What it takes to lead from clarity instead of control with Jaclyn Orent

What it takes to lead from clarity instead of control - Jaclyn Orent Claire Hayek: She had the dream job, great pay, great team, great city, and then she got fired. And instead of sprinting right back to the next opportunity, she actually stopped, and she asked the question most leaders never slow down long enough to ask. She asked, "Who am I outside of what everyone has told me to be?" Now, that question took a decade to answer. Yes, a decade. And what came out on the other side is a leader who operates from a place of clarity, precision, and calm under real pressure. Today, we get into how she got there and what the science says about why this works. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge, the podcast where bold leaders share the pressure moments that change everything, and where we translate those stories into science-backed tools that you can use right now. I am Claire Hayek, neuroleadership expert, TEDx speaker, and the founder of Mind-Soul-Purpose Team Building. I spent more than 20 years leading high-stakes projects and teams under real pressure. Now, everything I build is designed so that pressure sharpens leadership instead of breaking it. The three things you are walking away with today: what the brain actually does when a leader stops reacting and starts accessing a wider, clear field of intelligence; why the leaders who integrate both analytical thinking and deeper self-awareness consistently outperform those who rely on logic alone; and what a decade of pressure, rebuilding, and integration teaches you about showing up with authority when it matters most. My guest today is Jaclyn Orent, co-founder, CEO, and system architect of Cultural Catalysts, connecting powerful leaders across organizations to create the cultural change none of them could create alone. She spent a decade doing the kind of inner work most leaders avoid. She went further than most people are willing to go, integrated what she found, and emerged with a level of clarity and precision that is genuinely rare. Her story starts with her getting fired from a job she thought she wanted, and it runs through a 36-day water fast and spans 10 years of rebuilding, studying, and integrating before she felt ready to bring any of it forward. That's the kind of journey that produces something real as far as I'm concerned. All right, Jaclyn, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Jaclyn Orent: Thanks so much for the great introduction. It's really beautiful to be seen in the mastery that's been required to bring forth what it is that I am here to do. Claire Hayek: Yes, and I love the word mastery, because that's what it is. So let's dive right in. So you had the dream job, top workplace in Austin. Everything was great, and then you got fired. So take us back and what happened. I'm more interested to know what was going on inside of you when that really hit, the reality of, "Oh my God, what do I do now?" Jaclyn Orent: Well, it's funny looking back on it that it was actually exactly what I was needing to go through. But at the time I was actually realizing right before I got fired that what I was doing was not what I was wanting to do anymore, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I started to look. And I literally thought I had a little bit longer, and it turns out it was almost imminent. Days later after realizing that I didn't want to be doing that anymore, I was let go. And it was really shocking to me because I'd never been fired from a job ever. I've always been a top performer, especially in sales, and it was really dysregulating to me. I remember going home, I worked in the heart of Austin, and I had this beautiful ability to take the bus to and from home, it was a straight shot from where I lived to downtown, and I just remember crying on the bus, and then I got home, and then there was a postal worker who gave me a hug, and I didn't even ask for the hug. And it really opened up a realm of possibility that I didn't know was there yet. But it was enough to stop and realize that I actually had no idea what I wanted, but I had some health challenges at the time, and I had already gone the traditional Western medicine route, and it hadn't worked. And so I decided to not take my parents' advice, which included not telling them, which I've gone through multiple bouts of that, which really I know in psychology is individuation. I was individuating from them, and in doing so, I went on a pathway of self-discovery that ultimately led to a 36-day water fast. And the reason why that's important, besides the fact that it's jarring and I don't recommend it, is that my life is really dictated by before the fast and after the fast. Claire Hayek: Right, so hold on. Let's pause there for a second. So a 36-day water fast. I want our listeners to take that in, okay? Tell me what that was like, what was happening, what were you looking for, and how do you do that? Jaclyn Orent: Yeah, totally. I just want to acknowledge it's completely bonkers, completely crazy, and I want to acknowledge everyone who's completely in shock hearing that. There's only a handful of people on the planet who've ever done that. So it was a calling for me personally. What initially drew me to it was noticing I had a food addiction that was preventing me from healing my body, and then I got introduced to water fasting and found out that you could literally have a spiritual experience. I grew up Jewish and had no perception of what a spiritual experience was at the time, but it was intriguing enough for me to go forward. Something that I learned about myself during the fast, and even after the fast, was that once I set my mind to something, I will go through absolutely anything to get it, and that's actually part of mastery. It's having that one-pointed vision and taking every step in front of the other. And so I actually came up with my first purpose statement that I didn't even know what it was at the time, which was, "I'm gonna heal my body to heal the world." And that is actually what drove the vision to be able to do that. It was for something greater than myself, and in doing so, that helped me overcome the inevitable challenges and hardships of overcoming the hungers of being human. Claire Hayek: That's actually very interesting because what really happens, scientifically, biologically, in extreme states like that, sustained fasting is very significant when you look at it neurologically. The default mode network, the part of the brain that's constantly narrating your identity, your self's story, your worries, actually quiets down. And when that quiets down, it opens up a lot of clarity that we don't usually experience at that level in ordinary life. And actually, research on interoception, the brain's ability to read information from the body, confirms this, that leaders who develop access to that signal, which could be stimulated by fasting, make faster and more integrated, more calm and clear decisions under pressure. And you've spent years learning to bring that state back into daily leadership. You describe this as a 10-year journey. The world is full of leaders who had a breakthrough and started teaching it the next week. You sat with this for a decade before you built anything from it. So what did that decade actually require of you, and what did that serve? Jaclyn Orent: Yeah, so I'm actually going to relate this back to the default mode network, and the ability to access the part of the brain that allows for quietness and calmness, and new ways of thinking. Because ultimately, what ended up happening during the fast was I ended up experiencing profound states of inner peace that included no thoughts. There was complete stillness, and there weren't any stories or the usual chatter of being human. And what I had access to was actually direct knowing. What makes that experience unique, and one of the ways I can actually filter what is real love and what is not, was because I got to access it for weeks on end. People oftentimes in medicine ceremonies or peak experiences will have touches of the divine that show up as imperturbable peace or unconditional love or bliss states. These are things that are measured in consciousness science, dictated by certain subjective, immeasurable experiences. I actually got to experience those things for long periods of time, and access direct knowing, and I had never had anything like that before. One of the things that I got to experience during the fast was complete unconditional love for myself in a way that I had never had access to before, and I love my mother, but that's not something I've learned from my family. Most people around us have absolutely no idea what real love is. And what I actually got to find during that experience, it wasn't through one intense moment, it was weeks long, that love is actually flowing through all of us at all times. It's actually our natural state. And it completely reoriented me to reality. My values completely changed after this experience. What was important to me changed, and ultimately what I dedicated my life to is completely different. Before, I was driven by money. Afterwards, I was dedicated to service. Claire Hayek: So why a decade? What was happening? Jaclyn Orent: So after the fast I started going through extremes in behavior. I started going from extreme unconditional love, once I integrated food back into the picture, down into despair and wanting to literally kill myself, in hours. Extreme, bipolar-like symptoms. I didn't have the skillset at the time to integrate it. I got introduced to psilocybin for a brief period of time, and I realized when on psilocybin that my mind was controlling me. I didn't have the skillset at the time to be the one who's watching and not attached, and so I ended up asking for help. That help led to literally a decade's worth of repetition of the same skillset over and over. And when we look at what mastery is, that's ultimately what it is: repetition of the same thing over and over, and most people aren't willing, or don't have a purpose high enough, to repeat something long enough where it goes from intellectual understanding to actually being in your body. My path required me to learn how to let go of the mind, and to allow for the new reality and new programs to be implanted. My main teacher has been Dr. David Hawkins, who was a physician, a psychiatrist, and eventually a consciousness researcher who created the first scale of consciousness, teaching us the difference between power and force. I had to write a paper on his work to graduate the program I went through to receive the help I needed right after the fast. I realized that the way we lead and the way we work is literally the difference between whether or not we add to life or take from life. I've spent the last decade in dissolution of the things within consciousness that are of force: shame, guilt, fear, despair, anger, desire, and pride. Those things are all associated with force, and they're culturally conditioned, whether in family structures, societal structures, or workplace environments. We are in a position right now where we literally need a new operating system, otherwise we are going to lead to our demise as a species. So I've spent the last decade going into dissolution constantly, and it took a long time for it to stabilize, where I've learned how to actually stabilize things from a place of love, from a place of wholeness. And it is not what you think. It's the complete opposite, and requires complete and utter surrender to something higher and greater than yourself. Claire Hayek: Wow, that's amazing. There's so much gold there. A lot of leaders and listeners spend their whole career leading from the analytical side of the brain. You're talking about love, openness, being at a whole different level of connection that most of us probably will never get to unless we put our mind to it or take it on as a mastery of some sort. I can relate a little bit, though I'm nowhere close to what you did. I did fast for four days, no water, no food, in a whole different environment. I was alone, couldn't speak, no phones. We were safe, in a camp. But you literally have to stop, and going back to the default mode network, that's exactly what happened, you get insight. I did this four days every summer, four years in a row. For me, the struggle was the first two years, I was trying to fill the time with sleeping, I made the emptiness into a task because I couldn't let go. It took me two years of repeating the process before I was able to open up and listen and be present without having to rush anything. That fourth year was so transformational. I mention this in my upcoming book, Calm Under Fire. So back to you, Jaclyn. Now, you have been through genuine pressure. Just listening to your story, the ups and downs, everything from the beginning till where you are today, what does pressure reveal in your opinion about a leader that nothing else can? Jaclyn Orent: Yeah, what I hear when you say what pressure reveals in a leader when nothing else can is their willingness to be able to let go or not. There's the real frailty of being human and the limitations of the mind, and I think it'd be really helpful to go into the neurology here, because the default mode network is the part of us that allows for open-mindedness. It puts our body into a place of rest and digest and creates something called PEA, the positive emotional attractor. It's literally the positive energy that can move through the system, from the individual to the organization to the community, all the way up to the country and even global levels. So when we look at a leader under pressure, within a greater systemic level, they are either letting the energy move through them, or they're not. And oftentimes if they don't know how to let the energy move through them, that's going to be a really strong period of suffering, which can often lead to burnout or even rock bottom. But rock bottom is actually really valuable, in the sense that my teacher, Dr. David Hawkins, describes rock bottom as the programs you are holding, the operating system you're running within your nervous system, got you there. So when you let yourself fully experience that period of rock bottom, those programs release because they are no longer needed, which allows for new programs to get installed. We can either go through that process by choice, which is the skill I've had to develop over the last decade, how to let go. If you don't know how to do that, it can look like someone is literally losing it, or they get checked into a hospital, or they need help. I did need help at a point in time. I'm no longer needing help because I have the skillset I need to, what I call, be the captain of my consciousness. I can change the way I see reality no matter what my external circumstances are, and find inner peace no matter what is going on outside of me. As a leader, as someone who is in some ways the leader of leaders, role modeling a new level of leadership, we are able to move forward with precision and clarity when we're able to find that peace and calm no matter what is happening within the storm. Claire Hayek: I love the way you put it, and I love the redirecting, in a way. You're redirecting that pressure, that experience that is completely probably destroying you inside out, toward growth, toward spiraling up as opposed to spiraling down. I often talk about this with the Pressure-Proof Leadership system, that's what it is, you're building it. You're always going to be under pressure, always going to be challenged. So what do you do with it? It's kind of like redirecting that jab, redirecting the energy. It's amazing how much wisdom there is out there, and so little is actually communicated to leadership. So the leaders in the audience are navigating something really special nowadays. There's a lot of complexity right now, economic pressure, team pressure, market uncertainty, disruption, AI. But it's not about AI. I don't want to make this about AI or specifically what's happening in the world right now, because there's always going to be something. So based on everything you have lived and learned, what do you most want our listeners to understand about leading through all of this? Jaclyn Orent: Yeah, I'm going to lean on Tony Robbins on this one, because Tony Robbins says the secret to success is actually 80% psychology and 20% execution, but the problem is our nervous systems are probably having that flipped. Most of us are in a position where we're trying to figure it out, or judging circumstances to be a certain way, and trying to change or fix them. And when our mind is focused on trying to fix or change something, or judging something, we're not actually accepting what's happening. We're trying to figure it out, which takes up mental energy, and that puts us in the task mode network. The task mode network is the part of us that's trying to solve problems, and the problem with the task mode network is it's inherently depleting. That's called NEA in the science of change terms, also known as intentional change theory, it literally depletes the body and halts change. So what that means is we need to make sure that whatever we're moving toward is actually something that gives us energy, which is the first step of change science. We have to connect to an ideal vision for ourselves, or a collective shared vision, that gives us energy. One of the things I want to be really wary of, because I've seen this working with a founder who was, on the surface, working on something that was going to change the world, but his reason for doing it was actually not to change the world, it was to prove something to himself. So we need to be aware of why we're doing what we're doing, and whether it's coming from a wound. I can think of another founder I talked to specifically, he was wanting to grow his business, and when I got into the why he was doing it, what he was actually doing was trying to make himself feel significant. That is not enough to create change. What is going to be able to create change, and what got me through the inevitable challenges and struggle over the last decade, was serving something greater than myself. I call it higher purpose. What is it you are dedicating your life to that's greater than you? Claire Hayek: So if we bring this into Cultural Catalysts, tell us a little bit about that before we jump into the rapid fire, and about what you're trying to achieve with your co-founder. Jaclyn Orent: Totally. So one of the things I'm trying to achieve in the Cultural Catalysts Network is to apply 60 years of research that also intersects with consciousness science. Last year I applied to grad school, at what was called the most innovative university in the world, Minerva University, with a very specific thesis based off my private practice, in which I saw that developing consciousness, changing the way a leader saw something, changing those sunglasses that they wore, and changing their behavior, created exponential systemic change. In applying to grad school and getting in, I got to meet two researchers: Richard E. Boyatzis, who spent the last 60 years studying change, and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, the famous organizational psychologist. Both of them read my work. Boyatzis said, "What you are saying is called the emergent field in intentional change theory." And Ben was all about the non-linear side of his own research. So what I did was I actually ended up letting go of grad school and decided to apply the research that already exists on how cultural-level change actually happens. One of the things we need to make sure of, as we create cultural-level change, is that we have a collective shared vision that creates the positive emotional attractor. For something to create that, it has to be greater than oneself, focused on giving instead of getting, on service instead of taking. Doing so gets us out of our inherent selfishness and purposelessness, and helps us live with totality and serve from a place of wholeness. For the people who are cultural catalysts listening to this, first, it's designed for you to say, "I am that, thank you for giving me a title." Second, by identifying as one, each of us has our unique contribution to what we want our culture and society to look like. That's called a personal ideal vision. When you bring those people together, it creates a collective shared vision. What the research shows us about how change happens is that a shared vision groups people behind it, kind of like "I have a dream." It paints a picture that people want to be part of, that arouses them in a way that their default mode network turns on, they become open-minded, able to collaborate, able to work with others, and want to move the thing forward. So what we're actually doing is bringing together proven leaders who identify as cultural catalysts, who have a vision for the culture they want to create, and making it so their relationships serve as the fuel, the neurobiological fuel, to sustain change efforts to create a new culture. That's why we call it the non-negotiable infrastructure. Claire Hayek: I love this, this is so interesting, and I'll be sharing a link to Jaclyn's LinkedIn so you can connect with her and learn more. Let's jump into the rapid fire. I'm going to ask you one question: what do you know now that you wish you had known at the start of your 10-year journey? Short answer. Jaclyn Orent: To bring my family closer, not push them away. Claire Hayek: Wow, okay, I didn't expect that one, but thank you, that's a very good one. Before we close, a couple of things. If you're leading a team and want to know exactly what pressure is costing you right now, you can take the pressure and performance scorecard, and if you're an individual reader, founder, or solopreneur who needs tools to help reset pressure when it hits, you can download the pressure reset scripts, both linked in the description, and at clairehayek.com/reset. Finally, I'm writing a book called Calm Under Fire, coming out in September. I'm building a small group of senior leaders who will read it before it launches and help shape it. If that's you, I'd love to have your voice and feedback in it, and Jaclyn, I'd love for you to be in that group as well: clairehayek.com/book. Jaclyn, thank you so much, this conversation is exactly what this show exists for. Any last words? Jaclyn Orent: Yeah, I want to mention that this word "purpose" gets thrown around a lot, and one of the things I want to disprove about purpose is that it's something you need to achieve out in the future. That is not what purpose is. Purpose is actually found in the present moment, in your darkness, in the parts of you that you don't want to look at, in the parts of you that you're avoiding, in the things that are uncomfortable that you never want to accept. Your purpose is actually found within the totality of your experience of being alive. Claire Hayek: I love it, I love this. Jaclyn Orent, co-founder and CEO of Cultural Catalysts. You can find her on LinkedIn, link in the description. And to everyone listening, if this episode moved you in any way, share it with a leader in your world. Make sure to subscribe to the NeuroLeadership Edge. As always, lead boldly, stay human, and turn every challenge into a gift. See you all next week. Jaclyn Orent: Thank you for having me.