill set, same resources,
radically different results because different
values, mindsets, and beliefs.
And this is one of the things that McKinsey
is really teaching a lot on now is how leaders
can mathematically identify and calibrate
their beliefs and mindsets and work out what
are the brakes and what are the accelerators
to performance.
[pause]
Meditate an hour a day every day.
Cumulative, not consecutive.
So, to really help you, I want to share with
you some meditation accelerators.
Like, things that you can--.
If you wanted to take this invitation, there
are three really interesting things to do.
Number one is to find a teacher.
Find a teacher.
Find a teacher.
Find a teacher.
Everything I write about in my book and on
my tapes and CDs, everything I've learned
largely has come from a teacher.
You can't learn Judo through a book.
You can't learn singing through a DVD.
The most powerful transformative experiences
to really accelerate is finding a teacher.
The next big one is to create in offices,
circles of practice.
I hope you're noticing the circles, Google+.
Yeah.
[Mark Thornton laughs]
But the key here is, and people are doing
this at the stock exchange in New York and
I've set up crews of people who do this.
And it's just staff get together.
You can play a tape.
You can play a DVD of a guided instruction
or a teacher just sharing a practice with
you.
Very, very simple.
The trick is that there's no such thing as
meditation.
There are many--.
One of my teachers said, "There are as many
meditations as there are recipes for food."
They're just organized along different paths--Mexican
food, Italian food.
So, rather than have a group that's on meditation,
find the group that you love that loves doing
mindfulness.
Set up a circle that loves doing mantras.
Set up a circle that loves to--not tantra.
Don't do a tantra circle.
[audience chuckles] Set up circles that are
involved with breath stuff.
Start up circles which are based on focus.
Finding the right practice for you and getting
your pod, your crew of people together is
really important.
The third one is to really experiment 'cause
there are thousands.
Find the one that most moves your heart.
Find the one that most calls to you, that
most has an impact for you.
So, the number one block to people enjoying
practice is they are doing a mantra practice
and it's the wrong tool for them.
They're doing a mindfulness practice and they're
bored out of their mind.
It's just the wrong tool.
So, I'm trying to encourage you to think there
are literally thousands of practices that
you can do.
And I only write about 19 in my book.
But there are lots.
And a teacher can really be able to connect
with you and identify "this is the practice
for you.
Try this one."
The fourth one is mastering emotions and triggers.
Now, this is a slightly--.
This is a stereotypical view that some people
have of men when it comes to emotions.
They tend to think men have five emotions,
largely which are, or, or, winning, sports,
or Brooklyn Decker.
[laughter]
Now, clearly that's unfair and it's untrue.
But any idea how many emotions there are in
this experience of being human?
Have a guess how many emotions there are.
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #5: Ninety-three.
>>Mark Thornton: Ninety-three.
[chuckles]
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #6: Ten.
>>Mark Thornton: Ten.
Spoken like a true man.
It's ten, that's it.
Done.
[laughter]
There's 400.
Four hundred human emotions and combinations
of emotions.
So, in leadership teams, the power of meditation
is you get to be very exquisitely aware of
this inner domain here of feelings and become
more sensitive of how they can serve you and
hinder you.
So, moving from emotional intelligence is
to emotional mastery.
And that means awareness, management, and
particularly being aware of what triggers
you.
So, if you're in a business meeting and you
find that there are people, maybe people that
are really triggering you, there's ways to
deal with that.
Anyone heard of this guy?
Since he did the rebel yell.
He was just--Howard Dean--who just couldn't
contain the emotions and it leaked out and
it really damaged him.
This is Mike Tyson after he's fallen from
1998, his peak.
He was really--.
This was him.
He was walking into some event and he was
so triggered by something that a distant spectator
shouted, he went on for about four minutes
just shouting at this guy.
And that's not emotional mastery.
George McEnroe.
So you may be wondering, "Well, if there's
400 emotions, and I'm a guy particularly and
I thought there were only five, how do I start
to master that?"
And luckily, there is an app for that.
[laughter]
So, the app is called Awareness.
It lists a hundred emotions and different
moods.
And I've worked with the creator of this to
come up with different meditation practices
that are linked to the different couplings
of moods.
It’s very cool, actually.
At the end of each day or hour or week or
month, you get a pie chart.
And it gives you cartography of your emotional
universe--your emotional journey through the
week or the month.
This person is clearly enlightened.
They've got peace, love, and compassion.
Mine's not like that.
[pause]
So, I wanted to finish really with a story.
And thinking about things like focus and superior
focus, and in meditation, we're fascinated
with intention.
We're fascinated with what drives focus.
And the experience has really been on meaning--the
reason why we're here.
And I was at Fort Hood and I was teaching
some soldiers down there.
And I asked one of the soldiers privately,
I said, "What was it like being in Afghanistan?"
And he told me this story.
And he said that he was a Staff Sergeant in
charge of a platoon.
He was there in Afghanistan for two years.
He said his base was at the bottom of a valley.
And he said every day there were sniper shots,
but they were very well concealed.
They knew they were safe.
However, every platoon leader had to take
their team to man an outpost that was up a
very, very steep hill that was 70, 80 degrees
steep.
It took four hours to walk from the base camp
to the very, very top of the mountain.
So, he walked his team up there.
And on the third day, one of his soldiers
got too close to the sandbags, to the perimeter
of the base.
It was right at the top of this mountain.
And a shot rang out.
And the bullet went through the soldier's
wrist, through this side, out his stomach,
and through his other wrist.
And I mention that because that was how close
the Taliban was for that amount of power to
reach.
So, I said to this soldier, I said, "So, Staff
Sergeant.
So, what did you do?"
So, he said he dragged the guy away from the
side, put him into the back where there was
a medic.
And he said the medic was very, very young.
It was his second week there.
Very inexperienced.
He was making basically a mess of it.
The guy was in agony.
And at that moment, shots rang out from the
entirety of the perimeter.
They were surrounded.
First thing the Taliban did was they took
out the communication towers.
So, there was suddenly no way they could communicate
to the base that they needed reinforcements,
or for help.
And even if they could, it was a four hour
walk, hike, to get to them.
So I said to the Staff Sergeant, "So, what
did you do?"
And he said he could hear the explosion, he
could smell the gunpowder, the fire that was
there.
And he said, "I told my men three things."
And he said there was no use sugar-coating
it.
He could really see the fear in the men's
eyes.
And he said, "I told them three things.
First, this looks like it's it.
Second, it's been a pleasure serving with
you.
Third, go out and be your bravest."
[pause]
And they did.
And for 45 minutes, they fought the Taliban.
And there was a French fighter pilot that
was flying low over the position and buzzed
the position just for fun.
Took fire from the Taliban.
Turned around and dropped some bombs.
And that was it.
The question I leave you with is this Staff
Sergeant wasn't fighting for America, liberty,
freedom, any of that stuff.
It was his team.
So, how far will your people follow you?
How far will your followers, your clients,
how far will they follow you?
What's their commitment?
What's your "why?"
Why are you in this building?
What's the big, big reason you are here?
And the more you are plugged into the deep
reasons for being human, the deep reasons
for being here, the more energy, the more
clarity, the more poise.
Thank you.
[applause]
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #7: Could you possibly
talk a little bit more about your own personal
choices to be in this corporate world to do
what you're doing now?
>>Mark Thornton: Sure.
Sure.
So, it definitely wasn't the money.
To be honest, I had an experience when I was--.
I'm gonna assume we're all friends here and
I'm just talking to my friends rather than
presenting.
So, I had an experience when I was chairing
a meeting of the board of directors at JP
Morgan.
And in that meeting, using some of these practices,
because I was chairing it, I could introduce
someone and I had some dead time.
So, I was doing some of these practices that
you can do with your eyes open, fully aware
of the room.
And I was really shocked because I looked
up and experienced that the room was filled
with like--.
Like, I was aware of like the energy that
made up the room.
So, in some teachings, it's called like, seeing
divine light, being able to see energy everywhere.
And I was completely shocked because there
I was at JP Morgan running a meeting and at
the same time, it's like, externally I was
like, "Thanks very much.
Now, we're gonna introduce Mr. Smith.
He's gonna talk to us about Luxembourg sea
cabs and it's very incredibly boring."
And internally, I was like--.
[laughter]
"I'd like to introduce the next speaker who's
even more boring than the first."
[laughter]
Please don't make me do that visual gag again.
But that's the moment that I got that no matter
where you are, there is your center.
No matter what you're doing, you carry the
deepest part of who you are everywhere.
And it's accessible at any time.
And the myth that 'cause I have a job or a
big to-do list that that separates me from
the divine, from source, from energy--it's
just not true.
So I felt--to answer your question--very deeply
called that I felt I have to share this message.
I really have to share this message with people.
Because for decades, I'd struggled with it.
Spirituality was the mountaintop.
It was the robes, the beads, the teacher.
It's not true.
It's just not true.
My wife jokes that--.
I met my wife after I left JP Morgan.
And she said, "I met you after you had money
and power and status."
So, it's true.
[laughter]
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #8: Hey, Mark.
Thanks again for talking to us today.
So, a follow-up question to that.
Is it possible to integrate this type of practice
and exist in this type of context?
>>Mark Thornton: Oh, totally.
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #8: So many of us focus
on delivering, right, in the there and then,
in the future.
Or, we're reviewing performance of the past.
But are we able to really be present and whole
as what's in the center there in that orb,
in this type of environment in an ongoing
basis?
>>Mark Thornton: So, I left JP Morgan, but
I'd been doing these practices for a long
time.
So, it wasn't that I left and I had these
spiritual experiences.
I had these spiritual experiences when I was
on the trading room floor.
So, the way it works, I think, is that the
more you do these practices, the more you
access it.
And eventually, something interesting happens.
These qualities start to--.
It's like you're building a pathway, like
a pipeline.
And eventually, these qualities start to flow
out.
So, it's a balance of being present in the
moment, taking action, dreaming of the future,
envisioning, being present--it's that whole
thing.
But everything comes from the center.
So, it's learning that being centered, taking
action, returning.
And that returning again is very important.
Very important.
Thank you.
>>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #9: Hi, Mark.
Thanks for coming.
I did read your book.
And I thought one of the most compelling parts
was just in the beginning about leading from
your heart.
I would love if you could just talk a little
bit about that.
What does that mean?
How can I think about as someone who may have
not attempted that, how can I start working
from the heart?
>>Mark Thornton: Yeah, great.
So, leading from the heart was our way to
try and describe living from the deepest essence
of who you are.
And there's a really interesting practice
that I wanted to share.
And do you have that experience, you can drive
a car and you can talk on a cell phone?
Yeah?
You can sit on your laptop, talk on the phone,
tweet, glance--.
I mean, you can do a lot of stuff, right?
So, we all have the skills to have foreground
awareness and background awareness.
So, one of the powerful ways to find the core
of your heart is to rest your attention effortlessly
in the center of your chest.
And you can do that whilst you talk.
You can do that whilst you're running meetings.
You can do that whilst you're walking in the
same way that you can talk to your mom on
the phone whilst reading the newspaper.
So, that is a way.
And where energy--.
Attention goes to where energy--.
Attention flows where energy--.
Energy flows where attention goes.
What you notice, you magnify.
And what you worship, you become.
So, you can move about on this through your
daily life whilst keeping some of your attention
anchored in the center of your heart.
It's like--.
The analogy is like if I'm standing on the
circumference there and I'm facing outwards
and the center is behind me, it's far enough
away where I can reach out and connect to
the center and still be present.
But always returning to that.
And there's times when, in work, I need to
drop this and be completely--.
That's really important, too, to know when
to let go and to do your work.
Yeah, so it's just a reaching back connecting.
And sometimes, you have to look directly at
the center.
And sometimes, eventually, you can actually
stand in the center of your essence and talk
from there.
And then you pop out again and it's that kind
of quixotic dance.
But ultimately, it makes a difference.
[pause]
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #10: When I saw the
title on this talk, I thought I was going
to get some techniques.
This was more of a description of strategy
and not technique.
Can you do anything in such sharp bursts of
time?
How do you know that you're making progress?
>>Mark Thornton: Sure.
Great question.
Thank you.
So, the idea is to pick a practice.
Do it as frequently as you can.
You need to give yourself some time as to
how impactful it is.
There are some techniques you try and it's
instantly like a sweet kind of nectar.
Like, there's a sense of, "Ah, this is like
returning home again."
And there's other which are creating actually
more mental confusion and more internal dialogue
and more sense of frustration.
That's just the wrong technique.
So, I'm not an advocate of pick a practice,
try it for three months, go through turmoil,
because my intuitive sense is that your heart
knows what it needs.
And it can recognize a practice that is most
rich for it.
And anything else is too painful.
So, you have to try it.
See how it goes.
Don't bash your head against the wall.
It could just mean the wrong practice.
Is that helpful?
Thank you.
>>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER#11: I'm curious as
to your own experience growing and the experience
of your clients, what they find the most challenging
thing in making that transition from life
before and then life moving towards the ability
to be able to be in that moment in its state.
Cumulatively.
.
>>Mark Thornton: What would you most like
to know about that journey?
>>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER#11: What would I
most like to know?
>>Mark Thornton: Yeah.
>>FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER#11: I guess what
people typically find the most challenging.
Is it doing the right practice or what have
you seen?
>>Mark Thornton: I would say the biggest challenge
is--.
The biggest challenge is to experience the
kindness of what it is to be human because
as soon as you turn within, you're faced with
a whole lot of stuff that many people are
not familiar with dealing with.
I can guarantee you in meditation, you'll
become more aware of parts of you that are
dark, parts of you that are shadow, parts
of you that are uncomfortable, as well as
parts that are light and glorious.
And the biggest temptation is to close down
and move away from things that are actually
them, but are held in shadow.
And people structure their lives not wanting
to look at that stuff, you know?
It's like, [chuckles] "No, I'm looking there."
There's a lot of stuff that--.
And that's where the freedom is--when you
can start to realize that we're human and
we have light and we have dark.
And that moment to moment practice of kindness
with yourself for who you are and for your
experience.
A lot of people think meditation is, "I'm
gonna run to the light and wear white clothes
and be holy."
And you're always a bliss junkie for many
years, I think.
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #12: Mark, so thank
you for coming in.
>>Mark Thornton: My pleasure.
>>MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER #12: And delivering
that message.
So, having brought up in India as a teenager,
I was lucky to have stumbled across what you
mean with meditation and I agree.
So, anchoring, principles, pillars in my life.
But in talking to gurus, the dichotomy that
comes up in most people's mind, and I want
to bring it up to you and see what your answer
is, on the one hand there's a group of high
achievers, who feel the relentless pressure
on a daily basis.
Not enough time in a day to answer all the
emails, get to all the meetings and then chase
all the goals.
The skills and resources are available, but
people feel there's not enough time.
There's a stress associated with that.
On the other hand, here is somebody, former
COO of JP Morgan coming in saying, "You have
to find a teacher, meditate, find your place
of heart and your life will be perfect."
And there's a big gap there that often people
find, "How do I leap across and trust?"
How would you propose that people close that
gap in their minds?
>>Mark Thornton: Sure.
Thank you, [inaudible].
So, I would say that for me, the context is
important.
So, I don't believe the set-up of life that
we don't have time.
I don't believe in it.
There's always ways to be skillful with it.
The invitation for practicing an hour a day
cumulatively, whilst not giving up any part
of your agenda at all, that's a huge inspiration.
I can simply cut down on my dead time--my
over processing--and add it to why which I'm
creating more aliveness in myself.
So, trainings are really good.
Finding teachers.
If people have interest in finding teachers,
there are some great resources.
The top three websites in the US, which are
like the magnets for all spiritual teachers
in the US, you can browse through that stuff
and just work out what, where, if there's
a pull for you.
There's lots and lots of resources out there.
And I'm happy to share that with Rach and
anyone, share those things.
One minute.
Is that partly helpful, [inaudible]?
I think that the key thing for me has been
that 
experience that there are ways where it weaves
artfully into your experience of life.
So, it can become part of the fabric of your
everyday experience.
And that's what's really rich for me.
>>Female Presenter: Thank you, Mark.
Thanks for coming.
>>Mark Thornton: Thank you.
[applause]
