Get your mind right | Sumitra Narayanan | TDSU Ep. 59

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I know another person who has a great interest in this, and I'm going to go to him first, is JP. Nam-nyoho-renge-kyo. Is that right, JP? Yes.

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Rob, I'm sorry, but I said I wanted JP to talk. All you, JP. Let's see if I can do it when the pressure's on.

All right, you guys ready? What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, JP, with us. JP, do you want to say hi? Hello.

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I got my man, Rob, with us. Rob, do you want to say hi? What's up, people? And we've got Sumitra with us. Sumitra, do you want to say hi? Hello, nice to be here.

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So happy to have you here. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

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Sumitra, would you like to introduce yourself? Definitely. So I'm Sumitra, and I lead a high-touch scale customer success team at Braze, which is in the MarTech space. And I've been in customer success for close to 10 years now.

And some of my passions are writing, meditation, as I'll speak a little bit more about on this podcast, and of course, meeting people like you. I love it. I love a good teaser.

So you know why we're here. We want to ask one simple question of you, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? And let me just guess, does it have to do with meditation? That was a pretty accurate guess right there. Tell us more about it, please.

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Yeah, definitely. Maybe to take a little bit of a step back, being in customer success, I don't think meditation is one of the first topics that comes to mind, but I'm happy to connect the dots a little bit. You know, as with any other fast-paced job, customer success does have its fair share of moving parts, and we are on the front lines with customers.

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You know, I did get to a point in my life where I felt overwhelmed by anxiety and some constant lows, and not necessarily just related to the job, but just overall in life. And I thought, if I can look into a tool or a technique to help myself calm down even more generally in my day-to-day, then I'm sure it's going to have an impact with the stresses of my role in customer success, too. So that's kind of what led me to explore meditation.

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And interestingly, I didn't have to look too far for a meditation practice, because in my culture, the Hindu culture, meditation and yoga is actually a core part of the knowledge system. So I didn't actually have to look too far, and I started getting into it somewhat gradually, because to be fair, a lot of people think that meditation is very simple. You just close your eyes, focus on your breath, and relax.

But for people who work in, or even just anybody who's, you know, leading a fast-paced life, it's super hard to do that. Like, it's very hard to just sit, close your eyes, focus on your breath, and just relax without your mind racing. So that was something that I really struggled with.

And so either way, I kept at it. There are a few different forms of meditation out there. Maybe for some people, it is easier to close your eyes and focus on your breath and relax.

For others, maybe a more active form of meditation, maybe you're moving a little bit, maybe you're chanting. Whatever it is that helps you find that peace and disconnect a little bit, I would say, is immensely helpful. And you may not see changes overnight, but if you're patient with it, you will see changes in your day-to-day life, and you'll most definitely see it in your day-to-day at work as well.

Just being patient with it and allowing it to give me that pause, allow me to disconnect so that I could fully recharge, really had immense benefits in my role in a more so stressful, fast-paced customer success job. What's up, guys? It's Dillon here, and you know why I'm here. Hat in hand.

I got a favor to ask of you. If you like what we're doing, give us a like on whatever platform that you find us on. And if you want to know when we're dropping new stuff, give us a follow.

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Thanks so much, guys. I'll let you get back to the show. I'm a big proponent of anything that focuses on your mental health and your mental fitness.

So I love that you're bringing this topic to the table. And quite frankly, it's the first time we've heard it from this perspective. I know another person who probably has a great interest in this, and I'm going to go to him first, is JP.

I went to a meditation class. Not class. Sorry.

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I went to meditation... What do you even call that? Rob, I'm sorry, but I said I wanted JP to talk. Oh, you're JP. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. I'm kidding. This is why you need meditation to give you some thoughts.

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Oh, I'm going to need it after this. You guys aren't listening to me. Go for it, JP.

I was just giving some content. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

Thanks. Thanks. I've definitely had chanting practice for a long time.

I mean, I did start out with meditation. I still do meditate. Sometimes I'd say the most difficult part of the meditation for me is to start the start of the meditation.

To say, I'm going to go take this time to do it. Once I take the time to do it, I feel like a lot of times what I'll do is, I usually do the breath-focused meditation when I meditate, just because it's a very simple thing to put your focus on. It's also just good for the body.

There's all kinds of scientific studies and whatever about just the benefits of meditation that's really agnostic. I mean, my chanting is not so much agnostic, but meditation is something that is ultimately agnostic, but it can also be used in whether it's a knowledge work context or a religious context, whatever it is. But at the end of the day, I'll say if you're a scaled CS or lots of clients, you could probably benefit from some sort of meditation and mindfulness because you don't want to be transmitting the energy from a customer or a few customers over to other customers.

What tends to happen is once you're in a state of agitation, you tend to pass that energy along. We want to bring our best to each of our customers. I think in a practical sense, if you can find even five minutes, I know that sounds, well, then why do it? But if you could take five minutes out of your day, just close your eyes and focus on your breath for five minutes, I think that you'll see a lot of benefits if you keep up with it.

That's a really great point. I think you bring up a couple of really relevant things in terms of the scientific benefits. So if I could share a few quick tidbits, a lot of people think conventionally your prefrontal cortex in your brain does not or cannot really grow much beyond the age of 25.

But they did find in meditators and yogis that the prefrontal cortex, so your brain's rational logical center, your mindful center was actually quite expanded even more. So that was a pretty interesting revelation. And also meditation can help just going through those motions, even just five minutes, as you said, JP can help kind of shrink your amygdala.

So your fight or flight response, so thereby really minimizing your stress response. And then also to your point, I think even though meditation and yoga do stem from our, you know, Indian or Hindu, indigenous knowledge systems, it's very agnostic and secular, you don't have to give it a religious bent at all. The chanting can be very much, you know, say frequencies that resonate with your chakras, as an example, or just mindful affirmations, right? I love that.

I love that. Rob, why don't you take us out of here? Sure. Yeah, these are great points.

I love this topic. It's such an important topic. For me, I think one of the interesting applications that I found meditation sort of by accident, or in a reactive capacity was just by dealing with very angry customers.

And then me also, like, it actually started when I was managing people, and I would have people not show up to work or quit on me or something. This is actually dating back to when I was in the restaurant world. And I was like, borderline meltdown a lot of the time.

That was just like my way of dealing with these problems. And so I started, I found that the only way that I could deal with that, either like a customer yelling in my face, or like someone else showing up to work or whatever all these pressures of the world was to find meditation. I think I found some basic stuff by like Alan Watts or something like that.

That was like just basically teaching me to see myself in the third person, which was a really cool technique that worked well for me. That's our time, Sumitra. Thank you so much for bringing this.

Like I said, very unique. Mental health is something that we talk about a lot. But from this perspective, I think it's really cool and just kind of a different methodology for folks to think about and to focus on.

And that five minutes is crucial. JP, you were saying, would love to have you back in the future, do a second part on this. But for now, we've got to say goodbye.

Yeah, my pleasure to be here, Dillon, JP, Rob. Pleasure talking with all of you on this very important topic. Thank you.

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You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at LifetimeValueMedia.com. Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at LifetimeValueMedia.com. Until next time.