Seth Godin is an author, changemaker, and thought‐leader. I think of his brilliance as his ability to pause, listen, and ask questions to hone in on what's really going on to understand the consumer; how they think, feel, and make choices. I have followed Seth for years, and I've been a part of his community‐driven projects, like his altMBA, and most recently, The Carbon Almanac, which is a book that gives people who care about the environment the facts to take action by making discerning choices about our carbon impact.

He believes that when people work together, we harness ideas, inspire change, and make a difference. He's right because when we mutually care about something, we can create change, growth, and impact. I have learned three questions from Seth that I always use to avoid falling into the trap of doing more—and instead—pause to do better:

• “What's it for?”
• “Who's it for?”
• “Why does it matter?”

I asked these questions when I started this book. I ask them when I discuss new ideas with my team. And I ask them when someone feels a bit lost about the decisions they have to make.

Seth looks at our human behavior as driven by these five factors: fear, being overwhelmed, which leads to our desire for ease, greed that's fueled by survival fear, curiosity, and generosity stemming from connection. He talks about the tension we feel when facing change and the need to learn to embrace it to avoid getting stuck.

In a similar way, you can see how The Self‐Care Mindset^® brings you through your own behaviors based on FUD, pausing to get curious, and then reclaiming your choices with care and mindfulness. The heart of the matter for our humanity to thrive is connection and generosity. Can we wake up every day and challenge ourselves to stay present and make choices that matter, not just for ourselves, but also for each other and the people we serve?

Care Reaches All the Way to Your Customer

Companies, salespeople, advisors, lawyers (any position that is customer service and client connected) tend to have a mindset that the customer is at the center of the business model. This means that everything is about the customer and they come first. When we work in the service of our clients, we tend to put their needs above all, prioritizing to solve their demands, and abandoning ourselves in the process, rather than realizing that how we care about ourselves impacts how we care, connect, and communicate.

Speaking with people in these positions, it's clear they are burning out and sometimes even frazzled by the never‐ending need to be available to solve their client's problems.

I encourage them to pause and ask, “What do I need so that I can best solve my client's needs?”

That's how a Culture of Care^® reaches all the way to the customer.

If you're anything like me, you don't want someone to be available to you, you want someone to be present with you. You want someone to truly listen to your concerns, understand what good would look like for you, and care about what you care about. You don't want someone to just give you what you want; you want them to ask better questions to find out how they can truly help you to get what you actually need.

Using The Self‐Care Mindset^® to reach all the way to our customers, we create a culture that is care‐driven instead of just customer‐driven.

Moments of Presence

We can use Power‐Pausing with anyone and everyone to create better moments of connection leading to better relationships and trust. We can pause together. We can pause as a team. We can pause before we respond. And we can pause just because we need a moment of presence to reconnect with what we care about and why it matters.

Well‐being means different things to each of us and the respect and care that comes from pausing and listening to each other allows for that to emerge. Leaders often ask me how they can inspire their teams to self‐care without overstepping boundaries. My response is always the same, by doing it yourself. Pause more. Show your people that you pause. Pause with them. Be curious for just a little longer. Ask more questions. And know that it's okay to ask someone how they are doing, but it's not okay to assume, judge, or to tell them what you think they need and pressure them to share with you.

Many people are still concerned about privacy and autonomy when it comes to health and well‐being at work. But you can still say, “I'm here if you want to talk.” And say it because you mean it and are able to be present to someone. They will know if you are authentic because you show that you know what it's like to be human too. Because you truly care about their well‐being, because just like them, you know what it's like to hide and pretend you are okay, even when you are not. Because you too know that it hurts when we think that we just have to be resilient and push through instead of pausing to be mindful about what we need to feel we matter, be whole humans, and work better because of it. The point is to care. Caring about yourself, others, and the work you do is how we find a way forward together.

As a leader, you show you care when you pause, listen, and ask questions about what your people need to solve what's facing them, and give them the space and time to answer. This is not supposed to be rapid‐fire. Let them reclaim their agency, be it for their emotional and mental well‐being or a project where they are stuck and you can support them using the AAA tool and asking better questions.

Grief at Work

Loss comes to us all at some point in our lives. Loss is isolating and we tend to grieve alone. However, as we are rethinking culture and how we care better together at work, grief is a conversation we need to include. The difficult conversations are often the most transformative and the ones that cultivate the trust and psychological safety that we need to foster a healthy work culture.

The challenge is that grief is personal and each of us grieves differently. Some want to talk about it, some don't, others simply don't know how to talk about it. The worst of it is that we feel awkward and say something that sounds like a greeting card or something downright hurtful like, “You will get over it, don't worry.”

When I lost my parents, I didn't want to get over it; I wanted to learn to live with it. I didn't fit into the “normal” grief groups, where people were asking why it happened, because I felt it was more tormenting to ask questions that we could never answer. The meaning of life is a question we tend to seek the answer to for our entire life and if we keep asking it until the end, it can become a curious way of living and learning. However, the meaning of death is not one I think we can learn to understand. To me, it became about learning to accept, not understand.

I was fired after my mom died and it seemed no one knew how to talk about grief so getting rid of the problem was the best way to go, for them. Of course, that was not the official reason. Some need to get back to work to get their mind on something that brings about a sense of normalcy, not able to be at home, where the void is big and dark. Some need time to process because the emotions are constantly triggered. That's what happened to me after my first divorce, I was taken aback and stunned, and I simply couldn't shake the feeling of betrayal. I sat in my office cubicle crying through the day, and I was thankful that my job didn't expect much of me.

Loss has been a constant part of my life story and it's part of my resilience too. However, my resilience has changed. It now comes from being transparent about what I'm feeling and asking people to simply listen to me talk, without giving me advice about how to fix it. I ask them if they are okay to just hold space for me, and I have a few friends who are great at that.

How do we hold that space in the workplace? We have teams that perhaps want to grieve together, between having lost team members to COVID, mass shootings, and war. This is something we neither can nor should ignore. I believe that we need to give people the care and respect to ask them what they need, and for each of us to answer that, we need to ask that of ourselves first.

Leaders ask how to best have the conversations with their team members and how they can ask people how they are doing without overreaching. My answer: ask them. Let's stop assuming we know what people want and need. The reality is that we each need to deal with our own discomfort of talking about grief before we can be present with someone else's grief. We do this by simply holding space and letting them speak, without “me‐too‐ing,” interruptions, and “good advice” about how to deal or get over it. Even when someone says, “I don't know how I'm going to get through this,” don't tell them how you think they should act, just listen. Maybe say a kind yes and ask how you can help or what they would need from you, if anything. Leave it up to them to know the right time to ask for help and to figure that out. At first, they are just getting familiar with grief, and they are not ready to “fix it,” even if it's painful. Our nervous system needs to adjust to the shock of loss. This goes from being fired, to betrayal, divorce, and the loss of loved ones. I'm not saying the loss is the same, I'm saying grief comes in many shapes.

The shock of loss is life‐altering. It's the period of time where we realize that all our hopes and dreams and our expectations about life and the days ahead have just disappeared. Losing my mom suddenly and my dad over a longer period of time, where we had the opportunity to grieve together, I can say that I prefer the latter, even if it was difficult to go through. In both cases, our grief accompanies us to work. Even if we use work to distract ourselves, our emotions don't stay at home, they stay with us and in us.

If you are grieving, please ask for the support and care that you want, be it space and time, a hug, or sharing a cup of tea to talk about your loss. People ask me if it hurts to talk about my parents and if I would prefer not to. It's a great question because it gives me the opportunity to share how much I love talking about my parents because it reminds me of the love that lives on. Whatever you need, please don't think you have to go at it alone and please also know when you need to be alone.

I don't believe we get over it, we learn how to live with it and as much as we need support to get through it, we also need to go at our own pace. Loss is like going numb and being frozen. When we can start to open back up to receive the love from the memories we carry with us, we begin to feel the circulation of love again. As my dad said right before he passed, “All we have in the end is love.” What is so clear to me is how much love and grief go hand in hand.

For the future of work to be more human, we need to respect and care about all the things that make us human. Our humanity is a gift to embrace and harness, together.

Care Matters

It's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when the daily stuff needs to be taken care of and busy is the new normal. I invite you to get clear about what you care about, the big strokes and the small ones because even under pressure, care is the strongest and most resilient emotion that drives us. It keeps us aligned with our ethics, hopes, and dreams. We often hear that love is the strongest emotion but I believe care is. Care is universal. You can care about the environment and feel strongly that we need to make daily choices that protect our resources. You might love the view, the animals, the fields, the ocean, and the mountains. It's your personal experience that makes you feel the love, whereas CARE is shared.

We become activists because we care. We show up because we care. We speak up because we care. And we choose the company we want to work for, and the people we enjoy working with, because we care about the same things. That's how we create change and impact together.

The future of work is about CARE. On every level, care is the mindset that keeps us focused on what matters, including our well‐being. Care is what takes us out of the survival mode of fear, greed, and cutting corners to get by. It's how we are able to face the FUD and stay curious and courageous. It's how we can connect, communicate, and collaborate with kindness and generosity and make choices that regenerate our daily energy, focus, and attention so that we can keep building a strong, healthy, and sustainable Culture of Care^® together. One that doesn't burn out from worry but rather builds on our strengths, harnessing our human advantage to care.

It's the kind of leadership that doesn't focus on what's not working but rather catches people in what they are doing right, building on our strengths, and being curious about what we can add to the conversation by being more inclusive of our diverse human skills, talents, and ways of thinking.

It's the kind of culture where we stop running on survival mode, driven by fear, and instead are inspired by what we care about. Where performance is about pausing to solve the right problem and pursuing growth by asking questions. It's the work environment where people feel they want to work because it feeds who they are and fuels their growth.

We can all choose to change the way we work; however, we work better together when we recognize that our humanity is not a problem to solve but rather an advantage to harness. When self‐care is no longer a personal problem but instead a work‐culture possibility.

What Will You Choose?

Going back to where the seed was planted in 1999, little did I know it would become the year my parents got cancer just a few months after I had divorced for the second time and changed jobs. They say don't change too much all at once, and it certainly wasn't what I had planned. But that time and the experiences in my life changed me forever and allowed me to keep growing today. I have come to understand that even though change and growth are scary or uncomfortable, it's essential to life. We need self‐care to harness change and grow so that our well‐being is the foundation for achieving our goals. We must stop fear from running our lives and we must stop working on survival‐mode. Instead, let's pause more to protect and harness our most important resource—our humanity.

Care Is What Motivates Us, Not Fear

Scuba‐diving on a beautiful day at the Needles Eye by Darwin's Island, I was excited as the day before we'd dropped down right in the middle of a migration of hammerhead sharks. It was a magical experience. Awe‐inspiring. As far as I could see, above me and below me, these amazing and graceful animals were just passing by us for 20 minutes straight.

So there we were, about to drop straight down into 35 feet of water to avoid the current and make it across the abyss to the diving area for the day. Being a dive master, I went last, holding on to my camera, ready to be one with the ocean and her treasures. But just mere moments after being in the water, I got thrown off course and felt like I was in a washing machine. As I tumbled around, my regulator, which allows divers to breathe under water, was ripped out of my mouth.

When I finally got my bearings, I looked at my depth gauge and realized I was in 15 feet of water, not 35 feet of water. “How did I end up here?” “What's going on?”

I needed air. I couldn't go to the surface as we'd been warned to avoid doing that at all costs because the current would slam us into the rocks of the Needles Eye. I was fighting against the current and the undertow, trying to stay down in the water as close to the sandy bottom as possible, crawling toward the depths of the ocean, reaching for my regulator so I could breathe again.

Still holding my breath, trying to stop myself from tumbling, I realized in that moment I had two choices. I could either take a breath of water and my life would be over. Or I could fight.

It may sound cliché, but it was as if my life flashed before my eyes. I thought of my parents as they were still alive at the time, and I knew my death would devastate them.

In case you are wondering, I decided to fight for my life.

I got my regulator back into my mouth, and I started screaming into it while choking, drawing in as much breath as possible, hyperventilating at this point, and crawling into the ocean's depth against the current. I finally made it down to 35 feet of water, crossed the abyss, and joined the rest of the team. Shaking, I grabbed onto one of the arms of the guide, and I did not let go till we finished the dive and got back on the boats.

I realized later that I was not screaming out of fear of losing my life; I was screaming because I wanted my life—I wanted to live.

That's how I was able to harness such immense focus, energy, and power to keep fighting against the fear, and the current. I was fighting for my life because I cared about the people who cared about me.

Fear is not a sustainable motivator; care is. It's what we care about that keeps us motivated. It's what we care about that gives us strength and focus. It's what we care about together that makes a difference in our own lives and in the lives of the people we serve, and it’s how we create the change we want to see in the world. The actions and choices we make all add up to sustainable change and growth. Because we care.

Self‐Care Is a Conversation; Let's Keep it Going

I hope that we can all learn to communicate from a place of care by being aware and inclusive of our own needs, respecting each other, and speaking from a place of healthy boundaries that focuses on how we build a Culture of Care^® together.

A culture where we can be who we are because we feel safe, belong, and matter.

A culture where care is the foundation for how we do our best work together.

A culture where people first means that we care about people, not just for people.

A culture where we feel we have worth, bring value, and can raise our hand and ask for help without fearing we will be viewed as incapable or unable.

A culture where we can embrace mental health as something we all have and need to care for together by saying no to working in survival mode and instead cultivating the common practice of Power‐Pausing.

A culture where The Self‐Care Mindset^® is a new language we all share so that we can be fully self‐expressed.

A care‐driven culture that holds space for care‐driven conversations.

Care Makes Us Stronger Together

I invite you to care more, not less. Care matters. When we care together, we make a difference, we inspire each other, we change and grow together. People who care together, create impact together. Care is the new currency that will change the way we work and live, for good.

Let's build self‐care into our daily lives. Let's care about each other. And let's share the care to create the kind of future where human beings belong and work better together.

I hope you will share with others what you have learned here. When we share what we learn, we grow, and we inspire others to do the same. It's how we cultivate a Culture of Care^® where everyone gets the tools to navigate their whole human well‐being.

“May all beings be happy. May all beings be healthy. May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings live in peace. May all beings know that they matter and make a difference in the world, and may all beings learn to live and work with care, together.”—Buddhist prayer.

May the PAUSE be with you.