Systems That Fit Real People with Graham Skidmore

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

Stephen Sakach (0:16)

Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host, Tullio Siragusa and our special guest, who we'll introduce in a moment. So in workplaces, people are often asked to fit into models that may not reflect how they actually think, learn, process, or grow. And for some, especially people who are neurodivergent or whose experiences are more complex or non-linear, that can create a painful message. That's like, you are the problem. But what if the person is not broken? What if the system is incomplete? And today, we are exploring systems that fit real people.

Tullio, tell us about our guest today.

Tullio Siragusa (1:01)

My pleasure. Our guest today is Graham Skidmore. He's the co-founder of Harmony Health Institute. Graham's work is rooted in lived experience and the belief that people deserve support systems that honor individuality rather than forcing everyone into the same model. He has written that Harmony Health Institute exists to address the gap between people's real experiences and the incomplete systems meant to support them.

Through Harmony Health Institute, Graham is helping build a collaborative care model that brings together physical improvement, emotional healing, recovery support, spiritual growth, education, tools, and practitioner collaboration in a more integrated approach. Graham, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. We're looking forward to our conversation with you today.

Graham Skidmore (1:55)

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for not giving up on me when I was having some technical difficulties as we were getting started. And I appreciate you having me here. So thank you so much.

Stephen Sakach (2:06)

I'm just picturing when you have the technical difficulties and you reboot, and then Microsoft comes on, it's like updating, you know, 10% there.

Tullio Siragusa (2:16)

You'll have a computer back in two hours.

Graham Skidmore (2:18)

Right.

Stephen Sakach (2:21)

So, Graham, you've written that many people are trying to function inside systems that were never designed with their individuality in mind. And what do you think traditional systems most often miss about human potential?

Graham Skidmore (2:36)

Well, so I think that there's probably a couple of things. And I think fundamentally speaking, or foundationally, whichever is the appropriate word here, you know, in the Western, you know, we, everything is built around the belief of materialism as the base and the foundation of reality, which means that, hey, everything that you're going to treat means that there's a biomarker, it should be the same thing for, you know, everybody, where there's, you know, humans have this one size fits all box, that we should be able to, you know, take similar approaches and have everybody, you know, essentially be the same.

You know, where, you know, in Eastern traditions and other spiritual traditions, right, the basis of reality is consciousness, which means, hey, of course, there's a material factor, there's also some stuff behind the scenes driving it. And why that really matters, especially in health care, is because if you're not able to achieve the results that you want, you know, it may not be a physical thing that's causing the challenge, right? And one of the things with that, when we're only, when we're stuck in a paradigm of materialism, is that if we can't get it fixed, then the best, then the way that we're going to achieve our quality of life is simply based on system, or symptom management, which isn't, you know, which is certainly helpful, but it's not, but it doesn't offer us this, the hope of healing and feeling better, and of liberation from, you know, like I used to walk around with a bag of pills and all these other kinds of things to, to feel comfortable, you know, getting by. And so, you know, it was, it was stressful, you know, if I forgot the bag or whatever else. And so, having an additional set of choices, because this is the other thing, an additional set of choices that honors, that there might be something going on behind the scenes. If you're not able to achieve the quality of life you desire through a few, through purely a material lens, well, then you should check it out from some other lenses, whether that be Eastern, whether that be indigenous, whether that be spiritual, right? And we're not here to tell you which way you look. We're here to provide you the frame, you know, the framework to help you figure that out for yourself, and to help you along that guided journey so that you can make the most of it. So, you know, it's kind of like we're playing the game right now with just one hand tap, with one hand tap behind our back.