"A point of perspection dances in the balance of the seer's vision."
Zen Benefiel‘s life and the quest for connection created opportunities for deep self-reflection and professional development; acquiring ministerial certification, an MBA in project management, MA in Organizational Management, Secondary/Post-Secondary teaching as well as hypnotherapy and transformational life coaching certifications. He has coached entrepreneurs and small business owners in business plan development, social media marketing, and professional development; a personal development facilitator on the fly, and by appointment. He also is a practicing transformational life coach, assisting those in career or lifestyle conundrums. He is the founder of Be The Dream.
His professional career has spanned numerous industries including aerospace production management, education (curriculum development and teaching), health/wellness sales(13-state territory), special event management (Tempe (AZ) Olde Towne Arts Festivals & Tostito’s New Year’s Eve Block Party) and even community television shows (One World, Who?). Most recently he co-hosted 2 Small Biz Guys talk radio shows for nearly 100 episodes, achieving over 200,000 listens. A dozen years after meeting Dr. Edgar Mitchell, he became the Phoenix Institute of Noetic Sciences Community organizer in 2009 and 2010 President-Elect and Conference Chair for the Valley of the Sun Chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), an international corporate training support organization. ‘The Shift – Challenge to Change: removing liabilities, limitations and excuses in the workplace was the theme for ASTD’s conference that Zen produced as his President-Elect duties.
A pre-construction team building facilitator doing business as TeamPartnering.com, Zen performs partnering workshops for building, road, elevated highway, and waterway projects. Project operators and owners have included the Department of Defense, Arizona Department of Transportation, Department of Homeland Security, Savannah Port Authority, National Park Services, several municipalities, and private entities. Zen has four children, 9 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren that inspire his efforts to make a better world. He currently lives in Arizona with his wife Luba, an extraordinary classical pianist and music/piano teacher from St. Petersburg, Russia. Zen has played golf and drums, his two favorite pastimes, since his youth. His favorite music to play is improvisation with a progressive jazz/Latin/rock mixture.
He continues to be active professionally, supporting co-working and incubator space and advisory board development. His penchant for bridging science and spirituality continues to offer interesting insight as he continues to explore and share findings. Most recently, Zen was a guest on Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove’s New Thinking Allowed. Which came about in a serendipitous sequence in 2018, fulfilling a 28-year dream come true scenario. Hosting One World, Zen’s host interview favorites to emulate were Dr. Mishlove and Bill Moyers, with hopes of someday being worthy of an interview with one of them. Continuing with great flow, in January 2019 Zen was reunited with his birth mother through Ancestry.com, a synchronistic event that also led to realizing he’d met his birth father in Phoenix in the late 80s, unbeknownst to either. Now that is some spooky cool action up close and personal.
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Table of Contents
Let’s learn a little about you and get to experience what makes us tick – starting at our beginnings. Where did your story begin?
Zen Benefiel: My story began at birth, and evolved in a small town in rural Indiana. I was given up for adoption and 6 weeks later was adopted by the Benefiels on their 7th wedding anniversary. Four years and five months later, my adopted sister arrived and I was then told about my adoption. It caused a deep dive into my psyche, asking questions most never ask, and a month or so later the response was a ‘voice’ that reached out to me one evening with a, “Hey You!” It began a relationship of unique and valuable connections to life.
A few years later I was introduced to yet another aspect of reality, watching myself ascend into an orange cigar-shaped cloud in the middle of the night. For a couple of years, I had what seemed to be bi-weekly events and I’d never remembered what happened inside, only that I couldn’t wait to go back. At 23, just before moving to Phoenix, I was in a bookstore in Muncie, Indiana and a book fell off the shelf in front of me. It was Ruth Montgomery’s ‘Strangers Among Us,’ which revealed that the most common contactee experience in the Midwest in the late 50s and early 60s was the orange cigar-shaped cloud.
In between those times, at the beginning of my second quarter in the Pre-Med program at Ball State University, I had a life crisis, a meltdown of sorts, and hit my knees, praying to know the truth and being willing to die for it if necessary. On November 11, 1975, that same voice approached me during an afternoon meditation and asked if I was willing to die for what I believed in. A few moments later, with ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ as my belief worth dying for, I ascended into a brilliant white light that had an iridescent, effervescent high-pitched sensation to it. A few minutes later I returned with marching orders and an understanding that we all are cosmic consciousness condensed into form, with a perfected form, fit, and function in the world.
Decades later I’d acquired the education and skill set for facilitating people, places, and things to work together better and toward harmony with self, others, and nature. As a sexagenarian, I now serve as an advisor, coach, educator, facilitator, and host for creating conversations that matter in achieving harmony and positive outcomes for people and projects in this new time, great ‘website’ or uprising of humanity.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up?
Zen Benefiel: After leaving college, finding a job, and getting married there was a period of great internal strife. The previous might sound somewhat normal, though I’d been institutionalized after an altercation I tried to avoid that put me in the emergency room. My parents were overly concerned about my well-being and could not relate to the experiences I was having that paralleled Castaneda’s adventures. I was bereft of the fortitude to stand in my truth without shaking like a leaf for months afterward.
Still not whole, I started a job and relationship that grew into marriage. A couple of years later, jobs dried up from the auto industry decline and we moved to Phoenix. I soon went to work in the aerospace industry as a machinist and a few years later became a production control coordinator for a commercial spares product line, with a $7MM/mo shipment goal. We had four children by then and I’d also become an elder in our church. Then it all fell apart and no matter how I tried to fix things, it just got worse. A devastating divorce, expulsion from the corporate world, and a lie that brought church separation sent me into a tailspin. I’d put my best foot forward, deliberately, and found rejection as a result. I vowed to return with irrefutable evidence of how to get people, places, and things to work together better. It was the choice of fear that caused the separation within others.
Now, this was opportunistic though I didn’t realize it at first. It gave me the freedom to return to the inner development and re-connection with my assigned duties received in the conversation with God I had in college. After a year of deep diving and amazing experiences, I got the opportunity to host and produce a TV show that was sponsored by a local Lions Club. It allowed me to explore the worlds of others who faced challenges in their personal and professional careers and development, from both inner and outer perspectives. It was a priceless education and validated my perspective through the over 100 shows we produced.
I went back to school, got two Master’s degrees in Business, with a Secondary Teaching certification in between, all around the turn of the century. I taught high school for nearly a decade, wrote a business plan for a model school in my Organizational Management degree, and moved on. I had opportunities to earn life coaching and construction partnering facilitation certifications right afterward. I began facilitating partnering (team building) sessions for multi-million dollar construction projects as well as developing a reputation as a stellar transformational life coach. Today, I coach, consult and facilitate conversations that evolve attitudes toward taking positive action in organizational development and the world at large. I have been deemed an Organizational Bricoleur and Possibilities Coagulator due to my unique style and results garnered. Yes, I’d be a liar if I said I never thought of giving up. However, when I looked in the mirror, my commitment to the inner and outer work I’d given in my vulnerability and willingness to die for the truth, I simply had no choice other than to grow and continue to move forward. I’ve helped thousands as a result.
Is there a particular podcast you listened to, or business thought leader that you find helpful while maneuvering this pandemic?
Zen Benefiel: Being particularly attentive to opportunistic moments in moving an agenda of people and planet over profit, I’d been given some ‘marching orders’ as a teen to help facilitate a new world order and that it would happen in my lifetime. I’d produced a show in the early 90s called One World as a beginning exploration of how professionals across multiple areas of society found their passion and purpose, specifically through bridging their inner-awareness and outer activity, and addressing and overcoming personal and professional fears. What an education, with over 100 shows and nearly 200 guests. It was a volunteer project and I had to move on after a couple of years.
When the current crisis hit in early 2020, I told my wife that I hoped the obsession with self-hygiene and the sequestration would get people to turn inward and examine themselves deeply. We’d only been recently married, and part of her vetting for me was watching my videos (I had a few shows I’d saved and posted) as well as some other videos I’d produced over the years. In April of 2021, she came to me and told me I needed to start talking to people again as there was no one addressing the situation from a sense-making perspective.
So, by the beginning of June I’d been able to access some brilliant thought leaders in systems transformation, through another program I’d engaged, and had plenty to begin a weekly series of One World in a New World. I call them ‘apocalyptic chats’ because of their empathic and generative nature, where guests often reveal they’ve never been asked the kinds of questions and found them engaging and thought-provoking. So, instead of listening to podcasts, I listen to real people as we craft conversations that matter to show that there is a common thread of inner-knowing that is surfacing as a silver lining to the pandemic. We’re addressing the ambiguity and unknown future that we’re co-creating intentionally.
In your opinion, what makes your company stand out from the competition?
Zen Benefiel: First of all, competition is so last century. Today it’s collaboration. We’ve experienced the alpha-male pyramidal structures of competition for over a hundred years. It’s time we evolved as our current conditions seem to reveal the fallacies of the old paradigms and structures. We spend too much time examining our competition and not enough time on creativity and innovation. This is where the differentiation occurs.
We focus on developing the inner-awareness and capitalizing on skillset integration to craft action plans that engage inner-knowing and outer structures, including people, places, and things. We focus on dreams and goals and the special sauce I’ve found to help achieve them. Our marketing focuses on the investigative thinker who knows there is more to life, especially now, and wants to tap into the greater opportunity presented by stepping into their power and ability to co-create their reality. That sounds idealistic and perhaps unrealistic, yet my clients would differ from that opinion as they’ve grown to know themselves deeper and found a reflection in their business, relationships, and personal achievements.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
Zen Benefiel: I own four businesses and have several personal projects, in addition, each with varied success, yet I love the challenge and variety of daily activities that keep me excited about ‘what’s next.’ This spills out or is absorbed in, the three things I’ve found to be most important – attention, intention, and interaction.
Attention means it’s where you focus and what you think about consistently. Most vacillate between the Law of Attraction and the Law of Disturbance and Interruption. The latter often wins. Why? Because we don’t know how to discipline our thinking once we’ve prioritized goals and objectives. We’re distracted by the nuances of life and our environments. Instead, and with much better results in a more timely fashion, we learn how to discipline the mind and focus attention on the things that truly matter. This creates the beginning of FLOW as outlined in the book, FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
The intention is the core of what your Being requires of life, love, and work through your experience. It’s the will to do good that is, or ought to be, present in everyone’s life. Intending to be our best, honor our imperfections with compassion, and perform to a higher level of expectation brings us to a new living awareness and experience. It’s another discipline like bridging self-actualization and self-realization as an evolving human being with purpose in the world, perhaps even a perfected form, fit, and function in it.
Interaction is what the core of the activity of life brings to greater levels of success through the previous two. Our efforts are laser-focused and yet flexible enough to be agile and malleable to fit the needs of each moment or situation. The amount of interaction varies greatly, of course, especially when the variety of activities require a gamut of engagement, from subtle and inviting to full-on production mode where every moment is a full visceral experience of body, mind, and spirit. Perhaps there’s even more activity just beyond our ability to perceive the moment. That’s where the magic happens with serendipitous synchronicities.
Being a CEO of the company, do you think that your brand reflects your company’s values?
Zen Benefiel: After being in business for 30+ years, I better reflect my brand, especially as a transformational life coach for Be The Dream LLC. If I’m not growing and evolving how could I possibly be an example for my clients? Don’t we have to practice what we preach? As we build ranks, this kind of attitude and zest for altitude brings out the best in everyone. The inspiration the emotes from within drives the bus and every passenger benefits as there is no carry-on or stored baggage on this trip.
For many years I tried to ‘fit in’ to what others seemed to be doing. I found out just how unconsciously I was living the imposter syndrome, denying my brilliance and capacity for creating an outstanding brand, both personally and professionally. I love to stand out, not for attention-getting purposes, more for attracting others like me who want to test the boundaries of co-creating reality as I believe we were designed to do. I have a marbleized tuxedo I used to wear to business mixers, for example.
Being different and standing out has its pros and cons, though done with a selfless attitude in following your inner-wisdom brings unimaginable moments of connection and rapport. You really can’t imagine it, because you’re thinking about it. You have to BE it. It’s an EXPERIENCE. I’ve had some amazing opportunities seemingly fall into my lap because of that kind of attention, intention, and interaction. I encourage others to do so and can show them how as well.
How would you define “leadership”?
Zen Benefiel: Leadership has a lot of characteristics that are hard to delineate in such a brief fashion. That being said, a true leader combines mission, vision, and activity as an example and spans the gamut of expectations of performance across the employee range. A leader is an educator, even an edutainer, as an example that can back up the activity of leadership with Cliff Notes of opportunity for others to incorporate and integrate into their own individual lives and relationships. Leadership is not just a company-based or environmental activity. It’s a life that is lived in every moment.
Today, even more, a leader has to be as agile as the company he keeps and leads. There is an ambiguity about the near future as the world is reeling and rocking with the evolution of the activity that’s crippled economies and nations, let alone individual lives. Now it’s time for leaders to step up to a greater level of understanding and work from a holistic systems perspective as nothing is separate in our world now, even science has proven we’re 99% space, so there’s a lot of permeability in greater awareness and leadership toward higher ethical and moral standards and freedoms for all.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Zen Benefiel: I’d have to say that you need to be careful of pushing and pulling things around instead of unpacking the process and understanding it more fully. What I mean by that is that there is a natural order to accomplish anything. It may not be what you think it is and assumptions can be costly in many areas. Slowing down to observe and organize strategically, including writing a business plan of some sort, focuses your attention, intention, and interactivity with a higher-ordered thinking process. It takes the decision-making out of the most emotional and invites a more grounded in reality approach with details and facts more easily analyzed and converted into appropriate action plans that truncate your development time because you’ve been more considerate and mindful of the process.
Time has been said to be a measurement of the change in entropy. Imagine if your efforts had little resistance because you’d planned them out with consideration of your SWOT and as many possible scenarios so your ‘worst case’ as well as your ‘best case’ are covered. You’d be surprised what the mind of man can believe and achieve when it’s focused on a mission and purpose that is as well-crafted as possible. We aren’t alone in the process of business development; there are worlds both seen and unseen.
Another ancillary consideration is patience. Realize your idea and its development will take time – it’s time – and your schedule needs to include that understanding. You need to be realistic about time frames. The rule of thumb I learned in my MBA program decades ago was this: It will take you three times as long as you think it will. Now, considering the ability to create flow in your development means that the distractions and interruptions are at a minimum, less entropy, so your achievements may happen sooner than that if you’re in tune with the project’s nature. Patience is the first of the 5 Ps I would encourage you to know – Patience, Perseverance, Persistence, Passion, and Purpose. Of course in my business, I’m always seeing the obvious… and there’s a sixth – Practice.
What’s your favorite “life lesson” quote and how has it affected your life?
Zen Benefiel: It’s one I created: “A point of perspection dances in the balance of the seer’s vision.” What that means is that there are both perception and introspection involved in establishing your awareness of the moment. If we see things through a limited sight, then we’re apt to miss something important. The greater we can see a moment, the more effective we can be in serving it.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Zen Benefiel for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Zen Benefiel or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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