One Encounter, One Opportunity. Make service meaningful. Be Your customer's hero.

Your Workplace Mental Wellness Program | Managing Obstacles & Exploring New Possibilities | Ep. 121

How to prepare yourself for the inevitable challenges and uncertainties of incorporating anything in the realms of mindfulness, coaching or other mental wellness modalities into your workplace – and creative possibilities to make your program a true success.

The right questions to ask yourself to have a successful mental wellness program that meets the specific wellness needs you have as an organization.

How to your keep sense of self from getting affected by someone else’s foul mood so you can continue to perform and enjoy your service-oriented work.

Do we really need stress to perform? And how do we lessen the time and degree that it impacts us? Listen for some valuable techniques and principles for improving your relationship to stress.

There are so many misunderstandings about how stress works that result in misguided approaches to managing it. Know the real impact of stress on your service success – and actually effective ways of breaking its grip on you.

Emerge victorious in a world of “Emotional Labor”, where service professionals are feeling crushed by expectations to look happy when they’re feeling like crap.

What being “selfless” service really means – you might be surprised how many “selfish” decisions are required to really be of service.

Learn some of the ways that I broke out of emotional illiteracy – connecting with your customers is simpler than you think.

How to kill the service-killing belief “I am looked down upon and not respected in this role.”

For this milestone episode, I share some love for you my listeners, my inspiration for creating this podcast, and some powerful tools for you to connect with others like a great interviewer.

An eye-opening conversation with Dr. John Demartini, human behavior specialist who’s authored over 40 books on living and working to your fullest potential.

High-octane approaches to living with appreciation so that we serve from a place of fullness and achieve true success.

This is a short guided practice that I consider to be martial arts training for emotional resilience. Exercise attention and feeling capacity as though it’s a muscle.

A game-changing in-the-moment mindfulness practice that will allow us to meet the reactions we have with the kindness and support of a good friend.

A guided practice that will set up your service mindset to meet the challenges of work and life with more energy, patience and capability.

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness (IOM). For both your own fulfillment, and the people you serve, what’s a better service trait than the love of making others happy? Well, the first mistake you can make with this is a tendency towards “outcome-orientation”: the frustration from things not turning out how you […]

Learn how our self-sacrificing tendencies can ultimately compromise our service game. This episode hopes to disrupt the myth that good service somehow needs to involve a constant outward flow of our energy into “helping” others. Bring care to yourself that truly fills your service tank – starting from the moment you open your eyes.

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. “Never let ‘em see you sweat.” I have very distinct memories of one of my mentors telling me this and urging me to laugh at myself more. Thanks to a terrifying combination of clumsiness and perfectionism, I was a young service professional that was prone to […]

The Celebration Mindset Pt. 1 – Taking Resilience to the Next Level

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. A true person of service lives and works in constant readiness for celebration. I can see this principal getting misinterpreted by my former bar and restaurant colleagues as something to the effect of bartenders doing shots with the clientele. But you’re onto something here: real success […]

The Best Way To Handle Mistakes in Service? Be Your Own Yoda

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Service is full of mistakes. You’re dealing with endless highly-individual needs, unpredictable particularities, a minefield of emotional triggers that clients will readily punish you for ever-so-slightly feathering an insecurity of theirs. You’re also juggling technical demands and chances are you have the precision of a flesh […]

Mindful Service Is An Inside-Out Game

Originally published here for the Institute of Organizational Mindfulness. Expand Your Communication Skills Have you ever gone to eat somewhere and everything is “perfect”? The person serving you recommends a wine pairing with a sniper’s precision. It arrives with surgically-executed food, both of which are timed like a Swiss monorail. And yet the experience was […]

Think you love “making people happy”? Well, that good intention isn’t always what you think it is. Learn the more mindful, skillful approach to bringing out the best in others. And, actually, take the pressure off of yourself and expand your idea of what “making your customers happy” needs to look like.

What personal practices and mindsets prepare you to meet the challenges of service life, prevent burnout and brave all the other challenges ahead? Hospitality torchbearer, self-cultivation wizard and generally rad dude Dushan Zaric shares more of his wisdom, plus some impactful hits from the very special live service course he’s running.

How can you get the most out of your meditation and mindfulness practice? Is it just about technique or can you look at your whole relationship to your program – and you life…

In this episode you’ll learn about how common it can be to experience shame in the service experience and techniques that determine whether it will be a great ally or a terrible enemy.

Hear about how the Coronavirus opened up surprising opportunities for Tico & Susan to successfully serve their community how they’ve always wanted to through their Kombucha and fermented food company, Radiate.

Self-Hospitality Pt. 8: Restore Yourself With The Parasympathetic Nervous System

The resulting experience of each meditation doesn’t matter nearly as much as your mindset around your experiences. Meditation is not a state you reach, but an attitude you maintain.

Self-Hospitality Pt. 7: Meditation is Not a Performance, It’s a Medicine

The resulting experience of each meditation doesn’t matter nearly as much as your mindset around your experiences. Meditation is not a state you reach, but an attitude you maintain.

What’s the most important factor determining the success and satisfaction you get from serving? You. This episode details meditation and mindfulness techniques you can use to start your day, prime yourself for service, and refresh yourself during the chaos of the work day.

Learn gratitude practices to start your day and also apply to challenging situations. They will transform how you experience life.

My reflections on my fascinating discussion with Kelsey Mathes in the most recent interview episode “Ego-Driven Fear, Self-Transformation, Empowered Work…and Other Barroom Chat – Interview w/ Kelsey Mathes.”

Big doses of wisdom and inspiration from Kelsey’s journey from hospitality professional to meditation teacher and transformational coach. Learn to live with care and purpose…without the drama.

A short episode reflecting on my fascinating discussion with Wu De – key points applied to the challenges and opportunities of service life.

The Zen Way of Tea: reconnect with your natural intuitive wisdom, master yourself while remaining fluid, free and accepting – and learn how to truly serve.

Learn to create your own opportunities and relationships that serve your growth and success better than anything someone you’re hoping to “network with” can offer you. Be your own source of self-worth and break dependency on others for validation.

Bartender turned life coach discusses the importance of not defining your worth by self-sacrifice and grind – find a path that truly inspires you.

How I learned that service isn’t just for work. Everything in life can be defined on those terms. And must be questioned: Is it a worthy input of energy? Am I doing it skillfully such that I am really serving the best parts of myself and others?

Ask me about how to be confident and you will get more than you bargained for.

Discussion that looks at mindfulness, emotional intelligence, monotasking, caregiving and hospitality principles that work in any setting.

We discuss mindful journaling and other conscious reflection techniques, slowing down and having hobbies…real ones.

Humanity as the new spirituality! Talk with Jonni Pollard about his book The Golden Sequence, a total guide to conscious living as a participant in society. Self-development is worth much unless you’re of service!

Service That Connects When It Could Divide: Interview w/ Angie Vroom | Ep. 10

Conversation with meditation teacher Angie Vroom on the crucial marriage of spirituality with activism, social justice and critical thinking.

The most recent Serve Conscious podcast episode was about living with an abundance mentality. The concept might have seemed more controversial than I first considered and probably would have benefitted from a more thorough explanation of what it is and what it is not. In case there are fears that this idea conflicts with your […]

For the first time in awhile, I don’t have a management role where I work. Right now, all I want to do is moonlight at a restaurant, rather than invest the hours into running some aspect of it. Currently, I have too much else to do. So I’m not a leader there. Technically. However, that […]

Meditation: The Most Powerful Tool For Upgrading The Way We Serve | Ep. 03

Learn how to meditate effortlessly and adapt powerful ancient principles to your daily life.

In part I of this article, I illustrated my current easier-than-usual work environment where I still find tremendous challenges to serving others. I’ve found that this is because of the innate limitations of being human and connecting to other humans. This exercise has allowed me to look at the finer points of service and […]

Years ago, I retired from the bar/restaurant industry to take my meditation knowledge further and become trained as a teacher. Last year, I returned. For love, fascination…and, yeah…for money. I was excited to be back in my element. And dreading it a bit since I know the industry can take its toll on ones health […]

In different stages of life, we all have holes in our game that we hope others don’t see. “Impostor syndrome” is the belief that we are riddled with deficiencies. That we are fundamentally lacking in something (i.e. reliable skills) that makes us the useful, valuable human we are somehow obligated to be – and we’re just around the corner from being found out. The most successful people on the planet continue to get struck by this feeling every time they put themselves out there in a big way. But, everyday, even the smallest interactions can trigger it.

The ego is often misunderstood as something you need to get rid of. It’s more like a part of you that needs to be kept healthy. Those mystical experiences where the ego “dissolves” is more of a chokehold being released from your true self – the ego’s still there, just non-attached, not defining and limiting your experience.   I discuss the unexpected ways that “enlarging” it helps you break out of its limitations. And provide some useful techniques that you can use to strengthen your ego so you can serve everything better and just generally live your full potential.

Category Archives for Well-ness