speaker-0: Performance doesn't fail first, clarity does. Most people would just say, No, I I'm not interested. The questions that they themselves are the motivation.

speaker-1: What happened in your own experience that that led you to this realization that clarity is the central foundation to performance?

speaker-0: We are all called to discover things about ourselves that only experience can teach. And I was becoming the answer to the question I was asking.

speaker-1: When pressure starts to build, I just keep going. I keep making decisions, I keep answering messages, I keep showing up, and from the outside, everything can look fine. But internally, I know that the pressure is building and my decisions are getting worse. I can feel disconnected from the work and from myself. And I can start to blame my situation on the things around me, not really noticing or willing to acknowledge the pressure and what's happening internally. Because I feel like Sometimes if I acknowledge and admit that the pressure is getting to me or the pressure is real, it would make me feel weak or vulnerable in some way. But by the time I'm willing to finally admit it, my performance has dropped and the problem has been building for a long time. So what do you do when you realize that you're just no longer thinking clearly? Tell me answer that question. I'm excited to be joined today by Savio Clemente. Savio works with healthcare leaders and teams after disruption. And his perspective both comes from his work with these teams and with these leaders. And from his own recovery from cancer. In our conversation, we discuss why clarity breaks before performance does, how silence and stillness helps us to notice what is happening internally, how Savio's aloha reboot works, and why some questions need time before the answer can become clear. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Savio Clemente. Savio, thank you so much for being here.

speaker-0: Ian, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

speaker-1: Absolutely looking forward to our conversation. So, Savio, you say that clarity breaks before performance does. What do you mean by that?

speaker-0: Yeah, so people often assume that you need to perform and get things done, but if you are not centered, clear in your not only intentions but in your actions, then everything's really gonna fall apart. My professional leanings and my lived experience have proven that. And also talking to at this point over two thousand leaders, change makers, thought leaders, even celebrities, and I find that that's the central theme.

speaker-1: Yeah. So what are some of the first signs that you see when somebody is losing clarity?

speaker-0: Often there is a break in decision quality and decision making. Oftentimes there is this semblance of feeling not connected to the work or not even connected to themselves and what they actually want or perceive. And the third one is really a blaming of external situations rather than taking personal responsibility for what's going on. Now. That is to say there is critical disruptions happening socially, politically, and technologically with AI. So but on mostly, especially when it comes to the healthcare leaders I deal with, it's really about them having a constant cognitive pressure and overload, and they themselves are not to a large degree clear in their actions and intentions of how to move set initiative or how to move any really anything meaningful forward.

speaker-1: So obviously you've you've spent a lot of time developing your expertise, your methodology, and your belief that clarity becomes comes before performance does. I'm curious to know, like in your own personal experience, like how did you come to that realization? Like was there something was there a moment in your life where you were doing everything but trying to get back to clarity to fix your performance issues? Like what happened in your own experience that that led you to this realization that clarity is the central foundation to performance?

speaker-0: So my thesis in a nutshell is performance doesn't fail first, clarity does. And so when you break that down, you really come to realize well, what is actually guiding my decisions? What's actually guiding my thoughts? What's actually guiding my emotions? And so for me, it was a hard earned lesson. In twenty fourteen, I was diagnosed with stage three non Hotchkins lymphoma, blood cancer. Fortunately, through RCHOP chemotherapy and a whole bunch of other integrated modalities, I was able to reach remission and I was in remission for a decade until cancer came back, lymphoma that is, in twenty twenty four, about a decade later, in a different part of my body. And with that I had to undergo a stem cell transplant. And with the stem cell transplant, Many people don't know, but you're in a quarantine room. Typically it's about three weeks in the hospital. I was there for about four weeks, twenty nine days. I lost about twenty six pounds. And obviously all the care that's involved, machines beeping, nurses coming every four hours to check vitals, doctors doing their rounds in the morning or the afternoon. I only had two things, Ian. I only had this idea of and the central anchor of stillness and silence, and I sank deeply within it. And in it I realized after I got out of the hospital 29 days later, I did an additional four and a half months of immunotherapy and then additional five months of physical therapy. I realized that I was chasing this idea of recovery and performance. But I myself wasn't really clear as to how do I navigate forward from this situation. So I put my whole life on hold, my professional life on hold. And I focus completely on healing. And I realize that we live in a world of complete and super optimization. We want to track, we want metrics, we want things that actually make us feel good or if to some degree make us feel guilty. And I realize when it comes to performance, the thing that actually lacks is clarity. Clarity in how do you want to move forward? What do you actually want to create, not based upon competition? or based upon the Joneses, or based upon what you see on social media, or even based upon what you see in your professional world and your colleagues. Clarity in the sense of what is meaningful for me right now, especially when you go through something as devastating as what I went through, people often say to me, they're like, Well, you know, your story's really dramatic. And yeah, my story's very dramatic. But the fact of the matter is it doesn't have to be so dramatic. It could be a job loss. It could be a corporation folding, it could be a divorce, it could be someone cheating on you. Whatever the iteration is, the fact of the matter is if you don't really search from within to actually figure out what's actually driving the machine, then the machine is actually going to break down. And that leads to what I talk about a lot, which is this idea of post crisis decision gap or post crisis leadership gap. It's really that period. Where everything looks stable and fine and then things starts to drift and then shift and then it widens and then the chasm creates. And that's when you get yourself in serious trouble.

speaker-1: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that and for your candor in your sharing your story. I think, you know, it's really powerful. And but you mentioned something there at the end that it doesn't have to be as serious and as intense as what you went through. But I found that in my own anecdotal experience in my life, that the biggest shifts and the changes that I've made, which, you know, taking the time to do a lot of internal reflection to find clarity, to connect with yourself, to find what you really like, is that, right? It is Something that have to take time and intentionally, like you have to take seriously and carve out time to do, right? It is like a big shift that you're gonna make in your life. So what I've found in my experience is that those shifts only happen really after something really breaks down. So have you found that people have been able to make this shift, connect with themselves only after they have some kind of traumatic experience? Like obviously it doesn't have to be super traumatic, but like I don't know, I found that in my own experience, like I really only make changes when things have gone really bad. So like, how do you respond to that?

speaker-0: Well, in healthcare leadership, the central word there is burnout. And typically that's usually what happens, especially for individuals that I work with high stakes, themselves, their teams, organizations, and another human being. There's a lot on the line there. There's a lot of responsibility, there's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of constant need to always figure out and know the answers, and then things shifting and changing. But If you're talking human to human in terms of our own individual experience, yes, sometimes, most of the time, something has to be really hard in order for it to be really soft again or in manageable again. And I would say those are the growth spurts. People talk about transformation all the time, but if they really knew what it takes for growth to actually occur, most people would just say, No, I I'm not interested. They would say I would rather just idly doom scroll or bide my time with s pleasures. But I think when it does happen, I don't think it's something that most people often invite to fully discover. So in other words, I talk a lot about on stages and in my work and in my journalism work as well. This idea that it's not about surviving the crisis, it's about what happens afterwards. Cause that's when you win or lose. That's when you actually reorientate, figure out your next way forward, figure out how to recalibrate, figure out how to not only have self regulation, but have co regulation with other people, how you create psychological safety with one another through vulnerability and trust. So the short answer is yes. Most of the time you something does happen in your life. But I do think that there are people on a search and I think the world is very disruptive and chaotic right now that it's forcing people to look inward, which really is my bread and butter.

speaker-1: Yeah, I completely agree with you there that it is forcing a lot more people to look inward, myself included. Feels like I've been searching for a long time as to like what is my calling. That sounds really grandiose, but just trying to find it because I just know that the people who do find it are the happiest people on the planet. The people who find what they love that what they love to do, right? They're fully engaged in the work that they're doing are the happiest people, most successful people on the planet because seems like they were born to do the thing that they're doing. But you mentioned the point that well, I think just to kind of underline the the part of what we're talking about that change only happens when like you're in a place of pain. I think that's just like a natural kind of human thing. Right. Obviously I I don't have the training, the experience, the knowledge to really be able to articulate it as clearly, but like I know as humans we're more prone to move away from pain than we are to move towards pleasure. Right. Like in conversation logically, we can understand that, yeah, we want to improve, we want to get better, we want to grow, but it's hard, right? It's really hard to do that. And it's we're probably only gonna do the hard work to make that change, to make that shift when we're kicked in the butt by something going on in our life. And then you also made the point that it's not the crisis that defines you, but it's how you react to that crisis, which is like how you use it. Are you going to use it as fuel, an opportunity to grow, to learn? From that experience and improve and move beyond it. And then you had talked about like the idea that if people understood what it takes to really grow, right, they'd probably say no thank you. Right. I mean, there's many stories like that in the conversations that I've had with founders where if if they had known what it was gonna take to get to where they are now when they started, they probably would have said no thanks. But It reminded me of this quote from this book that I recently read that I brought up many times on the podcast, but it's a a Return to Love by Marion Williamson. And I'll just read this to you. It's this is a very spiritual book and they use a lot of Christian language and terminology in the book, but it can be applicable to whatever faith you have. But is this idea that and you could replace God with growth, but sometimes people think that calling on God or calling for growth means inviting a force into our lives that will make everything rosy. The truth is it means inviting everything into our lives that will force us to grow. And growth can be messy. The purpose of life is to grow into our perfection. Once we call on God, everything that could anger us is on the way. Right. So it's I feel like that's like if you're stepping onto the path of growth, you're inviting everything into your life that's gonna challenge you, that's gonna force put you through a struggle, because that is the path to growth.

speaker-0: So, Ian, a few things. You hit on one of my favorite books, A Return to Love. The quote that I resonate deeply with, and thank you for sharing yours, was the I our deepest fear is that we are not inadequate. I can recite that. I I know that by heart. Another thing is I'm staring right at you, and I actually am smiling because you are a young person who's asking the questions. There's a book called Letters to a Young Poet by Raina Maria Rilke. And in it she speaks, he, sorry, he speaks. of this idea of living the questions. That's the contradiction. That's the paradox. We have to live in that of figuring out for ourselves, well, what is the question? And maybe the answer will come to me. Maybe the answer's not something I actually have to force. so thank you for highlighting those two things.

speaker-1: When you say living the question, like what does that mean to you? Yeah.

speaker-0: So most people want the answers, same thing with crisis. Most people want to fix the crisis. And I'm not saying you shouldn't fix the crisis. I just want to be clear. Everyone wants to turn the fire down and fix it. Yes. But living the questions is really this idea that the questions that they themselves are the motivation. They tug at us, they pull us, they guide us, they call to us. So living the questions is actually living in that semblance of not knowing to a degree. where the answers will eventually arrive to us. Not the full answers, because the great mystery as they call it. So some context. I grew up Catholic. I was an altar boy for like six years in Catholic elementary school. Then in college I knew that I wanted to study other belief systems. So I've studied from that point till now everything from Buddhism to Jewish mysticism all the way down to Vedic philosophy. And in it they actually talk about this idea that the river doesn't rush. Eastern philosophy that is, and that the sea doesn't rush. The sea knows its architecture, it knows what's happening underneath the ground, underneath the soil, underneath the darkness. And the river knows its direction, even though a rock or a boulder might be abutting it, it knows that it's going to eventually reach the ocean. So at the end of the day, really living the questions is really living with that paradox, that contradiction, that even though I might not know, and even though something is tugging at me to know, whether it's some soul calling or heart calling or your mind calling, that living the questions is living in that mystery and being okay with it. oftentimes people actually said to me, and something I had to unlearn was that I was constantly optimizing. I was living in this state of metrics and what do I what can I do? And what can I, you know, like I know I can't control my red blood cell count and my neutrophils and my white blood cell count, but Yeah, I can definitely control those things. And I'm not saying that that is not important. It's very important. But I was so consumed by optimizing that I didn't allow rest to actually fully be the answer to recovery. I didn't allow myself to actually figure out that maybe through this process it wasn't about reaching the summit or reaching the answer. Maybe it was the steps that I was taking and I was becoming the answer to the question I was asking.

speaker-1: Yeah, that's beautiful. Living the question to me sounds just like living in that space of curiosity and being okay with not finding the answer. Right. Just recognizing that was a very turbulent time in my life. I don't know what happened, but like I was in my early twenties and I just got like everything felt so big and I just felt very lost. And I just had to like the story of Sisyphus. Like I went through a very like, I was just like meaningless. Like, what's the I forget the the school of philosophy? That argues that. Like it's a but it's just like nothing matters. Like basically I just kind of fell into a loop of like nothing really matters. Like, what is all of this? Nihilism. It fell into a very like deep nihilistic hole. And then I had to kind of like climb my way out of it. and the story of Sisyphus reminds me of your story of the river, where it's just, you know, he doesn't know why he's pushing the the rock up the mountain, but it's in the act of doing, it's in the act of moving the rock up the mountain that he finds his purpose. But yeah, so that idea of living in the questions just means, you know, living in a space of curiosity, being okay with not being certain, not knowing, but still striving and taking steps anyways. So in your opinion, so you found this thing about yourself that you were constantly optimizing, like what is the what is the opposite of that? What is your your new way of being?

speaker-0: My new way of being is taking responsibility for what I need to have and occur. One thing people don't understand unless you've been through a dramatic and traumatic a medical situation like I have is that when the medical system and I have to give them credit, they they definitely helped me and I'm speaking to you today because of it. But when that team and that care is gone So for example, for me, I went through stem cell transplant, I did immunotherapy, I did physical therapy, I got my scans blood work, and now I'm in complete response to treatment. I don't call it remission, but that's it's called CR. So I call it a complete response. It ends. Yes, you see them every six months or four months, whatever, and then after two years you see them every year, but there's nothing left. And so me being a board certified health and wellness coach. I know that those two worlds are like silos. They don't really talk to one another. They criticize each other consistently. But I always have felt and still do the answer is in the middle. So the things that I do is I realize, okay, well, my body is reconstituting. When you go through a stem cell transplant, most people don't know, but your bone marrow is completely wiped out. And when your bone marrow is completely wiped out, I got my own stem cell. Some people get donor stem cells. Because it reconstitutes, it takes time. It's sometimes it's a year or two before it actually is able to regenerate or recalibrate to where it was or maybe even better. But then there's also side effects that occur, like I had tachycardia. Some people have neuropathy, I have some neuropathy as well. And unfortunately some people have some other serious side effects like walking and whatnot. And so I said, well, what is the best way forward with this, knowing so I do the wellness protocols that I know and I have researched and I know that are scientifically vetted and tested. But I also am not in a hurry to consistently and constantly do those things where I become so obsessive about trying to get back to where I was, rather than thinking that where I was might not have always been the ideal. Maybe the ideal was going through this and having this viewpoint or this new ideology or thinking that the healing, the recovery is really about the two pillars that I discovered in the hospital being in the hospital for 29 days, which was silence and stillness. So I sank deeply into those two. And those two are available to anyone, anywhere, regardless of your socioeconomic status, regardless of your upbringing, it's just available to all of us. And when you really figure out for yourself that that is true healing is when you can actually sink into those things. You realize all the external things that you're trying to achieve. Sometimes it's only done through ego. It's not really done through purpose.

speaker-1: Hmm. Yeah, when I heard you describing the the living a life of constantly optimizing, realizing that was a problem and trying to live differently, it reminded me again from another idea of a return to love, this idea of surrender, which surrender doesn't mean a forfeit of your responsibility, right? You're still going to take full responsibility and control what you can control and do everything that you can, but you're going to surrender the outcomes, right? You're going to, you know, surrender the things that happen, right? Whatever outcome comes there. But you brought up the idea again of stillness and silence. Like what do you see as the value of those two things?

speaker-0: Oftentimes we live in a noisy, disruptive in so many ways socially, politically, and now technologically, and we're caught up on this ideology or caught up on this, as the Eastern philosophy calls Maya or illusion, that that's going to bring us some level of happiness or some level of peace, of some level of sanity. And what it actually does, it actually creates more chaos in our lives because oftentimes we're living through this idea of who we want to be rather than living through this idea of who we should be or who we want to be. And that takes a lot of soul searching. A lot of my work, especially as a coach and as a speaker, is really speaking to healthcare leaders that to a large degree have to put down some of their roles or their masks because they often feel like they have to have the answers. And of course we rely on healthcare to do that, especially healthcare leaders to do that. But oftentimes that gets in the way of actual connection. We don't live in a world lacking in content. We live in a world lacking in connection. AI can generate any data point that we want. Yes, it hallucinates from time to time, but it does give information. And we're not lacking in that. We're lacking in how we use the information, how that information actually informs us. And to a large degree If AI has something inherently wrong with its output, does it have any consequences? No. Can it be fired? It can be deactivated, but there's nothing that AI faces in terms of personal responsibility. So I think it behooves us as humans, living in that world now, incorporating that into our lives, that we actually get better at being more relational with one another. And forming that connection deeper.

speaker-1: I 100% agree. Yeah. I think that is where the true, you know, human element lies is in that connection. And that is the unique human ability. And that is the what we all need to work on. Right. Like that is what, you know, if you want to I don't know, be as valuable or be as useful is definitely not the right term to say. But it's like if you want to work on something that's going to be irreplaceable by AI, it should be working on your abilities to connect, inspire, you know, lead. other people because that is the uniquely human quality, the unique uniquely human ability. But I think to the first person that I've had the opportunity to talk to about the value of silence, like I have this journal that I use every single day. And one of the parts of the journal every morning obviously is like the gratitude, but then it sets an in intention for the day. And for the probably the last two years, like I could go back through every single day. One of those intentions for the day is create silence. Again, in my own Anecdotal experience, I have found that it is the moments where I can get to silence, where I can turn off the podcast, I can turn off the music, I can just sit there and be in a space of silence, is when I can hear the intuition or just like connect back to the things that I know I need to do, or I can just like really sink into focus. I'm not exactly sure what it is. I haven't had the opportunity again to articulate like the value of being in silence, but I know that many great people have talked about, and I've read this in other books, that It is only in silence and a lot of people talk about it like you go for walks. It is only in silence that you can really hear your intuition or your soul kind of speak to you and you can kind of connect to that. You know, you can see or you can hear where your soul wants you to go or like what you should be working on. You can really connect with that. Is that part of it for you as well?

speaker-0: Yeah, and you know, silence to a large degree is hard. It's as hard for people as meditation, this idea of meditation. People think that there's only a few ways to do it and it needs to be done in a structured way. And maybe to some people it works, but for me it never has. I need meditation. I do it in the morning as soon as I wake up. And for me it's just instrumental music lying down. I'm not in a lotus position. I'm not doing any yoga poses. That's just me. But for other people, silence could be, like you said, journaling. It could be taking a walk. It could be humming. It could be breathing exercises, a whole panoply of things. I'm not prescriptive in the work that I do because we're complex people and a large portion of humanity doesn't really like to be told to do stuff. I mean, there has been studies where before the advent of digital prescriptions, that staff would find written prescriptions in the garbage can as soon as individuals would see their doctor. They just didn't want to adhere to what was given to them. And so to a large degree, I think people, especially with this the variant amount of choices we have nowadays, is very difficult. Second thing I wanted to say is you're a gratitude lister. I think this is beautiful, but one thing I learned, and maybe you do or do not know this from one of my mentors, Martin Siegelman, he's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Was that when you write a gratitude list, besides writing it, which is great, ask yourself for each one of them why did that happen? So for example, I have a house. Why, how did I get this house? Like, I saved, I I sacrificed, I invested, because it actually makes it stickier and then you actually find more value and that value then extends further.

speaker-1: Mm. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I'll definitely add that as a part of the when I write it out, just kinda take a beat to kind of think through how I got that. Like the first thing again, one of those things you go through all my journals over the last five years, like the first thing that I'll say I'm grateful for every day is my health. But I can kind of take a moment to kind of think about the things that I do to enable that, right? Like eating clean, working out, exercising, moving my body, getting good sleep, right? So just appreciating the Things that feed that and create this thing that I'm now grateful for. I love that.

speaker-0: Well, n no, one of the other things now that you mentioned like seven things for why you're healthy, I love it, is the fact that it gives you things that you that are wins. Like you already won most of the day because you did like seven things in that bucket of health. Beautiful, beautiful.

speaker-1: Yeah. And so what do you see as the difference between stillness and silence?

speaker-0: Yes. So stillness is this ability to actually not feel that you always have to create action in your life. Yes. We live in a material physical world. Action's very important. If I just sat around and did nothing, probably nothing would happen. But we're only judging that from an external standpoint. What is true growth? I think that's individual for each person. I think someone would probably most people would probably say growth for them is the ticking off all the boxes in terms of life stages. For other people, growth is this idea that they're more comfortable with self and they're not as ashamed or that they have forgiven or that they have released or that they brought more joy into their life. So I think it really depends. So stillness is this ability to actually feel comfortable in the body that you're in. So a lot of my work is embodiment work. So it's about soma, which is soma means the body. So somatic. So it's using the body as reference points. So instead of just talking to someone and coaching them, I actually will say to them, where in the body do you feel that? Okay, now that you feel that, is there an image or sound or something that's tugging at that? And then from that, is there a point in your life where you felt that way? Not a point in your life where you've been there, but when you've when you felt the same things. And then it's Well, resourcing it, how did you navigate through that? How did you process that? Sometimes for most people, they didn't process it. They just buried it. And for other people, they have processed it. So I said, okay, now that you process that, is there any way that can influence what's happening now in your life? And and a lot of what we're talking about is life stuff. It's personal stuff, but this bleeds professionally all the time. You know, Ian, I at this point have interviewed over two thousand leaders, change makers. Cancer survivors, I did an interview series with two hundred of them. And you know, one of the golden threads I've seen through everything, including celebrities that I've interviewed, is this idea of self-forgiveness. It's not this idea of forgiving other people always. It's forgiving themselves for they didn't say something, they didn't do something, they did say something, they shouldn't have said something. It's consistent and pervasive. And I see it because we're trained as an executive coach to see what's underneath the glacier. So the glacier is beautiful on the outside, but what's actually underneath that? What's actually bubbling that you've suppressed? And so I know I went in a circular direction with this idea of stillness and silence, but silence is this ability to process that. So I mentioned the many ways one can do that. Stillness is this ability to actually stay so centered and so calm and so quote unquote still that you allow things to run through you. So in other words, Whatever you process now has a place where it can actually be seen, can actually be viewed, it can actually be confronted. And most people don't want to confront themselves. They just don't.

speaker-1: Yeah. Cause it's it's messy, right? It's messy. You start feeling all the feelings. and yeah, the the work on you is is the hardest work you'll do. But yeah, so it sounds like stillness to you is kind of this release of this tension that can be ever present, right? And I experience this still now, right? Even though, you know, I have this understanding and this is so common in just You know, learning anything, right? Like you have this understanding, sure, I know what stillness is, I'm aware of this idea, but actually putting it into practice is a is why there's the value in somebody like yourself, right? Somebody who can kind of coach you through this process of relieving this tension. So yeah, it sounds like to me like the stillness is the release of this tension of like you have to do something, right? You have to take these actions, but it's your ability to relieve that and be present still in this moment. Kind of just letting it all kind of pass through you, as you had kind of mentioned. And then silence is just the absence of sound, right? The literal silence that you want to find.

speaker-0: Yeah, and then things animate. First few stems grow from a seed, it breaks open in its own time. It's still for a long time, it's silent for a long time until it does what it needs to do. So it has its own mechanism, it has its own workings. Another thing also which is really intriguing from what you're talking about as well, is I often find is most of the time when it comes to leadership, people often assume that leadership is always in a corporate setting, but leadership is really about how people view you, how they want to follow you, how they want to model you, how they want to mirror you. And if you yourself are don't have the basics of self regulation or co regulation with other people, then how are people going to trust you? How are they going to be vulnerable around you? How are they going to want to actually make said initiative or said team that much stronger? It's just not possible.

speaker-1: Yeah. And I feel like I don't know, it's it's just a note that I just wrote down. So the relationship between stillness and silence, they do go hand in hand, where silence is the quieting of your environment, which allows you to kind of hear your own internal monologue. Right. Like I find whenever I create silence, like I can hear that inner voice more clearly. And it it gives it space to kind of wander wherever it goes. And I can be much more aware of that in a quiet environment. Like I can it's the only thing you hear, right? And then stillness is the quieting of the mind. Right. Stillness is just the letting go of that voice in your head of the you gotta go do this thing or like the the talking to yourself, right? Stillness is the ability to kind of just let that go. And then I I find, I don't know, I would imagine that if you can find a moment where you can pair both of those together, right? You can be in a quiet environment and then you can quiet the mind. that is where you can probably hear like that intuition of that soul the most clearly, where it's just going to be like your intuition is going to come through in like what you actually are called to do in this moment or what you should be doing in this moment.

speaker-0: Absolutely. And then also a little step further is you could get into the realm of metacognition, which is something that I learned through my health relapse journey in the hospital, in a hospital bed, in a quarantine room, which is this idea of the thinking of the thinking. Who's actually the savio that's in the bed? And who's the emotional vibrant person? Who's this psychological open person? Who is this relational person that's whose spirit is really alive and really figuring out for ourselves what is the connection between the one animating this experience, who's doing the thinking, what consciousness is running through all that. It can get a little trippy and I don't really like to get into it a lot, but with you, it seems very easy to mention because it's something that until you're forced to confront and face, you're just not going to do it. And so for me, I decided to surrender and submit to it. I decided to not surrender to the fact that I might not make it out of the hospital bed, but surrender to the fact that maybe this is trying to show me something that this experience can only teach. And wanna be very clear, cancer is a rough thing. This just you're speaking to a two time cancer survivor. People have organ cancers where things are taken out of their body. They suffer Dramatic and grueling, grueling pain. And so I'm not saying this lightly, but I will say, having the experience, having the experience, and at this point I've lost about eleven people to cancer since my relapse in 2024. I think we are all called to discover things about ourselves that only experience can teach. And some of it's painful. And some can be very joyous. It's about us accepting it. And through that we're able to then create.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well said. You had mentioned in your earlier this idea of self forgiveness. Why is that so important? And then how does one go about that?

speaker-0: Mm, self forgiveness is a tough one because people carry that like they carry luggage. If you travel internationally, you're allowed two fifty pound bags along with a carry-on, and maybe a backpack or a little hand. People carrying a lot more than that. They're carrying tons and tons of baggage and self forgiveness is in order for it to be unraveled, it needs to be first viewed and seen and witnessed. And it's hard because we're talking about individuals that have made excuses or have made concessions or not willing to face their own responsibility within that situation. They're not very objective. They're very, very subjective. So how do you deal with self-forgiveness? That's a hard one. I think through your faith, whatever your faith is, I know a lot of atheists who don't believe in in any central belief system. So for them, I say it's about Coming to accept the paradox that sometimes life is what it is, it's it's not fair. And coming to terms with accepting that it doesn't always have to be balanced. I think that's the contradiction most of us are wrestling with right now, especially when things are very heated socially and politically right now, is that I think we're all called to accept the paradox of that that We might not all have the answers, we might not all agree, but we have to find a way to unify those differing opinions and differing feelings.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's the there's a self forgiveness on a person to person. You know, there's like the forgiveness of others and then there's the forgiveness of yourself. And that really is what I've in conversations with others on this podcast, that is like the first step in you know, being able to change more effectively, right? Or being able to move forward is being able to kind of forgive yourself for the things that have happened in the past. Cause otherwise if you don't, you're just carrying this weight behind you that's just gonna hold you down. It's just gonna keep taking you back into that. Like you're just not gonna allow yourself to to make the change because you don't forgive yourself for what you've done in the past and you don't feel like you deserve it. So you won't really receive or accept this new you because you haven't given up on the version of yourself that you see as undeserving of of those things in your life. So it is a complicated process.

speaker-0: Life teaches you or has taught me that it's a series of catch and release. I think we just have to catch what we can and release what we can't and let the contents of the river flow the way they must. I mean, this might sound new agey woo-woo to people, but when you actually embody it and actually live it, you actually see the connections, you actually see how it makes sense. Now, to practice it, no, that's not easy. That's that that takes work. But I think it behooves us because when that structure is right, then everything else that you do touches that. It allows that to flourish. It it gives it more clarity. My central theme is performance doesn't fail first. Clarity does. So if you want to perform, you need to really figure out for yourself what's actually driving those desires. Is it based on ambition? Is it based on purpose? I know you talked about trying to figure out. Purpose? Or is it based upon ideology of what you think you should be doing based upon your age, your gender, your sex, where you live, family structure? So catch and release. I think that's the easiest way for me to summarize that feeling.

speaker-1: Yeah. So you hinted at it there, but one of my final questions for you here today, Savio. So when somebody does realize that they're in a s situation where they're not thinking clearly anymore, what should they do first?

speaker-0: So this goes back to my adaptive resilience leadership framework, which is that situations and things will trigger and give you signals and patterns. And it's for us to try to make sense of that. Otherwise, it creates this big chasm, this post crisis leadership gap that I call, which then things get so out of control that it shifts and drifts. So the first thing to do is really to figure out for yourself what's actually making me feel like there's a problem in this situation. So I'll echo my TEDx talk. I did a TEDx talk about a year and a half before my relapse in 2024, called Seven Minutes to Wellness, How to Love Your Inner Stranger. And in it, someone asked me, like, what hell are you talking about, inner stranger? They're like, That's so weird. And I'm like, okay. They're like, So what's your inner stranger? I'm like, well my inner stranger is that young person that never really felt completely rooted or grounded. Like I I was friends with people, different people. I never got bullied or an outcast. I just didn't feel really, really connected. And then she's like, I get it. So she's like, for me, the inner stranger is that great professional person, that that idealized executive that I want to be that I can't, or that great mother, this sibling I want to be. And so my framework is really easy. It's a lens that I use called the aloha reboot. Aloha, as we all know in Hawaiian means hello. So it's a hello to your inner cell. So A stands for acknowledge. So in my situation, I'm in the hospital, hearing the beeps, I'm in a quarantine room, nurses are coming every four hours. Just just acknowledge what's happening. Write it down, vomit it out, whatever you need to do, just get it on paper or on digital screen and just be okay with it. L stands for listening. So listen to your inner self. So in Hawaiian, there is a healing modality called Huna healing. And in Huna healing, the kahunas, the kings of Hawaii. believe that the not only does the body sense sensations, but it has language, has consciousness, it has something to tell us. So we need to actually be still and silent in order to actually see what's happening. So they believe you can actually talk to the body parts. I call that the three brains, head, heart and gut. But and I would like to say that doing this in front of other people might not be the best thing. They might think you're strange, but that's the listening aspect. O stands for opening. So open yourself up to this, no matter what your belief system is, you're just Exploring self. So it's not a big deal. H stands for harnessing. So harness all this information. Make the mental connections, make the emotional connections, see what works, what doesn't work, it's not everything's gonna work. And A stands for acting, but there's a caveat because the research and the data proves that when it comes to change, it's not that people don't want to change. They just don't know how to change. There's something called the stages of change. So it's posits that people are thinking of change, pre-contemplation, in change, in change, thinking of relapse. And so it's really about having the courage to act. And so it's called the aloha reboot, seven minutes a day. I had someone say to me once, I don't have seven minutes. I'm like, okay. So just take one of the acronyms, practice it for one minute a day, and after five days, you'll have done the aloha reboot.

speaker-1: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Savio, thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you. It's the recurring question I ask every guest. Before we get to that though, how can people get in touch with you?

speaker-0: Sure. They can find me on my website, salvio pclementi.com, S-A-V-I-O-P-C-L-E-M-E-N-T-E dot com. On there I have my keynote work. I have a few more spots left in 2026. I have my coaching information. Every Wednesday I have a substack called the Human Resolve where I talk about the head, heart, and gut intelligence. Right now I'm running a interview series with CEOs and CMOs on the healthcare leadership operating system. And if people want to find me on social media, I'm at every platform at the human resolve because what else do we have in resolution and resolve to fix in our lives?

speaker-1: Absolutely. Sweet. We'll have the links to all of that in the description wherever you're listening to this podcast. So go check out Savio's work. But Savio, my final question for you is if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why?

speaker-0: I would actually have it say I matter and I'm purposely saying that because not from I matter, but when you read it, it actually reflects back your worth and value. I think a lot of times people don't see the worth and value until someone affirms it. And so if a billboard is able to do that in ten seconds, then that's half the battle.

speaker-1: Yeah. I matter. Ooh, even just saying that, it feels like I've never said that to myself before, so well said. Savio, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from this conversation is that I don't need the full answer before I take the next step. My instinct is naturally often to remove uncertainty by thinking harder, optimizing more, doing more brainstorming, or forcing a decision before I'm ready. But some questions need to be lived with for a while.

speaker-0: Thanks, Ian.

speaker-1: I need to stay with them, create silence enough to hear what is underneath the noise, and pay attention to what the experience is showing me. That does not mean I stop moving. It means I take the next honest step without pretending I can already see the whole path and absolutely know the answer and just be comfortable with the fact that I'm not sure and just keep moving forward. Sometimes and oftentimes, clarity comes from the act of moving forward with the question instead of rushing to try and close it. If you want to get connected with Savio, you can find the links to his website and the Human Resolve newsletter in the description of this episode. And if you run a coaching program course or you have a book and you want to make it easier for your clients to engage with your ideas and get results, download the free program execution system toolkit in the description. It shows you how to install what I call execution infrastructure. So it makes it easier for clients to do the work and get results. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.