Leading Through Healing | Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, guest · [02:56]Then the, colleagues in the psychology department came to see me and said, the guy that was supposed to be chair of psychology is retiring, and, we talked amongst ourselves and we decided it's your turn. Three-year mandate. And I said, oh, really? Like, why, why me? He said, it's your turn. We can't, we can't help it, it's your turn, we've all done it, so now it's you, and, and I agreed to do it for three years. And at the same time, the union came to see me and they said, we're looking for a chief negotiator for the upcoming round of collective bargaining. And, and the guy you asked me, I had enormous respect for, and, and I couldn't say no. So, one year to the next, I found myself in, in those two leadership roles, led psychology as well as I could, and negotiated, four collective agreements. There were four tables reporting onto the union successfully in a timely way. We got good deals. Everybody were happy. And, the provost, who was negotiating on the other side of the table from me, said that he liked, he liked the way that I, behaved and the way that I, that I taught, that I thought, and, and the way that I loved bishops. And he invited me to apply for a dean of arts and science position, which I did, and found myself, way too early in my career. And in a significant leadership role as, as Dean of Arts and Science at, at Bishop. So to, to make a long story short, the principal then encouraged me to apply for the provostship of Bishops. Which was my dream job at the time. But for whatever reason, the process took a long, long time, and I was drawn into another provostship process for Concordia University in Montreal. And honestly, Daniel, like, Concordia is much bigger than Bishops. It's in Montreal. I didn't think I really had a chance for the position, but I thought it would be good practice. And I applied for the position, I interviewed, I interviewed a second time, and eventually was offered the position, and I just couldn't resist it. A provost of Concordia University, my alma mater in Montreal. The person who hired me is, I think you know him, is Alan Shepard, the current president of Western University. I owe Alan a lot. He took a chance on me when I was way too young and way too inexperienced to be the provost of a major university, and he also showed me how to do these jobs. And to this day, I think of Alan a lot as I go through the day-to-day business of running UBC. And, you know, from that point on, you get called all the time. Time. There's just not that many people that can, that has the experience to do these jobs. So on to Queens, then the presidency of Carleton, and now at UBC. I think that's the story.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, guest · [10:56]And when you live with someone like this year in, year out, as a little child, people forget you're five years old, you're eight years old, you're even 14 years old, and every day you're scared. Every day you know you're going to get in trouble. Things are going to go down. So you're always in a state of fear. And there's only three things that the mammalian nervous system can do to prepare for fear. You can prepare to fight, but little child can't fight their parents. So little children need their parents. Or you can flee, but little children can't flee either. so all that's left for little children in unsafe houses is to freeze, a little bit like rabbits, when, when the coyote spots them, you freeze, and you hope that you won't be seen. So there was a lot of freezing in our house, but freezing's not good for you. Your adrenals is pumping you full of those hormones, like epinephrine, to prepare you for actions, and then that gets stuck in your body, that gets stuck in your nervous system. You, you build an image of yourself where you're, cowardly, you're shameful, you're worthless, and you build an image of the world as, dangerous and unwelcoming, and, these, these mental models stay with you well into adulthood, and one of the ways in which I coped, with the trauma of, of that upbringing was, to drink and to, use substances, which I did for a long, long time, starting when I was about 14, 15, and, and all, all the way to, I would say, 40, 41 years old. That's my experience. I share it, Daniel, because it's far from unique. I would say a lot of people face childhood trauma of various kinds. We all attempt to put a brave face to show ourselves as functional, but we're suffering inside. So when I speak to our students, our faculty, and staff, I know a proportion of them are dealing with that kind of trauma. And I want to say to everyone, no one has to suffer in silence, and no one has to suffer alone. And it's possible to get the help that you need and deserve, and healing is always possible. And that journey of healing is at the center of my life, and it's made the whole difference for me. If I find myself in a leadership position, that's directly linked to the healing that I've been blessed with. And I would say the two are intertwined. I'm able to lead because I've, I've, I've healed, but I've also healed because I've been willing to take on the burden of leadership, and I'm very, very grateful for that.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, guest · [14:47]And, and you really, you really have two paths, You can, you cannot acknowledge that, and then, these inner wounds will guide your life, unbeknownst to yourself. And you'll wonder, why, why don't things go my way? Why do my relationship fails? Why don't I get promoted? Why am I unhappy? And you won't know why, because the root causes are left undisturbed and unacknowledged. Or you can delve into that, but that's a journey. And that's scary. For the longest time, the last thing I wanted to do was open the wounds of my childhood and teenage years and start to assess why am I behaving in self-destructive way? Why am I not able to reach what people thought was my potential? I'm very, very lucky that one thing leading to another, especially since the birth of my daughter, I was able to model myself on people that seemed to know how to live better than I did. To copy their behavior, one of the first things I did in the mid-2000s was to start running, and that's been life-saving. One of my friends was a choir director, so I started to sing in a choir and discovered the power of making beautiful music with other people, and that's been transformative. Leadership has been transformative, and one thing leading to another, I was able to stop using substances. I'm almost 12 years sober now, and people think that sobriety is the destination, but it really is not. It's just a plane ticket that allows you to take the journey into a self-determined life. And from that point on, healing has just accelerated. I used to suffer from all sorts of chronic pain, from repressed trauma. Now I'm essentially pain-free. I feel better in my body now than I ever did, certainly than I did at 30 or 40 years old. I feel much better psychologically because I've been blessed with Realization that these thoughts that were haunting me were not really my thoughts, Daniel, they were just programming that had been put into me by the experience I had lived through. And once you realize that you're not your thought and you start to observe your thoughts, you realize a deeper part of your being. People sometimes call that the witness. The witness is watching the thoughts, therefore you're not the thoughts, you're the witness. And that allows for the opening of what I would call a spaciousness inside. And out of that spaciousness comes a different way of being that you would have never thought possible. Out with the fear and out with the shame and in with compassion and respect and love.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, guest · [20:10]Once I healed sufficiently to realize that I was not my thoughts, once I was able to quiet my mind, once I was able to release all the fear and all the shame and all the anger and the rage that I had inside me, and, and once I was able to sit with that spaciousness that I was mentioning before, that inner peace, I realized, oh my god, this is the kingdom of heaven. To feel inner peace free of fear and shame is the kingdom of heaven. And to be at the mercy of your thoughts and of your trauma is hell. It's funny, you can call that a form of spiritual awakening. You realize that you have the power inside yourself to connect with something that is different and better than material existence. So once that happens to you, you look for maps. You want to understand what is it that's happening to me. Why do I think this way? Am I going crazy? Some of the first maps that I found were from Hinduism and Buddhism. The Bhagavad Gita is probably the best book that was ever written. They're very accurate maps. What these books tell you is in essence what Aldous Huxley calls the perennial philosophy. There's three steps to it. One, there is something inside you that is more than matter, that is divine. You can call it the Atman. Two, this divine piece of yourself is connected to the whole. To Brahman. Isn't that a beautiful notion? All, all of us as something divine and, and we're all connected to one another and to the whole. and three, once you realize that the, path of life is to deepen that feeling, to explore that feeling, and to bring it fully to, to fruition from awakening to enlightenment, and, and that's become an important journey to me. And the Bhagavad Gita is essentially, a user's manual of how to achieve freedom, enlightenment through, knowledge, through service, and if you're able, which I'm not fully able to, through love ultimately. And then you realize the Christian message is exactly the same. You have to move through the world from a loving intention. And be detached from outcomes. And we do the exact opposite. We always start with the outcomes that we want. I want this. I don't want that. And then we try to manipulate the world into giving us these outcomes. That's a control-based strategy that's based in fear, and only misery and unhappiness can come from that. The way to go about it is the exact reverse, Daniel. You have to start with a compassionate and loving intention, act with agency according to that intention, and then be completely detached to the outcomes, which you don't control.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, guest · [25:57]Yeah, I've noticed that, that tenures are getting shorter. If you look at the wall of UBC university presidents from the beginning, in the old, old days, they were 20 and 25 year tenures, and then tapered to about 10 year tenures for a long time, and now in recent times are shorter than that, and the trend is the same or worse elsewhere. You now often see presidencies that are less than five years. These jobs take their toll. There's no questions. I'll answer it in two ways, I think. First is building on what I just shared about surrendering. I would say to any leader, there's only two paths in life. The default setting is the path of fear. It's all built into us to be fearful, and to alleviate the fear, we want to control everything. We want to control situations, we want to control people, we want to control outcomes. That takes an enormous toll on your nervous system, on your mental health, on your happiness, on your energy. By definition, you have a limited shelf life on the road of fear. You always have the option to choose a different path, the path of love, the path of compassion. This requires the ability to not be attached to outcomes, to not react. Whatever happens, don't react. It's just stuff unfolding. Most of it is not personal. Don't react. Take it in, and then respond from a deeper place, a place of inner peace, and a place of compassion. And when you respond, remember that the important part is not the outcome. That you think you want, the important part is the intention, to keep the intention loving and compassionate, and then see what happens with real curiosity. I wonder what will happen, and resist categorizing the good with the bad. So my advice is to move with great agency and great energy, with the best of intentions, but then accept what is, surrender, and don't carry attachments to specific outcomes that will kill you. Attachments to specific outcomes comes from fear and a desire for control, and that will never, never work.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, guest · [30:04]I, I think people confuse their roles with their identities. I'm, I'm blessed that I don't do that. I happen to serve currently as the president of UBC, but that's not who I am. If I'm anything, I'm, I'm a guy in recovery. I'm on a journey of healing. And more recently, as I was sharing with you, I've been on a spiritual journey, for lack of a better word. And by spiritual, I just mean a journey into something that seems above and beyond objective materialism. So my activities and what I do reflect that. I suppose most people would consider my life outside of work extraordinarily boring. I go out very, very little. I go to bed early. Most days I'm in bed by nine. I focus on my health and on my mental health. I have a routine that keeps me healthy and that keeps me grounded and that keeps digging that groove of spiritual awakening. I meditate every day, morning and night. I run, I've gotten into lifting weights, which really gets you present into your body to lift, especially if you lift heavy. I've been working on my flexibility too. You lose a lot of flexibility as you get, as you get older. So I've been, I've been very careful about that. I take long walks in nature. I play guitar. I read. I watch the occasional great movie. I sleep a lot. I, I, I have full nights of sleep and, people ask me, how do you sleep? What keeps you awake? Absolutely nothing. I, I have full nights of sleep and, and I nap, on the weekends. Sleep is, sleep is healing. So it's funny, I, all the things that I love to do, I've come to realize, Daniel, they're free and they're available to absolutely everyone. And, and it made me reflect that keeping people unhappy and fearful and in shame drives consumption. That's worth thinking about as a society. Once your mind quiets and you're at ease with being with yourself, it turns out the consumption is superfluous and you can just enjoy yourself doing things that are free and available to everyone. So I think people would be surprised how modest and boring my life is outside work.