“Time is what we want the most, but what we use the worst.” - William Penn
There are newly emerging fields, such as spiritual and contemplative studies, peace studies, and transformative leadership worthy of our attention.
Scott J. Spears believes life is a puzzle piece. Piece it together and organize it with time management, life organization, and self-connection.
What Challenged Me?
The risks of being a human doing:
What Inspired Me?
Knowledge Bomb
About the Guest
Scott J. Spears, Transformation Consultant and Culture Strategist.
About the Show
Podcast Host: Life & Leadership: A Conscious Journey with Dr. Michelle St Jane
A podcast for Global and Re-Emerging Leadership creating community/tribe, a circle of influence, transcendency of compassionate leadership in the world and wider universe. A unique destination for learning about Leadership + Conscious Stewardship + Legacy.
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“Time is what we want the most, but what we use the worst.” - William Penn
There are newly emerging fields, such as spiritual and contemplative studies, peace studies, and transformative leadership worthy of our attention.
Scott J. Spears believes life is a puzzle piece. Piece it together and organize it with time management, life organization, and self-connection.
What Challenged Me?
The risks of being a human doing:
What Inspired Me?
Knowledge Bomb
About the Guest
Scott J. Spears, Transformation Consultant and Culture Strategist.
About the Show
Podcast Host: Life & Leadership: A Conscious Journey with Dr. Michelle St Jane
A podcast for Global and Re-Emerging Leadership creating community/tribe, a circle of influence, transcendency of compassionate leadership in the world and wider universe. A unique destination for learning about Leadership + Conscious Stewardship + Legacy.
⬇️ Listen, Follow, Subscribe and Share ⬇️
Social Media Accounts
Intro: You're listening to Life and Leadership: A Conscious Journey. The podcast that shares wisdom and strength. Join your host, Dr. Michelle St Jane's conversation on how to have a positive impact for people, planet, and the wider world. If you want to live a life of intention, to be proactive with your time and bring your vision for the future to life one today at a time, you’re in the right place at the right time. Let's get started.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:00:37] At certain times in my life, I’ve found myself trekking along an ever-changing path of curiosity that at times continued to bring paralyzing moments in the cragginess of the climb be it down into the darkness of the cave and upwards into the light of my consciousness
There are times when we feel like we cannot move freely in our thoughts and actions.
When we feel as if we are stuck this is a place to explore and leave.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:01:06] I know it is my time to act differently, even if I leave others behind. I am where I am meant to be.
Always, it is the right time for taking response-ability and respecting the power of my thoughts.
There are newly emerging fields, such as spiritual and contemplative studies, peace studies, and transformative leadership worthy of our attention.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:01:31] Transformation leadership development expert Scott J. Spears joins me in conversation around time. Scott is a global consultant who believes life is a puzzle piece. Piece it together and organize it with your time. It's all about time – life – self
That’s Time Management, Life Organization, and Self-Connection.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:01:57] When you complete a puzzle, doesn’t it feel amazing? A sense of accomplishment that you were able to do it?
There are 3 aspects of time we will speak about in this conversation ‘Aion,’ time of eternal and/or enduring cycles. Think centuries
‘Chronos,’ time on the clock deadlines the space full of lots of demands. Think Human DOING!
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:02:21] ‘Kairos’ as ‘time in creativity’ or being in flow or spiritual time Think Human BEING. In my doctorate, I reflected on the significance of time, the different aspects, impacts, and blessings.
Time was made the keystone of the moon gate framing the theories and thoughts I considered. When the keystone was inserted, time emerged as the pervasive and unifying theme. The interplay of Chronos and Kairos across the archway became visible.
Contemplating different aspects of time, when reflected on by the created a prism lighting up the moon gate at its center showed the twists and turns of kaleidoscopic images.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:03:12] Making visible the chaos of the markets and the creative diversity of people and nature that came into focus during my doctoral fieldwork.
The recognition of Chronos being on clock time and Kairos being on spiritual time or inflow. This allowed for the noticing of synergy sparked by their appearances in terms of time, space matters.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:03:35] In these modern liquid times, a term coined by authors of Moral Blindness Zygmunt Bauman and Leon Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis (2013 2014). These authors highlighted actions and attitudes, through the concept of adiaphora.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:04:01] The term Adiaphora implies an attitude of indifference to what is happening in the world – a moral numbness.
This means the placing of certain acts or categories of human beings outside of the universe of moral obligations and evaluations. Suggestions for productive currency in the contested space of Aion.
I am joined by Scott J. Spears. Scott, you joined the army at 17 and evolved into a global consultant and 2020.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:04:29] You're a person who's lived and worked in 52 countries in what I would imagine is around 50 years.
Most of the scholarly research is around this chronological time. This being on what is called Kronos or the cannibalization of us in that time because we're also social and creative beings. If everything is informing the management or leadership realm is around clock time, maintaining it, supremacy the dominance over our lives.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:04:59] Speaking to time and society, Academic scholar Hans Rämö (2004) calls it “the economics change to be translated into money, then translates into your work.” If you fall asleep or you get sick, hmm, not a lot of worth left there is there. I can really relate to that sort of form of paralysis in needing that time for reflection or snap too when it's decision time.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:05:21] How did Jamaica work for you?
Scott J. Spears: [00:05:27] Jamaica was great. It was a helpful reset. Let's say in my life that propelled me to realize what I really wanted to do. That was when I finalized the divorce because I was kind of up in the air, like, “do I want to try to make this work? Is it the right thing?”
Scott J. Spears: [00:05:43] I have a daughter. We have to learn how to be selfish sometimes in our life. If it's just not going to work, then you got to move on. No matter who is involved.
The most important person in your life is yourself. If you can't be happy, then you can't make anybody else happy. I know that sounds cliché. But that's the true experience that I had in my life, realizing that when I finally got in touch with myself,
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:06:12] What might be working for one person or two may not be working? It's really hard to stay in this. When did Latin America come into?
J. Spears: [00:06:21] After Jamaica, I went to China. That was my base. Then I was traveling non-stop. Sometimes I'd be on three different continents in one week waking up in the middle of the night saying, “where am I?”
Scott J. Spears: [00:06:39] I had a blast. I love to travel. I love experiencing different cultures and food of course. Just constantly learning. That was the perfect situation.
2016 is when I was transferred to the Latin America region. That's when the jobs started to frankly suck. It wasn't fun anymore. After working in Latin America for maybe two years, non-stop again, kind of like the Nigeria situation. I was doing a lot more than I should have. I tried to balance. Again, life has lessons for you. That's when I learned about ego the hard way because I burned out again.
Scott J. Spears: [00:07:27] Juggling too much. I was feeling low on energy and one night I just hit the wall and died. Clinically died from burnout. This time I was out for about three minutes, that’s what they told me.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:07:41] That's seriously a wake-up call. I like the way you kind of called it that you were as simple as zombies through to October 2019.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:07:49] I really appreciate that you were also experiencing the depths of depression. When we're out of balance, there can be physical symptoms, mental symptoms, spiritual. We are expected to do so much. I can relate. I used to do 60, 80, hundred-hour workweeks.[I was holding Europe through to California.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:08:10] That only left me a four-hour window to sleep and parent, sometimes by text.
I know you have five tips for taking back control of your life. I quite like you to speak to those.
Scott J. Spears: [00:08:26] I have what I call a five by 20. It's 20% for these five things, 20% each.
The first one is Time Management.
That’s what I really focus on when I'm coaching individuals and businesses. Time management is the foundation of everything. If you don't know what you're doing today, tomorrow the next week, or have any kind of inclination to, I know a lot of people are very spontaneous. That's great. I'm not asking people to throw away their spontaneity but to have some sort of structure with their times.
I know what I have to do. Right. So many people wake up in the morning and they're like, “oh, what am I going to do today?” Rather than, “Okay. I have these three objectives.”
Scott J. Spears: [00:09:11] Time Management is the foundation, but it's only 20%. The rest is related to you. That's what I learned when I said, “having this burnout to death as a wake-up call.”
It was a wake-up call to a point, but not like you would expect because I didn't change anything in my life. That's what led to an eventual, deep, deep depression that I fell into.
That's how I was able to look at why these next four things attribute to the other 20 plus 20 plus 20 plus 20%. Those are your energies:
Your physical energy, like your diet, your sleep, your exercise,
Your mental energy, being like your mood,
Your emotional energy, being in touch with how you're feeling throughout the day.
Your divine or spiritual energy, do you feel like you have a purpose?
Again, I was at a stagnant point for the next three years after I die. I didn't change anything. I continued doing everything the same way. That's why I went in that slow decline into a very deep depression. That's my five by 20 rule time management.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:10:50] I’m totally on board. I am having spent decades in the C-suite, the corporate world, and my own businesses, it was very easy to get cannibalized by Kronos. Always being on the clock. Thinking I'll get one more thing done.
Around 2003, I flipped into a different type of time, Kairos time, which is what I think you're referring to as divine purpose.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:11:15] Focused on what am I waking up to do? How can I serve? Where is it that I contribute? Moving away from just being on the sort of bureaucracy of chaos and rigid rituals that don't necessarily serve, certainly didn't serve me because I was more of a human doing than a human being for a very long time.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:11:35] I knew this was going to be a robust conversation. I think you're a vivid visionary. I love your best advice about the future, “not to live in it, but visualize it, share it.”
Scott J. Spears: [00:11:49] I think everybody needs to have a ritual, a daily ritual, or habits. However, you want to call them without jumping into the woo.
Scott J. Spears: [00:11:57] I call them a daily ritual in the morning. I like the first thing I do is smile for 30 seconds. Even if I'm not feeling it. If you smile, it automatically releases those brain chemicals that reduce stress and anxiety without you even having to do anything else. Just to smile, even if you fake it.
Scott J. Spears: [00:12:16] The night before, I plan out three things that I want to do for the next day before I go to bed. I visualize those things being completed. How am I going to complete those? When does the next day start? I'm smiling. And then I just have to work on my energy. Make sure I'm in the right frame of mind to jump into whatever I've got to do.
Scott J. Spears: [00:12:40] Those three things. That could vary for anybody. I like to get some physical exercise in. Then I like to do some meditation just to calm the mind and try to block out all the other thoughts that come in to try to distract. From there are the three things that I want to do that day. Visualization, manifestation, time management is a form of manifestation, that I like to say to people that you're actually manifesting what you want to happen.
Scott J. Spears: [00:13:10] When you're writing down your to-do list, your agenda, that's actually manifesting what you want to do. That's how I practice
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:13:19] Very interesting. Given I'm living near or around where at Atlantis. Atlantean used to believe in psionics: If you can believe it, you can do it. Which nicely sums up your rituals you call into your world.
I like the way you talk about dealing with your feelings and your thoughts. I've decided in my life feelings and thoughts are visitors. They're welcome, message received. Then move on. I'll take what I can use and leave the rest. If I need a reminder, I'm sure they'll be back.
Scott J. Spears: [00:13:55] I learned that in India. When I went through my deep depression, I realized I needed to go somewhere that I had never been before to get out of that funk. Luckily it happened right before the pandemic. I went to India, and I did a Vipassana meditation. Which is a 10-day silent meditation, where you disconnect from everything. You don't talk to anybody.
You just go and meditate for about eight hours a day, an hour at a time. You do a body scan, and you learn this process of how to let go of the thoughts that are constantly coming in. This is definitely not easy. That's not for everybody, but it was huge for me and what propelled me into what I'm doing.
Scott J. Spears: [00:14:42] I learned the mind over matter trick during that meditation, because when you sit there, you're not supposed to move for an hour. That sounds pretty easy. Like I don't move when I watch TV for an hour.
But no, when you're sitting in a meditation pose and then all of a sudden, all those aches and pains from years before started cropping up. I've had a really bad issue with my knee at the time.
Scott J. Spears: [00:15:06] One day I had to have a battle. I couldn't sit still for the first four days. I kept having to move my leg out once in a while and bring it back in and jump back into the meditation. On the fourth day, I said, “Nope, I'm going to do it. I'm going to sit through it. I'm going to face this pain.” That's what I did. I did this body scan and then realized my knee was screaming to move. Then my mind started having this argument with my knee at the moment and says, “Nope, you're not going to move. It's not your turn. When we reach you, you can.” It is kind of like the easiest way to explain what's happening here.
Scott J. Spears: [00:15:43] When that happened, then the pain actually subsided. It didn't go away totally. But it decreased significantly and when that happened, I was like, “wow, this is deep right here.”
Learning that, and then I have attributed that and applied it to the depression and any other thoughts that would be coming in, “It's not your term. It's not your turn. Get out of here. Get out of here. I'm focused on one thing right now.”
That's what I'm doing here in the present in the now. That's what I try to bring into my life and teach others in my coaching. Is this mindfulness.
Scott J. Spears: [00:16:23] Get that multitasking out of here!
It's overrated. It does nothing but slow you down and put out less of a product of what you're trying to put out in the world. Just focus on what's in front of you. That's what I learned through that process.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:16:36] Scott, you're a dad. What do you most admire about your daughter?
Scott J. Spears: [00:16:41] Oh, her drive. She's a lot like me, she loves to travel. I'm so grateful that I was able to bring her to a lot of places in the. Even after the divorce, she's still been able to travel a lot.
She just has these big dreams. She's very ambitious. She's learning three languages, Japanese Mandarin, starting on Korean now. I just push her. But with everything that I've learned, I always try to coach her “Hey, make time for yourself.”
Scott J. Spears: [00:17:17] It is great to be ambitious but make time for yourself as well. Keep the balance.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:17:23] If you could have everything your way over the next 20 years. What do you hope that you would achieve, and the world would shift to?
Scott J. Spears: [00:17:31] Wow. Good question. Well, I want to help as many people as possible on a personal level individually.
Scott J. Spears: [00:17:39] With the self-connection. Learning how to get in touch with themselves and find out about their life because everybody gets so distracted with everything else going on. They always leave themselves for last. Usually, they're too tired to even get in touch with themselves. That's one. And then the other is one where I'm venturing out now is trying to help companies’ leadership transform.
Scott J. Spears: [00:18:05] There's a lot of leadership development out there. I think that's kind of cliche these days because a lot of it is the same. We're not looking at the real problem.
To me, the real problem from my experience and others' experience is we have to cut costs and increase profits, and there's only so much time that you can do it.
Scott J. Spears: [00:18:26] Looking at a lot of statistics these days. Now we're looking at millennials who have taken over the workforce; I think a 53% compared to everybody else now. There’s intergenerational harmonization that we need to do. Take advantage of everybody's strengths, Gen X, millennial, Gen Z coming in. Take advantage everybody's talents.
Scott J. Spears: [00:18:50] At the same time, reduce the turnover we have. I think 60 to 70% of employee turnover is voluntary. Most of that has to do with being people feeling like they're being burnt out. They just don't have time and manage. Executives, need to understand the cost. First of all, I think it ranges like 12 employees, depending on their salary can range from $250,000 to replace them to one and a half million.
Scott J. Spears: [00:19:21] Again, it varies on the percentages and everything in the time that you lose in production and experience of somebody that's been in place going. Having to replace them, train them.
What I'm working on now and what I'd really like to do in the world is change this whole corporate mentality of treating people like your OPEX.
Scott J. Spears: [00:19:44] If you're taking care of them, like you do your company cars, changing their oil. If you're taking care of the electric bill, your power. Humans need that too.
What I find is wellness programs really don't work unless it's driven by the leadership in the company. You can have a yoga teacher come in and show them how to stretch once a week. You send these invites. They're going to get canceled or deleted. Nobody's going to show up. I mean, they might show up just to get out of work and those are the people that you do not want to keep in your company.
What I want to do is train the leadership on how to take care of the employees. It's not just HR responsibility, it's the leadership. That's my goal, right now to train, to change this whole corporate mentality, and make work a healthy place where people don't feel exhausted and drained when they come home. They have no energy for their life. Of course, they're going to want to leave if they do that. That's just a vicious cycle.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:20:47] Clearly, I'm hearing, you're turning your bad experiences, like an Alchemist, into gold. You're just taking all this raw material and spinning it into gold, and it's much needed in the world. I really appreciate you, Scott.
Any programs that you'd like my listeners to hear about.
Scott J. Spears: [00:21:12] I'm doing the Time-Life-Self program for individuals starting with time management, getting life organized, and then self-connection. That's where I'm helping individuals on the coaching side.
On the business side, the corporate side, helping with the leadership transformation. Plus, the information I'm putting out on Instagram and my website.
Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:21:40] I will put links in the show notes.
Outro: Dr. Michelle St Jane is a conscious steward of meaningful leadership in the world and the wider cosmos. Tune in for real talk around life, leadership, and your conscious journey. Be ready to create and cultivate your dreams and wholehearted desires. Your support is valued. Please follow, subscribe, leave a review and a rating. More importantly, share with your connections.
Reach out. I am interested to hear from you. Do you have a topic you'd like to explore? It would be great to have your feedback.
Dr. Michelle St Jane
TEDxWoman Speaker | Author | Video, Podcast Host: Life & Leadership: A Conscious Journey
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