An Interview With Edward Sylvan
Elazar & Joe: …Boundless leaders are needed not only to make incremental changes towards more skillful stewardship of our society and humanity but quantum shifts through bold visions and fearless execution.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Elazar Aslan & Joe Loizzo.
Joseph (Joe) Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D. is a psychiatrist, clinical researcher and meditation scholar-teacher who integrates neuroscience with contemplative practice to help people cultivate personal well-being, interpersonal compassion, and transformational leadership. Assistant Professor at Weill-Cornell Medical College and founder of the educational non-profit Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, he has published dozens of chapters and articles on the benefits and mechanisms of meditation in peer-reviewed publications such as The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. His books include Boundless Leadership, Sustainable Happiness and Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy. In addition to offering frequent classes and workshops internationally through his Nalanda Institute, Dr. Loizzo works individually with leaders in business, healthcare and education in his private consulting practice in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife, Gerardine, and their sons Maitreya and Ananda.
Elazar Aslan is the Founder and CEO of Caterfly Solutions, a firm offering coaching, workshops, and rigorous programs to leaders and their organizations, so they can operate from their peak potential and have a positive and sustainable impact on their communities and the world. Before founding Caterfly, Elazar was a successful entrepreneur and restauranteur, as well as an executive at Kraft Foods, American Express, and ADP. He earned an MBA from the Wharton School and a degree in organizational psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.
An avid believer in human transformation, Elazar has studied with some of the foremost teachers and scholars in various spiritual disciplines. He is co-developer and co-author of the Boundless Leadership Program and book. His personal journey to boundless leadership is the why and how of all his work.
Elazar lives with his wife and two daughters in Philadelphia where he spends his free time serving on nonprofit boards, writing poetry, and leading mindfulness and self-inquiry workshops for youth and adults.
By Joe Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D. and Elazar Aslan, MBA, PCC
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Elazar: I began life as an Iranian-Iraqi-Jew. So, early on I learned about conflict. When the Jews and Moslems were not at war, the Shi’ite and the Sunnis were. Living within the Jewish community in Iran, a deeply Moslem country further ingrained the concept that we are only safe within our tribe. The pervasive unspoken tensions between the groups informed not only the school I attended, but the path I would take to get there, literally and figuratively.
I was not aware at the time that the outer conflict reflected my inner terrain: A self-protective stance constantly maneuvering to create safety while struggling with internal pangs of fear, overwhelm and insecurity so much that I suppressed frequent inklings of a life based on confidence, joy and compassion. It wasn’t until my path of self-inquiry led me to become an Iranian-Iraqi-Jewish-Buddhist that the inner conflict subsided, ushering in an era of relative peace based on self-compassion and deep respect for the inter-dependency of all things.
Joe: As the only son of a Sicilian Catholic family, I spent my first years in Geneva where my dad went to medical school, and my childhood on Long Island in New York, watching him become a successful psychiatrist and my mom a beloved high school history teacher. Their diverging paths offered me a homespun double-blind trial. As he got busier and moved away from his spiritual roots towards science, he showed signs of chronic stress and burnout. As she dug deeper into her spiritual roots and practice, she grew into a living embodiment of inner well-being and peace of mind.
This early experience of my parents’ divergence deeply informed my development and my whole life path. Although I was fascinated by my dad’s work as a therapist — discussing the meaning of life with clients one on one — I decided the only viable way to follow in his footsteps was to work out how to integrate the contemplative values and practice that so benefitted my mom. I left for college with a copy of Jung’s Psyche and Symbol and dedicated my education, training and career to integrating timeless contemplative methods of self-transformation with the emerging new science that has increasingly proven its effectiveness in fostering resilience, well-being and positive change.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
Elazar: Perhaps it’s because it was the first grown-up book I read, but To Kill A Mockingbird had a big impact on me. It fed the rebel in me that believed focusing on our differences is not the path to joy and happiness; that kindness and respect for all beings is a superior approach. Additionally, seeing that what is true and just is not always enough to motivate others to do the right thing. That insight still troubles me deeply and spurs me to action.
Joe: One of the most impactful books I read as a young man was also one of the shortest books I found on my father’s office shelf — Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. Freud’s argument there actually dates back to a pre-Socratic Greek scientist-philosopher named Empedocles, who taught that the evolution of our humanity and human civilization critically depends on each individual and group learning to transform the archaic self-protective instincts Freud called the “ego” or “death” drive (Thanatos) into the socially generative and connective instincts he called the drive towards “love” (Eros). This timeless insight has since been powerfully validated by the new science of evolution and the brain, which has increasingly shown that positive emotions like self-acceptance, empathy, love and compassion are the main drivers of positive human development, resilience, happiness and well-being.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
Elazar: I started my career in business at a time when people still wore three-piece suits to work. It was presented as a big perk to the incoming employees that “Casual Friday” would begin in the summer season and that we should dress accordingly. I was excited to work for this progressive company and came into work on Casual Friday dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and sandals. I had more people visiting me from all over the company in that one day than for the rest of the year combined. It turned out I was the only employee — ever — that did not know that ‘casual’ meant you didn’t have to wear a tie; or maybe, if you were bold, you could wear a sport coat instead of a suit. It was a painful experience that taught me about the power of belonging and how organizations use subtle cues to assess your place in their tribe.
Joe: When I set out to integrate mainstream science and psychology with the timeless contemplative methods of India and Tibet, there were only a handful of other explorers who had any appreciation for my road not taken, so I had to keep my interest in meditation research from my superiors and peers in medicine and psychiatry. But all that began to change when some of my research colleagues like Herbert Benson and Jon Kabat Zinn began to publish their findings on the mechanisms and benefits of meditation. So by the time I moved back to New York City for doctoral studies at Columbia in contemplative psychology and ethics, my new colleagues at my day job in the psychiatry department there were excited to hear what I was up to. They asked me to found a Center for Meditation and Healing at the University Hospital, and that became my lab for developing and testing the hybrid methods I had only dreamed of for decades. What shocked me most was that while my interests hadn’t changed at all, the world’s interest in what I was doing had undergone a sea-change. That pleasant surprise taught me a lot about how dramatic and rapid change can be when consciousness shifts.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
Elazar and Joe: Boundless Leadership is designed to have an impact on both a macro- and micro-level. On a societal level, leadership as usual is no longer adequate for the task at hand. The hyper-individual, top-down, zero-sum game mindset that has defined modern business has become the problem, fostering an increasingly outmoded, rigid, and stifling culture that lacks the collaborative, flexible, win-win outlook it will take to operationalize the solutions needed to address the big issues of our age: climate change, wealth inequity, social justice and global responsibility. So, at that level, boundless leaders are needed not only to make incremental changes towards more skillful stewardship of our society and humanity but quantum shifts through bold visions and fearless execution.
On the micro-level, a career fueled by stress-based, performance-driven energy is not only detrimental to our health, it limits our capacities for innovation, teamwork, and sustainable peak-performance capacities required for the demanding nature of today’s fast-changing, interconnected global economy. Boundless Leadership provides a proven and methodical approach to shift the trajectory of our work and personal lives by leading ourselves and others with a clear and self-aware mind, an authentic and compassionate heart, and a fearless and energized stance to realize the expansive and inclusive visions our society needs today.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
Elazar and Joe: That’s hard. There are so many powerful stories. One story that seems a sign of the changing times we’re in is the story of the CIO of a prominent investment firm that had been run for years by a highly narcissistic CEO who had carefully developed a top-down culture into which he built in many of the self-aggrandizing patterns that fuel corporate dysfunction, including financial corruption, nepotism and sexual harassment. By patiently building trust within the company, board, and larger field by his transparent, egalitarian style, the CIO was poised for promotion to CEO when sexual harassment charges toppled his former boss and has gone on to totally change the culture of the organization towards greater transparency, compassion and inclusiveness, in line with Boundless Leadership.
Then there is the story of the Executive Director of a non-profit organization who struggled with a presentation to her board. After identifying the main issue — a board member who vociferously argued against her being hired for the position — she used the compassion training we taught her to shift her mindset prior to the meeting and no longer saw him as the enemy in the room, and walked out of the meeting with a new ally on her side.
What was the “aha” moment or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
Elazar and Joe: The anecdotal evidence of so many of our clients changing their life and work perspective based on the trainings that make up the transformational practice of boundless leadership was the “Eureka! The world needs this!” moment. On an external level, the convergence of the new pressures on business that have become even clearer in the era of the pandemic — pressures towards a more horizontal/remote workplace, towards greater racial, gender and financial equity, pressures towards agile, sustainable business models and especially towards greater corporate social responsibility. This growing pressure has been acknowledged in a whole new range of recent letters from corporate leaders on social responsibility so we felt we had to get the how-to-get-there into the hands of more people.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Joe: As a society, we need to make fundamental changes in the way we measure, define and foster success for individuals, organizations, and as a whole society — changes that reflect the importance of the new research on health, well-being and happiness. Key among these would include: 1) measures for overall success for individuals that reflect the critical role of positive motivation, relationships, and community; 2) measures of the social impact of organizations/businesses that measure the overall benefits to individual and collective well-being/happiness vs. the overall human costs of their activities/products; 3) measures of the overall human costs/benefits of business activities such as the unpaid labor of people who do unpaid homecare/childcare/eldercare, of the social costs of the unemployed and/or uninsured, costs vs benefits to the social and natural environment.
Elazar: One that I find important is at a structural level of organizations. Fortunately, many organizations are authentically moving towards inclusivity, respect, equality among all constituents, triple bottom lines and virtuous cycles, as some positive examples. However, the far greater majority of all organizational structures continue to be the hierarchical pyramid schema. Understanding that structures reinforce the values and behaviors we want in our organization, suggests that we are limited in how much we can change without upending a hierarchy that is designed to reward the few far more than the many. Akin to the childhood game of musical chairs, how can you really have collaboration, teamwork, and joy when everyone is concerned about ending up without a chair when the music stops? If there are 20 people playing the game, in the end, one person won and 19 lost. How can that paradigm really foster an atmosphere that truly embraces diversity, inclusiveness, and equality?
What might be a better structure you ask? One found in nature — a cellular structure where the nucleus is where some team members read and update the DNA of the organization according to new input from the cell and environment, the cytoplasm where much of the work takes place and the cell membrane that defines what comes in and out of the organization — the interface with the larger world. Each part is interdependent with the others, and all are equally important for the healthy functioning of the whole. It is about individual specialization based on interests and skills and not about privilege based on the facade of objective performance metrics.
You reach a lot of people with your articles and I’d like to invite others to join the collaborative effort taking place to make this the new normal.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Elazar and Joe: We do not see leadership as an executive position or a set of skills honed to influence others. We see it as a way of being. A way that manifests a reality from our authentic aspirations, shaped by fearlessness and offered with kindness and compassion. Although the traditional view of leadership is defined by the sphere and gravity of influence over others, we believe that the power of a boundless leader is sourced from the radical leadership of Self.
Most of us have been trained to set our sights on a particular outcome and attempt to manage, manipulate or control the external factors that stand in the way. Current leadership principles have their genesis from that belief. Yet the actual leverage to influence and affect others is more related to our self-awareness, our core beliefs and the mindset that we use to listen, assess and respond to a situation — all of which are managed by a focus on our self, not the other. It’s turning the extant leadership principles on its head.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Elazar:
1. How people treat you is fundamentally a reflection of their state of mind and not your actions.
Believing that people reacted to me because of my actions and words, wasted a lot of my time and energy as I gauged their reactions to assess the value of my efforts. A great example of a fool’s errand.
2. Your manager is not as concerned with your performance as they are with their own.
Often we walk into a meeting with our boss or colleagues focused on our performance and how we will be perceived. In that process, we forget that the other person probably has the same need as most people weigh heavily what others think of them, regardless of their position. It benefits all much more if we enter that meeting thinking not of how we need to shine, but rather how we can be of service to others.
3. Being a negativity addict is a choice.
I long thought that if I focused on all the things that could negatively affect me, I would handle them better, and thus, be protected. It was a few years into my career before I realized not only is that false, but negative thinking begets negative circumstances. It took some effort, but the science is clear on this point and it helped me to shift my default perspective to an open and expansive one.
4. Creativity and innovation are not about thinking outside the box, they’re about not seeing the box in the first place.
Too often we start with a set of biases and limiting beliefs and think incrementally better, to shape a solution superior to what currently lives inside that box. True innovation, though, is borne outside the self-censuring, pre-conceived judgment of what is possible. This is why I tell my clients that creativity is the purview of the heart, not the mind,
5. Success is NOT the best path to happiness.
Most of us were raised to believe our self-worth was intricately connected to our success. Ergo, the more success, the greater the self-worth and the deeper the happiness. Well, it turns out that performing to improve the likelihood of success will never get us to sustained happiness because we are solving the wrong problem. I often ask my clients: How many times do you have to paint a car before it starts to run well? What drives our happiness is not a performance-calibrated measurement of self-worth, but rather, a compassionate-based path to self-acceptance — as we are. I suspect your readers, like many of my clients, are scratching their heads — huh? It’s not a difficult concept to understand, really, it’s just that it is a different language from the one we were taught.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Elazar: I was 16 when I penned my first quote. ‘You are bound to lose, seeking the approval of those you do not respect’. Judging someone by their adherence to the prevailing view can only serve you if you are someone who holds a prevailing view. You cannot fully explore who you are and what you want if you are simultaneously trying to manage what others think of you. Best to give up one of the two. PS, don’t live your life not discovering who you might be and what you can become.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Elazar: Bruce Springsteen. LOL. I’d like to convince him to bring his talent, stamina, heart, care for humanity and ability to inspire others to the political arena. But he should prepare with our Boundless Leadership program first, or at least read the book. After all, we were all born to run.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Elazar: The easiest way is my website elazaraslan.com or LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/elazaraslan
Joe: My website is nalandainstitute.org. I’m also on Linkedin and researchgate.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Elazar Aslan & Joe Loizzo Are Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.