EP 14 Disruption as Alignment: Coaching, Grief, and Non-Striving with Rishikesh Tirumalai | Deep Work Out Loud
Julie Harris Oliver: [00:00:00] Welcome to Deep Work Out Loud, the thinking that fuels our life, our work, and our leadership. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. This is the podcast where I sit with another professional coach and we do some work around a single concept or a piece of inspiration, a topic we've seen come up in our coaching or in our life.
And if we're very lucky while we're talking about it, we might demonstrate what coaching might look and feel like, but we'll see how this goes. It's all an experiment. With any luck, you'll leave with something that you can apply in your leadership, in your life, or both. Today, I'm here with Rishikesh Tirumalai.
Rishi Is a strategic partner experience designer and leadership coach working with technology leaders and arts organizations. After a decade, wade through the waters of the startup world. Rishi now focuses on creating immersive performance art, teaching courses on emergence and finding right relationship with our lands and the people living on it.
Rishi particularly enjoys engaging with mystery and inviting others to do the [00:01:00] same. To this day, this practice has led him toward recovery from alcoholism, repair with ancestry and parents, multiple career changes, and a series of creative pursuits that any well-meaning adult role model might call inane, and that's what brings Rishi joy in life.
Welcome, Rishi. Before we dig in, what was your journey to becoming a coach?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I'm just kind of laughing 'cause I think that's the first time I've heard someone else read that thing back to me that I've written. It's in a few different places.
Julie Harris Oliver: It's always a little weird hearing someone read your bio in front of you.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I'm like, oh, I like this guy. It's like, oh, this person's
Julie Harris Oliver: I love your sense of humor. Comes right through.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: the yeah, the journey, winding journey really full of so much.
Like left turn after left turn, after left turn. And I think one significant moment is just a moment of discernment that I made 2023. I had been invited to take a solo trip. [00:02:00] Actually, I would never have done this on my own, but someone actually paid for a flight for me to go to Panama for 10 days, and I just had such an opening experience, just seeing the world. From a completely different lens. And Panama is like basically a US colony. It's not like, it's not actually so far away from what I knew. And I've been to India. I lived in India as a child many years of, those two contexts, the US and India. But something about just breaking out of the bubble I was in, in the tech
Julie Harris Oliver: Are you.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I was like, oh, wow. I know nothing I like know very little. And I'm in an environment of people who sees from one vantage. And I wanted to see from multiple Vantages. At that time in my twenties, I was just hungry to see from kind of every
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm. What was it about Panama, do you think?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: It wasn't Panama specifically. I think it was the, like I was in the solo travel world and it's changed a lot in the last 15 years.
But the specific way that people were living was very modest and very connected to the [00:03:00] earth and like fo like following patterns of, and surfers are like this, I'm not a surfer, but hung out with a lot of surfers in a lot of places where surfers hang out. of the general vibe is like people are moving in accordance with messages they receive from the land, seasonal patterns and living cyclically.
And there's something in our bodies that just resonates with that, that I put my finger on at the time. But I came back to the Bay Area and I was like, I can't do this. I can't do like a 40 year tech career. As a software engineer, becoming engineering manager, VP founder, whatever I just knew that there was something for me that was more. That was more in the connection. Connection and intimacy. So I spent some time I did another year at my first job, which was incredible. I received so much mentorship and support there. And then I I went traveling for a couple years and discovered this calling as a teacher, and I spent the following two years teaching at a coding bootcamp. And that was also totally expansive and opening. And then I [00:04:00] friend, a friend introduced me to the concept of coaching. And I felt like this is everything I like about teaching without any of the crap. Like really genuinely meeting people where they are learning deeply about someone, creating space for that person to learn about themselves, aha moments, experiences of like really raw realness and then doing something about it and going somewhere with that. And that just was really alluring. I hired a coach. She's like, I want to know if this is real. And was resistant to a lot of it at first, like kinda like, oh, I don't need help. Like, I'm great, like all this, attitude. And then I had a big crisis and I needed to get sober, so I had a big crisis with my drinking and alcoholism.
I was like, oh shit, to look at myself differently. And the coach I worked with at that time really just, changed my whole trajectory. And then I decided to go for it and get trained up and start coaching people. And it has been a, that's just been nonstop since then.
Just really [00:05:00] growing, my capacity, learning how to meet people more radically learning who I am and discovering all the different ways that we can be with each other, that we can be with the land and we can, with the world beyond human, beyond humankind.
I think that's my story really.
Julie Harris Oliver: Now it sounds like, unless I missed a bunch of years in between, it started that it sounded like you came to coaching fairly young. Is that true?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: One of the I'm kind of an outlier in a lot of my coaching world. I'm like, of all, being a person of color, being a man, being a young person, are all outliers. The coaching world I was in a certification cohort when I was getting certified that was seven white women in their fifties and up and me.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, that's the typical profile.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: It was fun. It was, I, there's something about a lot of my peers and people in my world don't even fully get coaching. They don't they, they like understand theoretically what it is, but in terms of realizing what it can do for someone, what could do for your life. I'm not trying to be everyone's coach, but I'm [00:06:00] like, I have a network, and a lot of my friends. Some of them are starting to take me up on it, but I'm realizing that just my cohort of people, they're like, we're not well represented and we also don't get it. We're not, I come from a culture where asking for help is actually really
Julie Harris Oliver: Hmm.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: And receiving help, even if you're successful and well off.
A lot of that is through this what I call immigrant individualism, like the kind of individualism that's forced through the process of immigration. Like I saw it happen to my dad. He had to take on a lot on himself, whereas the culture he came from was a lot more we support each other. My parents come from a community of immigrants in New Jersey. Like they came up in this community after immigrating that was very supportive and like very there for each other. And of like, you know, hiring somebody to help you out I'm gonna find a coach, I'm gonna find a therapist, is totally anathema. For my folks and a lot of the folks in our community. So I'm really curious, I'm really curious what 20 years from now, what it'll feel like. and I'm also grateful. I like being on the edge. I really like [00:07:00] being one of the few Indian men in the coaching world. And, , And every time I meet someone it's like, you too.
It's actually really fun, you know, healing together.
Julie Harris Oliver: It sounds like that combination of that immigrant kind of grind with the American individualism where we just make things as hard as they could possibly be for everybody. Why do you think, um. why do you think you were able to shift from that?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I can't really, I don't have a clear answer as to why I, since being a kid, I've always been someone who questions like. What's normal? Like what's the deal of this? Oh, we're all acting this way, but I don't get it. And I would be, someone to try to disrupt that. And I do think that, coming up in tech, the word disruption was used a lot in the early days.
Now they don't anymore, which is pretty funny, but. the idea of we're gonna break certain patterns of like how the system works and, I, I used to think of startups as insurgent forces. Like just creating entirely new pathways of [00:08:00] growth and how people related to each other. And some of that's true, but there was also a way that a lot of startups were caught in this, here's the game game is defined under terms of venture capitalism and here's the story of what it means to be successful and we are all gonna win at this game.
And I was like, what about just playing a different game, like rewriting the game or just like choosing not to play? And that's what I thought of as
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: And I, you know, my parents were very, some of the earliest people in our larger community of South Indian immigrants to get a divorce. Incredible disruption. So courageous on everyone's part and my family and of their friends who like took them in and accepted the different flows and shifts that brought out. there's something, I feel like it's something in my family too, not
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Like, you know, Breaking the rules a little bit to be more authentic or to be more real.
Julie Harris Oliver: I love the string of disruption.
Okay, we're gonna talk about what just happened in case I can edit this together somehow. [00:09:00] But we had just started to talk about disruption when our entire session got disrupted and just got disconnected. That was wild. Um, so that was meta. But I did wanna pull on this string of disruption a bit more.
And also in your bio talking about like emergent art and it, it feels like there's a connection there. What can you talk about that.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: well, there's something interesting. I think the word disruption indicates like breaking the order. But I actually think a lot of what I want to do with my work and what I'm doing with this emergent art stuff is, um, aligning. Nature and aligning with the natural order and listening for what actually wants to happen here.
A very simple example is like in the winter we're tired more because there's less sunlight and just, it's like a cyclical inside of the cycle is the time to be slower and to be quieter and to listen and to be in the dark and maybe sleep more. And that's just a natural cycle.
And we [00:10:00] also live in a sort of culture where on January 1st we all make our plans and it's it's time to go and here's the next who I'm gonna be in the future, and I'm going to make a plan for the whole year, from winter to winter. And really doesn't, you know, I, I learned very recently that. This was in like 400 BC so like maybe like 40 bc.
Actually, I don't remember the exact date but that far back, the new year was in March and it shifted to January. So it could align with the the time that the consoles were paid. Because their terms started in January and they just wanted to start the year early. So they shifted the whole new year forever.
And I'm like, this is so interesting because that's an artificial construct that we all agree to. And so for me, disruption isn't actually about breaking all the construct. 'cause some of the constructs are in harmony with nature. It's more about asking what is harmony and what is harmonious in particular for me, like what's harmonious in my body? How is my body responding to this? Because our, I have a mentor and she says this beautiful thing, which is your life is where your [00:11:00] body is. So if you're asleep, your life's in the dream world. And if you're, at a party, your life's at that party. And if you're at work or if you're in the woods by yourself or if you're, hanging out with your family and eating cake and having tea or whatever, that's your whole life, that one moment.
And what if we just learned to listen to that? And yeah the thing about that's so radical is that it does disrupt a lot of expectations about how we're supposed to be. You're supposed to marry somebody, and even if in the truth of your relationship, you're not meant to be together, you're supposed to stay together.
That's the culture my parents came from. So for them to disrupt that by getting divorced. So what they were doing was actually quite harmonious with nature.
Julie Harris Oliver: It's so interesting that the disruption becomes actually being where you are and doing the thing that you should be doing.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. It's only disruptive in a context that tells us that we're supposed to be we're supposed to be somewhere that's not right for us. Or, and I see it all the time. I've met so many people in my career worked with people, but also peers and friends who are doing [00:12:00] things that are not in accordance with who they actually are.
And it's just heartbreaking to me, to see that, because I also think that that's what confirms. There's, I, I draw a connection between that and how we relate to our larger political sphere. And actually making choices of authenticity is a form of activism. And it requires like such a deep courage and has I has been in my own career, has been actually quite isolating and alienating it times to, to go against the grain
Julie Harris Oliver: it makes everybody question what they're doing. There's a lot of pushback. I think so much of our work just from people I talk to. I don't know if this is so much your work, but I suspect it is the way you're talking about it. Is people figuring out I'm so far out of alignment and I don't know how to get back.
And now that a lot of times now that I'm in midlife and I've less of that, , survival, fear, how can I get back to alignment? And where I was really meant to be.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. Yeah. I think what's fun is like working with leaders who are. Wanting to come into greater alignment. They [00:13:00] actually have so much impact on their whole entire world. You know, you're a, you're a leader at a hundred person company. That's a small company at the end of the day, but that's a hundred people who are directly impacted by your relationship with your authenticity
Julie Harris Oliver: And as John Amaechi says, all those people's kids know your name. They talk about you at dinner.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Exactly. It is so fun actually. It can be so fun to to watch a leader come into like really deep integrity with themselves. And start to have fun. Like, I think my favorite thing is talking with somebody who's I'm not really having fun because this or that reason, right? I'm not, I'm stressed, or the conditions feel weird.
Or maybe I'm holding my relationship with my role as obligation and I'm not having fun as a leader myself. Like I'm not seeing that being a leader could be fun. And then slowly seeing that shift usually takes three to six months, maybe more sometimes, but it takes some time. But just getting to track like the shift into like, I am me.
And we're doing this my way and I get to do it my way. And that being better for everybody. And we live, I think I've seen this is not related to [00:14:00] leadership or whatever, this is just humankind and culture of society. But I see so many people living with, I don't get to be me as like a dominating story.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. How do you help people shift from this can be fun from the crushing responsibility.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah, I there when people respond to different things, I think one thing I've noticed, especially early on in a coaching relationship, in coaching, they I learned in my training and just in practice. It's probably better not to give advice, probably better not to say I know what you should do, but there is sometimes a value in holding a vision for somebody and saying, I really believe, like I'm holding for you, that you can have be in exactly the role you're in and have a lot more fun. Like I believe that and to hold that conviction and like I've seen it over and over again and you can too. And that sometimes people. This is true for me with getting sober. Like I couldn't see that it was possible for me to love my life more without drinking. That I could love myself more, that I could, to be very candidly that I could feel the kind of like [00:15:00] full aliveness, both in my like expression as a creative and my expression as like a sexual being and my expression as a, even as a friend and showing care and compassion and friendliness that I could trust my own, like what was moving through me and the energy of Rishi that I could trust who that was if I wasn't drinking. And for somebody to come along and say, yeah, you will get sober like you will and you will like your life better
Julie Harris Oliver: It is the gift of holding the possibility.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. Yeah, and I love, I think, I love the, like I lived in possibility a lot. I had to, I was five, no, I was 10 years old when I first started to hold the possibility of my parents divorce, which happened 20 years later.
I was 15 when I first brought it up to my mom.
Julie Harris Oliver: The kids always know.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah, they really, yeah, they really know. The kids are way less programmed. We should be looking to them a lot more to see what's really
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. And you should not be staying together for the kids thinking that they're not gonna notice and think everything's happy. [00:16:00] They never do.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. It's tough. It's tough to be talking about my parents' divorce too, because I just did lose my dad as, you know, like in November and still feeling like. I holding both of us, holding a lot of potential for each other that some of it will not be realized like in this plane of existence because he's gone.
Julie Harris Oliver: And how does that change things for you?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I think there's a big adulting threshold that I'm crossing right now, like a big sort of don't squander at the time you have here and also take yourself seriously. Take what you do very seriously. My, my dad was an entrepreneur. Both my parents are actually, it's another way that they were mavericks, especially for their generation of immigrants. And I think what my dad really wanted for us. Was to be world builders. I have a younger brother. He wanted for both of us to be world builders. And, I remember being young and hearing probably in my, like first [00:17:00] 15 years of my life and he'd come home from work and he had lost a job. At one point he lost his job and I asked him about it, or maybe my mom had asked him about it and he was like, Rishi, I just, they were wanting me to behave in ways and do things that I didn't agree with.
And they wanted to like, move money around in a way that I didn't agree with, and I lost my job and they let me go. And he wasn't upset about it. He held his head up high that I had a choice. I chose my own values.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: was my dad and I have a complicated, very complicated history together. A lot of difficulties. And it was interesting to hear people reach out to me and they'd be like, I know you were having a tough time with them. And because in the last year I didn't have as much, we hadn't moved. Threw some stuff and found some repair at the end. But what I'm remembering is also that so many of my values and the way that I am was inspired directly by him, both of them, both my parents. And I guess what that gives me is just the conviction that like I'm resourced to go forth and create something.
There's one more thing I wanna say. The other thing that's changing is actually just because grief is so immense. [00:18:00] I'm also not holding that like I have to do it right now. I'm like, the only thing I have to do is be present to myself and again, like being with my body and ask, like the grief itself has a lesson for me and it's my, not my first walk with grief.
And that's given me the chance to like really understand that there is so much value and being really slow and being really patient to see what's the message and to let it flower on its own time.
Julie Harris Oliver: I think that's a particularly brave thing to do in this culture. Not to numb out, not to distract yourself, but to allow yourself to sit in it.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I'm just letting myself sit in it right now. It's raining like crazy outside, like downpours. It has been for the last
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm. Is there anything that now you feel is more possible than it was before?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Before my dad passed, , one experience I was having in the early days of him passing was like a level of stability that was available to me was just gone. [00:19:00] Like I could just lean on him. I never I don't wanna say never, I rarely took him up on it, but he was just there as a pillar for me, and in so many, like my brother and I were talking about even being in and out of contact over the many years, neither of us stopped using him as our security contact because he was just that he would just show up and. With time and as I like connect with him, I try to like communicate with him, not through 'cause I don't have words or like language as much as I, I used to when he was alive, but still trying to communicate with him or calling in his energy or being, being in that relationship that I have with him.
One thing I notice is that stability is starting to return and I feel it more inside of me rather than from him. Like I feel it more inside of my own system. And so maybe there's a, I do feel that sometimes this is going to feel different based on your your belief system or whatever, but I feel like the universe takes away something one [00:20:00] way. One of the, one of the impacts of that is that it helps each of us see what we can, who we can be without that thing,
Julie Harris Oliver: What is it making
Rishikesh Tirumalai: can go on. Yeah. And also that I'm. Yeah, that I am a source of stability. Actually, I'm a kind of a pillar. Just recently, just this morning actually, my housemate was referring to me as a pillar and not just for her, but for a community of people and realizing that like I am, I provide that kind of stability that my dad provided for me and my brother.
I, I actually do already provide that, and I don't think I saw it that way before.
Julie Harris Oliver: Is that, do you think the adulting piece,
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Related. Feels really related. Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: and it was there before, but now it's revealed.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I think it's also a call to like take on more adulting, yeah, I don't have kids, but
Julie Harris Oliver: yeah.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah, I spent a lot of time with young kids and been thinking about it a lot. I'm also in the place right now where I'm like, it's too soon to make any big decisions or [00:21:00] do anything really. But I really see myself like over the next five years, like continuing to grow up and in a way that feels super fun and I'm so excited to go through all these different thresholds and keep becoming. And I, yeah, I think I also feel that my dad is like blessing the journey. Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: talk about it being fun and you're looking forward to it, what are you picturing?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: One thing is actually just being able to hire someone like work, working with somebody who we have a shared goal and I can actually support them to like work on that goal with me.
Julie Harris Oliver: What do you mean?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Especially working with a fellow artist who wants to get get into some of the art education stuff that I've been doing.
Like I'm actually thinking about growing that work. So far it's been me running courses on my own in a very grassroots way, and I can see in the next two years maybe establishing a team and creating stuff together as a team.
Julie Harris Oliver: I am smiling 'cause I, [00:22:00] I did a little meditation before we started talking and the word that kept coming in was expansion.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. And then another obvious one that feels more out of reach or maybe more mysterious is just expanding like a family. Growing that. Yeah. And I think if it happens, it will be totally baffling to me. 'cause it's not something that I'm planning for, it's not something I'm actively asking for, but it's like. If it happens, I'll say yes. If it comes my way,
Julie Harris Oliver: It's like you're not actively seeking it out, but it's like you suspect it's coming. It's coming at you.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: something is coming. I have a people do word of the year or tensions, and I think a year is too big of a timescale to really have that. I have this intention for the coming season, and maybe it'll move out into the world and into the year. But the intention is to be like in a non-striving or a non forcing stance, and really just trusting the right place, right time of things and trusting that what's in front of me is what I'm meant to be with [00:23:00] and face confront, enjoy, savor. And it's a little bit of a slower existence than I have had recently, but it's also like I actually find that a lot happens. A lot of shit just happens naturally when I don't strive too much. And I'm just watching it happen. And maybe maybe that there are moments, and I think this is where like learning to be in my body has been really helpful.
There are moments when I get the message like, you need to take action. This is a time for you to step forward and act. So it's not acting or inaction, it's just not striving. Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: I had an another interview with Laura Rebel Gross, and at the end of it we came to more Purpose less Hustle.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I love that.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. Yeah. Hustle is really sexy and it's really that whole attitude of hustling, it seems like really it's in our culture, it's really ingrained in our culture and it's associated with need, and I think it's, yeah, like you said, it's incredibly courageous. getting [00:24:00] our needs met without doing that. To like actually to actually see how much care and resources available to us if we don't fight for it, and then we're not fighting.
Julie Harris Oliver: And it feels vital to me right now.
I really wanna ask you how you put this in context with the world right now. We're recording on January 5th. Okay.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard not to tie this into the larger climate of, we're in the United States and like the climate of like how the US government relates to the world and taking action in the world. And there is a lot of, we need this. We need that and we need to take action. We need to make things ours and we need to create in our image. It's a different relationship with the word expansion actually.
Julie Harris Oliver: Not in a good
Rishikesh Tirumalai: and yeah, it's like it's, and just, I, yeah, it's a very soberly, I want to be very sober and directly look at the truth that I live in a colonizing [00:25:00] power and I have for my entire life. And that also being like a child of colonized people having grown up between the US and India and my parents being from India, that's a very complex straddle to have and it is difficult because I benefit from being in the us.
I benefit from the global system of global order. And I also have been hurt and traumatized and carry generational trauma from that same exact, the same exact movements. I think that there is another world and another sort of version of me, different time that was like, it's my job to right the wrongs of, and I'm like, I don't know that I can write anything.
I think the best I can do is bear witness and be very honest with myself about what's happening. And then to say can I like practice growing trust with myself, that if there is an action for me to take, then it's in service of healing. And repair and reparation, rather than two words like perpetuating the harms of the global over culture, [00:26:00] which here's a great book I'm reading just, it's called Outgrowing Modernity.
It's related to another book. It's a sort of a sequel to another book called Hospice and Modernity. They're both trying to look with very clear, wide eyes at what is the world and what is for any of us in any positionality in the world. How do we, how are we hurt by the way, the world is?
How do we benefit from the way the world is and how do we contribute to it implicitly or knowingly? And can we, yeah, can we grow out of that? I.
Julie Harris Oliver: That's the thing to grow out of it, because I think another one of the things that's happening right now is it's being so blatantly revealed that the narrative has, is not matching, has never matched what actually goes on, and then. Trying to reconcile that as a people feels, it's a lot of instinct from people to disconnect or ignore it or go crazy in the other direction.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. I think there's something that really. [00:27:00] Either, either trying to avoid the feelings or trying to mitigate the feelings through taking excessive action or expressing rage, which rage is on. I honor a lot of sacred rage, but there is something about just sitting with and staying with the grief and the longing for a different kind of world and the pain of like, , if I really let myself and I slow down enough.
I think this is why it's so difficult to stay slow, because if I slow down enough, I can feel in my own body, all of the pain in the world, all of the pain of ecoside, deforestation, fracking, mass, murder of children global hunger crisis like se separation of families. Like the list goes on and on.
And if I just slow down, I can actually feel. Just how much pain is there? And I wouldn't want anything. I wouldn't want anything different. I, ' cause this is what connects me to the larger fabric. And it's also what helps me align, like the true alignment of what am I supposed to do with this one precious life. Now am I supposed [00:28:00] to show up? Like I don't wanna show up in a way that's blind to any of this pain or any of the other feelings.
Also, the immense joy and the immense gratitude and the like, the deep forgiveness that continues to be pouring out from Mother Earth all it's almost like she has infinite forgiveness for us, for all of this shit that's happening, and I want to be part of it, you know, and be part of it all.
Julie Harris Oliver: So, where do we go from here?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I'm just enjoying being here with you and the rain and the pain and the hope. The conviction.
Julie Harris Oliver: I keep coming back to that word disruption and the disruption to the system that we're in that really is just mad right now. Mad crazy and mad, angry and it feels like cultivating presence and calm and. All the things you're talking about is the disruption.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah, I feel sad to say that. I feel sad to see that like disruption because of how much the [00:29:00] forces of every day, I think it's too simplistic to call it capitalism, but just what we have grown to believe we need to do to survive. Requires so much. And I, I do a lot to survive. There's a lot I do on a daily basis. I do shit that I don't want to do, but I think that it's just measured with is this within the world that wants to be created? I don't envy people who do have kids and do have to put food on the table and don't envy people who are responsible for employees and paying, like genuinely having to support.
People, and I feel that responsibility. I think that's why I'm drawn to the work I do, is because that level of responsibility creates a narrative that you have to do this in order to sustain your obligations. And I'm like, that's what I want to disrupt. I'm like, there's something about that's, that doesn't sit with me.
Because actually if we were to actually look at our obligations, we're not meeting many of them. Like in, in our current system, we're [00:30:00] actually not meeting most of them. Like what's our obligation to the people of the world that we, some of whom we will never meet? And what's our obligation to the earth and what's our obligation to our descendants, like generation 1, 2, 3, down the line?
Are we looking at those things as much as we're looking at this is what I think I have to do to make it today. The active effort of slowing down to, I've said, slowing down so much in this interview, the active effort of to, of slowing down to actually cons, consider and discern the broader scope of things.
I think that, yeah, I would call that disruption because it breaks the sort of urgency culture that we're
Julie Harris Oliver: Mm-hmm.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Or the sort of scarcity of time I can only look one day at a time or, and it's so prevalent in startups. It's like the, it's like one of the favorite ways of being in startups is we can't look past.
What's going on right now? And some of that's true, and some of that's also we don't take the time to see the bigger picture. Then we're heading off a cliff and we don't know it.
Julie Harris Oliver: With the attitude of we have no choice but to go off the cliff.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. I, [00:31:00] and I, yeah, I love choice. I feel like choice is so important to me. Sometimes the most beautiful, powerful choices. Have been the hardest ones, like the choice to get sober. The choice my parents made to get divorced, like they were exercising choice every moment. And it's so much effort to just approach and find and arrive at that moment of this.
Is it like knocking on the door of the unknown
Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, it takes incredible courage.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: yeah. Yeah. So I have a lot of admiration for people. Like I have a mentor who put this idea in my head and it's been true just like feeling so much reverence for and learning from every client. 'cause every single client is doing something just incredibly brave.
And, but just that the idea of designed to work with a coach requires so much like self-inquiry and going deeper and, ah. I remember when I couldn't do it. I just remember when it just was so out of bound for me and I, so I have deep admiration for people doing that.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, I remember a day at my therapist was, [00:32:00] I was like, I thought I was done with all this self-improvement and growth. I'm exhausted. Can I, can we just stop for a minute?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I have a day, I have a day like that every three months.
Julie Harris Oliver: Enough already.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I've referenced being in the body and listening to the body so much in this call. And I'm also like, I remember the very first time, like my first ever coach was like, what are you noticing in your body? And I was like, what the hell are you talking about?
What do you mean my body? What are you saying? And just that person is now yeah, like crying about the world and enjoying the rain. And I'm like, anything is possible. Just genuinely anything is possible.
Julie Harris Oliver: And did you prefer the juicy feeling in your body?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah, it's so tasty. I just, I, and I think what I love also is the feeling of complete unity with the world. Not, I don't always get to have that, but I think that growing up in a culture that told me that I was separate and I had to figure it out for myself, it's so lonely, and I still feel [00:33:00] lonely sometimes, but I don't feel separate from the world.
I think I just feel like loneliness is part of being in the world. Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: If we could just shift just that one thing of you have to do it alone. So one of the hardest things is, is getting to a place where you can receive and ask.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Julie Harris Oliver: What does support look like for you right now in this season?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I've been really enjoying people who can hang out with me and just hang out. I've gotten good at asking for it too 'cause I've been gr in grief with my dad, people who approach me with a, oh, I want to talk to you about your dad and I want to hear, and almost sometimes like a feeling of I need to support you.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: So I need I need you to tell me like, or like I want to focus the conversation on you and I noticed sometimes that helps, that actually makes me feel more alienated. I did, I started telling people when it was happening Hey, I actually noticed that this, and this was pretty brave for me at the time a few weeks ago when I first did it.
[00:34:00] Just actually I don't want to take all the questions 'cause I actually, what I want to do is hang out and just. Actually maybe hear more of your story or just connect. And the friends of mine who have been able to show up, just able to kick it and give me an experience of normalcy. Like naturally the stuff with my dad just comes into the conversation because it's kinda everywhere for me.
So if we're hanging out, you're gonna hear about it like it happened with you just now. Like it just came up because I couldn't not talk about it. And it's fun. When we, there's no pressure that like, it has to we're here to support Rishi or we're here to create an experience for him, which sometimes that can be really, like if we're both like, coaching is an experience of an agreement to like create an experience for one person, right?
So like, I love that stuff, but I also really loved, I have loved like just vibing with people without an agenda. The kind of stuff that's been coming out just because of who's there and who we are and where we are right [00:35:00] now is really profound I lived, especially in my early coaching career, some of my close friend of mine listening to this, he might remember a time when like, all I wanted to do was like, facilitate stuff and let's do the intentional hangout.
And my birthday parties would have all kinds of like a planned agenda. And it's, yeah. So one of the things that's changing the last couple of months is I'm really enjoying just kicking it without any of the. Sort of expectation of intensity or intimacy without the intimacy of being together is enough.
That's just
Julie Harris Oliver: You don't have to plan to have a deep time.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: It's part of my non-striving attitude right now, which I'm like, I'm honestly really loving.
Julie Harris Oliver: Just be cool
Rishikesh Tirumalai: , It is kind of characteristic of me for people who know me, that I have to label the thing as non-striving to just hang out and be normal, but I'm not normal. I'm like pretty divergent. So it's fine.
Julie Harris Oliver: We're gonna do nothing right now and just be cool
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Okay. Let's do nothing for a little bit, [00:36:00] just.
Julie Harris Oliver: again. Disruption. All right. If there was something you would leave us with today. About where you are, what you're learning, where you are in this season, what would it be?
Rishikesh Tirumalai: I think the ultimate, like the most beautiful, sacred work is to take care of each other. And to have fun with each other. And I think I really want, I really wanna hold that as a north star for my life, is have fun and help the people around me have fun.
Julie Harris Oliver: I am writing that down. Rishi, thank you for doing this.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah. Thanks so much Julie. Thanks for the invitation. And. You don't know me, so it's pretty cool to get to know you like this.
Julie Harris Oliver: I feel like I know you now.
Rishikesh Tirumalai: Yeah, same.
Julie Harris Oliver: This has been deep work out loud. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. I'd like to thank Rishikesh Tirumalai for joining the podcast, and if any of this resonates with you, please subscribe. Leave a review at all the podcast places, and if you'd like to work with me, you can find me at julieharrisoliver.com. If you'd like to work with Rishi, [00:37:00] you can find him at emergencewizard.com.
And let me leave you with this information. What might it look like? If you were to try to have a little bit more fun, what would that look like at work? What would that look like if you're a leader? Just to bring some more fun into your leadership, try some things, report back. Thanks for listening. See you next time.