Transcript:

Dorsey Standish

[00:00:00] Wendy Manganaro: Hi everyone. My name's Wendy Manganaro and I am the Host of the Wellness and Wealth podcast. I'm so happy to have you find us. And if you could take a moment and hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. This is the podcast where we believe when you show up better for yourself as a woman business owner, you show up better for your business. 

So sit back, relax. And learn from the practical to the woo-hoo, how to best take care of you. Have a great day. Stay blessed. And leave a review when you're done listening to the show, thanks so much. 

[00:00:38] Wendy: Hi everyone. I'm excited you're here today and we have another great topic, mindfulness, mental health, and Living Your Purpose. Today our guest is Dorsey Standish, and I'm gonna read her bio and then we'll get right into the show.

Dorsey Standish is the CEO of Mastermind, a Dallas-based corporate wellness firm. Dorsey is a mechanical engineer, neuroscientist, and wellness expert who brings evidence-based mindfulness and emotional intelligence to clients worldwide. Dorsey has LED science-based wellness programs for hundreds of companies, including Staples, Toyota, and American Airlines.

Dorsey holds a master's degree in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas, and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Dorsey's teachings draw on her training as a teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction through Brown University and deep experience on regular seven day silent meditation retreats, studying with master teachers.

Welcome Dorsey. Thanks for coming on the show. 

[00:01:48] Dorsey Standish: Hey, Wendy, so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:52] Wendy: Yeah, I'm always excited about these topics around mindfulness, especially with mental health. I'm a big, believer that mental health is not a month, a year that we should be having these conversations year round.

So this is gonna be fantastic. So we'll get right into it. What does living your purpose look like to you? 

[00:02:10] Dorsey Standish: That's a great question, Wendy, and I think even that phrase can be intimidating. Oh my gosh. Living my purpose. What does that mean? We might even start by thinking about it as living on purpose or living with purpose or living with intention.

I know for me, I was really intimately familiar with what it's not. You might know some of my background you shared in the intro that I'm a mechanical engineer and I spent many years in the corporate world. And from the outside looking in, I looked really successful. I was climbing the corporate ladder, getting promotions and accolades.

I got to spend my 25th birthday in Taiwan launching a product for a tech company and I knew that I was good at my job and I was getting affirmation and acknowledgement for it, and it seemed like the right thing to do based on how I had been raised and what my family values were. But on the inside I felt a piece missing.

While I loved technology and engineering, I always knew that I was a people person, and at the end of the day it was connection with people that really made me light up and I got to do some of that in my program management role. But the truth is that even when I was working at this tech company, my favorite parts of the week were when I would lead these free yoga classes for my female colleagues, and I started to look forward to those sessions to feel this certain amount of energy exchange and positive coming together and just what it meant to be part of a group that was invested in wellness and wholeness, even in the midst of a really stressful corporate environment.

And so I knew that I was out of alignment ultimately with that really strong desire of mine to help others and be really connected to people all the time. So it was that experience of feeling out of alignment and getting burned out in a traditional tech role that inspired me to turn inwards.

And, I did at first. I took baby steps, I started doing things that work that would allow me to feel more in alignment. I launched this TI Pride initiative and I got to bring a really large group to out and equal conference. I started a new tech initiative as well, and all of these things were great and it was like taking little steps and then eventually I realized that my calling was outside of that, being in that corporate environment and part of going to corporations as a consultant and helping to bring some of these strategies that have changed my life in.

But I think that the first step in living with purpose is, Pausing and taking inventory. Where am I now? Do I feel in alignment? Do I feel excited? You mentioned Wendy, how much you love this podcast , how excited you get to do it. You're learning so much stuff, right? So this is really in alignment with you.

This is part of your purpose, and it doesn't mean that we have to take any drastic action or quit our jobs tomorrow, but I think pausing and becoming aware, which is where mindfulness comes in of. How am I feeling? Am I excited to get out of bed in the morning and if not, what little things can I start to change and tweak and then down the line?

That may lead to making a bigger shift. But for me it was all about realizing my favorite parts of my week and my life and starting to invest more time and energy there. 

[00:05:18] Wendy: That's interesting you talk about that because I think when I first started to get into mindfulness and understanding, I had a coach and I talk about this often, 

who was like, what do you want? First of all, I don't know if anybody's ever asked me that question prior to that, other than , where do you wanna be in five years when you go for a job and you're like, oh, what's gonna sound good? Not that kind of, what do you want 

and I really didn't know. And for me, it started with realizing what I didn't want. I just never looked to see what was the opposite of that. I got as far as I don't want this. And then I attract more of that, but I like, I don't want this, but I never really asked myself like, Okay, so if you don't want this, what are you looking for instead?

And I think that sometimes that's where we start, when we start with all these careers and everything looks good on the outside looking in, and I did the same thing in nonprofit, but I raised through the ranks and all of that stuff. And on the outside everybody was like, you're doing so well.

And I'm like, I'm not sure I really want to do this. So I think that's there's something about that. I like that you said these little tiny tweaks because sometimes it's okay, this doesn't feel good anymore. It may have, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this. It may have at one time felt good and that part of it is giving yourself permission to be but it doesn't have to stay feeling that way.

[00:06:33] Dorsey Standish: Yeah, that's a great point, Wendy. And yeah, I don't, I can't speak for you in your nonprofit experience, but I know for me that engineering work that I did, it laid the foundation for who I am today. And it was perfect for me right out of college to get that experience presenting, being part of a bigger organization, learning what real life engineering was really about.

Yes, it totally served. At one point, I think what you're saying, and what I agree with is that sometimes we just get on autopilot and we just keep doing the same thing and we look to other people rather than turning inwards for what's really serving us, we realize, oh my gosh, I'm actually not where I wanna be, or I'm not living alignment with who I am right now, who I'm showing up as right now.

[00:07:15] Wendy: Yeah. I'm in total agreement with that and that's what I think happened is I went on this, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. I graduated college and it wasn't bad and honestly, years later my husband and I opened our own non-profit and I took so much of that experience.

into what we were doing and that was aligned for eight years and then it was not. We did that and we're like, okay, now it's time to do something else. But I think we get into this autopilot of, okay, this is what everybody expects of me, so I'm showing up.

And somewhere in that we lose ourselves. And I think that's what happens is when you start to feel like that feeling of, okay, I don't feel like me here though. Or you get resentful against it. That's another thing I think that happens. I don't know if you've experienced that where all of a sudden you're like, why do I not like this?

And I, I think it happens in businesses too when we don't align ourself to our business. Have you had experience or worked with people that, that deal with that they think they're on the right path and then suddenly they're resentful about what they built? . 

[00:08:11] Dorsey Standish: Yeah, I think that's such a good point. And I can acknowledge some of that within my own journey of living this dream, life of making a living by doing mindfulness work, which if you told me that seven years ago I'd be doing that, I would be in shock.

And so excited about it. And for the most part, I am, and I've grown a lot in the past seven years and I've noticed myself, for example, teaching class after class. Become kind of second nature for me, and it's no longer necessarily a growth opportunity to get up in front of companies virtually or in person.

And so for me right now that next level where I'm really being called to grow into is being a leader and a visionary and training other people and empowering them to go in. And I can totally acknowledge what you're saying about that resentment of realizing, oh my gosh, I built this business at one point, this was my dream, and my dream is evolving and it's becoming slightly different.

I think it's so common for entrepreneurs to, again, keep doing it. Oh, this is successful, this is working. I gotta keep doing it. And I think it's so important that we take pauses to check back in with ourselves and that we have mentors and coaches that help us to continue to grow and doing the things that got us to the success that we're at. Right now.

[00:09:23] Wendy: That's a good point too, is that I think that mentor mentors and coaches are very important in that journey. So let's backtrack a little bit though for a second, because the part of the topic is this idea of mental health. And aligning or living with purpose, with your mental health and what would be some of the checkpoints where it's not aligning?

It doesn't feel where the mental health part of it really starts to get heavy. 

[00:09:49] Dorsey Standish: That's a great question, Wendy. And I think a lot of us have experienced this in different ways, if not before, at least over the past two and a half years with the Covid crisis and the ongoing fallout in ships in our society from that, I can tell you from my experience, again, things look great on the outside, looking in from the inside out, I can tell you that.

I wasn't sleeping well, but work took up my whole life. I didn't know who I was if I didn't have my laptop in front of me and I couldn't get that dopamine hit of sending an email. I would wake up in the middle of the night obsessing about work, and I remember sending an email to a colleague at 3:30 AM about.

Spectroscopy. Come on, get your sleep. I totally lost perspective, which I think is a sign that mental health may be challenged, is not having perspective on, okay, if I don't take care of my basic needs for sleep, for wellness, for self-care, then what's the point of all these other things that I'm doing.

If that's not in alignment, and then there's other signs too. People will struggle with symptoms of anxiety or depression and it can be as subtle as being like, wow, it's been really hard for me to get outta bed for the past few weeks. Or, I notice my mind racing constantly and it's really hard to pull it back in and focus on the task.

And our society is doing such a good job, I think about waking up to the importance of mental health. Through my journey, what I learned is that yes, coping with mental illness and recovering to a state of mental health is really important, and I really don't want people to wait until they're in a point of crisis, like I was in my journey before I started to get help and to really invest in myself.

So the work that we do now with corporations is really focused on helping each person develop their own inner toolkit for mental wellness. So that, As soon as I start to feel myself, wow, like I'm having trouble sleeping or I dunno if I'm in alignment. Yes, go get a mentor. Go get a coach. Talk to your doctor, and what can you do right here, right now?

Can you take a five minute mindful pause and turn inwards and just acknowledge how you're feeling. Can you start to journal to keep track of the different symptoms and things you're experiencing? I was so helpless when I had a mental health diagnosis, when I had that experience of burnout and I didn't know how to turn inwards.

And so the work that I love to do now is to teach people that well in advance of any kind of crisis so that they know that. In addition to turning outside of themselves, they can also look inward to get the support they need through practices like mindfulness, mental wellness practices, like gratitude.

So simple, yet so powerful when it puts us back in the driver's seat for our own health.

[00:12:31] Wendy: It's interesting you're talking about that. And especially with burnout. I had a very, enlightening experience yesterday. I like to take photos. I don't really talk about this usually on the show, but I love to go play photographer out there.

of Beautiful sceneries. it's something I just enjoy. It gets me out in nature. it's a wonderful thing. So yesterday I went to go do this and I think I'm going on this little trail. It turns out to be a six and a half mile off road track. Not really a trail to walk on, more to drive on, but this particular state forest I went to had a

 Forest fire over the summer. And the reason why I'm telling you this story is, and I think it was so profound to me because the road had been the separation between the fire where they could stop it and it burnt acres and the other side, so one side was all burnt trees. No, no foliage, and the other side was this beautiful, even though it's fall lush with colors and gorgeous.

And it was parts of it, it was so starkly different that I kept thinking to myself. Like the one side is like when we're not aligned, when we're not living in good conscience. And to that point where we burn it all down and when you're talking about crisis, that's what I'm thinking of is like this idea, like it was so stark and I was like, but we don't have to get to that point of

burning it all down around us to get to the other side where there's light and there's all of this aligned energy, and it's beautiful. And I think sometimes as people, we forget that we don't have to go to this stark drastic point before we do ask for help. I don't know if that's, and I'm sure you see that with the people that you work with because they've never been taught or for whatever the reason. They have to go all the way down before they even ask for help. And I talk about that a lot with my girlfriends as we do not have to burn it all down before we get some other perspective in here. But sometimes we feel like that, especially when you're in an entrepreneur position and you feel alone.

[00:14:30] Dorsey Standish: Yeah. That's such a beautiful depiction. I can just picture that. One side of the road and the other side of the road and that stark difference. That's a really great illustration and I totally agree with you. What if we didn't have to go there? I will say though, that I've talked to so many people who have burnt it all down in one way or another, or had that dark night of the soul, and what's so cool is there's almost this reforestation process.

After something like that happens, it takes a while to even dream that it's gonna look like that other side of the road, that has the light and the lush greenery and everything, but sometimes it's that magic period of starting to invest in yourself and fertilize your soil and put the time and the nutrients in that you can start that slow, steady growth process to get back to where you wanna be.

So some people have those moments, other people don't have to go all the way there. But I think the one thing that covid did. It brought mental health more into the limelight. I can't tell you how many companies and people I work with who are now realizing, oh, My employees are a little stressed. I need to bring in them in some wellness stuff.

So they're not saying, oh, people are quitting, or, we have half of our staff missing, recovering from burnout. Thank goodness they're saying, I can tell people are stressed out and I really wanna support them. And so we're starting to treat mental health, I think equally to physical health and that vocabulary of, oh, you're gonna go work out for your body today.

Oh yeah, I'm gonna go work out for my mind, or I'm gonna do this self-care practice for my mental wellness is starting to become some more in our repertoire. And that's what I see more and more in the corporate world. And I have so many clients that, my journey, my story has been all about going from.

Not practicing mindfulness to, I'm gonna practice every day and it's gonna become part of who I am. I would love that for everybody, but what more realistically happens is that people will come to our sessions once a week or once a month, and then when they need it, they know where they can turn and they have that tool.

To lean into and turn to, to add it. Just like they might go to a Pilates class for their bodies or something like that. They have this added tool of mindfulness and meditation and journaling and reflection and turning inwards to add into their toolbox of the ways that they take care of themselves. 

[00:16:54] Wendy: That's interesting and I do agree with you that I think that it becomes this tool.

I think that's a really important part of it, is that it's knowing okay, this is a safe thing to use if we were gonna go workout, because we don't think any of them. We're either gonna do that, because we have workout people and non-workout people and and it doesn't have to be so black and white, but it could be a tool as people need it. I'm gonna back you up a little bit. You talked about teaching yoga classes while you were in corporate America. How did you get into mindfulness? Because yoga's, , part, mindful was that something you've been practicing for a long time before you even started to this journey?

Or was getting into yoga a stepping stone into where you are? 

[00:17:35] Dorsey Standish: Yeah, that's a great question, Wendy. I joke that yoga was my gateway drug into mindfulness because it was definitely a stepping stone for me. I started practicing yoga in 2011. I've always been very type A, you can guess what the engineering and science and was doing triathlons in my spare time, got injured, forced to do yoga.

Only thing my doctor would let me do . So I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so slow. This is so boring. But there was something about yoga that grabbed me. It was like the one place in my life where I accepted that I wasn't trying to win any trophies or perform or achieve anything. It was just about being there and showing up, and I love that.

And so I practice regularly and got my teacher training certification in 2013. And you're right, some people equate yoga with mindfulness, or you can think about yoga being a mindful movement practice. For some people, the way they practice, it's like a moving meditation where they're focused on their breath and their body.

That wasn't really the way I was practicing . I was doing like arm balances and finding those ways to progress and perform even within yoga, but because I had been exposed to this world of holistic wellness and mindful movement and those forced Shavasana periods at the end of a yoga class where you'd have to lay there and stillness for a few minutes, when I did have that mental health crisis in 2015, I had a foundation of where I could turn for answers.

And I coupled that with my own research and exploration into stress resiliance, into ways that I could train my brain, cuz I knew I wanted to have a stressful job and a meaningful job, and so it wasn't like I wanted to take away the stress. It was that I wanted to be better equipped to deal with the stress of life.

And I just kept landing on meditation and mind training. I read Andy Putti, I'm the founder of Headspace. His book gets some Headspace. I started using the Calm app. I was very much self-taught and just on this search for meaning and to understand my mind better and to understand myself and what it meant to be human better.

And that ultimately led me to these moments in stillness where there's some similarity to the yoga practice of being with your body, being with your breath. But for me, it was really getting still and being with myself alone, that can be so scary. But that was what I really needed. And I wanna acknowledge you, you hinted at this a little bit.

but how intimidating the practice of meditation or mindfulness can be. We have all these connotations of meditation as, oh, having a calm mind, or even the fear of sitting in silence. I was teaching an intensive this past weekend and I was sharing with them the analogy one of my teachers had given me, which was that our mind can be like a bad neighborhood.

We don't wanna go there alone. We want guidance. We want support. We want someone sitting and meditating with us. They're telling us what to do because for a lot of us, we've never made that intentional friendship or connection with our minds. And so I would just advise people, as you start to dip your toe into mindfulness and meditation, this is a vast field that it doesn't have to look.

Certain number of minutes of practice. You don't have to be in any kind of pose. You can get all the support you need from books and apps and community groups. It's really about developing this muscle of turning inwards and connecting with yourself and with the environment as things are. And from that place of awareness where we meet things with curiosity rather than judgment or resistance or pushing things away.

It's a muscle we develop so that we ultimately become more in touch with what it means to be human. We become more of who we really are and we start to get more and more comfortable. Letting things be and being ourselves rather than always having to do and control and make things happen. So it's been so transformative for me, and I see this in my clients all the time.

I had a couple people who came in on Saturday of this past weekend, never having done any kind of meditation class before. And on Sunday afternoon, they were like, I'm starting a daily practice. I'm so inspired, this is what I'm gonna do. And it's just so cool to see that light bulb go off for people with busy lives.

There's a physician in there whose pager was going on the whole time cuz she had so many people wanted to get in touch with her. But the fact that no matter what our life circumstances are, how busy we are. We all have those same 1,440 minutes a day. And what if we could spend just a few of them in stillness, just a few of them being brave enough and courageous enough to turn inwards and get in touch with who we are.

[00:22:10] Wendy: And to that point, so somebody, shared with me meditation and my teens, I used to literally have anxiety attacks through it. I'd be like, you want me to slow down enough to stay still? And it's so funny because as the years have progressed with me learning how to do it I can sit in silence and that's the amazing thing is that once you learn how to do it, it is so enjoyable to do. I love time by myself. I used to hate time by myself.

Cuz again, that same thing, I'm like, oh, I'll be thinking and I'll be on next year, next week, last year, five years ago. And now I can really go, oh my gosh, it's so enjoyable to be in my own company. And what a change from, definitely from where I started. But it has taken practice, it has taken being, intentional in, okay, this may feel uncomfortable for now, but I wanna get to the point of comfortability.

And it's a beautiful practice once you understand, and I'm still learning all sorts of ways to do it, but it's a beautiful practice when you're like, okay, I'm not afraid to like be by myself now. It's a comfortable thing. Now I'm all, I have mom, kids, dogs, the whole thing, and I'm always like, oh, when can I go?

Hence the drive yesterday. When can I go have some quiet time for me. I love it now but it is a practice. I think anything that becomes important to us we practice. 

[00:23:27] Dorsey Standish: Definitely. And it's almost like you think about, it's going from not wanting to spend time by yourself and then extending that olive branch and making that first connection with your mind and saying, okay, I'm gonna spend time with you like a relationship that's important to us. We'd probably make time for it. So how can we make time for ourselves?

I love the idea that attention is the highest form of love, and how readily eager are we to give our attention to everything else and everybody else in our lives and not give it to ourselves. And that's not a sustainable place to be, especially as female entrepreneurs. How can we give ourselves that attention, that highest form of love, so that then we can offer that to other people from a place of integrity and from deep connection to who we are.

[00:24:11] Wendy: I have one last question, and I always like to ask this, what's the first step toward being in balance with mindfulness, mental health, and living your purpose? If you feel like you're not there right now, cuz you're having an off day, or you just have felt like that for a while, what's a good first step for a female entrepreneur who's struggling with this?

[00:24:31] Dorsey Standish: That's a great question, Wendy. I would say first step, it seems super cheesy. I never like it when people say it to me, but take a breath, pause long enough, maybe we can even do it together right now. Breathe deeply and let go of the breath. So that one breath can start to shift our nervous system from a place of over drive

into that parasympathetic rest and digest place. And it's that place from which we can problem solve and we can deeply connect with ourselves. So take this breath and then start to check in with your body and notice is there energy, are there places of tightness or tension? Even close your eyes for a moment and let yourself move a little bit intuitively and feel around, how am I right now?

And checking in. Okay. And then maybe you start to journal or jot down some of the things that are happening in your life that are challenging, like, this is stressing me out, or This is a challenge, this is what I'm going through. And then think about, okay, what are the things in my life that are lighting me up?

What do I look forward to? What are my favorite parts of the day? What fills me up? What gives me more energy? And see if you can commit to this being a daily practice. Like I just talked you through it. It took about a minute to breathe, to feel your body to write down, like start to do an energy inventory.

These things. These things. And what I've been so surprised at with my own mindfulness journey, I've always been such a action taker, that it always surprised me that just bringing awareness to something could actually help it. And so that's what I wanna encourage people to not feel like take this first step towards being in balance of okay, I gotta go out and do these five things.

It's actually just about pausing and being aware cuz so often we lose connection with ourselves. And there's a quote that I love from Thich Nhat Hanh. He says that awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things they transform. So trusting that taking these few minutes a day to be aware of your body and your breathe.

What you have going on, what's contributing to your stress? What are you grateful for? And then from that place of awareness, every day start to see yourself making small shifts towards maybe more breath, maybe more mental, physical awareness, and maybe more moments of shifting into living your purpose or making that choice to say, wow, my kids or my partner is home.

This email can wait. And I realized this morning, being with my kids at dinner is what brings me joy. So I feel empowered to go do that right now. So for me, it's really been a journey of awareness and trusting that awareness can make a difference, and that I would, that's what I would advise to people is how can you put just a few minutes of mindfulness into your day so you get in the habit of being aware and trusting your own inner wisdom and inner guidance, and trusting that time will 

help you start making those shifts in your actual day-to-day living. 

[00:27:35] Wendy: That's beautiful. And I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today. It has been a delight talking to you. I could talk about this for hours and hours. These are some of my favorite topics and I think that it's so important if you're listening out there.

You don't have a self-care routine of meditation just try it, for exactly a minute. I think that's the thing that people think, I have to go sit for 16 hours, or I'm not gonna do it right. Or your head may not stop racing the first time.

That's okay. You could try it again. There's no perfect way to do this as long as we keep trying. So thank you so much. I know you have an offer for the audience. I'd love for you to share about it now and how people can get in touch with you. 

[00:28:14] Dorsey Standish: Yeah, thanks so much, Wendy. If you're newer to mindfulness and brain training, you're inspired to start somewhere.

I would so encourage you to sign up for our free mental wellness library at Mastermind. You'll find about 20 practices there, including a one minute work break. So this is your invitation to start with just a minute, a day. A number of practices that you can benefit from and start to explore how mental wellness can support you moment to moment.

So please check that out. We'll put the link in the show notes. It's mastermindmeditate.com/freelibrary to sign up and get access. And then we're at mastermind meditate on Facebook, on Instagram, LinkedIn. And also my name is Dorsey Standish, so you'll find some mindful inspiration under those handles as well and

as you head out into your journey of self-care and mindfulness, I just wanna piggyback on what Wendy just said, right about who knows what you're gonna find when you turn inwards. That's always the adventure to go on. I will say that some people, when they start practicing, they actually think they're getting more distracted, but it's really, they're just noticing we have this monkey mind One study found that our minds wander about 47% of the time.

So trust that no matter what's happening in your mind or your body, you're not alone. Wendy and I are here talking about our experience and why we do these practices and that starting point of awareness and carving out that time and attention for yourself can be such a game changer in the way that you show up in the world.

So really wanna encourage you to continue your mental wellness practice in whatever way supports. 

[00:29:50] Wendy: Thank you so much. What a beautiful show. To my audience members, if you love what you heard today, please subscribe for other self-care guests. Season Three will have three shows a week With somebody new on. Also, if you love what you heard, please write a review.

In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderfully abundant week. Until then.