I have two quick updates and two offers for you…

Updates:

• I’m hosting a 7th “Mindful Leadership Retreat” in upstate NY, from May 9-11th. I have 3 others this year, but they’re full with over 100 participants. I do these for YPO, Hampton, and companies. If you’re a post-exit founder or a leader in transition, you can request an invitation here to the May one. If you’re interested in having me facilitate one for you, the Fall of this year would be the first availability (inquire).

• The CEO Mind podcast I’ve been working on just launched with 8 episodes. My co-host and I interview CEOs & coaches on the mental, emotional, and metaphysical aspects of leadership. Give it a listen on Spotify!

Offers:

• I continue to offer and enjoy executive coaching under my Still Rush practice and have decided to donate $120,000 worth of pro bono coaching to one or two non-profit leaders. If you or someone you know leads a large non-profit (50+ employees) based in the NYC area, please let them know this is available. They can email me directly with their interest and org details, and I’ll pick a client sometime in the next month or so.

• Catalyzed by an incredible 25-person conscious leadership workshop I did for a coaching client; I’m considering offering more workshops to leaders and their teams. If you need some leadership training in the NYC area let me know. I’m only going to do a few, and I most likely won’t travel or do zoom for them 🙏🏻. I’ll be customizing this - though the topics are typically: executive presence, how to be a mindful leader, effective communications, innovation & creativity, how to coach direct reports, building sales and marketing programs, and more.

Just a few quick things today and an ask at the bottom:

• Today I offered up some coaching advice to Elon Musk after finishing his biography. It’s an excellent book. I wasn’t a fan of his (was fully in the NOT-MARS-let’s-save-our-planet camp), and then this book changed my mind.

• I’m hosting my fourth “Mindful Leadership Retreat” in upstate NY for those in transition or growth mode with their businesses. It’s three days and two nights of intensive meditation, breathwork and solo-nature immersion to catalyze breakthrough resets for leaders. There will be all manner of attendee interaction/focus grouping/workshopping. Apply here (4 of 20 spots left).

• If you missed it, I wrote about Zen and the Art of Burning Man a few weeks back, sharing my journey as a leader of one of the biggest camps at Burning Man during a “mud-pocalypse” from a zen practitioner’s POV. My camp PlayAlchemist, is pictured below right after the storm ended.

One ask for all of you:

Who do you know that is focused on the Mindful Leadership space? This is the specific focus of my coaching practice and the retreats I host, and I plan to pull a lot of collaborators into the mix with me over time as I create new experiences and content for people.

Just respond to this email if you’re willing and send me some links to people you admire in this space :)

🙏🏻 Peter

P.S. If you’re looking for any resources related to mindful leadership (events, blog posts, books, podcasts), just ask and I’ll send you something back.

But wait, there’s more!

I just returned from a 3-week adventure at Burning Man and I wrote about some leadership lessons learned as I helped lead a 260-person camp during a natural disaster.

Read: “Zen and the Art of Burning Man”

I’ve just announced that I’ve co-founded Spirituality Week, a community produced, city-wide festival to nourish the spiritual needs of New Yorkers & its visitors.

The full announcement is on Medium here.

It’s going to be an interesting experiment. I hope you’ll come and participate!

-Peter

TLDR Summary:

[1] You can hire me (here) for CEO / Executive coaching and facilitation if you like.

[2] I’m open to exploring formal roles as a GP of a venture fund, and/or as a part time Venture Partner as I am at Up.Partners. Just email peter at stillrush dot co.

[3] There’s a bunch of book recommendations in the conclusion.

Over these past two years, I’ve spent much of it practicing Zen, training in hospice and have enjoyed/endured collectively over a month in total silent meditation. During this period there’s been no ego death feeling — it’s been a time of “becoming nobody”…

Full post here: https://corbett3000.medium.com/from-ceo-to-nobody

The following verse gives me great comfort when I’m faced with challenging people or groups - like an opposing political party in the time of a election. It’s a bit tricky so I’ll explain a little of Thogme’s verse from 700 years ago, which still applies today:

“In my native land waves of attachment to friends and kin surge, hatred for enemies rages like fire, the darkness of stupidity, not caring what to adopt or avoid, thickens — To abandon my native land is the practice of a bodhisattva.” -Thogme

The following bullets will hopefully make this clear. Once you read them, trying sitting quietly for a moment to see how this applies to the 2020 Presidential Election, as well as in other areas of your life.

• This “native land” is not a place. It is the situation we’re born into where we’re conditioned to believe there’s a “us vs. them” and an “other” that is separate from ourselves. This native land is one that is full of divisions. People and ideas are set against each other. This is called duality - and it’s the beginning of suffering and delusion. I equate it to the Original Sin in the story of Adam and Eve. By eating the apple they separate themselves from the Garden of Eden - separate their genders - and live in a state of suffering duality ever after.

• Abandoning this native land means no longer being involved in an us vs them game. It is bringing our divided world back into view as it actually is: unified, interdependent, in a state of interbeing.

• This attachment to friends and kin is especially tricky. Of course we are attached to the folks we love. But are we attached to the idea that our parents, our siblings would vote like us? What happens then…And are we not attached to the lives of others? We’re happy to just throw all those people away?

• A bodhisattva can simply be understood as someone who’s endeavoring to reduce suffering in the world rather than create it. So in this election, it’s probably easy to conclude that by voting for Old White Man #1 in stead of Old White Man #2 that you’ll reduce suffering for all…sure. But what is your attitude towards Old White Man #2’s voters. Do you hate them? Do you think they’re idiots? This is causing you and the world suffering too.

I’ll end by adding a few questions/practices that, once you’ve had a moment to contemplate this verse, you might find compelling:

• If only for today - when you think about the other party or the other candidate let the words “not two” pop into your mind. Then try to see where interdepence and interbeing are at play. Can you bring the other party and the other candidate back into unity with you in your mind?

• The “not two” exercise is especially interesting when we listen to political candidates talk about other countries, like China. You’ll be begin to see that in this native land we are being conditioned to separate from others, to dislike/hate etc. What purpose is this severing? Can you see how you are also Chinese? Russian? Are you a traitor for doing so?

• Finally, what comes up for you when you’re told you are American? Or Patriotic? Or that you are not Patriotic? Where does this cause suffering or joy? How is your nationalism affecting you, those around you and the world?

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Perhaps my favorite poem of all time is copied below. Pablo Neruda hits on something essential that feels prescient in this moment of COVID, inequality/unrest. I’d love to hear how and if it moves you, as it has me, the many times I’ve read it.

Keeping Quite

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Dear White Friends,

Only in the past year have I come to know that I’m a white man. I know that sounds odd - that it would take me 40 years to realize this. I was surprised too!

I’ve read a lot about whiteness and the Black experience recently and come to realize that in fact the only thing more dangerous than a white (wo)man, is one that doesn’t know they’re white…or “doesn’t see color.” So my hope is to make you and me a little less dangerous right now.

If those sentences pisses you off, mystify you, or you feel attacked in some way — GREAT. That means there’s some interesting work to do and the books below are going to blow your mind in such a wonderful way. You can thank me later! You’re also welcome to avoid this self-education for a while longer, but I assure you that you do so at your own risk and at the risk of harming people of color further than you/we white people have already. You could lose your job. Your reputation. Your everything.

Or not. After all, it’s a white world and we white people are running it.

These books have had a profound impact on me.

If you’re skeptical about why you should read more about whiteness and the Black American experience, here’s a list of the “value propositions for white folks” that might be compelling to you. Perhaps they will convince you to do some of this reading if the inherent moral/humanist reasons to do so aren’t so apparent. White folks love value propositions! I know I do.

So here they are. If you read these books you will:

1. Cause less harm to people of color

2. Understand what’s happening in America today

3. Be less afraid of what’s happening in America today

4. Be more active in helping the community around you

5. Be less likely to say the wrong thing

6. Be able to communicate with POC about race

7. Be less likely to get fired from a job for being racist

8. Be less likely to have your employees/co-workers consider you an out of touch white guy/gal - or worse

9. Develop the interest and ability to have intimate relationships with POC

10. Be more in tune with your spiritual beliefs if you have them

11. Be more prepared for the next several decades of cultural upheaval at our doorstep

12. Learn how to be a partner to historical civil rights movements like Black Lives Matter

Sounds pretty transactional right? Man, white people…we love transactions.

So here’s the list - I encourage you to read them in the order I listed, but I’m not sure that matters. If any one of you reads them all - please comment or email me and you’ll receive a special gift from me (white people love incentives).

Summer 2020 Reading For My White Friends:

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley

The Fire Next Time

The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

BONUS: For my buddhist friends like me…

The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender

Double Bonus: Next on my reading list is…

Native Son

Wishing you all the best this Summer!

-Peter

It’s been over a month since I posted here. Since that time I’ve found many ways to be of service during the COVID-19 outbreak (donating, delivering groceries to folks in need in NYC, etc). I want to offer a few ways here that I can be of service to you remotely, should you want to connect that way:

1. As a retired Founder and CEO (my bio) I know a lot about all things business related. If you want to book time with me to get some insight into what you should do with a specific business issue, please book time here and we’ll connect (it’s free of course).

2. Some of you are aware that I just completed a certificate program in Zen hospice care - where I worked with hospital staff, the sick, dying and their family members. It’s been my privilege and calling during COVID to do video calls with friends who’ve lost loved ones, or who are dealing with emotional trauma brought on by the pandemic. I’m not a counselor - just a friend who’s worked with hundreds of people in the ER and ICU (and outside of it) during life’s most difficult times. If you need me I’m here. Just book a time.

3. If you have a question related to #1 or #2 above but don’t want to book time, just email me and I’ll send something back (i.e. book recommendations, ideas, podcasts etc.)

P.S. If you have a friend who’s an entrepreneur and needs some free help please send them this post.

A a final public service announcement from my wife and our pup Jack <—>:

For those of you interested in entrepreneurial war stories, I submit to you a recent interview of me by Debbie Weil, on Mortality, Dying, and a New Life of Service.

I speak about going from being a CEO to…well…just Peter again, and the in’s and outs of my training in Zen hospice care (aka Contemplative Care).

You can find the 20 minute interview on Apple Podcasts and other ways to listen.

Peter

This is the 10th post in a series and I’ll leave you with a powerful video called “New York Tough”.

Fellow New Yorkers: we will get through this. And if you think you’re not a New Yorker...look around your room, your house, your content viewing history. This place has influenced more in our daily lives in America than anything where else. New York is your financial hub, media capital, and is the very origin of the grit this country is so proud of. Before there was ____ Tough, there was New York Tough.

We’re so tough we can even say I love you. And we can say thank you to all the NYPD, FDNY, healthcare workers, grocery workers, deliver guys, and everyone else workin this crisis to get us through.

We love you. We’ll get through this. 🙏🏼❤️

If you want a little tear jerker this morning watch this.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath —
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love —
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

By Lynn Ungar

Peter Corbett, Zen hospice volunteer and retired Founder/CEO takes you through a process for how to provide contemplative care for the sick and dying in the time of Corona Virus / COVID19. This approach is both informed by Zen Buddhism, his Catholic up bringing, and training in an Emergency Dept. / multiple ICU units in New York City.

If you would like to connect with Peter to discuss sickness and death you can book a time here for free: https://calendly.com/corbett3000

[Note: This is attributed to Bill Gates, but it looks to be fake news. It’s a nice read regardless. ]

What is the Corona/ Covid-19 Virus Really Teaching us?

I’m a strong believer that there is a spiritual purpose behind everything that happens, whether that is what we perceive as being good or being bad.

As I meditate upon this, I want to share with you what I feel the Corona/ Covid-19 virus is really doing to us:

1) It is reminding us that we are all equal, regardless of our culture, religion, occupation, financial situation or how famous we are. This disease treats us all equally, perhaps we should to. If you don’t believe me, just ask Tom Hanks.

2) It is reminding us that we are all connected and something that affects one person has an effect on another. It is reminding us that the false borders that we have put up have little value as this virus does not need a passport. It is reminding us, by oppressing us for a short time, of those in this world whose whole life is spent in oppression.

3) It is reminding us of how precious our health is and how we have moved to neglect it through eating nutrient poor manufactured food and drinking water that is contaminated with chemicals upon chemicals. If we don’t look after our health, we will, of course, get sick.

4) It is reminding us of the shortness of life and of what is most important for us to do, which is to help each other, especially those who are old or sick. Our purpose is not to buy toilet roll.

5) It is reminding us of how materialistic our society has become and how, when in times of difficulty, we remember that it’s the essentials that we need (food, water, medicine) as opposed to the luxuries that we sometimes unnecessarily give value to.

6) It is reminding us of how important our family and home life is and how much we have neglected this. It is forcing us back into our houses so we can rebuild them into our home and to strengthen our family unit.

7) It is reminding us that our true work is not our job, that is what we do, not what we were created to do. Our true work is to look after each other, to protect each other and to be of benefit to one another.

8) It is reminding us to keep our egos in check. It is reminding us that no matter how great we think we are or how great others think we are, a virus can bring our world to a standstill.

9) It is reminding us that the power of freewill is in our hands. We can choose to cooperate and help each other, to share, to give, to help and to support each other or we can choose to be selfish, to hoard, to look after only our self. Indeed, it is difficulties that bring out our true colors.

10) It is reminding us that we can be patient, or we can panic. We can either understand that this type of situation has happened many times before in history and will pass, or we can panic and see it as the end of the world and, consequently, cause ourselves more harm than good.

11) It is reminding us that this can either be an end or a new beginning. This can be a time of reflection and understanding, where we learn from our mistakes, or it can be the start of a cycle which will continue until we finally learn the lesson we are meant to.

12) It is reminding us that this Earth is sick. It is reminding us that we need to look at the rate of deforestation just as urgently as we look at the speed at which toilet rolls are disappearing off of shelves. We are sick because our home is sick. 

13) It is reminding us that after every difficulty, there is always ease. Life is cyclical, and this is just a phase in this great cycle. We do not need to panic; this too shall pass.

14) Whereas many see the Corona/ Covid-19 virus as a great disaster, I prefer to see it as a *great corrector*

It is sent to remind us of the important lessons that we seem to have forgotten and it is up to us if we will learn them or not.

-Bill Gates (or not)

“The task is to move from happy endings to mature serenity in a world without happy endings.” - Paul Shepard

“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

“When doomsday comes, if someone has a palm shoot in his hand, he should plant it.” -Muhammad

“The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the Earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise — then we can build a noble environment. If our lives are not based on this truth, then we shall perish.” -Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

When contemplating sickness, old age and death a Korean monk said:

“Sunsets are beautiful too, not just Sunrises.”

I was recently helping a teenager process her emotions related to her mother dying (I a Zen hospice volunteer) and I asked her to practice putting her fear, anxiety and pain on the table in front of her. Just set them down for a moment so they aren’t consuming her. So she could look at them more clearly. This reminded me of this final quote:

“Casting all your anxieties on him (Jesus), because he cares for you.” -Book of Peter 5:7

“At the core of Buddhist philosophy is non-attachment, which is an important principle to remember in relation to altruism. When we see others suffering--whether a family member, colleague, client, animal, an entire group of people, our earth--we hopefully try to meet suffering honestly and intimately, so we can serve. We also put Not-Knowing into practice by recognizing that really, we are always in free fall. It's not like we will find some moral high ground where we are finally stable and can catch all those falling around us. It's more like we are all falling above the infinite groundlessness of life, and we learn to become stable in flight, and to support others to become free of the fear that arises from feeling unmoored. The final resting place is not the ground at all but rather the freedom that arises from knowing there will never be a ground, and yet here we are, together, navigating the boundless space of life, not attached, yet intimate.”

-Roshi Joan Halifax (from her book)

Lockdown by Brother Richard Hendrick (Capuchin Franciscan Brother)

March 13th 2020

Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.