Ep. 54: 40 Years, 28 Layoffs, and a 99% Blockage: Rich Strilowich's Path to Integration
Rich Strilowich spent over 40 years in global corporations and 30 years on a spiritual path he kept almost entirely hidden, and it took a daughter's autism diagnosis, 28 layoffs, and a 99% coronary blockage to make him stop pretending those two lives were separate.
Rich Strilowich is a spiritual coach, speaker, and bestselling author of The Corporate Sage, and this conversation goes places most career podcasts would never touch. Rich spent decades at IBM leading global teams, managing layoffs, and delivering results — while quietly doing energy healing training, core energetics therapy, and spiritual direction on the side. He didn't call it a split at first. It took a spiritual advisor pointing it out for him to see it: he was living as two completely different people depending on the room he was in.
Then life stopped cooperating with that arrangement. His daughter was diagnosed with non-functioning autism at three and a half years old. He shut down the private practice he had been quietly building, poured everything back into his corporate salary to fund her therapies, and spent his nights researching and advocating. A few years later, after laying off 28 people over two years, he ended up in the emergency room with a 99% coronary blockage. The depression that followed cracked him open in a way nothing else had, and the synchronicities that followed — a vision quest, a book already highlighted on his shelf, a spiritual director he has worked with for the last nine years — led him to the fully integrated path he now walks with others.
What Laura and Rich get into is not a tidy story about work-life balance or mindfulness at your desk. It is a real conversation about the cost of compartmentalizing yourself, the four spiritual principles Rich uses to navigate the hardest moments (surrender, faith, patience, and acceptance), and why the inner discontent you keep trying to outrun might actually be the most important signal you have ever received.
What You'll Hear
✔️Rich describes living as two completely different people for three decades, and what it finally cost him.
✔️A 99% coronary blockage and a vision quest in the woods are two stops on the same road to integration.
✔️ The four spiritual principles Rich uses to stay grounded when life goes sideways: surrender, faith, patience, and acceptance.
✔️Why your inner discontent is not a problem to solve but a calling trying to get your attention.
"I didn't find the spiritual path. It found me." — Rich Strilowich
If this conversation cracked something open for you, here is where to go next.
Book a free 20-minute clarity call with Laura: https://www.leadintact.com/freeclaritycall
Grab the Heart-Aligned Career Transition Starter: https://www.leadintact.com/freebies/heart-aligned-career
Links and Resources
Rich Strilowich's website: https://stillpointcoach.com/
Free workbook — Recognizing Your Spiritual Path in Your Corporate Life: https://stillpointcoach.com/workbook
Rich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rstrilo/
The Pivot Point Podcast: https://www.leadintact.com/the-pivot-point-podcast
Lead Intact YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@leadintact
Lead Intact Freebies: https://www.leadintact.com/freebies
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You made the move, or maybe you're about to, or maybe you're still in it, showing up, performing, delivering, while something quiet in the background keeps saying, "This is not it." Either way, something has shifted, and you can't unknow it. Here's what nobody tells you. The landing strip is a little rocky once you come down from the high of accomplishment.
There are moments of real excitement, real clarity, like, "Yes, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be." And then night comes, and the anxiety rolls in, the what-ifs, the what am I actually doing? Not because you made the wrong choice, by the way, but because you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming.
Done pretending this is enough, done pushing through, done ignoring the thing that keeps pulling at you. That's exactly where this podcast lives. I'm Laura [00:01:00] Dionisio, founder of Lead Intact, and I've been exactly where you are. The corporate success that stopped feeling like success, the leap that was equal parts terrifying and necessary, the messy, non-linear process of building something that actually fits, and learning to trust yourself through all of it.
This is the pivot point. Real conversations about what's actually happening beneath the surface, and what it takes to build a life that feels as good as it looks. Not just the wins, the attempts too. Because I'm not here to romanticize the journey. I'm here to show you what it's really like. Let's get into it.
Before I introduce today's guest, I want to get a little personal with you. I grew up partially in the Philippines, Catholic school, mass on Sundays, the whole thing. And what I noticed growing up [00:02:00] was that religion was everywhere, but so was the contradiction. People who were deeply devoted, who would also be the first to judge someone for not showing up to church that week, or really any other belief that did not follow that of the cultural and religious expectations.
Nobody seemed to see the irony or the hypocrisy. So I developed something early, a kind of internal alarm that goes off anytime someone brings spirituality or faith into a serious conversation. A reflex that sounds like, "Okay, here we go." For a long time, I just accepted that reflex as part of who I am, but at some point, I started noticing that it was not actually serving me, that meeting people and ideas with immediate skepticism was closing doors before I even had a chance to walk through them.
And I realized I would rather show up with curiosity and openness than with my guard already up and judgment already in my mind. So I'd been doing that work quietly on my own [00:03:00] before Rich ever came on my radar. And when he reached out about being on the-- a guest on the show, I saw it as an opportunity, a chance to practice exactly that because his entire body of work sits at the intersection of corporate life and spirituality.
How absolutely interesting. I was immediately curious. I'm not gonna lie to you, a version of me from a few years ago might have talked myself out of this conversation before it even started. I'm glad I did not, because what Rich Strilowich is really talking about, at least in my opinion, is not necessarily about religion or even spiritual practices, if you will.
It's the cost of keeping different versions of yourself completely separate, and I think you know something about that. Think about it. Maybe for you it's not corporate by day, spiritual by night like it was for his experience. Maybe it's professional you versus the you that nobody at work gets to see.
The you that operates by completely different rules depending on the room you are in. The you that has been performing a [00:04:00] version of yourself for so long, you're not totally sure where that performance ends. That was me for a long time. Rich spent over 40 years in global corporations, 30 of those years quietly on a parallel path he kept almost entirely hidden.
And it took a daughter's diagnosis that stopped him cold, 28 layoffs that landed him in a hospital with a 99% coronary blockage, and a depression that cracked him all the way open before he stopped pretending the two paths were separate I'll be upfront with you. This conversation goes deep into spiritual territory, and if you felt a little resistance just now, that's okay.
I felt it too for a long time. What I invite you to do is to stay curious because whether or not the spirituality resonates, the question Rich is really asking is one I think you've probably been asking yourself too. What happens when you stop pretending that the different parts of you do not exist?
And with that, here's Rich
Welcome, [00:05:00] Rich, to the Pivot Point Podcast. Thank you so much for making the time to be here.
It is, uh, really a delight for me and I, I'm so excited and looking forward to our time and connection together.
And as we get started here, I just wanna read Rich's amazing bio. Listeners, you are in for a treat
Okay. Rich Strilowich draws from over 40-plus years in global corporations and 30-plus years of spiritual exploration. Through practice, he learned to blend the two together, thus he achieved a level of high performance while maintaining inner peace, balance, and authenticity. Rich walks with you as a fellow traveler, sharing this hard-earned wisdom with corporate professionals who find themselves struggling to integrate their spiritual calling into their careers, aligned with authentic leadership based on who you really are.
Your corporate career is your spiritual path. Rich is a spiritual [00:06:00] coach, speaker, writer, and lifelong student of contemplative Christian and global spiritual traditions. He is the bestselling author of The Corporate Sage: Gracefully Integrating Spirituality for Authentic Leadership. Thank you, Rich, for being here
Thank you.
It, it's such a delight, and I really meant it when I said, yes, I'm a fellow traveler on, on this path. There's a mastery. I'm not quite sure that what that is, but we're on the path together, and I've walked this path quite a while.
I love that. And I wanna get started there because even in, in reading your bio just now, and of course, I am fortunate enough to have spent some time with you before this call.
Don't worry listener, we'll get into it. You'll be privy to some of the things that we've already talked about. But Rich, if you could walk us through, because in your bio, you talk about how your corporate career is your spiritual path, and how you are also a [00:07:00] traveler because you have been through the path of, and again, we talked about this offline, the corporate by day and spiritual by night or something like that.
Can you talk more about what your life was like before you found this integrated approach?
Sure. Uh, there's a lot to pack in there. Uh, so we'll start off, you know, I, my corporate career, I've had a 40-plus year corporate career, and I originally started, you know, in software, computer science, software engineering.
Mm-hmm. I was a computer geek. I've been around for quite a while that I, you know, started programming on main IBM mainframes on, uh, computer punch cards, right? And, uh, I remember the experience of dropping a 1,200 card program on the floor and they weren't numbered, and it was not a fun lecture.
Mm-hmm. Glad that I did. And I've been through, you know, the technology world and the corporate world, [00:08:00] small, medium, large companies over all the years growing out of computer programming, which I thought at one point, there's nothing in the world I wanna do but technical programming and sitting in front of a computer and debugging and, and all that kind of stuff.
And something shifted and changed along the way, and I started realizing, you know, younger people were coming in and programming circles around me, and I decided I wanted to get more into leadership management. So I've, you know, worked as project manager, program manager, director of technology people, of architects and systems engineers, and I've had, um, you know, line cost owner, um, and all the challenges of running, uh, working for a global company.
It was IBM for, like, 30 years. Um, you know, and dealing with, uh, managing global matrix teams all over the world in services and delivering to, uh, always a different level of cost cutting throughout all those times, and the [00:09:00] challenges that come along with that. And By night, I call it, I'd been on this, I call it s- secret spiritual journey.
And It's only in hindsight that I say I didn't know I was on a spiritual path. I usually tell people I didn't find the spiritual path, it found me. And it started out quite a few years ago, like 30 years ago, with more of an inner discontent at work. Like, you know, I had always been a very sensitive person.
Um, my first sense I had a spiritual nature was when I took the Myers-Briggs type assessment, and my personality type was an INFJ, which the counselor told me this is the most rare type of all. It's only like 2% of people, and it's the most sensitive, but also intuitive. And they likened it to, there...
If you imagine, uh, a herd of antelope, there's a small percentage that's more sensitive than the rest of the herd [00:10:00] that warns the herd when danger is approaching sooner than anyone else recognizes. And I've always found that about myself. I've been m- Something about me always wanted to know the truth, and seemed to be more sensitive, and always seemed to be on the cutting edge of technology, always wanted to be and know what's underneath things.
So it led to, this feels really hard at work. Mm-hmm. And all the things that are going on, and the politics and the challenges, and there's this inner disconnect that there's gotta be a better way.
And then- Can I pause you for a moment there? Because I, I hear that a lot, and I've experienced that a lot about the feeling of it feels really hard at work.
You mentioned inner discontent. So I would just love to learn more about, like, what was that feeling of being hard? What felt hard about it?
Sure. It was, it was hard to put into words back then, but it was a tug at my [00:11:00] heartstring-
...
That was causing tremendous anxiety, and always the feeling of, like I said, there's gotta be a better way, and I want to escape from this.
Mm.
I wanna get out of this. And so I... How do you escape and get out of it? Well, the first thing that happened for me was I was finding and really immersed in every self-help book and book on spirituality out there, and some amazing, wonderful authors. Uh, but every single book Always felt they had some part of an answer, but just didn't do it.
And so, okay, maybe the next author and books got the right answer, or the next one, and none of them ever satisfied me. And so I started exploring other kinds of things. I, uh, found coaching, and I took coaching training, and that led to me to be opening up myself to other areas. And I went through a four-year, [00:12:00] um, uh, energy training program.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and that led me into another place of, uh, getting a, of going through a four-year, uh, core energetics body-centered psychotherapy program, very somatic, very deep shadow kind of work. And all of that was guiding me to a place where I kept thinking, "Okay, my escape, and it looks like my spiritual path, is to leave the corporate world, and it's guiding me, um, to leave to start my own practice."
Now, when that was starting to happening, I was getting guidance, and all of my relief, if you will, from what was happening in the corporate world was coming externally. So I would even tell people, by day I'm this, corporate professional, and I've got performance reviews and performance results and all the challenges and sometimes laying people off, all those things going on [00:13:00] on the outside.
But by night, I was a spiritual, doing woo-woo kind of stuff that I would tell people. And it took me a long time to get to the place of recognizing my own words, of look at the split there. There's, that's split in half. A pa- part of me is here, part of me is there. There's no integration.
And I would, could, didn't know that at the time. It actually took a spiritual advisor to point that out to me. But what I started realizing on the spiritual path was that inner, the spiritual path found me. I didn't find it, and that inner disconnect, content was the first inkling Of a calling.
That was calling me forward. It felt like pain in the very beginning, but it was calling me to something different. And the place in the spiritual path that, um, is calling you back to yourself. [00:14:00] Reconnecting to what I'll call, you know, your own connection to your own inner divinity, within.
And, uh, I, I realize I do need to just take a quick step backward 'cause I'm using the word spirituality quite a bit here. And, you know, sometimes you think that that doesn't go, you know, the corporate and spirituality don't go together. But let me talk about what I be- what I mean by spirituality.
Mm-hmm.
And that is the spiritual journey really is about connecting to source. And when I say source, some people use the word, like the word source. I'm gonna use the word God based off of my heritage. Some people call it the universe, uh, the cosmic consciousness. Um, many religions have their own word for God, which are, are all valid and, and wonderful here.
But the spiritual path then really is about your connection back to source or back to God. [00:15:00] And it's, um, Jesuit priest P- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who says, "We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are already spiritual beings having a human experience." And that right there implies that we are of spirit.
There's something beyond this flesh and blood here, beyond us, and it also implies a belief in something beyond us, whether that is a god or some people just say my higher self, another wise part of myself, but something beyond us.
Mm-hmm.
And there's, uh, in Hi- in, I believe it's in Hindu, there's an analogy, God being equivalent to the infinite cosmic ocean, and we are individuated ripple waves on that ocean.
And spirituality is about the relationship of each of us as individual waves to the ocean, such that [00:16:00] we are then affected by the essence of the ocean. And if you're really gonna connect down into the core essence of that in spirituality, you're asking the deeper questions.
These are the mystical questions that have driven saints, sages, and, and others insane or to deep inner peace.
That is, who am I?
Mm-hmm.
Why am I here?
I love where this is going, and as somebody who's also been on my own spiritual path, I totally am connecting with what you're saying. And at, at the same time, I'm thinking about a listener out there who is in the throes of their life, who is probably where you were.
Maybe they're feeling their own split. Maybe they're just starting to get curious about learning about themselves. Maybe they just took a Myers-Briggs test. You know, funny enough, that's how I started my own personal journey.
Right.
And so if I were to put myself in their shoes, I would, I would ask myself, and probably like you, right?
[00:17:00] I am In a world of inner discontent. I feel that. I don't have words for it. And you are telling me about the spiritual journey and how important that is to connect to source, God, whatever the language is. Why is that important?
I could just, can you repeat why is what part important?
Why is embarking on my spiritual journey important?
Because if you think about the listener, maybe you of like, I don't know, like 10 years back- Oh ... you know? Get like at the point- Yes ... where you are just like, "I'm feeling discontent." Yeah. I was with Rich when he was talking about inner discontent. I'm feeling that. There's a part of me that's curious, and I do feel like I'm performing in a way- Right
during the day, and at night I'm, I'm indulging in my curiosity.
Sure.
And, and so I, you know, this listener is like, "I was with Rich when he was talking about that," but then he started talking about leaning into the spiritual journey and the calling, and I can see that listener thinking, " Why is that important for me- Right, right
to embark on a spiritual journey?"
Right, sure. [00:18:00] Um, first I think it's as important to discern, as I said before, we are all spiritual beings having a human experience. So that means as human beings, we're all spiritual and we're all on our spiritual journey. We might not realize it, and it might not it be that I even want to go on that path.
And I know many, many people who are in that place who it... I'm gonna be v- very say it very clearly, it's not necessarily an easier path. Mm-hmm. I've had some real challenges on it, and I've grown in ways that I never could have planned or anticipated, and things c- are gonna come up on the spiritual path that are not necessarily easy.
But here's the thing. If you are awakening up to being a spiritual seeker and opening to it, Here's why you have to keep going. You can't turn it off.
It will gnaw at you. It's almost like your soul is saying, [00:19:00] "You have some other thoughts and plans for your life-" But what your soul's plan is, is con- completely different than what your, I'll call it your human ego's plan, is going for, gonna be for yourself.
So you, you can try and squash it and hold it down, but the same patterns are gonna keep happening in life over and over again until you finally relent and say, "Okay, God." There's a phrase, let go and let God. "Okay, where are you wanting me to go here?" And, so you're, if you're a spiritual seeker, you are probably it's gonna keep gnawing at you until you actually- Mm-hmm
do say yes, and you start down that journey. And I spoke to someone about marketing of the work that I do, and it didn't go too well in trying to put together a marketing plan because they kept wanting me to say, "Okay, what is your commitment to what you are promising are gonna be the guaranteed outcomes [00:20:00] by the end of your program?"
And it's like, come to me and, um, I'm gonna, I'd be a guide for you on what I'm gonna call the pathless path, where you can't really put together a plan. But you can sort of embody these, uh, spiritual practices and perspectives in spirituality and trust, you know, have trust and faith that g- grace is gonna guide you to grow those qualities in you over time.
Um, you know, will, will people buy that? And, the reality is, is that there is something to that.
Mm-hmm.
That there's a phrase, life is not, something to be planned, it's a mystery to be lived.
And so the spiritual journey and the spiritual path, I wish I had a guide that helped me for all those 40 years to know what that path looked like and how it was gonna work, is surrendering to the journey of it.
Still having plans, I [00:21:00] think, but surrendering to the journey of it that all the things that are, were happening in my corporate life and world are actually coming to me for me.
Not
to me. To help me grow in all these spiritual qualities.
So can I trust that when I've gotta lay off tw- 30 people within two years, that's pa- here for my spiritual evolution and growth?
Not an easy thing to do, right?
You know, what I would love to hear about is you just said something, um, you said that, "I wish I had a guide when I was going through those 40 years in corporate." What I would love to hear about, two-part question, and I will remind you, don't worry. The first part is When you look back at those 40-plus years, what is it about it that made you think, "Oh, it would've been nice to have a guide"?
And then the second part of the question is, if you could go back in time to talk to your younger self, how would you have guided you through that?
Okay. So [00:22:00] yeah, I wish I had a guide when I was having to go through some really hard times. To have a guide to be able to help me understand and coach me around the hard and challenging and different, difficult things that I needed to do.
To coach me to, um, accept them-
Mm-hmm ...
as being in service for me.
Mm. 'Cause- would you be open to discussing what some of those hard things are? Just so my listener can get an understanding of- Sure ... oh yeah, I totally relate to what Rich-
Yeah ...
went
through. Let me give, yeah, let me give you a personal and then a work example.
Sure. Perfect. So I res- you know, personally, I believe I was receiving guidance that at some point I was supposed to leave the corporate world, and that I was go, supposed to go through different education training programs. And I found I went through, as I said, coaching and energy healing and therapy, and I was starting to see clients at night, [00:23:00] and I was raising a small family.
And I was believing God's will was that I'm supposed to leave the wo- corporate world and help people in a completely different kind, way here. And then the world fell out of, out of our life with my wife and myself. And that is our daughter, at three and a half years old, was diagnosed with non-functioning autism.
She completely stopped talking, and her days were spent spinning around and temper tantruming and almost non-controllable. And my wife and I were sort of like deer in the headlights. I mean, we were really freaked out. Our... We brought her to dev- several specialists. One of 'em said she's never going to talk the rest of her life, and we should be prepared for life like this.
This is a moment where- Huge grief comes through in an experience like that. And couple of things happened. [00:24:00] One, when that happened, I completely shut down my business. I shut down all the things that I had planned and thought I was being guided to do. Because one, I knew that I needed to focus on my job career and be a high performer, and I needed a corporate level salary in order to be able to afford all of the very expensive therapies we were deemed to, to find and have her go through.
And second, I was spending all of my nights quite late, um, just researching and studying everything about autism to find out what therapies would be helpful for her. So here were my plans, and I thought I was in control of my plan of guidance of what I thought it was gonna be, and the biggest lesson w- here was, as a spiritual one, I'm not in control.
I might think I'm in control, but there's a deep, better, a different plan. Now, I can only look in hindsight here and [00:25:00] see how perfectly I was lined up to be able to manage and handle, 'cause every- sometimes there's a quote, "God only gives those who, uh, things that they can handle." And I didn't believe that at the time, but what was starting to happen was, I call them human angels, started showing up in our life.
And the next human angel gave us the next gift of what, of a therapy for her to go through, or s- one of them was a, an autism coach who helped us navigate through all the doctors to go to and advocate for us. And so many human angels came along. Today she talks. She's still autistic. She's gonna live with us a long time, but she is such a light.
Mm. And she melted and opened my heart. And so in that way, she was my teacher I would have never in a million years chosen that experience for me. And yet I can see in hindsight what a gift [00:26:00] it has been, and I can also... It also gave me... I had to step into a level of strength to fight and advocate for her like I never had before.
Well, that also made me a better manager.
At the same time integrate some of those qualities. So that's one example, and it's been such a gift that sometimes they say the spiritual path is a one-and-a-half foot path from our heads to our hearts, and can take an instant or a lifetime.
Mm-hmm.
But it completely opened my heart, uh, in such a different way than I never could have planned.
Uh, that was a personal example. A business example
was- Sorry, can we, can we pause for a moment? I just wanna reflect back, Rich. What a... Thank you for being so open and sharing that story, because I know that there is at least one listener out there who is probably dealing with something very similar. So I just wanna [00:27:00] acknowledge that sounded like it was very difficult at the time.
Mm-hmm. I, I love what you said About human angels. And I, I just would love to just dive... Just, uh, one last question, if you will, about that personal experience. Sure. Just because I know that that is... I can just imagine a listener hearing your story and saying, "I'm exactly in that same boat, and I feel," I imagine, frustrated, helpless, powerless, and maybe even starting to think, "What was all this for?"
Mm-hmm.
Maybe even a little angry if they were starting to go on a spiritual path. And I would love to hear from you, what would you say to somebody who's going through all those emotions? Or maybe even maybe you were going through some of those emotions, and what was that like for you, and how did you stay steadfast in your belief?
Right. What one right now is, and I can only see this in hindsight. I wish I had somebody right there to give me the hindsight, right?
Mm-hmm. [00:28:00]
But if, if I'm gonna go through an experience like this, also how perfect was it that ex- exactly the same time, I was also in... going through Core Energetics training.
And I had several therapists already there and in place for myself and my wife. I had my classmates, all the teachers in the school. If this is gonna happen, well then, how perfect is it to have happened to deal with and move through grief? 'Cause there is a grieving process where you move from grief to anger, denial, et cetera, all the way to last place of acceptance.
How perfect was it that I was already in that place, right? So there was that that was h- that was happening for me. If someone else is, is going through it, again, first thing is, you know, do they have a spiritual inclination or a spiritual seeker already? 'Cause again, if [00:29:00] not, I really have a lot of pain in my heart for those who don't have a level of belief like that.
And I've seen so many just turn to anger and- Mm ... victimhood . and I've seen them not get out of it. But if you have a deeper connection and deeper, um, knowing that there's something bigger in life, we can navigate and manage and handle most anything that comes through. As Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning- if you know of that book, um, talks about that very clearly. You know, here's someone who went through the Holocaust, and his statement is that they, he would not and never allow them to break his spirit and his, uh, and his choices, um, of, of who he was. Uh, but anyway, the biggest thing is knowing that there's someone there to hold me going through an experience, to help me know that- This too shall pass.
And there are four spiritual [00:30:00] principles or filters that I work with in people that I learned through my own spiritual director , and one is surrender. That is, uh, n- not giving up and not doing anything, but surrender is working as hard as you can, but letting go of the results and outcomes to God.
Surrender, faith, that is trusting that everything that's happening to us is happening for a higher good for ourselves. I'm simply not privy to know what that ultimately is, right? How can I predict the future, right? Patience You know, this too shall pass. Um, things have their own cycles many times, and no matter what, sometimes you just can't make it happen faster than I personally want it to be.
And the last filter or per- perspective is acceptance. Accepting what is. And the spiritual path in embracing those filters or perspectives [00:31:00] naturally leads to a place of deeper inner peace. It doesn't happen overnight. I wish I could wave a magic wand to the person that you might be talking about who's listening here, and wave a w- wave a magic wand and say, "Poof, you are now an enlightened master sitting on the mountaintop-"
living in inner peace with nothing affecting you whatsoever." But that's a spiritual growth to go to, and starting the journey with a guide who can support you to recognize that and coach you around that, to help you recognize where you're at is where you're supposed to be, and accepting you're not supposed to be at the mountaintop.
These experiences here, how do we have you embrace them at a deeper level? And maybe you're not gonna, maybe I'm not going to embrace it in the moment, and that's okay. It does mean probably something similar is going to happen at another point in time-
Mm ... [00:32:00]
through the pattern here. But, uh, but that's okay.
Did, uh, did that answer your question?
Oh, my gosh. Rich, it was so good. I just want... I took some notes, as you can see. I just would like to reflect back some things that I heard based on what you said. Uh, I love the idea of you see how it has been a gift to you in hindsight. And so for the listener, I took that as a comfort.
If you're going through it right now, then maybe think of your future self who's gonna look back on this and have the gift of hindsight. So that's what I got from what you said. I also got, The power of perspective- Mm-hmm ... which is really helpful if you also have a coach or a spiritual director or some sort of support who can help give you that perspective.
I love the phrasing that you used. You said, "How perfect that I just started this healing," I think, "certification. How perfect that I know this therapist." And so to the listener, I offer, if you are in a world of pain right [00:33:00] now, going through something, consider, you know, how perfect that I, I don't know, have a friend who is also going through this.
How perfect that I happened to listen to this episode right now, and I can hear about Rich's experience. How perfect that... I really loved that phrase, Rich. I don't know if you meant to do that, but I thought it was, like, super powerful. And then I love what you said about the four spiritual pillars. Mm-hmm.
Is that what it was? The surrender, faith, patience- Acceptance ... and acceptance. Yes. Yeah. So Rich, Thank you. That was really amazing. So if you are open to it, let's go ahead and, and go through the other example that you wanted to provide, the professional one.
Sure. Absolutely. So there was a point in time where, you know, I had a full department, and my management, over a two-year period, came through and said, "You know, we're having layoffs, and, you know, every manager needs to make their targets no matter what."
And over a two-year [00:34:00] period, I needed to lay off 28 people, and, you know, making the decisions on every single person is one of the most excruciating things to have to go through . by close to that 28 people I had laid off, um, all of a sudden, I started having some health issues, and I went to the doctor, and the next thing I knew, uh, I was in the emergency room the very next day, um, having a heart event.
Oh. I was 55 years old , and, um, I didn't have a heart attack, but I had to have a, uh, stent put into a coronary artery, which they called a 99% block. So I was- Wow ... quite lucky, uh, as they said. There's, there's a terrible phrase, but it certainly hit home. Uh, you know, "You're one cheeseburger away from a, a massive event."
Mm.
Um, that event brought me into a place [00:35:00] afterwards of deep depression, and they warned everybody when you go through that deep depression could occur. And I went and saw a psychiatrist, and I was seeing a therapist, and, um, really a deep questioning of what is the purpose and meaning of life here. That process brought me into a place of searching, and there's a something that I'm gonna bring up here, and that is on the spiritual journey, and again, being open to it, is synchronicities starting to show up So I found a book called Synchronicities, and, uh, lo and behold, in it, it started talking about a vision quests and having this amazing experience of, uh, of God within and the vision quest.
That then guided me to trying to find-- I, I wanna look into vision quests, um, 'cause they've talked about deeper purpose and meaning that you find for [00:36:00] yourself in it. And I found one, and I was in the woods for four days, just by myself, and the most bizarre thing happened. Uh, the vision quest leader said, "This is gonna happen differently for each person based off who you are," but I was having delusions that Jesus Christ was walking next to me, telling me that I was a priest of the heart and the mystic and all that kind of stuff.
And I kept thinking, "Man, if there was a therapist around here, they'd have committed me." It's like, come on, really?
But this, the vision quest guide, yeah, said, "Based off of your background, well, yes, of course that's who showed up for you." But then the messages that he kept giving me were, you know, a priest, a mystic.
I mean, what do I do with that out in the world? So when the vision quest ended, and a little time passed, and then all of a sudden I'm like, "Okay, well, what's next with this?" And I listened to a Facebook, um, live program from a thought leader coach named [00:37:00] Cheryl Richardson, and someone was asking her about purpose in life, and she said, "Read my book, Unmistakable Touches of Grace."
Well, it turned out I had the book on my bookcase, and I'd never read it. So it's like next synchronicity. Okay, time to read this. So I'm reading it, and she's talking about an experience at a, um, silent meditation retreat that wasn't too far from us. So I looked at that silent meditation retreat. I found it.
The head of it had a couple books out. I put their book on Amazon Pr- uh, Prime list. Couple weeks later, I look on my bookcase, and again, the book is in my bookshelf. I'd read it fifteen years earlier, and it was highlighted all over the place. At that point in time, I'm like, "Okay, whack on side of the head, God.
I get it." I signed up for their meditation retreat, and the head of it has been my spiritual director now for the last nine years. That, and that path, having this heart event and having to lay [00:38:00] off people guided me To this deepening and depth of the spiritual journey that I've been on, bringing it full circle.
That's what- Mm ... that's the synchronicities that happened for me. And everyone's gonna go through their part of the journey and path. But especially if there's low points on it, having someone to support you and prop you up is almost invaluable.
Mm. I love that. What I'm getting from this story the most is, first of all, I'm glad that you're doing well.
Thank
you. That sounds like a really, a big and scary health issue. Especially it sounded like you weren't even... That it just came out of nowhere.
It did. I didn't really have too many symptoms, but I was, uh, living under quite extreme stress
So a listener, if you were living in extreme stress, just know that your body is taking on all the stress.
And I love that you talked about you just follow the synchronicity step by step, not necessarily knowing where it's gonna lead you. So thank you for sharing your story. And, and I, and I [00:39:00] love it. It, it's so interesting because like I mentioned in our, like, you know, like offline in our coffee chat, I can relate a little bit to your story 'cause I also come from a technical background, and then turn coach.
Mm-hmm. So I find it really fascinating to hear your journey and how you got to where you are today. And if there's a listener out there who was just like, "I'm intrigued by everything that Rich has to say," and maybe they're in the beginning part of their spiritual journey or maybe in the middle, wherever they are, how would they connect with you?
Well you can find me on LinkedIn, Richard Strilowich, S-T-R-I-L-O-W-I-C-H. And also my website, which is www.stillpoint, S-T-I-L-L-P-O-I-N-T, .com. And you can find how you, you can book a call with me or contact me, uh, anything like that. You'll also find information on my book, uh, which is all about the j- the spiritual journey, [00:40:00] uh, some of it that I went through and, and what I find valuable.
How do you tie this back into the... It's, it's appropriate for corporate pro- professionals.
Hmm. I love that. I also realize I never asked you about that part of it. So if you would, uh, if you were to give just like a high level view of how you integrate corporate life with spiritual path.
Right. So the first thing is, in the sp- I didn't get to the place where one thing that it really is important is to have some level of spiritual practice, whether that be meditation or prayer or something like that, and a committed practice.
That's sort of the container that holds the spiritual path and holds things together for you, um, and having that kind of connection. And then, um, there's a quote by, um, uh, Joseph Campbell, "If you can see the path clearly in front of you, you know it's not your path."
I'm just laughing because, like-
I just think about who I was [00:41:00] even like a year ago, and I'm like, "What do you mean? I wanna see the path." But-
Right ... yeah. 'Cause a path is only shown to us one step at a time.
And I sort of add on to his quote there of, and sometimes it only shows up as you're falling mid-step, and you hope faith- Tells you there's a, it will come up and rise to you.
It just might not, uh, look the way exactly that you thought it would. And can you repeat the question you had? 'Cause I, I was heading there and then I forgot your question.
Oh, sure. It's all good. Um, I asked, because I forgot to ask earlier, how did you integrate the, the corporate life with the spiritual-
Got
it
path? Got it. Again, the deepening your spirituality is not a project plan to put together as a goal that I'm going to be more spiritual, and I'm going to grow faith, and I'm gonna put a plan A to B to get to. It happens through the process, and I didn't talk too much about it, this, about grace. [00:42:00] Grace brings to you the s- the events and situations, if you're open to it, to start recognizing that what's happening here is coming to you for your spiritual growth.
So after I went through that event with my daughter and with, uh, with the heart event Faith is now stronger in me than I ne- than it ever was before. And accepting what is, is a stronger quali- quality am I embodying than it ever was before, not because I planned for it, but because I allowed it, and grace guided me in the exact things that I needed to learn along the way that I didn't know.
Such that at the end here, uh, there's a quote that I love by St. Teresa of Avila, and that is, "Everything happened in our life just that way such that we may know our divinity and God within."
Mm-hmm.
So I can now see how everything [00:43:00] happened in perfect way for me to learn what I need to learn and integrate it into my work.
I continued to be even more of a top one performer. I started learning to not let things affect me so much, and to embody and hold onto a deeper level of inner peace. Sort of like imagine, you know, being the s- center of inner peace in the center of the storm. Imagine how clearer you can think and creative you can be if I w- not spending all that time being so obsessive and stressful and worrying about things.
And if I can accept what's happening, now I can be more, uh, reactive to it. I had people telling me I would go into a negotiation with a customer, and they'd be quite irate, and all of a sudden, because I'd done all this work and I'd grown, this intuitive hit would just come to me, and I'd immediately know, " [00:44:00] Oh, I need to propose and navigate this conversation in this kind of way."
And people would come to me and say, " how did you maintain, become so s- calm with that, and how did you come up with that solution?" And honestly, I wouldn't tell them this. It's like, " I, you know, I don't really know, but it's sort of like it came through me." It wasn't from me. But all of a sudden I started having that happen.
And I talked to people about integrating this in for t- authentic leadership. Well, authentic leadership, there's one definition of it, and Harvard Business Review will give you its very valid and good forms of authentic leadership. But then your true authentic leadership truly comes through based off of The nature of who we really are at our core, and that is, I'll quote scripture.
Matthew says we are the light, and we are created in the image and likeness of God. We've got that spark of divinity within us with our own nature [00:45:00] of who we are in our strengths and abilities, 'cause everyone's got their own different nature. So if you infuse those together, in living from your core of yourself, now that's real authentic leadership or your authentic self.
So I was finding that, um, happening and occurring for me more, that I was just being myself more without seeking approval from others outside of me and seeking my own purpose from within, not to make my job, not to have my job be my purpose and meaning. But my purpose and meaning was connected to more to my inner self more than anything.
Mm-hmm. And again, I was g- even being on a spiritual path, I still had to lay people off. That w- that was still gonna happen. But I had a mentor who told me, "If it's gonna happen, at least they had a [00:46:00] manager who ha- held them in compassion while it was happening."
Mm. I love that, Rich. And may I just say, the next time you talk to marketing, and if they ask you what is the definable outcome, you have one.
You just said it. The definable outcome is you're gonna be a lot clearer, a lot more creative. You're not gonna be as obsessive. You're not gonna be as stressed out, and you're gonna step into authentic leadership. So take that back to your marketing, Rich. Thank you. Because that's huge. And then you have, like, actual examples.
You could say, "When I went through this integration process, I became," I think you said top 1%, "I became a better leader. I was able to have faster outcomes." Mm-hmm. "Because through my intuition, I knew what to say in a meeting." I... Yes. This is great.
Yes. All
of it. Take that back to marketing.
There we go. Rich, this has been so wonderful. I have one final question that I ask all my guests, and that is if you were an item, anything in a coffee shop, could be a drink, a pastry. Somebody said the [00:47:00] security camera. Somebody said, like, a cool sticker. What would you be and why?
I- in a where?
In a-
In a coffee shop
In a co- oh, boy. Let's see what intuition says to me. Uh, now, now it's under pressure. This might sound a little... It would be the coffee mug.
Okay.
And that is The coffee mug is the container of our spiritual practices to hold the silent the liquid of the silence within
Well said.
Good.
Rich, thank you so much for making the time to be here. And listeners, don't worry, I will put all of his contact info, LinkedIn, all that stuff in the show notes if you weren't able to write it down as he was saying. And with that, Rich, I hope you have a great rest of your day.
It was such a delight being here.
Thank you so much.
Big thanks to Rich Strulovitch for being so open and so real in this conversation. This is [00:48:00] exactly the kind of story I created this podcast for, because when you hear someone else say the thing you've been feeling but couldn't quite name, something shifts. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
You probably already know exactly who that is. And if you're sitting with something after this conversation, that feeling that good enough stopped being good enough a long time ago, I want to talk. Book a free 20-minute clarity call at leadintact.com/booking. That's where we figure out together what's actually going on and what your next step looks like.
All of Rich's details are in the show notes. Go show them some love. And with that, I'll see you next time