WHAT ELITE LEADERS KNOW ABOUT ENERGY, INTUITION & POWER

The transcription discusses how elite leaders like Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs have found success through energy, intuition, simplicity, and understanding beyond traditional analysis. They emphasize the importance of energy management, intuition over analysis, simplicity in decision-making, and deep understanding through firsthand experience. These principles, rooted in yogic practices, are crucial for exceptional leadership in a world dominated by technology. These skills differentiate good leaders from exceptional ones, helping them thrive and remain effective in the face of constant change and pressure. The speaker, Heather, offers a methodology called Ground Source Energy Yoga that applies these principles for modern leaders seeking to enhance their effectiveness and human capabilities. Today on Joyfully Speaking, I want to share with you what elite leaders know about energy, intuition and power. But let's talk about you first. You are probably brilliant at analysis. You can dissect a P&L sheet in a heartbeat, evaluate risk scenarios, you're great at model outcomes and probably incredible at weighing up all manner of probabilities. My guess is you've built your career on rigorous thinking, data-driven decisions and pure, unadulterated intellectual horsepower. Your ability to analyse complex situations is probably why you're sitting where you are right now. But here's what nobody tells you. Analysis has a ceiling. And the leaders at the very top, the Bezos, the Buffets, the late Steve Jobs, they've all discovered something beyond it. Jeff Bezos put it quite plainly. All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition and guts, not analysis. Now hold on a second. Are you telling me that the founder of Amazon, a company built on data, algorithms and optimisation, made his best decisions with intuition? Well, the straightforward simple answer is yes. And he's not alone. Ray Dalio, one of the most successful investors of all time, called deep meditation the single most important reason for whatever success I've had. Warren Buffett, who at 95 still tapped answers to work, genuinely tapped answers to work with an energy that defies his age. And the late Steve Jobs chose a book about yoga as his final gift to those closest to him at his private memorial service. Not the latest Apple product, not an Apple prototype, but a book about yoga. These aren't soft, touchy-feely executives trying to balance their chakras. These are hard-nosed, results-driven leaders who built empires and they're all saying the same thing. The principles of yoga, not just the poses, but the deeper practices transformed how they lead. So what do they know that perhaps you don't? When most people hear the word yoga, they think of stretching and Lululemon. That's like thinking Apple is about glass and metal. You're missing the point entirely. Yoga, in its complete form, includes meditation, breathing techniques and practices designed to achieve mastery over body, breath and brain. It's not about flexibility. It's about unlocking what one practitioner called uniquely human superpowers. The capacities that no AI, no algorithm and no amount of data can replicate. And for leaders navigating constant intensity, relentless pressure and existential questions about the future of work in an AI-dominated world, these principles have never been more relevant. Here are the four that I believe that matter most. Firstly, energy. The power fear is blocking. Steve Jobs said that once you learn to make external expectations, pride and fear of failure simply fall away. There's just no reason left not to do what you love to the fullest extent possible. Now that's not motivational platitude. That's describing a specific state achieved through yogic practice. One where debilitating fear transforms into focused, creative energy. Think about how much of your mental energy is consumed by fear. Fear of failing. Fear of being judged. Fear of looking foolish. Fear of missing out. Fear of being exposed as not knowing enough. These fears don't protect you. They drain you. Yogic practices, particularly meditation, don't eliminate fear. They transform your relationship with it. As meditation master Pema Chodron explained, brave people don't feel less fear. They've developed deeply intimate relationships with their fears. They've learned to observe, recognise and respect fear, but without being controlled by it. When that happens, something remarkable occurs. Massive waves of crippling anxiety become gentle, manageable ripples, and the energy previously spent managing fear becomes available for everything else. LeBron James uses yogic tools, so does Novak Djokovic. Champion athletes who perform under unimaginable pressure have figured out that managing fear and unleashing focused energy isn't optional. It's essential. And business champions know this too. The difference is they're using the mental practices more than the physical ones. Ray Dalio described meditation as helping him slow down life's chaos and deal with even the hardest management challenges in a clear-headed, energy-efficient, effective way. Like being, in his words, a ninja in a street fight. That's energy management, and it's the first principle exceptional leaders have mastered. My number two is intuition. The intelligence beyond analysis. Hedge fund titan Chris Holm called intuition a higher level of intelligence than just intellect. Jeff Bezos said his best decisions came from heart, intuition and guts, not analysis. These are people operating in arenas that demand rigorous left brain thinking, maths, logic, data analysis, and yet they're telling you that their most consequential decisions came from somewhere else. Here's what they understand. Analysis is necessary, but it is insufficient. It's a prerequisite, but not the conclusion. Yogic intuition isn't about ignoring data or following impulsive whims. It's about doing the analysis, then learning to calm the body, quiet the mental chatter, and feel the question. Steve Jobs described it this way. It's like an intentional version of, let's sleep on it, allowing your sophisticated subconscious mind to synthesise everything you know into a clear knowing. When it works, you experience unshakable confidence, not arrogance, certainty. As Steve Jobs said, follow your heart and intuition. Everything else is secondary. Now you've probably experienced this, a decision where all the data pointed one way, but something in you knew differently, and you were right. That wasn't luck, that was intuition, a capacity you can develop systematically through yogic practice. My number three is simplicity, the discipline of perfecting less. Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter and Square, he made this observation. Make every detail perfect, and limit the number of details to perfect. That's a yogic principle. Every practitioner learns quickly. Simple does not mean easy. Complex does not mean better. Try the simplest yogic instruction ever. Just sit quietly with your thoughts for fifteen minutes, and do absolutely nothing. Research shows people would rather give themselves electric shocks than successfully accomplish it. Simple, yes. Easy, not remotely. Steve Jobs called simplicity his core mantra. It's why Apple devices are deliberately cleaned while remaining wildly powerful. Charlie Munger noted that simple behaviours create the most value, not the complex ones on Wall Street. Here's the truth. Humans cannot match machines when it comes to complexity. Machines are literally built for that. But simple, ha, simple we can do. And simple is no slouch. The next time you're in a meeting loaded with confounding jargon, complex workflows and Byzantine processes, ask yourself, does it need to be this way, or is there a simpler, better way that we're avoiding because complexity just feels more impressive? Here's my number four. Understanding. Knowing versus knowing about. Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman credited much of his brilliance to a childhood lesson. There's a huge difference between knowing the name of something and actually knowing the thing. Warren Buffett put it more directly, risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. This is a central yogic principle. Real understanding comes from first-hand experience, not from what someone else tells you. You can read every book about swimming, attend every seminar, master all the terminology and still drown the first time you're in the water. In business, knowing the buzzword isn't the same as knowing what you're talking about. We're surrounded by We're surrounded by executives betting on AI, quantum computing, blockchain, technologies they don't actually understand but feel compelled to adopt because everyone else is. Jeff Bezos and Lee Iacocca both spoke about the critical, no shortcuts importance of understanding your business inside and out. Not the consultant version, not the deck someone prepared for you, your own first-hand hard-won understanding. The yogic approach is honest. What we don't know will always exceed what we do. But that's not cause for despair, it's an invitation to humility, growth and expanding your circle of competence. You don't need to become a yogi to apply these principles, you don't need to sit in lotus position or chant mantras, though you can if you want to. What you need is to recognise what the most exceptional leaders already know. The next level of your effectiveness isn't in better analysis, more data or sharper strategy. It's in developing the uniquely human capacities that no machine can replicate. Energy management that transforms fear into fuel. Intuition that synthesises complexity into clarity. Simplicity that perfects what matters and eliminates what doesn't. Understanding that comes from first-hand experience, not borrowed wisdom. These aren't soft skills, they're the skills that separate good leaders from exceptional ones. Leaders who survive from leaders who thrive. Leaders who burn out from leaders who, at 95, are still tap dancing to work. At Wonderful World Wellness Experience, Heather has spent decades mastering these principles. First as a professional dancer who rebuilt her own body against medical odds. Then as a teacher who trained West End and Hollywood stars and now as the creator of Ground Source Energy Yoga, a methodology that brings these ancient practices into modern practical applications for leaders exactly like you. This isn't about becoming more zen, it's about becoming more effective, more decisive, more energised, more human in a world increasingly dominated by machines. Because here's what Bezos, Buffett and Jobs understand. The future belongs to leaders who can do what AI cannot. Who can access intuition, manage energy, embrace simplicity and develop real understanding. That's not mystical, that's strategic. So this week ask yourself, am I leading with just my intellect or am I accessing the full range of human intelligence available to me? Because the leaders at the very top already know the answer and they've been trying to tell you. To tell you. Just to remind you, Steve Jobs' final gift at his memorial service, which was not an Apple product, was a book called Autobiography of a Yogi. He wanted those closest to him to understand what had truly shaped his life and leadership. If one of history's greatest innovators considered these principles his legacy, maybe they're worth exploring in your own leadership. Ground Source Energy Yoga is how we bring these practices to leaders who want results, not philosophy. Sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is learn from those who've already figured it out.