• We are getting going and here we go.
• Welcome back to the business Brothers podcast.
• My name is pradeep saying, I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of business brothers.
• And today, I'm pretty excited here to have a good friend of mine on, as well as an expert in a particular area on, which I think is very relevant.
• For today's, you can say age or the add the timing that we are going through coming out of covid.
• And some of the challenges that people are facing especially those in in family businesses.
• So I'd like to welcome, parm cheat, sing.
• Here he is, the founder of passing clouds and passing clouds.
• They focus on essentially helping corporations businesses, executive teams improve their mental health improve their emotional health, and improve their, their physical health and a number of different ways.
• I'm going to have parms, you talk about how he does that, but Barnes you welcome to the show here today.


• Thank you for deep for having me so wonderful to be here.


• Yeah, I'm always glad you and I actually had lunch yesterday, and we were chatting about this podcast.
• I always have a great time chatting with you, because we talked about some very deep topics.
• And one of the big topics that's coming about today is mental health.
• It's been talked about for a while now, but I think it's becoming more prevalent because of the conversations or the challenges that people have faced coming through covid.
• And knowing that the audience is primarily family business, Is there's a different layer on top of this as well because now we're mixing business with family, which can be, you know, stressful by itself and then you had covid and all these other pressures.
• I know that you have your theory when it comes to what stage, we're at right now with mental health, this and perhaps things may get worse, but maybe you can tell the audience a little bit about why you chose to get into this field or why I chose to create passing clouds.


• So thank you for the I think my sense of who we are, we are at that will show up in our conversation later, but let me answer your basic question.
• How did I come to choose this?
• So my training I started in in Sciences in my undergraduate, I was interested in human mind.
• I, at one point, I actually trained wanted to become a microbiologist, but I end up in Psychology because I loved the human mind.
• And I went to do because I was always interested, you know if you have a control or master of your mind it's the best ally you can have and if you don't it's the worst enemy is the enemy in the house.
• It is it destroys you within you, you don't need any enemies outside of you.
• If your mind is not really at the same Pace as you are, so I was always fascinated by it.
• So I went into psychology I found that most of the things we did in our Master Psychology was very generalized, they are very theoretical.
• They have no bearing whatsoever to my understanding in real life and in order to actually overwrite that I did, my PhD in sports psychology.
• So I worked with athletes and their cognitive performance.
• What really made athlete good athlete.
• What kind of faculties and Facilities, the utilized and moving from there.
• I went to do my post Doc in Australia and cognition and exercise.
• And do it is.
• And at that time, I also was introduced by my mentor.
• Who is who retired Professor from Florida State University.
• Now about the idea of expertise that what makes people expert, and then with that, I came to McMaster to do my post Doc in the area of expertise development and all sort of things.
• But, during that time, I always had wonderful conversation with people.
• People came to me for certain You can say advice even though I don't want to, I feel always and Seaboard saying that.
• And then at one point doing all this, somebody suggested me that if people come to you for tips and advice, why don't you start your own stuff?
• And I would say in a nutshell, that's how the passing clouds came to be.
• We had a couple of other entities before that, but we ultimately settled into the passing clouds because That really epitomized.
• What we thought about life that passing cloud.
• Is that, you know, the clouds, the obstacles come and go.
• But if you have trained mind, you can withstand the challenges of life.
• So, passing clouds has a kind of a more spiritual meaning to us the things come and go, is it?
• Everything is temporary.
• And if you have the skills to Stand Tall, during those difficult times, especially mental skills, then you?
• You are going to withstand the adversity and it maybe even transform into your real life.
• So that's how it all came to be.
• So that's the whole Every Time I Think of passing clouds, it's not only instructive to me that we all go through difficult times.
• And it teaches that okay, things will pass, that things are temporary.
• Nothing stays here for forever, neither good, nor the bad.
• And essentially, that's how I built my leadership development and emotional development and self development program, on that simple premise.
• And another aspect of the, I always have been practicing meditation in one shape and form, but many years back, I went you kind of very sincerely and to pop Asana which is it Insight Meditation and out of which mindfulness has the modern version of a pasta, is actually what we call the mindfulness.
• So I synthesize my professional training, my personal interest, and the things I did to stay sane, when I came as an immigrant together to build this kind of a program.
• So it's a very kind of a street-level practical no-nonsense, it's all experienced Shall I invite people that you be skeptical of what we I do here because you know I haven't self-interest in it but you can test the value of this program by by experiencing it by testing it and if you find after testing it is useful adopted.
• If not.
• Don't waste your time on it.
• So that's essentially the philosophical framework behind this program.
• I offer to the corporates, which is essentially focus on.
• On emotional health, leadership skill development, personal development, self development, and obviously a preventive way to manage your mental health and physical health.


• So what kind of results do you see or what kind of results can somewhat expect getting into your program as they grow through it and eventually graduate or completed and then continue on with the practices what what are the things that they benefit from or result in from the program?


• One of the Striking benefits that come from going through this program is that at one level, you get a kind of self-mastery, a sense of mastering yourself your mental landscape, you're physical landscape, your spiritual landscape.
• If your spiritual by any nature or by any means and the second one is that the skills we teach is a kind of a dual purpose skills or multi-purpose skills.
• You know if you are calm and collected and even-keeled you can be common That in your relationships and that can save you lot of heartburn especially on family relationship and similarly the same calm collected Nest can help you become a good businessman or woman for that matter because the mind you are going to use to stay present and calm and collected.
• While you're talking to your spouse or your kids is going to come in play, when you are dealing with your clients or difficult conversation with your, with your stakeholders.
• So one of the beauty of our program is that you You get two and one or maybe multiple in one kind of you learn one skill and two strands, lay table, and transferable to every single context of life.
• And that has been not only my own emphasis on this, we know, from research that if you learn certain kind of skills, they translate and transform only to a specific domain.
• But these skills, like, mindfulness pay scales or meditation relators skills or emotionally trainable skills, they are translatable to every single Aspect of your life so you get a lot more bang for your buck.
• It's a actually maximization of your return over investment over the period of time.
• So I tend to think that's one of the the major benefit of doings program similar to us is because you get self-mastery and then by doing.
• So you in fact, not only increase the probability of success in business, your transactions relationships, and anything.
• That comes in that domain.


• Is there an end and you have a theory in terms of where we're at right now?
• I know a lot of people are stressed out.
• People are easing off the stress by going traveling and we're seeing a lot of that at this particular time.
• It's a summer of 2022 and a lot of people are traveling.
• Airlines are packed and languages being lost and all this, you know, upheaval in terms of flights and vacations.
• What's your theory, what are your thoughts in terms of where people are in terms of stress levels?
• Because this is something that I've been monitoring with the work that we do.
• And we know that a lot of people are getting stressed and we work particularly in the business sector and we're seeing that higher levels of anxiety stress and we're not necessarily seeing stress resilience or coping mechanisms, keep up track or keep on track with the increase in stress.
• So what are you seeing?
• And what's your thought?
• In terms of where people are from stress perspective?
• And I think this is very important because for those are the audience members listening to this understanding that being an entrepreneur stressful.
• In itself, then you add on the family cell layer, as I mentioned before, having kids being in a marriage, all of these things, all these factors impact your business performance.
• So I'd like for you to share your thoughts in terms of where we are as a society when it comes to stress, depression suicide as well, mental health challenges,


• I think I have a, I have more crosses to way of putting it in a way, if you allow me to say that.
• I think we are at this stage, what we call psychologically constipated, which means that things are going to get worse in the coming months, people are in kind of false sense of normalization process that you know, pandemic is petering out or tapering off at least, or people are more comfortable with this kind of a whole experience of pandemic.
• But that does not deny, the fact that people have been in the survival mode for long period of time for the past two years and add to that the inflation.
• The economic indicators are rising and Trust rate, people's over responsibilities, all sort of things are coming together.
• So even if you feel that people are slightly unwinding during summer, I tend to think it's a kind of a blip in the Whole Thing Once fall Hits you We'll see this a very different kind of a very intense experience of my own mental health issues, because now people are in kind of distraction mode.
• They are traveling, or at least they have the choice to travel, if not outside of the country but within the country, whether it's nice, you're not feeling the gloomy November days but it is it is I tend to think even if people have been talking about the mental health, kind of a storm I can't I think this is the lull before the storm, and it is going to, it is going to linger around long before we have stopped talking about pandemic, because usually the wear, and tear on mind, has a long-term impact you.
• We can, you can go and discover survival mode for long period of time.
• And then, once all the, all the parameters or guardrails are taken off, then people feel that kind of, you know, that stress response coming and because there's no distraction after fall comes in, people will be traveling less.
• They will most likely have to return to their office space and all sort of things are going to show up and mental health is going to be one of the issues which people don't know how to deal with.
• And it was always there.
• I think it's a incorrect to say that it is something new.
• The lifestyle we live is if one of the major risk factor for mental health issues,


• Just on that note, when you're saying mental health, I think sometimes there's a stigma and there's been research that's been out lately that has talked about when you use the word mental health, what does that actually do?
• Does that actually promote a positive feeling towards it or neutral feeling?
• Or does it create more of a stigma and what they're showing now is when you say mental health, when someone you were uses that term, that it actually creates a negative stigma.
• So it's really interesting to see how what was I meant to be a positive for societies.
• Actually, starting to hurt people because anxiety depression, all of these challenges fall within mental health.
• So sorry.
• Go ahead barbecue.


• No. No please please.
• Finish a thought.


• Well, I was going to say, you know, I think when we take a look and we talked about this, this is stuff that what I want to say my personal perspective is this is something that's normal.
• Everybody goes through some period of anxiety, whether it's a short-term, or extended period of time everybody goes through depression.
• I've personally been in depression, myself years ago, Ago.
• I learned coping mechanisms to make sure that I don't get back into depression.
• And so everybody feels like it and although a lot of times we have diagnose, depression levels, we don't necessarily have undiagnosed stats and a lot of people have challenges.
• A lot of people are actually facing depression because we work with a lot of these entrepreneurs and they don't even know it.
• So there's still an awareness issue, a self-awareness issue when it comes to Mental Health.


• Yeah, I think to your point we need to talk about mental health, similar, the way we talk about physical health, we don't feel stigma when somebody is diagnosed with a physical ailment because we tend to think of his vehicle, body is different than mental stuff.
• And and partly there's a reason because physical body, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can move it, it occupies a special space, and space, and Time.
• But that's not true with the mind because mind is something unseen.
• Untouched unimagined, we don't know what we are talking about.
• Everybody has a different way to conceptualize human mind, but regardless, for all those kind of differences, I think having conversation especially wholesome, conversation about mental health, is one way to destigmatize it, why people feel when they are diagnosed with depression or sadness or something like That it kind of personal failure and part of the reason, I tend to think the reason why people think that way is because the the scope of mental health and illnesses have been an increasing and there is a kind of a skepticism about how these things are diagnosed and treated and most of the time, we do not want to talk about, sorry, we do not talk.
• I want to talk about these things and it kind of a unique Tway.
• So whenever we think about depression or anxiety or something, we tend to think of as a personal failure and whenever and we don't want to feel that way and then do the point of the definition has been broadening for very long time.
• That also has created a kind of skepticism because everything is now getting progressively medicalized,


• Is he?


• and then there's a skepticism, what the pharmaceutical industry, what is their vested interest is?
• So all these factors do not create a curve of conducive situation for us to talk about mental health in a wholesome way and I think the one of the way to destigmatize is to have a whole some idea about mental health and making a clear distinction.
• There's an Interventional part of their mental health which may require psychiatrist psychiatrist, intervention, medical intervention.
• And that media is a need for that but there's also part of the mental health, which is preventative.
• Which happens because of the accelerated wear and tear of the kind of mental attitudes.
• We have lifestyle, we live in our own idea about how the capitalism work can all sort of things.
• These are the accelerant wear and tear on the mind, which we should talk about.
• Because I think they often have a much more relevance to the large number of population or large swath of population.
• And because it both thing, whenever you think of mental health, we bring those intervention other preventative part together that it's trigger my stigmatize, the conversations.
• And more than that, it actually creates a kind of confusion among people.
• And then people who need to be helped by those interventions medical interventions, don't get help to because they are caught up in a different kind of conversation.
• And people who could simply get helped by using preventative methods, which you can do at at home in your Place within your family members, don't get that kind of traction and they lose out on then, then that book them at the risk of the latter part.
• The second, which requires medical intervention.


• Yeah, very good points are just two things that I should stand up for me there.
• The first one is when you talked about Psychiatry and I didn't know up until recently through a family member who is in Psychiatry that that whole discipline is based on Pharmaceuticals.
• And it was really interesting and I asked Mike what do you mean?
• It's all based on Pharma pharmacological watching well however you want to pronounce it studies and it's all about prescriptions and prescribing.
• And I didn't know that, and I guess the backbone is that a lot of these programs in Psychiatry are actually funded by and all the research is done by these pharmaceutical companies and therefore there's a big push towards when we talk about mental health, prescribing certain things for conditions


• Medicalization.


• and I want to be real.
• Yeah, and I think, you know, when you talked about being proactive and prevent it preventative measures, I think that's good.
• We need to focus more on that, on the physical challenges, that people have the physical health ailments that they have.
• My wife's background is all in functional medicine, which is all about preventive, whereas the general you can say the system, the doctors follow is more, you know, let's let's deal with the situation after rather than actually preventing it.
• And so I think we have to as a society, focus more on preventive measures so I that is very important especially as entrepreneurs because You know, when we hit that burnout point, when we hit that anxiety, point of high-level anxiety, or panic attacks, which is actually very common.
• I speak to a lot of people is mainly men, but actually a lot of women as well who feel like they're having a heart attack, but they're actually having panic attacks and they've been diagnosed with a panic attack.
• And because there's some situations that they've gone through throughout life that's causing them to be super, highly anxious, but preventing is so important.
• I can't stress that.
• Enough for entrepreneurs to have a healthy lifestyle in a routine, not just from a physical standpoint.
• But from a mental perspective and emotional perspective, because I've seen people not recover, when they've hit what I call the brick wall, because if you go fast enough and you hit the brick wall, sometimes you just can't repair the things.
• I've had people that have had Strokes heart attacks and they just can't.
• The doctor says it has said, you cannot increase your stress level past this point before they I have been able to deal with an 8 or a 9 out of 10 in terms of stress.
• Now, they can't go past a for otherwise, it could be potentially deadly.
• So what kind of stuff are you seeing enough of the preventative stuff when you're working with the corporate worlds are Executives or businesses?
• Do you think that it's top of mind for them?


• I don't think it is that people want to but then they are oftenly co-opted by the pressures of productivity because in a corporate environment doing is lot more important or at least being seen doing something even if it is actually unproductive in the long scheme of thing.
• Is lot more productive at least quote unquote in the terms of corporate productivity and bottom line.
• Then doing something which may increase their performance and productivity and resistance to failures or registrants to breakdowns over the period of time.


• Can you


• So


• repeat


• corporate


• that? Actually.


• is


• I think I think that's the story.
• I have to interrupt, but I think you said something that's actually very important there, you said some doing nothing is actually doing something.
• Those were the exact words, but can you repeat that?


• Yes, exactly means.
• I think we are our societies.
• This is a fundamental flaw, which I would say triggers, sustains and exacerbate, lot of mental and physical health problems because we are so obsessed with doing whatever that could be.
• But if you think about, if you think about our evolutionary systems, non-doing is lot more important, not doing is where You recover, non-doing is where you think and reflect non-doing is where you sleep, so that your brain can rest so that you can, you can your body can recover and be prepared for the next day, not doing is where the quality of.
• I often say that quality of your non-doing determines the quality of your doing.
• But there's absolutely no conversation about not doing in corporate word.
• And to the point, in fact, I remember a few years back in the first year medicine, class, I thought we were having conversation about that.
• Why, and the conversation was with that sometime not doing something, is the smartest thing you can do.
• But you need to know what, not to be done.
• And that requires a wisdom, that requires a kind of a reflectiveness that requires little bit of foresight.
• But oftenly we are so caught up in doing doing doing filling up our calendars that we miss the miss that the forest for the tree.


• Can


• And


• I just jump in


• I,


• there? Because I think that's,


• yeah.


• that's really important.
• I want to make this relevant to our audience here because I see this a lot in the family business world, where the first generation has built their business by doing by extreme work ethic by sacrifice.
• And what ends up happening is when they see their children the Next Generation Sometimes taking vacations Sometimes using the money going to restaurants enjoying the fruits of the labor, sometimes that founding generation doesn't see the benefit in that.
• And there's a criticism to say, hey, look, we never used to take these vacations, we sacrificed, we did all this.
• Why are you taking down time?
• That's not how we built this business and that's not.
• So it's going to help continue to grow the business.
• What's your what would be your comments or what would be your feedback when you if you saw something like that because it is prevalent in the family business Community, this is one of the core things that the founding generation feels and where the next generation is challenge because they're like we don't want to work 24/7, like you guys did.
• There's a reason why we want to be in business and that's to have a lifestyle.
• What are your thoughts on that Farms?
• You


• I think there's a it needs to be actually explained properly.
• I think that one of the day's a generation, I think intergeneration communication gap.
• The second one is the generation who built the business.
• They came from a different ecosystem, they were more robust, I tend to think and and I may be biased here, but I tend to think the previous generations were a lot more robust, physically mentally because they went through a lot of tough circumstances and those tough circumstances are It was defied them and that's why they, in fact, they survived and they did all the things they could do the other generation.
• Now, we have to understand that you cannot apply the same philosophy to these because people, these people are born and grown up in a different ecosystem, ecosystem, which I don't think it is a busty by people very much.
• It actually it makes them lot more fragile because there's a lot more Comfort attached to the


• Is


• things.


• it?


• There's a lot of more convenience.
• It's and comfort and convenience, often lie as much as we desire.
• Have a - site I think we spoke about that.
• The famous quote of the Lebanese poet Gibran that verily.
• The the Lust, For comport kills, the The Passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
• And that's a beautiful illustration or convenience and comfort can actually come to cost us a lot.
• So, when these people, the, the new generation is Taking vacations.
• I think we it needs to be either way in a balanced way.
• So I don't think there's a one way you can do.
• So I often think about it that what would I tell my kids?
• Who have a very different idea about that because they have born into a different system, it both ecosystem psychological system Financial system, and they don't see the life.
• The way I see why they don't see the life as a first-generation immigrant.
• See.
• He's so they're obviously not going to think about the idea of work can work ethics as I see.
• So what is the best way moving forward?
• And I keep on telling for example, my daughter is going to University this year and to keep on telling that remember you have their certain things, you would like to what we call customize as moving forward but there is a very basic ideas of Life.
• They were true hundred Bag.
• They were true thousand years back.
• They will most likely be true and thousand years to come.
• So you have to figure out how you can work with those things.
• So people going for vacations, people not taking enough and Trust in businesses is a big problem, and I think that's a one of the bigger stressor in the family businesses, because parents or whoever builds a business feel Untitled and maybe rightly.
• So, That you are going to destroy what I have built but the second generation is looking at the business from a different perspective because did they have not gone through the Pains of building something ground up?
• So they don't see that?
• What would happen in 20 years or 30 years?
• And maybe because of that, most of the family businesses fall apart within two, three generations, except some but most because people don't take on trust.
• And then obviously, there's another idea about it that Of the kids may not be even interested in what you know you want to do.
• My brother has a has a good business back in India, his kids are not least interested in his business and you can you can take the horse to the water but you can't really make the horse to drink water and that I actually big problem in family businesses.


• Yeah, that's actually another big stressor when it comes to family business and the approach that I see a lot of families take is ignoring.
• So the family will go through the build a great business.
• And then if there's an assumption made that the next generation is going to take it over and a lot of the times that assumption.
• It doesn't bode well and it doesn't bode well for a number of reasons a.
• You can't put, you can't put expectations on your children that are unfair.
• If they don't have interest in the business.
• They don't have the skill and the business, it can challenge them as well.
• And on the flip side, what I also see a lot of stress come from from the next generation is taking on the business, and let's not kid ourselves.
• I think as founding generation and because we work with all generations, as advisors, the founding generation feels like, they have a lot more stress on their side because they've sacrificed they built a business.
• You know, they have they I've had to put in the hard work to build a business and they believe that the Next Generation has it easy and the Next Generation actually has a level of stress that the founding generation doesn't fully understand.
• And that is the stress of taking on a successful business from their parents, and that can cause even greater stress.
• Because now, they are hoping and not wanting to screw up everything that their parents worked so hard for, and they might not have the skill, they might not have the resilience, they might not have The same Talent as their parents did to build a business and now they are stressed out because all of these expectations are being put on their shoulders.


• No, you're absolutely right.
• I think one of the fundamental problem in the family business, Transitions, and transfers is that misplaced.
• Expectations.
• You know, if you were to actually hand over the business to your kids, or I have to hand over the stuff, I do to my to our kids, that's an unfair expectation because my expertise is not translatable and so it might be yours in some cases.
• Yes, you know for example, if you run a store or if you have a physical Will business.
• But again, running a business requires a specialized set of skill set.
• And unless those kids are actually equipped with that, that's the unfair assumption and expectations from the founders to to have their kids.
• Take over.
• Just seamlessly.
• That's one thing.
• The second thing is that to your point, the stressors of today's are very different than the stressors were say for 30 years or 40 years waiting ever.
• Since the rise of free market economy, things have changed the way, we negotiate things have changed the way the These are built and run have changed the art of work ethics have changed interpersonal.
• Relationships have changed loyalties have changed and so Founders are actually thinking about all those things because they assumed all those things still exist without realizing that the structure of the environment in which the business is going to happen.
• In the next 30, 40, 50 years is no longer the same Adams was happening.
• 50 years back.
• And that adds to a stress which the new generation will feel it, but the old generation cannot anticipate it.
• And I think that miscommunication adds to the anxiousness or The Angst from both side


• Yeah, really good point sir.
• I think you've you've hit the nail on the head there.
• So, what is your do you have a last point for the audience here?
• I know we're coming up to town that time here in terms of whether it's mental, health, preventive measures having effective, communication, what's your last message to the family business?
• Owners out there.
• Listening to this,


• So, what is simple way to put this all together?
• If you want to prevent the incidences in the future, two things are very important when you're thinking about physical health, and when you thinking what mental, health and spiritual habit, I'll leave it to you because everybody has their own faith and they're going to buy it in it.
• They can reject.
• So, Physical body benefit by moving.
• Okay.
• And human mind benefit by resting.
• You have to have both these together in order to to benefit and it's a very inexpensive investment.
• You unless you are trying to become a bodybuilder, you don't have to hit the gym in the way.
• You know, if you want to move the body body is meant to be moved and human mind functions.
• Well, when you rest it, if you keep these two things together, you have one of the most important variables to preventing the incidences, both and physical health, and mental health in the long scheme of thing.


• Do you know what?
• A powerful way to close off this episode, because you're absolutely right.
• The rest is much needed and very beneficial, especially again, we come back to being a business owner.
• I know you're listening out there and be like, yeah, but I got to get, you know, after this podcast, I got to get this done or I go with my next M.
• I got to make my the next sale and so you've heard parmesan in terms of rest in your brain.
• It's very important.
• Keep your physical body active Farms you, where can people find out more about the work that Do if they want to get a hold of you or that you do.


• So yeah, so we have a fully functional website as a paramjit Singh.com.
• So my full name.com, you can find videos of research links to the latest research in the terms of mental health, physical health mindfulness, we have YouTube channel, you're most.
• Welcome to join us and we do podcasts.
• So anyway, we can help you can reach out to us.
• We'll be happy to have a conversation, but one of the most important things you We'll have it if you go and rest and move the body, it will keep you out of trouble for very long time.


• Great, thank you so much, Pharmacy and thank you for listening to another episode of business Brothers.
• We will catch you next time.
• Take care.


• Thank you!