351 Take Off Your Shoes and Walk From Corporate To Calm; Ben Feder

08/27/18 • 29 min

Ben Feder is CEO of a large gaming enterprise called Tencent Games and formerly was CEO of Take Two Interactive, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. In an effort to revitalize his sense of purpose and rebuild family relationships, he dropped everything and left his fast-paced Manhatten life-style to an exotic island for a year of growth, including a new level of mindfulness, meditation, and artistic expression.

Contact Info

Website: www.BenFederAuthor.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BenFederAuthor/
Twitter: @BenFederAuthor https://twitter.com/BenFederAuthor

Most Influential Person

Eric Langshur, author of 'Start Here'

Effect on Emotions

They skew much more positively than they used to and are much more optimistic.

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is the center of my mindfulness practice. My mindfulness practice amounts to three things. It's yoga, meditation, and art. In terms of yoga and meditation, [breathing] is integral to the practice, and in terms of art, probably not so much, but I wonder what would happen to my art if I actually incorporated [breathing].

Suggested Resources

Book: Take Off Your Shoes: One Man's Journey from the Boardroom to Bali and Back By Ben Feder
Book: Mindfulness In Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Book: Joyful Wisdom by Rinpoche Youngey Mingyur
App: 10% Happier, Mindfulness Studio, Headspace

Bullying Story

My daughter was bullied in school and really suffered terribly. She would come home and either cry or fight with her brothers and we wouldn't know what it was about until towards the end of the evening, when you'd kind of find out what happened in school.
It oftentimes wasn't anything specific. It was an eye roll from some girl and you know, all of a sudden she became devastated.
By taking her out of that environment and putting her into an environment where she absolutely flourished, we noticed that she could have a positive experience, so that school was obviously the wrong place for her.
A few years later, as she's a young adult now, or a teenager. She's just this utterly different human being. It just looks so amazing to watch. I'm sure some of that may have happened anyway, but taking her out of that toxic environment in and of itself was probably a mindful approach.
So, I don't think you need to like, get up and go to Bali and have that experience, but taking her out of a toxic environment, provided you can put her in an environment that's not toxic, A, is beneficial, and B, it shows her that her parents are paying attention and are concerned and caring and doing the best thing for her.

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Contact Info

Website: www.BenFederAuthor.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BenFederAuthor/
Twitter: @BenFederAuthor https://twitter.com/BenFederAuthor

Most Influential Person

Eric Langshur, author of 'Start Here'

Effect on Emotions

They skew much more positively than they used to and are much more optimistic.

Thoughts on Breathing

Breathing is the center of my mindfulness practice. My mindfulness practice amounts to three things. It's yoga, meditation, and art. In terms of yoga and meditation, [breathing] is integral to the practice, and in terms of art, probably not so much, but I wonder what would happen to my art if I actually incorporated [breathing].

Suggested Resources

Book: Take Off Your Shoes: One Man's Journey from the Boardroom to Bali and Back By Ben Feder
Book: Mindfulness In Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Book: Joyful Wisdom by Rinpoche Youngey Mingyur
App: 10% Happier, Mindfulness Studio, Headspace

Bullying Story

My daughter was bullied in school and really suffered terribly. She would come home and either cry or fight with her brothers and we wouldn't know what it was about until towards the end of the evening, when you'd kind of find out what happened in school.
It oftentimes wasn't anything specific. It was an eye roll from some girl and you know, all of a sudden she became devastated.
By taking her out of that environment and putting her into an environment where she absolutely flourished, we noticed that she could have a positive experience, so that school was obviously the wrong place for her.
A few years later, as she's a young adult now, or a teenager. She's just this utterly different human being. It just looks so amazing to watch. I'm sure some of that may have happened anyway, but taking her out of that toxic environment in and of itself was probably a mindful approach.
So, I don't think you need to like, get up and go to Bali and have that experience, but taking her out of a toxic environment, provided you can put her in an environment that's not toxic, A, is beneficial, and B, it shows her that her parents are paying attention and are concerned and caring and doing the best thing for her.

Free Gift

Click here: www.MindfulnessMode.com/Sleep

Previous Episode

350 Nourish Your Entrepreneural Spirit With Branding Expert Amina AlTai

Amina AlTai is a branding and marketing expert in the fields of nutrition, fitness, and mindfulness. She believes that being nourished & having a healthy bottom line are intrinsically tied. After several years of pushing her physical limits in order to achieve business success, Amina experienced burnout and developed two autoimmune diseases and a whole host of food allergies. She realized being physically and emotionally healthy meant her business could thrive too. Now she pays it forward and teaches others how to fill up in all the right ways: in business, and in life.

Contact Info

Website: www.AminaAlTai.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aminaaltai/
Free Mini-Course: Get Un-Stuck In Your Business http://getunstuck.aminaaltai.com/
Blog: https://aminaaltai.com/blogs/news

Most Influential Person

My Meditation Teacher.

Effect on Emotions

[Mindfulness has] tremendously affected my emotions. I think life is always ebbing and flowing, right? And so it's up, it's down, it's up and it's down.
And I think if we're not prepared, if we're not trained, if we're not mindful, we can go along on that rollercoaster so when life goes up, we go up, when life goes down, we go down.
But mindfulness allows me to witness what's happening in my life without riding the rollercoaster and that is just tremendous.

Thoughts on Breathing

So anytime I do any sort of a speaking or presentation, I will make sure to layer in additional breathing exercises in addition to my meditation practice. There's so much research on how it mitigates performance anxiety and just bringing ourselves back to our breath is everything.
You realize that you've been in a state of fight or flight all day trying to get a taxi, commuting, whatever it is, and then you bring yourself back to your breath and it's just this moment of profound stillness.

Suggested Resources

Book: A Pocket Guide To Mindfulness: (In 10 Steps) by Deidre Megan
App: Keep Calm Studio www.KeepCalmStudio.com

Bullying Story

I was obese as a child and I was bullied really badly at school for my thighs and I wish at the time I knew that it wasn't about me.
I wish that meditation would have helped me tremendously because instead of me clinging onto these ideas that I was terrible because of my weight and my size and what I looked like, I wish I would have been able to sort of watch these emotions, these thoughts, sort of as if I was a passer by.
[I wish I could have imagined I was] just sitting on the sidewalk watching them go by. Instead I was clinging onto them and, and believing that this was to do with me and my identity.
So, yes I wish I had known about mindfulness and meditation.

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Next Episode

352 The Colors of Mindfulness Through the Eyes of the Spiral; Natasha Todorovic-Cowan

Natasha Todorovic-Cowen is the CEO of National Values Centre Consulting and is the owner of the brand, Viral Dynamics. Natasha is all about helping people and businesses change. She has helped corporations with dysfunctional teams and incongruent leadership move to new levels of success. Natasha has personally endured massive levels of change in her life. She lived in three countries before the age of seven and then later, in adulthood, experienced two acquisitions and an industry that disappeared overnight. She has delivered over 100 SPIRAL DYNAMICS® Programs in 14 countries and continues to help teams learn how to meet their organizational goals. She holds an MBA degree and has worked extensively in the field of neural-linguistic programming.

Contact Info

Company: Spiral Dynamics
Website: SpiralDynamics.org

Most Influential Person

Chris Cowan (my husband)

Effect on Emotions

Mindfulness has affected my emotions by allowing me to notice the initial sparking emotion.
Far too many of us are feeling feelings about feelings, and that's a form of affect phobia. By noticing the messages in that initial spark, we get to understand our reactions and what we need to know quickly, rather than letting things spiral out of control.

Thoughts on Breathing

So we were talking about the PTSD, and one of the things I did when I was having a reaction was a long four count in, a four-count hold, a four-count exhale, and a four-count hold. And I did that until I could be present in the room again.

Suggested Resources

Book: N/A
App: Unyte

Bullying Story

Actually, my husband and I were subject to over a decade of bullying and it was rough.
It was very tough because some of the stuff that we did with spiral dynamics was very confronting to a certain group of folks. Sometimes we'd be in our classes delivering the spiral dynamics content and we'd have some of those people in our classes. I had PTSD for a number of years and this situation would get so bad it would trigger the entire PTSD.
Now, if you've got a room with 30 people, you can't go freak out. So what I did was, I internally noticed the reaction, noticed the panic, and noticed the fear. I noticed it come up inside me and acknowledged what that was and asked myself, 'Okay. Is this person asking you that question because they're trying to get you? Or is it because there's a sincere desire underneath there to learn something or to explore something?'
Once I was able to be mindful of their intentions, where they were coming from, and the origins of what it was that they were trying to explore, I was able to let that emotion or that reaction simmer down some, and then become fully present for them. Sometimes I had to ask them a couple of questions just to get myself grounded in their world, their experience, and their reality to be fully present for them. But that was one of the ways that I dealt with that.

Free Gift

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