Leaders will use quantum jumping and manifestation to encourage their teams.
The pandemic pause brought us to a moment of collective reckoning about what it means to live well and to work well. As a result, employees are sending employers an urgent signal that they are no longer willing to choose one — life or work — at the cost of the other. Working from home brought life literally into our work. And as the world now goes hybrid, employees are drawing firmer boundaries about how much of their work comes into their life. Where does this leave employers? And which perspectives and programs contribute most to progress? In our newest interview series, Working Well: How Companies Are Creating Cultures That Support & Sustain Mental, Emotional, Social, Physical & Financial Wellness, we are talking to successful executives, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, and thought leaders across all industries to share ideas about how to shift company cultures in light of this new expectation. We’re discovering strategies and steps employers and employees can take together to live well and to work well.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Violet Rainwater.
Violet Rainwater is the founder of The Rainmaker’s Way. As a keynote speaker and sales architect, Violet is on a mission to heal the workplace.
Thank you for making time to visit with us about the topic of our time. Our readers would like to get to know you better. Tell us about a formative experience that prompted you to change your relationship with work and how work shows up in your life.
At the age of four I immigrated with my family to the United States from Saint Petersburg, Russia. We came in search of the American dream, but what we found upon our arrival was culture shock, abject poverty, and never-ending adversity that would create not only an undeniable drive in me to overcome any obstacle I encounter, but also immense anxiety and depression. Fast forward to my professional life, I became insanely successful after climbing the ladder to the top of the corporate sales industry. My life appeared picture perfect, but inside I was an anxious wreck.
Finally, after losing my job in 2015 and consequently hitting rock bottom in both my personal and professional life I realized that my past trauma was dictating my present state. I tirelessly researched the effects of childhood trauma and found that my nervous system had been dysregulated. Armed with this knowledge I have been able to develop systems and processes for myself that have exponentially improved my professional and personal wellbeing. I have tailored my toolbox to create what I term, the Brain Map, techniques that help professionals and sales teams regulate their nervous system in order to operate at their most optimal level of wellness.
Harvard Business Review predicts that wellness will become the newest metric employers will use to analyze and to assess their employees’ mental, physical and financial health. How does your organization define wellness, and how does your organization measure wellness?
My organization defines wellness by assessing energy levels–those that are high, vibrant, and healthy indicate optimal wellness. We measure wellness by looking at the results of each individual team member as well as the department as a whole. If teams are thriving and operating at peak levels, in most cases this is indicative of a healthy, high-energy team. If teams are struggling, we dig deeper with each team and individual and will often find a pattern of destructive thoughts and habits contributing to low energy results. Within my organization I have a technique called Brain Mapping, which defines these energy levels. It helps us, and the teams we assist, to understand their level and more accurately measure wellness.
Based on your experience or research, how do you correlate and quantify the impact of a well workforce on your organization’s productivity and profitability?
I would say that there is a significant impact as our mental state determines our energy levels. Low energy produces low productivity and results. Most team members are operating at 15–20% of their potential, due to a low energetic state of being. My organization hinges on building an optimal workplace environment that creates a balance between our mind and body. The goal of my program is to heal past traumas by regulating our nervous systems in order to free ourselves from our past and perform at peak levels in our present. When this happens the growth is exponential, I have helped sales teams double and sometimes triple their sales simply because they leveled up their wellness.
Even though most leaders have good intentions when it comes to employee wellness, programs that require funding are beholden to business cases like any other initiative. The World Health Organization estimates for every $1 invested into treatment for common mental health disorders, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity. That sounds like a great ROI. And, yet many employers struggle to fund wellness programs that seem to come “at the cost of the business.” What advice do you have to offer to other organizations and leaders who feel stuck between intention and impact?
I would advise leaders to recognize that they are not addressing the elephant in the room. The ‘elephant’ is the fact that so many people are struggling because of what is going on inside of them. Anxiety about their workplace, the state of our economy, the war between Ukraine and Russia, and hello… we are just beginning to come out of a pandemic. For many people they are holding on by a thread with no idea how to break free and thrive. To make any kind of effective change, we must educate the workplace to shift their perspective, adopting one that has less to do with external “doingness” and more of an internal “beingness.”
Many people are simply not aware that it is NOT what is happening around us that is causing us stress and mental anguish, it is what we say to ourselves on the inside about the state of these issues. It is our inner dialogue, the narrative we create, that continues to negatively impact our mental wellbeing. That is why we must also equip the workplace with tools to help professionals change this narrative, I refer to it as ‘Changing the Channel’, to shift our state of being to a higher energetic state. These are tools we need to incorporate into our business on a daily basis. They become the foundation for us to begin practicing changing our perspective, our energy, and therefore our results. In doing so we also begin to rewire our nervous system and the pathways in the brain that are the true root cause of our mental stress. Once individuals and teams are equipped with this knowledge and my innovative tools, the organization as a collective will experience a huge shift in energy, productivity, and revenue–investing in mental wellness is most definitely worthwhile.
Speaking of money matters, a recent Gallup study reveals employees of all generations rank wellbeing as one of their top three employer search criteria. How are you incorporating wellness programs into your talent recruitment and hiring processes?
As a business consultant I consider myself a “sales architect.” I help teams build a firm foundation on which all of their personal and professional endeavors can thrive, by helping them heal past traumas and regulate the nervous system. When I am working with the leaders of a team I impress upon them the importance of mental wellness in their organization. A mentally strong team with high energy levels will naturally operate at peak levels. And this environment will in turn support and attract like-minded individuals.
We’ve all heard of the four-day work week, unlimited PTO, mental health days, and on demand mental health services. What innovative new programs and pilots are you launching to address employee wellness? And, what are you discovering? We would benefit from an example in each of these areas.
As a keynote speaker I touch on each one of these areas and their importance when I address my audiences.
● Mental Wellness: I utilize my Brain Map technique to teach professionals how to regulate their nervous system by taking a break and “regrouping” when faced with a challenge or trigger, in my program I call this “Changing the Channel”. Taking a break for mental wellness in the workplace is an extremely effective way to promote and sustain mental wellbeing.
● Emotional Wellness: My program takes a multi-faceted approach to breaking free from your past and building your future by design. I identify how our earliest mental programming can show up in today’s competitive workplace and hinder our ability to work at our highest potential. We work together to heal the past traumas and in turn build a firm foundation for peak performance.
● Social Wellness: Most recently I created a workbook for professionals to help identify and diffuse their workplace triggers. Virtually all our workplace triggers tie back to our past experiences and trauma. I teach professionals how to acknowledge, evaluate, and have self awareness regarding these triggers so that they can diffuse situations when they begin to feel triggered, avoid escalation, and improve their overall social wellness.
● Physical Wellness: Personally I commit to a morning routine of guided meditation and nourishment. And this is what I recommend to all the teams and professionals I work with as well, an unwavering morning routine that will align their energy for the coming day. I also encourage leaders to provide space, not only physical space but time as well, for their teams to move and release negative energy. It is a known fact that simply moving around can immensely improve your mental state.
● Financial Wellness: I feel that when your mental, emotional, social, and physical wellness are all satisfied, your financial wellness will come in line with them. In my “One Year Later” framework I practice something called “quantum jumping”, sometimes referred to as visualization. I picture all the details of where I see myself in one year from now and act as if I am already there. I instruct the teams and professionals I work with in the use of this technique and it has been an extremely powerful exercise.
Can you please tell us more about a couple of specific ways workplaces would benefit from investing in your ideas above to improve employee wellness?
When one experiences past traumas and is triggered by them repeatedly it results in a dysregulated nervous system. It is impossible to function properly and focus on your work, let alone anything else, when your nervous system is awry. All of the tools I’ve listed above will help regulate nervous systems for optimal performance. Workplaces would benefit most from encouraging their teams to recognize when they are triggered and diffuse the situation before it escalates either by taking a mental or physical break, or both, to ‘Change the Channel’ in order to restore their energy level and promote wellness.
How are you reskilling leaders in your organization to support a “Work Well” culture?
Whether I am consulting or speaking as a keynote, I bestow upon those I’m working with all the tools and knowledge I have amassed over the years to help them navigate the regulation of their nervous systems and rewire their brains. It is incredibly easy for a speaker or coach to talk about improving wellness and your overall mental state, but I walk my talk. I equip professionals with myriad tools to help aid them in their wellness journey.
Ideas take time to implement. What is one small step every individual, team or organization can take to get started on these ideas — to get well?
Incorporate guided meditation–start every morning with a ten minute guided meditation to calm your body and mind. This will create an immediate positive transformation of your mental state. And long term it will be exponentially beneficial, creating new pathways in the brain, healing our nervous system, and training our brain to sustain peak levels of performance and joy.
What are your “Top 5 Trends To Track In the Future of Workplace Wellness?”
- Changing the perspective (and language) surrounding the workplace.
I believe that in the future the workplace will shift from just a place to come to work, to a place to come and CREATE. As spiritual beings and creators at the core, having a business experience gives us the opportunity to share our essence and creativity. When we change this perspective, we can begin building a culture that cultivates and focuses on creation, where it is celebrated and encouraged in every way. We do not have access to our creative spirit when we are disconnected and stressed. This inaccessibility causes depression, because we came to create, so create we must or we will never have peace. In the famous words of Abraham Maslow, “What a man can be, he must be.” He is referencing the top level of his hierarchy of needs, self actualization. Part of self actualization is to create at our highest level, and the best part about that is we know the type of environments that foster and nurture the creative spirit–peace, tranquility, support, appreciation, collaboration, and co-creation.
2. Leaders will use quantum jumping and manifestation to encourage their teams.
As a way to help their teams align energetically to the wish fulfilled, leaders can use the ‘One Year Later’ technique or quantum jumping. Everything that is created is done so with the end result in mind. All of creation begins in the brain, everything we see around us has happened twice–once created in the thoughts of the inventor and once in the tangible creation. Leaders will use my technique, ‘One Year Later’, with their teams both individually and collectively to create clarity and energetic alignment, which is key when taking steps of action. This is why many people try and fail again over and over, there is no energetic alignment and often no vision for what is possible. This is also a very healing tool as it takes us out of survival mode instantly and into creation mode.
3. Organizations will have quiet spaces for team members to rest and recharge.
These accommodations will incorporate various modalities of healing, nurturing, and calming the mind and spirit. Imagine getting bad news, the minute you feel your anxiety showing up–that wave trying to take you under, instead of reaching for food, alcohol, drugs, or spending money that you haven’t even earned yet, you simply retreat to the quiet room. Water fountains soothe your mind and a massage chair releases blocked energy and flow. There is even a place to stretch and use your body to move through the energy, then lay back into shavasana for a guided meditation with earphones or a nap. These are the modalities we have yet to tap into, but I believe this will be common in the future as we shift our perspective on business and advance to the next age in business.
4. Leaders will be trauma informed.
I know this is controversial, however it is important because so many people are replaying their traumas in the workplace with no awareness of it and no tools to make a positive change. For example, whenever I got a charge back when I was a financial advisor, it would send me into a downward spiral. It brought up all my unprocessed trauma as a child immigrant who lived with poverty and food insecurity for many years. I would become paralyzed with fear and feel physically ill. Instead of having resilience when I needed it most, I would completely crumble–I had to do something to stop this feeling. Now imagine if instead I had the awareness and knowledge to understand that I was being triggered and I simply needed to use a tool, or a few tools, to regulate my nervous system and calm my mind and body. I didn’t even understand what was happening or that I was having a panic attack, no one ever spoke about these things in business. Especially coming out of the pandemic, we are seeing a lot of trauma, and leaders need to know how to navigate it. When we heal ourselves, we heal our teams so that they can drive performance from the inside out.
5. Leaders and teams will learn how to optimize their inner computer.
In the future, I can see a workplace that will tap into the mind-body and mind-heart connections to unlock the inner reservoir of resources that each team member has within them. Organizations are finally catching on to the power of imagination and how to utilize it for optimal results. It is through our imagination that we tap into the subconscious mind. We are then able to change our focus, our energy, and the trajectory of our life. For centuries we humans have believed that our power is outside of ourselves, but in reality it is within. We possess an inner technology that many of us have never learned about and so it waits for us to use it for the greater good. For the past 25 years the HeartMath Institute has been striving to teach about the power of connecting to this inner technology, they teach that we have power in our hearts, minds, and body. When we start developing the internal powers we have–abundance, prosperity, success, and health, vitality begins to flow our way. Actually it is always flowing, the problem is that many people are in a state of resistance. If they are worried, mad or sad, their body is resisting this vitality. But, if we can change the focus through the power of our imagination, which creates a feeling from the heart, this sends a new message to the brain. This message changes your very own chemistry. There is a shift in your energy and therefore you start bringing in experiences that match this new vibrational state of being. The workplaces of the future must focus on healing this trauma, so toxic workplaces can no longer exist.
What is your greatest source of optimism about the future of workplace wellness?
I am extremely optimistic about the fact that companies are finally opening up to a holistic approach to developing teams and driving business results. For far too long workplaces have only focused on pushing performance, making extraordinarily high demands of their teams without providing the social and emotional support needed. They have tried to avoid recognizing that these are unrealistic expectations, and their teams were suffering in both their productivity and emotional wellness as a consequence of these actions. I feel that implementing my Brain Map and innovative tools will allow teams to rise up to meet expectations in the healthiest way possible.
Thank you for sharing your insights and predictions. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and wellness.