In a world where innovation races ahead and burnout has become the badge of ambition, Dr. Manijeh Motaghy invites leaders to pause — and return to what truly matters: being human. Through her groundbreaking book, It’s Not Easy to Be Human, and her Mindful Life Optimization (MLO) framework, she confronts a global leadership crisis driven by speed, disconnection, blind innovation. She addresses the root programming of modern systems that optimize profit and progress while de-optimizing human life and planetary well-being. She offers a tested approach rooted in awareness, integrity, and life intelligence. Her mission is clear — to make leadership not just successful, but deeply meaningful, sustainable, and simply human.
Your latest book It’s Not Easy to Be Human, and its membership club provide the understanding and the means for Making It Easy to Be a Leader. What inspired you to write it now—and how does it speak to today’s crisis of meaning and motivation in leadership?
After decades of teaching and consulting, I noticed a global pattern: leaders achieving extraordinary results but feeling disconnected and dissatisfied. We’ve built intelligent systems but have neglected the intelligence of life itself in how we think, relate, and sustain meaning. I wrote It’s Not Easy to Be Human to expose the innate and learned habits behind human struggle and offer a path of Mindful Life Optimization (MLO) that equips leaders with the power of intentionality, integrity, inner stability, and skillful response. Today’s crisis of meaning and satisfaction isn’t due to a lack of success — it’s due to a lack of alignment between what we build and life’s successful design. This book helps bridge that gap.
You often say that leaders can’t fix systemic problems, such as resolving concerns with the negative impacts of AI unless the people who design, fund, and implement them are optimized. Which of your MLO lessons can they learn to ensure that technology serves humanity, not the other way around?
That’s such an important question. Design and innovation originate in the human mind and imagination. The systems we create whether—technological, economic, or political mirror one’s level of development in life’s intelligence. If innovation is driven only for competitive edge and profit and accelerated through automation, it will eventually turn destructive or potentially reduce humans to servants of the very systems we’ve created.
Although all 60 Mindful Life Optimization Lessons (MLOLs) in my book should be developed for optimal effects, several of them help mitigate concerns with AI. For example, MLOL 3 and 4 remind leaders that every design choice has interdependent consequences and that long-term effects must be examined before deployment. MLOL 8 and 9 reveal innate biases that can become encoded in technology. MLOL 14 teaches about wicked problems and how to prevent them with thoughtful step by step process. When innovators develop and enact the qualities and skills in these and other MLOLs, technology evolves with life intelligence assuring longevity and serving the human race rather than overtaking it.
Many of your programs integrate your MLOL 47: Intelligent Mental Activity with accountability. How can leaders today use Intelligent Mental Activity as a competitive advantage that strengthens innovation, performance, and conscious decision-making?
Intelligent Mental Activity is the discipline of self-analysis (knowing what’s in one’s mind and skillfully guiding it). It’s about protecting and cleansing the mind from negative or mindless thoughts while nourishing and strengthening attention, presence, and superior heart intelligence. It’s the difference between being misguided and mental clarity, between impulsively reacting and calmly knowing, between hazardous choices and beneficial actions that consider the well-being of all involved. I explain how this works in chapter 20.
It’s mental hygiene and intelligence at their best!
Leaders who develop Intelligent Mental Activity gain an extraordinary advantage. They can observe bias before it becomes behavior, regulate emotion before it distorts judgment, and act with confidence even under pressure. This is the essence of my 9-step Preventative Accountability Model—successful accountability before harm occurs. Together, they create a leadership culture where innovation flows naturally because the mind is stable, self-aware, and aligned with ethical intentions. It’s not about slowing progress—it’s about making progress harmless and everlasting.
Can you share a successful business case that supports your MLO methodology—not just for individuals, but for organizations and communities?
Yes, MLO offers guidance for systemic and planetary health. In chapter 15 of my book, I highlight Toyota’s regenerative manufacturing model as a powerful example of MLO in action. By mimicking nature’s intelligent design, Toyota created the Prius line—vehicles built from recyclable components, with third-generation models that are 85 percent recyclable and 95 percent recoverable. Even the hybrid battery can be refurbished for reuse.
What’s remarkable is not just the product innovation, but the mindset behind it. Toyota intentionally redesigned its processes to reduce CO₂ emissions, conserve water, and reuse materials down to the boxes that carry their parts. Their goal isn’t only efficiency—it’s natural resource stewardship.
This is an example and an aspect of a model I created called RIMS—Regenerative Integration Management System in practice: aligning innovation with nature’s regenerative principles. But this approach isn’t limited to manufacturing. Every one of us can live and lead regeneratively—whether managing a kitchen, running a company, or shaping public policy. When we operate with zero stress, zero waste in mind and action, we empower regenerative systems that ensure the prosperity of our planet and our shared future.
In a data-saturated and AI-driven world, how does MLO guide leaders to stay human-centered and engage technological progress responsibly?
It’s easy to fall into the fast-moving rivers of innovation and design out of the desire for growth and fear of becoming obsolete. This constant innovation can undermine our immune systems, disrupt our sense of contentment, create relationship issues and the list goes on. It’s not centered around human happiness.
In chapter 12, I explain the Law of Intentionality. MLOL 5: Mindful of the Law of Intentionality, teaches that our conscious intentions determine the quality of our conduct and experience—stress or happiness. Most stress and burnout aren’t caused by hard work alone; they’re caused by misaligned intentions. When people and organizations lack a life-affirming purpose, their results of going round and round lead to exhaustion.
An elaboration of this may be found in MLOL 12: Mindful of Consumerism and the Circular Anxiety Economy, which reveals the drawbacks of business built on continually creating unnecessary wants and needs, like technology upgrades designed only to sell more products.
Such business models keep everyone, including leaders and employees, locked in stress and anxiety and customers in dissatisfaction. Consequently, we increasingly feel a need for resilience to adapt to “change.” Changes which we, humans, create. The circular anxiety economy produces only temporary satisfaction at best.
To be human-centered—or better yet, life-intelligent—leaders and businesses could re-strategize their technological progress, operations, and marketing around genuine human needs, not manufactured ones. Sometimes that means pausing new innovations, no matter how alluring, and rely on enduring paths to sustain their business.
When intention is aligned with service and well-being rather than perpetual growth, work becomes regenerative instead of depleting. Teams feel balanced, creative, and purposeful—and mental resilience becomes less of a necessity because the causes of stress and constant manufactured changes are reduced or eliminated.
Continuity of energy then becomes natural. That’s when humanity can live with peace and feel that life is, truly, great.
Your methodology integrates organizational psychology, neuroscience, and universal wisdom. What insights from neuroscience have most transformed your approach to cultivating ethical, emotionally intelligent leadership?
Neuroscience has completely reshaped how I understand and teach leadership. In chapter 16, I explain several essential to know neuroscientific facts about our human brain: that we quite literally influence and rewire each other’s brains. How we speak, lead, and even listen can shape the neural patterns of those around us. We also know that the brain is coded for truth bias and the tendency toward confirming one’s ideas for efficiency. Our brain opts to accept most information without questioning, especially when it supports our existing beliefs. This explains why misinformation, bias, fear, and competitive ideas can spread so easily among families and in work environments.
Chapter 14, MLOL 18 reveals that our brains are not the most intelligent among species. Every species has evolved exactly as it needs to function and thrive. This knowledge can propel us to respect and honor all species for their role in the ecosystem and even to learn from them. The most hopeful discovery is neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change and develop throughout life. For example, many of our negative emotional responses are learned and can be unlearned. We’re not stuck with supposed instinctive reactions.
Because of these and other neuroscientific understandings, I am better able to teach how to think and communicate more objectively, regulate emotions more effectively, and realize for oneself the causes and conditions of happiness and failure. My students and clients learn how to optimize their intentions, change course when needed, and lead their work and lives for both success and fulfillment.
To learn more about these and other Mindful Life Optimizations Lessons, read Dr. Motaghy’s book: It’s Not Easy to Be Human and attend her live meetings to discuss each further.
