Mark: Today on PowerTips Unscripted. We talked to Peter Feinmann, president of Feinmann, Inc., a design build company in Lexington, Massachusetts. Lots of people are talking about stress and anxiety these days. Well, Peter’s here to show us how to use mindful meditation to help manage anxiety and reactivity when dealing with clients and employees, and to be more effective by facilitating great attention and focus.

Mark: And we’ll hear his advice in just a minute.

Victoria: You’re always. Hi I’m Victoria Downing and welcome to PowerTips Unscripted where we talk about tips, tactics and techniques to help you build a strong, profitable remodeling company. I’m here with my co-host, Mark Harari. Hi again. Hi there. How are you?

Mark: Doing good. Good. We’re doing another a room, a remote session here.

Victoria: That’s right, that’s right. Well, I’m excited about this session because, you know, these have been wild times, right?

Mark: Yes.

Victoria: I write downs and all sorts of information flying at you, and it’s kind of hard to keep your focus and to sort of, sort of keep yourself thinking about the present and not get all wound up and worrying about what could might happen. Right?

Mark: Absolutely. I’m still just trying to figure out how to work with kids running around and dogs jumping on my lap. All I’m trying to do my daily base stuff.

Victoria: No kidding. So, you know, I mean, it affects people. You anxiety and all this disruption and uncertainty affects different people, different ways. So I just thought that, you know, the more we could help our listeners give them the tools that could help them during this, this, you know, just this unprecedented, crazy time. You know, there might be helpful.

Victoria: So went beyond. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And that’s not just good for now. It’s good for anything. The mindful meditation. So when one of our roundtable members mentioned that he had gained so much from one of his colleagues sharing his experiences with meditation, I had to tap into it.

Mark: Oh, let’s tap away.

Victoria: All right. I am excited to have with us Peter Feinmann. I’ve known Peter for many, many years, and he is an incredible business owner, team builder. He’s run a very successful, award winning design build company for over 30 years in the greater Boston area. And we’re really excited to have him here. And today he’s going to introduce one of the most powerful tools he has learned to stay in business over the years.

Victoria: Welcome, Peter.

Peter: Thank you Victoria. Thank you Mark. Nice to see you both once again.

Victoria: Yeah.

Mark: Great to see you.

Victoria: You know, I’m sort of getting into this whole virtual, you know, zoom team video conferencing thing. I like it.

Peter: Well, you know, it’s funny you say that because I have read about three meditation groups starting in early March, and they all went to zoom, and it actually has worked out quite well to be able to lead meditation and lead classes through zoom. I just have to go up to my attic and I can have, you know, whatever I want in front of me, and I don’t have to prepare it in the same way.

Peter: I can really just have everything at my fingertips and and sometimes even go mute when I lead a meditation because I have to clear my throat or something like that. But I don’t have to worry about that because I have zoom. It’s been actually a great tool for teaching meditation.

Victoria: You know, Peter, you are very high energy guy and you are, you know, one of these, you you like direct answers, your fast move, and you make decisions fast. You’re, you know, you’re running quickly, typically. It’s always been my impression of you. So somehow, Peter find and mindful meditation. I wouldn’t have ever guessed that there would be a fit there.

Victoria: Can you understand why I feel that? What?

Peter: Well, I think the the misperception is that meditation is for the very quiet, you know, you know, laid back people. The truth matter is meditation is for all of us. We’re all wired a certain way. I am wired the way you just described it. I didn’t actually come into this world quite mellow, laid back. I came in just the way you know me.

Peter: So the question is, how do I deal with those data points so that my life feels that it’s, kind of more manageable, more controllable, where I actually can kind of feel greater joy and happiness in my life. So it’s not about being quiet or being loud or noisy. It’s about how do we just quiet our minds regardless of who we are?

Victoria: Okay, so you have not been doing this. Oh, the whole time I’ve known you, which is probably darn close to the whole 30 years. So what made you go in this direction? What was the impetus?

Peter: Well, I’ve always been a lifelong searcher. It’s always been me. I’ve always kind of poked and prodded. And that’s why I really went to roundtables over the years. I really wanted to learn more about how I could be more effective. And when you know, in these groups, it’s not just about the numbers in the marketing and the leads.

Peter: It’s really about what we bring to our companies and how we’re being challenged to be more effective in what we bring to our companies. I mean, if I learned if I learned anything, I learned that more than anything else in these roundtable groups. Right. So, you know, back when I’m mid-sixties now and back in my 40s, early 50s, I always had this idea that meditation would be one of those tools.

Peter: And I had this great opportunity in 2008 to go to AA5 day retreat, in upstate New York. It was about 3 or 4 hours from here. And there were kind of two elements of that retreat that really kind of worked for me. One was, I realized I didn’t have to sit like a Buddha at a meditation retreat.

Victoria: Because.

Peter: This this body does not sit like a Buddha. Okay. And the other more powerful piece was, we had to do about a day of silence. Now, you already know me, Victoria. I don’t do silence with you.

Victoria: Right? So?

Peter: So the anticipation that I had about going into this day of silence, well, the anxiety was really palpable. It was really there. And I went into this day of silence, and we got. I got through it and I said, wow, that wasn’t so bad. And I would say at that stage in my life, the peace, the meditation, the peace of meditation that was most powerful for me was, being comfortable with myself.

Peter: I would say that I always needed a lot of exterior stimulation to kind of be comfortable. Yeah. And that day of silence said, wait a second, I can actually spend time with myself and we’re not so bad together.

Victoria: Okay, great.

Peter: So as that happened and I had that experience, I then began to sit most mornings for about 20 minutes. I found a spot in my house. I had two spots in this house since about 2000. You know, I’ve been in this house for 20 years, but there are two spots in this house, and I’ve always said every morning for 20 minutes.

Peter: And I really started practicing and working on what it meant to be quiet for 20 minutes. Now, the real benefit has been that it’s made me be more aware of how I feel, how I experience myself. But I think the most powerful thing is that I have really gotten to enjoy myself and be comfortable with myself so much more in the last 12 to 15 years than I ever had before.

Peter: We really are starting to like each other.

Victoria: That’s awesome. So. Well. So. Oh, okay. Besides that, I mean, okay, so you like each other, you know, or like you like yourself. So how is that manifested out side?

Peter: Well, I think I think what I’ve really seen in the business over the years is, you know, as you said, I had a highly reactive, approach to managing my business. And I’ve had some people who’ve been with me 20, 30 years and they still will tell stories from 25 years ago. And the meditation has really taught me to kind of stop and watch the reactivity and react a lot less.

Peter: I gave an example in one of my classes yesterday, in which in 2000, I had this architect at work for me, and she made a really bad mistake with a client, and I fired her immediately. I reacted right. And then the client was so upset. We spent the next six months fighting our way to the finish line. You know what that feels like, right?

Peter: So recently, kind of mid Covid, I had a project manager that I really knew that I didn’t really want to keep going here any longer, but there was about 4 or 5 weeks left to that job. I didn’t fire that person. I wanted to, I wanted to save the money, but I didn’t. And then just as that drive wound down, I told that project manager I was terminating him because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t affect the client.

Peter: So in the year 2000, I behaved in a way in which my actions hurt my client and hurt me with my client. And in 2020, I didn’t react and I just was able to sit with the discomfort of having someone that was costing me more money than I wanted to pay for. So I can tell stories like this for days of how I learned to kind of be less react to what my staff’s doing, and giving it more time and space to let it play itself out.

Peter: That really has been the shift in the change, and I think it’s made me a more effective leader, because instead of reacting to people’s bad days and bad moments, I’ve been able to kind of sit with them and really determine whether these are bad days and bad moments, or they are something more substantial.

Mark: Okay.

Victoria: All right. Great. Now, what about your personal life? How was it affected? You know, have you seen changes in your personal life?

Peter: Well, I think in my personal life it’s been several ways. I kind of make a joke that I can’t believe how smart my wife has gotten in the last five years. Okay. We’ve been married 35 years, and when I tell people that, they kind of smirk at me because they know she didn’t get any smarter, I got smarter and understood how I should listen to her more and how effective she could be when I ask her for guidance and support.

Peter: So I think in my marriage of 35 years, it’s really allowed me to kind of, accept my wife more for who she is, accept our differences, but also really appreciate the great love and the bond that we’ve had for 35 years. And to feel that I’m the luckiest man in the world to have married this person. And and I think it’s partly because I’ve been able to kind of look at it, look at our marriage in a different light than I might have ten and 20 years ago.

Peter: I think in the same breath, I’ve also learned to kind of be a better listener. And a better friend. And to my, my, my grown children, you know, one of my children, some really challenging times about ten years ago. And, you know, I’m able to kind of sit and support, this child of mine and not react.

Peter: I mean, there are some days I still get phone calls and I go, yep, you’re having a bad day, honey. Instead of me trying to fix it.

Victoria: So you think that’s a benefit to jumping in and try and fix it?

Peter: Well, you know, one of my ground rules. When I lead a meditation class, there’s no fixing, no feedback during that meeting. Well, so I’m leading a nursery class at M, an eastern missionary class, and I, we all want to fix where we are built to fix in this business, right? We fix and we have the answers. And I say when you go to a meditation class with I role is to sit there and listen to others and to watch what they say, but do it with less judgment.

Peter: And don’t try to have the answers, but don’t simply let that person share with their experiences. So that’s what I mean by no fixing, no feedback. I listen to where you’re at and I can validate where you’re at. But my job is not to fix where you’re at.

Victoria: Right? Right. Okay. So tell me a little bit about how your, meditation practice has helped you specifically during Covid. I mean, you mentioned about being more patient, not reacting. How is it helped you specifically now?

Peter: Well, I think, when Covid was blowing up in mid-March and there was all this energy, I had a very great experience. In the second week of March, I was watching CNN every day. And then on the 20, I’ll never forget it was the 20th of March. I go home, I turn on CNN, and all I could hear is Wolf Blitzer yelling at me.

Peter: And I turned it off. And I haven’t turned on CNN since. I have not turned on the television in three months. Other great Netflix shows, because I was aware that the news was making me anxious. Yeah, I do read the paper. I read critical articles. I tried to read articles about, certain events, you know, certain pieces of data, but I’ve really minimized the amount of outside sources that were stimulating me and making me anxious.

Peter: I also watched a number of people in my local industry really react very quickly and shut down their operations. Covid is here. We’re done. I actually stopped and I really listened and watched. And I said to myself, I think we can continue to do this. Let’s put protocols into place very quickly. I made one of my project managers, my safety officer.

Peter: So all things Covid, she was handling, and very quickly we had PPE and hand sanitizers and we cut back the amount of people on site. And I really took it a week by week. You know, I was also listening to see if the governor was going to shut us down. Well, he didn’t shut us down. And once I realized he was letting us stay open, I then said, let’s just take this week by week.

Peter: So instead of reacting to fear, I looked at what was going on on my site with my clients and trying to figure out what my people needed to be comfortable. There was some days that they actually just all wanted to go home.

Victoria: Yeah, but I.

Peter: Was able to hold. You can go home, but I also think you can work if we do the following. So I think they got a message for me. You can leave, but if you’re willing to stay, we’ll make it comfortable for you. So I didn’t react to fear. I reacted to what I thought I could do, and I remember the great relief around me when I saw most of my peers come back to work and I said to myself, whoa, I made the right decision.

Peter: I didn’t know if I was making the right decision right many days, but I did check in at least once or twice a week. I’d go. Boy, is this the right thing. Peter. And all I could hear myself say is, you’re doing okay. Keep going. So I trusted my gut. I listened to the data, and I led my company through Covid so that when everybody went back to work, there was all this anxiety of how to do it again.

Peter: We already figured it out as we were doing it. And the last month has been quite easy for us because we already have in place the guidelines that everybody else had to put in place.

Victoria: Right. Good for you. That’s awesome.

Mark: Are you worried about the future of your business? Are you stuck and unsure about what step to take next? Do you have any doubts about your ability to lead through this crisis, whether it’s business, finance, or production? We have the experienced professional coaches standing by to help you and your team battle through these uncertain times. To learn more about our coaching program and to schedule a free 15 minute consultation with our Head Coach Doug Howard, visit remodeler.

Mark: Coach.com today. Now back to the show.

Victoria: Tell me. You know, I mean, I’ve tried meditation in the past and I find it so difficult since the whole concept of focusing on your breathing and I can’t, get myself to stop thinking about all the other things that are out there, you know, and never have my mind. Just go and get distracted.

Peter: You and everybody else, Victoria. So and so, people like you and I who move fast. We think we’re the only ones that got it right. But. But I don’t know, Mike. Well, enough of. Mark’s a quiet guy. His mind’s doing the same thing. So is my wife’s mind doing the same thing? Because she’s a quiet, kind of contained person, and everybody’s mind is busy and active.

Peter: What the mindfulness practice really teaches you is the ability to note and name what’s going on, but not change it, but the note and name it. When I need a meditation, I will quite often say if you are. If your mind is wandering right now for this moment, can you note it? Can you name it? Can you just watch it?

Peter: Because it always changes, Always changes. So I didn’t take on meditation to become quiet. I took on meditation to learn, to kind of watch how my my mind worked and to begin to kind of kind of watch it and trusted and appreciated as Peter’s mind not trying to be the Dalai Lama or the Buddha, but just to be Peter’s mind, you know, my my daughter, she calls me pop, along with sometimes family joke.

Victoria: Yeah.

Peter: So but so it’s the beauty of mindfulness meditation is not the change what our minds are doing, but to learn to watch what our minds are doing. And that’s a really powerful tool. So if I come to the office, there was a day about three weeks ago, I came to the office and I was ready to bite who’s ever head came in front of me.

Peter: And I found myself saying, oh, you’re really agitated, Peter. And I didn’t know why, but I was just agitated. I almost actually left and went home. Wow. I could see that I was really going to do something. That day was not going to be good. I noted it, I named it, and you know what happened over the next half hour?

Peter: It changed.

Victoria: Okay.

Peter: And I till 6:00 that night, because I settled back down into whatever was upsetting me. I was able to settle back down and work it through because I was able to note it and name it. And the most important piece is able to note it and name it without judgment. And the word is really without judgment because mindfulness is having none judging awareness okay.

Peter: Because most of the time all of us are judging our, our thoughts and our behaviors and our experiences. Oh, I can’t believe I feel this way again. I shouldn’t be fat. I shouldn’t be afraid. What the hell is wrong with me? Because I’m afraid. What right. We could talk about this for days. So it’s really it’s a non judging awareness when we say, right now I’m having this experience.

Peter: I’m having this experience. Yeah. And that is actually the tool. And I think it’s a wonderful tool for business leaders to be able to say, I’m having this experience. We’re still angry. We’re still anxious, we’re still agitated. We’re still all the things that we are as business leaders. Right? But we can begin to name it and hold it and validate it.

Peter: So instead of me being highly strung, Peter, I am just Peter with a certain brain that works a certain way, and I’m able to embrace it and actually say that what I am, you don’t have to be like me, Mark. Neither do you, Victoria. You. You’re unique. You’re the most unique person on the planet. No one’s ever going to be like us ever again.

Victoria:

Peter: Celebrated.

Mark: So, Peter, I’m curious if you could frame it. Maybe I’m just. And believe me, I’m not very quiet, so. Fine, Victoria, I’ll attest to that. But I mean, it kind of sounds like this is happening throughout the day. Right. But but is there you’re also, I guess what I’m trying to get my head around is, is is there are you doing this something at for a 20 minute period in a day?

Mark: Is it daily exercises or how does how does it work? The mechanics of it.

Peter: That’s a good question. So I think there are two parts of kind of mindfulness. One is we practice to build the muscle. You may work out, you may run, you may get on a treadmill, you may do yoga like we all have. We might all have these kind of exercise routines that we do because when we do them, our brains get used to them and our brains start actually making our bodies healthier.

Peter: So I sit every day in silence for 20 minutes to build the muscle of awareness. But I don’t stop because I’ve begun. I built, I have been building this muscle of awareness for 1213 years now. I’m able to bring the mindfulness into my daily life so that I can check in more often and be aware of what’s happening.

Peter: And the and the awareness is where the the less reactivity occurs. So we practice to have the muscle so that when we come to the office, like I did 3 or 4 weeks ago, just fit to be tied, or I could say who I fit to be tied today. The awareness was beautiful because the awareness kept me from behaving in a way that I would have actually felt horrible about.

Victoria: Oh, that’s interesting. So we’ve got a friend who is practicing transcendental meditation, which uses a, mantra, I believe, and that is different than the type of meditation you use. Yes.

Peter: Yes, I mean, yes and no. I think if you have been practicing for TM for decades, the use of the mantra has had the same power of making that person practitioner aware of what’s going on. They’re just using the tool of TM to get to mindfulness. I’m using the tool of insight meditation to get to mindfulness. We actually do mantra meditation, and mindfulness is one of the tools that we use.

Peter: This is a great prayer in mindfulness called love and kindness prayer. And it really is a much I have to tell you. For years that was actually what I meditated on using the Loving Kindness prayer. It just help me help my mind be quiet and settle down. Have surgery. About 3 or 4 years ago I had to have.

Peter: I had thyroid cancer and had to remove my thyroid and again into the operating room. And I said to my physician, I’ve been doing a loving kindness prayer for you. And the nurse said, Will you include me? So I was out within a minute because they were there putting a seizure. But I really I remembered the whole time after I was taken into the surgical just I kept on doing, may I be filled with loving kindness, may I be well, I was doing that to kind of keep myself quiet and calm, because it’s anxious to have someone cut open your throat.

Peter: Yeah. So so I really remember heading into that kind of surgery, really kind of calm. I remember getting to the anesthesia room and they said, do you want some anxiety meditation? I said, nope, I’m all set for it.

Mark: It’s this really good stuff here. Really good. Well, hey, how about if we meditate on some, lightning around questions? Now, what do you think?

Peter: Okay.

Mark: And now here’s the reminders.

Peter: And it’s lightning round. It’s a try.

Mark: All right, we’re gonna put 60s on the theoretical clock here. What’s your favorite business book and why?

Peter: In 1992, I wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and it changed the way I ran my business. And it helped me put in order the roles that I was playing, so that I made sure to do those roles until I could actually handle rolls off to members of my company. Over the years. Thank you, Steve Covey.

Mark: If you weren’t, remodeling business owner, what do you think you’d be doing?

Peter: I was worried to do this, Mark, I have loved this business for 30 plus years, and I couldn’t have been happier. I will never look back and go. I wish I had done something else. I did what I was supposed to do.

Mark: That’s awesome. What are you not very good at?

Peter: Patients. When they gave out patients, I was never got anywhere near the front of the line.

Mark: Your room, your desk or your car. Which would you clean first?

Peter: I am simply the most organized person you know. Both are clean. Okay.

Mark: What’s the weirdest thing I’d find in your refrigerator?

Peter: The weirdest thing they find in my refrigerator. Oh, I love half sour pickles. Half dollar. Oh, I do another half sour pickles to go with my sandwich every day.

Mark: Do you sing in the shower?

Peter: Do I sing? I actually make up songs. Oh, I have an I have an international student that lives with me and we play pool every night, and I’m always singing while we play pool. He’s starting to sing the songs that I’m singing.

Victoria: Made up songs.

Peter: Made up songs.

Victoria: Hey, Peter, this is awesome. Thank you so much for doing this and sharing your insights with us. It’s fascinating. And again, the more tools that our listeners have in their quiver to help them in these challenging times, the better. So we really appreciate you sharing this with us. Now, before I let you go, though, I want you to share your five words of wisdom with our listening audience and why they resonate with you.

Peter: Okay, see the unique differences of your of the people you work with.

Victoria: Okay, so why is that?

Peter: Because I think we want to put the people who work with us into roles, and I think that’s great, but no one fits all the roles you want them to be. And if you can find unique differences, then you begin to really leverage people’s strengths and also begin to support them in the areas that they’re not. As strong.

Peter: Don’t ask for all people to be all things. Hopefully you get a lot of people to be a lot of things.

Victoria: There you go. There you go. That’s awesome. Great advice Peter. And you know, it’s wonderful to have somebody like you who’ve been in this business have been so successful. And, it’s just great talking to you again.

Peter: Great. Thank you Victoria. Thank you. Mark, I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you today. And I am passionate about mindfulness. I was passionate about my years in roundtables. I think these are tools that make us better, what we do. That’s why I do it.

Victoria: Hey, Peter, if people want to learn more about your classes, how would they do that?

Peter: Well, I am, I’ve been, I’ve been I have some ongoing classes going on right now, and I’ve been, organizing another class to start kind of in July. And I’ve been considering doing kind of Monday evenings, early Monday evenings, East Coast time and office. You know, generally, I offer these classes in four weeks tense so that people can get a feel the way into it.

Peter: I find if you ask for people to make more than four week commitments, they tend not to.

Victoria: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Great. We’ll put the word out there.

Peter: Thank you, thank you, thank you Mark. Thank you Victoria.

Victoria: Okay. So you Mark my friend or a cynic a bit on this sort of thing. So what did you think after listening to Peter talk about his experience?

Mark: Sounds interesting. Sounds good. I just, I, I’m say I don’t have a problem with it. You make it kind of sound like I’m. I’m, like anti-immigration. No, but fantastic. I just I think I would really struggle with it. Yeah. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. I it’s probably really bad. I mean, my mind is always going a million miles an hour, and I don’t when it comes down to it, I don’t like not not doing stuff.

Mark: Not not doing stuff, you know what I mean? Yeah. I’m I always want to be productive. I mean, even my drive into work at least when we used to drive to work, it’s like I don’t just zone out to music, put on a book, put on a podcast, learn, learn, learn cars and constant cars, I want to I feel like I’m wasting hours of my day.

Mark: So it’s something that I just put up a wall to the thought of, you know, kind of just sitting there. Now, I know my wife and probably you as well, and I know probably Steve and a couple other people would love for me to do that day of silence.

Victoria: Old, I remain silent right now on that one. Yeah.

Mark: But, but, yeah, it’s, you know, I’m willing to try anything, but I’ll tell you, it’s it’s it’s tough. I, you know, I sometimes I catch myself on a Saturday sitting on the sofa if the kids are not around and, and, and dad’s doing something and I’ll just kind of feel like, you know, I’m not being very productive.

Mark: And I open up the laptop and start trying to get something done because I feel like I’m wasting time, you know what I mean? So.

Victoria: Yeah, you know, I look at it as just sort of a tool to help you, to help one be more present, because I’m, I find myself always thinking about the next thing I have to accomplish versus, or the next thing that’s going to happen versus appreciating the moment for what it is, you know?

Mark: Yeah. I mean, it sounded it sounded very interesting and it’s definitely worth a shot. I mean, maybe I’ll have to sign up for his class. So I can.

Victoria: There you go and have a good day. Yeah. All right. Well, so you.

Mark: Just you just want me to do that one day and silence thing?

Victoria: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll sign up for that one. Well, thank you again to Peter Feinmann. He was awesome. And I hope you all out there listening. Audience. Got a tip or two from him?

Mark: We’ll see you next week. I’m Mark Harari.

Victoria: And I’m Victoria Downing by.