Dhru Purohit Show - #248: Stop Suffering by Letting Go of Your “Story” with IN-Q

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Stop Suffering by Letting Go of Your “Story” | This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Cozy Earth. We create our own realities—it’s all in how we think about life. Ever notice how a growth mindset leads to opportunity and success and how a poverty mindset leaves you with nothing but want, and often spirals downwards into an ongoing funk? We have to use our physical state to change our mental state, and vice versa. There’s a feedback loop between our bodies and brains, which is why mindset and behavior are so powerful for creating the reality we desire.  This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sat down for an insightful talk with poet IN-Q, on how to break free from the stories we create for ourselves, how to step into a growth mindset, and how to cultivate intentional and meaningful relationships.  IN-Q is a National Poetry Slam champion, award-winning poet, and multi-platinum songwriter. His groundbreaking achievements include being named to Oprah's SuperSoul 100 list of the world's most influential thought leaders, being the first spoken word artist to perform with Cirque Du Soleil, and being featured on A&E, ESPN, and HBO's Def Poetry Jam. In this episode, we dive into:   -“Goldfish,” a poem by IN-Q (6:12)  -One of the most meaningful things we can do to grow (22:28)  -Dhru’s gratitude hack (25:24)  -Creating a meaningful tribe around you (26:54) -What is Love,” a poem by IN-Q (40:48)  -The illusion of time (55:44) -Who would you be without your problems (59:29) -Rituals and traditions that Dhru and IN-Q have brought into their partnerships (1:18:21) -The practice of loving yourself (1:37:46) -“Breathe,” a poem by IN-Q (1:52:55) For more on IN-Q, follow him on Instagram @inqlife, on YouTube @inqonline, and through his website https://in-q.com. You can find his book, Inquire Within at https://in-q.com/inquirewithin/, and his podcast at https://in-q.com/podcast/. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Cozy Earth. InsideTracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. Traditional lab tests can be hard to read on your own, but InsideTracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 25% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU.   If you’re looking for super comfortable and stylish men’s and women’s pajamas, joggers, robes, pullovers and hoodies, basically all the stuff we’re all wearing working from home these days, Cozy Earth has got you covered! So what’s Cozy Earth’s not so secret fabric that powers their superior comfort? It's the miracle plant bamboo! Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my audience 40% off. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use the discount code DHRUPODCAST. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're under this illusion that we're going to be here forever and that we will always have time. And we don't have time. Time has us. And time always wins. But within this never-ending now, like I was saying earlier, it's infinite possibilities. Hi, everyone, Drew Prode here. If you want to step into a growth mindset, which means being less critical of yourself, which also means being less hard on yourself.

which also means pulling yourself out of comparison and into peace. This episode with my dear friend and poet and philosopher, Adam & Q, is for you. Stay tuned. Have you ever gone to your doctor for your normal annual physical? And after sitting with them for 10 minutes, they quickly look at your labs and tell you, hey, everything looks normal. Keep it up and I'll see you again next year. Maybe even give you a nice little pat on the back.

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That's inside tracker, I-N-S-I-D-E, Tracker, T-R-A-C-K-E-R-com, backslash Drew, D-H-R-U for your 25% off. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Are you looking for the perfect gift for the perfect gift, for the person? person in your life who loves all things health and wellness, you got to check out Cozy Earth's new line of ultra-soft loungeware. Cozy Earth has the perfect set of pajamas, joggers, robes, pullovers and hoodies for you or the loved ones in your life. So what makes this loungeware so exceptional? Bamboo. Yes, bamboo. That's Cozy Earth's secret ingredient. First of all,

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Just go to CozyEarth.com with the discount code Drew Podcast. That's Cozy, C-O-Z-Y, Earth, E-A-R-T-H-H-O-T-H-O-R-T-H.com with the code D-H-R-U podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T. Keep in mind that Cozy Earth has a 10-year warranty, so you can't really go wrong with giving them a shot. Welcome to the Drew Perrault podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is my dear friend, poet, and philosopher, Adam In-Q,

NQ, which is Adam's stage name, is a national poetry slam champion, award-winning poet, and multi-platinum songwriter. His groundbreaking achievements, including being named on Oprah's Super Soul 100 list of the world's most influential thought leaders, being the first spoken word artist to perform with Circus O'Lay and being featured on A&E, ESPN, and HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam. in Q has inspired audiences around the world through his live performances and deep storytelling workshops. On today's episode, we invited Adam back to the podcast to talk about stepping into a growth mindset, something that we could all benefit from. If you're looking to be less critical of yourself, if you're looking to step into peace into your life and remove yourself from comparison, his poetry and today's episode is for you. Stay tuned. Adam,

My brother, welcome back to the podcast. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you here. I thought it might be nice to start off today's episode, just like we did last time, and kick off with a poem, just something that you feel present to. Okay, first of all, thank you for having me. Yeah.

I think that the first one I want to do is based on this fable. It's like one of my favorite sayings, and the saying is, I don't know who discovered water, but it probably wasn't a fish. And the reason that I like that saying is because to me it means you can't see your own environment when you're in it. And it's only when you get outside of it that you know that it exists.

So I wrote this piece during the pandemic. Beautiful. They say a goldfish will only get as big as it's bold. But if you put it in a tank, the space can change the way it grows. It needs to have the room. or its projection doesn't show, so its environment's essential for unleashing the unknown. I ponder if it knows that it could grow beyond the bowl,

that it could have a pond the size of an Olympic swimming pool, that the world is so much larger than the boundaries that it's known. Somehow I empathize with this little golden soul, because I too have unexplored and unexpressed goals. that were suppressed by an environment I couldn't control. Am I still playing small because it's all that I've known when there's a giant in my bones that I'm not sure I've ever shown? I ask myself this question when I'm purposely alone.

When my body grows to take up all the rooms inside my home, I expand in all directions every single inch consumed. I'm a million feet tall now. I'm a billion feet tall now, my head over the moon. I look down on the earth as it slowly spins around. I look down on the countries and the cities and the towns. I look down on the square blocks and buildings all around. I look down on my street and rip the roof right off my house.

I look down on myself sitting writing on my couch. Look, I barely pay attention. I'm the one that's looking down. How unaware I am of where I am. It's profound. So I put the roof back on and shrink myself back to the ground. It's crazy how I fit infinity inside my doubts. How I stuff the universe into the tiniest amounts.

How I keep the solar system in the corners of my mouth. How I speak into existence but forget what I'm about. In most days, I'm not sure which shot of. the glass I've been on. I win a Grammy in the shower every time I sing a song. But when the spotlight is on, my first instinct's to run. I have to super gloom my feet to even tell you where I'm from. I've been training for a quarantine since I was very young. For an introvert, it slightly hurts to tell you that they'll come. I would rather get into a staring contest with the sun, although I'll never see who fucking won. It's nature and its nurture, twisting into jungle life,

fighting the competition, branching out to reach the light. I tried to listen but could only hear my ancient heart. It screamed at me to make my life into my greatest art. But where to start? These walls are keeping people out and keeping people in. I guess it's good to know where someone ends and someone else begins. But our boundaries become prisons when we see what could have been. The biggest goldfish ever measured 18 inches snout to fin.

Finn. Beautiful, brother. I'm going to snap that up. You know, one of my favorite things about your podcast, we'll have a link to it in the show notes, by the way, is when you do your poetry and then you have the director's cut afterwards. And there's been a couple of those there, where you kind of chime in and share your thoughts.

Like, what do you think about this? What does this make you think? And the interpretations can go any which way. On any poem that you have, I'm sure you could take it in one direction, another, to the self, to relationships, to society. It all applies. I'm curious for this poem that you just read.

Give us a little bit of the director's cut on it. So I was at my cousin's house, and she has this little pollen in the backyard. And there were these giant, what I thought were coyfish. So I was like, Sophia, that's cool. When did you get all these coyfish? She goes, well, some of them are coyfish, but she goes, some of them are goldfish.

And I was like, really? Because my only experience with goldfish is you would get them at a fair in a little plastic bag and you would take them home. They would last two weeks. You'd flush them down the toilet and that was it, right? Like, they didn't survive very long. They didn't get very big. They were two inches.

And she goes, yeah, goldfish will change their actual size depending upon their environment. And I thought I can relate. And then I started writing the poem. Tell me how you can relate in the context of just this last two years that we've all been on where our environment internally externally has been in flux, let's say. Yeah, look, I think all of us were on our own treadmill, you know, we're. We were just trying to do things and accomplish things. We were going places. You know, we were on our old legend trip.

Like, you know, and I think that it just all stopped. And we were forced to go inside and sit with the silence. And in the silence, I think we all kind of realized how loud it is. So that certainly happened to me. And I learned an enormous amount from that silence. A lot of it, I put in some. my work, but a lot of it was just like different life lessons that have kind of stayed with me throughout. And I think that, you know, for a person to go through a systemic change, they usually

have to face a trauma. It's something that kind of forces them to wake up and shakes them out of the routine and allows them to see themselves in their life differently. And during that period of time, if they really pay attention, they can make changes that can last forever. But if they don't, and they fall back asleep to their life, they might not get another chance to make real change for 20 years. And I think an individual is like a collective, and it's supposed to at least be our collective trauma.

You know, it was like Mother Nature saying, hey, like what we're doing is clearly unsustainable. And we have to wake up. And some people did wake up. Some people are waking up, and some people fell hard, back asleep. Yeah.

I can definitely relate to that. In the context of the last couple years, it's just interesting to see new things that have picked up that I've wanted to do and double down on, things that I've wanted to stop, but I just had so much inertia and momentum that I was having basically like I was overdosing on the dopamine that I would get from, just keeping that engine running. In particular, like, I love hanging out with people.

And actually, for me, business and building companies is an excuse to really work with my friends, my family. I work with both my sisters in the company. A lot of my close friends are in the company. And I love to hear people. I love to help people who are working on projects, help them think about how to, like, extend their projects further. And there's a lot of beauty in that.

Yeah. And when people weren't getting together as regularly, especially like early on in the pandemic and stuff, I really had a sense of missing that. And I felt a little lost. Would you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert? Or both? Yeah, you know,

there's that like that other term of like an extroverted introvert. Like I love alone time. And I get juice off of spending time with other people. But I'm not afraid to spend time by myself and I've had a pretty, I've had moments in time where I've had like extended, time away from people

or spending more time in silence, especially my years in college when I got really into Buddhism. I kind of got really into like solitude and that sort of thing, going on long walks by myself, all this stuff. But I do get energy from spending time with people. And I enjoy that.

And the other component of it is that sometimes when I wasn't paying attention and I didn't have the awareness, I would use the busyness of life to distract me from the things that I knew would give me the most meaning and joy, even if they were really tough. Totally.

Like writing. Right. Like writing was always something that I enjoyed, but actually is very difficult for me. Why do you think that is? I don't think it's supposed to be easy for anybody to put together original thoughts and ideas that reflect what they have to say. And I know everything is remixed.

I'm not by any means saying, you know, things are original that I'm sharing. But they are. They're totally original. They're original from your viewpoint. Yes. Right? You are reinventing the wheel, but like, who the fuck only wants one wheel? Of course.

We want totally different wheels and other things like that. But I think writing should be a little bit tough. I remember this anecdote one time I heard from Stephen Pressfield. And I think he was saying this about one of the big writers that was out there. People were asking him, you know, do you sit down and write? when like at a set time every day or do you sit down and write when you're inspired? He's like, oh, I only write when I'm inspired.

But for me, that's 10 a.m. every morning. Right. And about an hour into it, the inspiration comes. He creates structure for his inspiration. Exactly. Yeah, which I think is really smart to do. You can create structure for your inspiration if you want. You can also create an assignment for your inspiration.

and then you can just pay attention to when your inspiration comes. I wrote something down this morning outside of my meditation. I like came out of it and this was the first thought. And it popped into my head when you were sharing what you were sharing right now. And it's finding who you are requires going outside of yourself. Discovering who you are requires going inside of yourself. Both are necessary. I believe that.

I believe that. You know, going back to what I was, that I was sharing about, there's nothing better than like a little mini deadline, a mini stressor, right? For a long time, especially in this world of wellness that I'm in, it was like minimized stress, avoid stress, other stuff. And then the last like five years or so,

now it's the more sophisticated conversation. It's like, look, there's healthy stress. Exercising is you creating stress in your body. going in a sauna and stressing your body out temporarily comes with these benefits. In that same way, doing creative pursuits, putting yourself out of your comfort zone. Even this weekend, I was on a little trip with my wife.

How's that feel? Feels good to say. Good, good. And I got some questions for you because you also recently, semi-recently married as well. It feels good for me to say too. No, I love it. When I first said my wife, it felt like a bit of like a straight jacket of tradition.

But, you know, now it's like, no, my wife. Yeah, my wife. It feels great. Yeah, it feels very beautiful. I was really into anonymous and random acts of kindness. And I had a- On the trip, you're saying? Just in my past history. Okay, got it.

And so I had a lot of practice of either direct acts, anonymous acts of kindness and other stuff, and I got a lot of joy out of it. And I had a really great teacher in the space. His name is Nipun Metta. He started this organization called Service Space that's still active in the Bay Area. And he created these things that are called smile cards. And smile cards are basically these cards that you leave behind after doing an anonymous act of kindness. So it could be raking a neighbor's lawn where there's a bunch of like trees in front.

You don't say who did it. And you just drop a little card in it. And I don't remember it verbatim, but it's paraphrasing here. It says, smile, you just got hit with an anonymous act of kindness, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. pay it forward. Like simple card. Nothing on it.

Nothing about who's behind the organization. It just takes you to a website where there's other inspirational stories and things that you could do. So I used to do a lot of those back in the day. And in my relationship now, I was having conversation at dinner with my wife and talking to her about this. And she's like, you know what? I don't really, I haven't really done a lot of this stuff. I was like, how fun would it be for us to do some these things together? Some of them will be anonymous and some of them will be direct.

And so we had set aside and said, let's keep a little budget every month for just like a gratitude budget. That's really cool, man. I love that. Something that we want to spend in a small, big wage just doesn't matter. Yeah. It can be spontaneous. It can be an anonymous act. It could be a direct act.

Just something to practice. So this weekend, our waitress and slash host that this restaurant that we were at, And my wife really took a liking to her and just was like, you know, she's just going above and beyond. And just like her kindness and gratitude and other stuff, especially in this context and space that a lot of businesses are struggling. They're understaffed and other things. And she was just really doing her best and taking care of a lot of different people that were there.

I was like, what if we did something nice for her? Just something small, right? Just something small. And you could see that for my wife in that moment, that was a very uncomfortable thing to be like, like, what is that going to be to like me to do something for this person? And that time, we kept a very basic. We had set aside a little bit of an extra amount for a tip. And my wife gave it to her directly. And she felt nervous. She felt nervous. She felt excited. What is this going to be like?

And, you know, a lot of things came up. How did it go? And it went great. And the woman received it. And in that moment, just looked me and my wife in the eye and just said, like a deepest thank you. and it was all communicated through non-verbal in her eyes. And it actually just the, just the gaze of it, just that small little, and it's not like we left like a thousand dollar tip or anything. Yeah. Right?

Just something meaningful in that moment, delivered with kindness, delivered with presence. And it put my wife in such a sense of a good stressor in that moment of putting her outside of her comfort zone that she was moved to tears. That's beautiful, man. Not just the beauty of the person receiving it, but the recognition that she could have a small little impact in that person's life in that moment.

And this is all to say, this is just a small little story to say, I think little deadlines, micro-stressers, putting ourselves out of our comfort zone, going back to what you were sharing earlier, is one of the most meaningful things that we can do on a regular basis to push ourselves to grow in any direction that we want to grow it. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

I mean, based on what you were just saying, I think it's interesting because some people would feel uncomfortable giving and some people would feel uncomfortable receiving. Of course. Both are really valuable. So whatever it is, you're more uncomfortable doing. You should try to do it. I like to, and this is like a pro tip maybe for anybody who's out there, it's just something that I've done. I've never shared this actually with anybody. But when I go to coffee shops, sometimes I'll like just buy the barista, like a quasi-a-a-quist.

like a croissant or like I'll get like a cupcake or something like that and then I'll just give it to them and I don't ask because when you ask they'll say no and even when they say no they can't believe that you're offering to buy them something they literally I have done it many times and every single time they're like no one's ever done this so you don't ask you just do it and you give it to them. And I promise it will make their day. It's those simple moments that are also, you know, we talked about last time you're on the podcast, we talked about your meditation practice and the value of meditation. We talked about the value of taking care of this vessel, which is our bodies and treating it right and giving the love and attention that it needs, which also means sometimes,

you know, not taking on new routines and understanding that we have too much going on and, you know, just retreating a little bit inward. And I think when it comes to meaning and purpose, that minimum viable dose of service is such a great way to ground ourselves in the reality of, hey, my life still matters. I can make a difference in my own way. And I have a place on this earth. It's easy to get caught up in so many global problems

that are out there that it feels like the day-to-day sometimes doesn't matter as much. And I think service is one of those pathways out of that. and I think we need more of it as a humanity. Yeah, I agree. It just feels really good. It's amazing how you can do something really small. I mean, it doesn't even have to be buying anything for anybody.

But just like looking someone in the eyes and actually like connecting with them and just like being kind. Like when we went to the coffee shop earlier and we got into that whole exchange with the table, the table thought that I looked like one of their great friends with the mask on. And so I went over and I just kind of like wrapped with them for a minute. It was like a nice little exchange. But I was actually looking at them and I was like actually connecting with them and we were all having like real smiles and I don't know,

every day's an adventure man. You gotta throw your hands up. One of my favorite, for lack of a better term, I'm just gonna call it hack, is that when I notice the need for my arm to sort of reach for my phone

because I'm bored, I'll try just at least a couple times in the week, right? I'm going to reach for social media. I'm going to post stuff. I'm going to, you know, doom scroll and all that stuff. But at least a couple times a week, I'll try to catch myself. And I'll say, okay, I'm not going to go to the apps, the social apps.

Instead, I'm going to go to my contacts. I'm going to randomly just throw my thumb and scroll through my contacts. And then let me stop on a page. Oh, that's awesome. And just whoever not talked to in a while. Yeah, that's great. And I'll just send a little voice note. Yeah, totally.

Hey, brother. You know, hey, I was just thinking about you. Right. How many times... It doesn't matter, by the way, that you weren't until you were. Until you are. Yeah, you are. You know.

It literally is that. You're prompting the facilitation of prompting a gratitude for that person, that memory of whatever it is. And you're acknowledging them. We're just acknowledging the shared experience of being on this planet flying through space at hundreds of thousands of miles. And we just take a little moment to acknowledge it. And I can remember a few times, you know, friends have done that with me because I do that with them.

Right. It just feels so good to step into that recognition and that reminder that there's all people that are out there that are thinking about me, that have my back. And a lot of the work and studies in the space of trauma and like the work on the ACEs study,

I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's basically a big study that was done around adverse childhood experiences. Basically saying that people, kids, that experienced really bad childhood experience, adverse childhood experiences like a parent who was an alcoholic, facing racism at a young age, you know, and being bullied a lot, all the stuff,

you know, going through the foster system, which is one of the highest, you know, scoring items, that those kids, even as adults, if they don't have that same trauma, if they haven't figured out a way to give that trauma a sense of context in their life or they haven't been shown the tools to, to mitigate that trauma and mitigate their nervous system

and self-soothe, that even if they're no longer in that trauma, later on in life, they're more likely to develop a chronic disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, other stuff, in addition to being more likely to suffer from addiction and other things like that. Well, one of the pieces around giving context for trauma is creating a meaningful tribe around you that helps you place your past experiences

into context of who you are today. And you can get that through a therapist. You can also get that through deep and meaningful soul friendships. People that look back and say, you know what? I can't imagine what that was like when you were young. And I just want to say, thank you for sharing and opening up about it. Not giving any advice, not telling you what to do with it now. Just being there to receive and hear you, that contextualizes that trauma.

And there's a piece where we forget who's around us and how much. support we have in life, especially in this day and age where we're sort of driven to more individual isolation and not, you know, seeing each other more frequently. My wife told me the other day that, by the way, we'll just see how many times we can each say that. My wife told me the other day that there's some sort of like root word for passion that means like to suffer or something, like to suffer for something, which actually makes a lot of sense. You know, look it up, make sure that I actually am telling the truth. But for the sake of this conversation, it's perfect context.

So let's just say that that's the truth and that passion is something that you're willing to suffer for. Then it would make sense that compassion is just being with someone else's suffering. You don't have to take it away, you don't have to change it, you can just be with them. You know, and that's often enough

to help at least start the process of alchemy, which is really just release into transformation. Separate from your partner. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you get that in your life? And how does this show up? What specifically?

The idea of people being able to provide compassion towards you and being a muse or just a sounding board to just hear you out. How does that show up? Do you have any sort of, yeah, just curious about that? Well, based on what we were talking about earlier, like it would be more difficult for me to receive. Much easier for me to give. for me to get outside of my comfort zone, I have to be able to receive without thinking that there are any strings attached

from the receiving. That's just because of my history, right? So I think I do get that in many places in my life, but I don't seek it out. I think I have a very small circle in terms of like compassionate counsel. And I also am very aware that I want to be honest and authentic with myself about what I'm going through, but I don't want to play this old victimy record that I have in my head.

I mean, everybody has a certain record that is playing, and then they take it off, and they're like, I don't want to listen to that. And then it starts to play again, and then they dance even when they hate the music. So I don't like that record, but I also know that I can't fight against it or it creates more and I can't kill it. I have to integrate it and welcome it into my life. So I'm saying that to say I don't often talk about the things that I'm going through from that standpoint because I don't want to give it power. But I do do that with my partner. You know, I do do that with close friends.

And I also have just like different modalities from meditation or, you know, breathing work that I do or inner child work just things to try to be compassionate to myself. Because ultimately I think that's where it all starts is loving the parts of yourself that you don't like and like really truly celebrating them so that they can walk. with you in life rather than behind you. No, you mentioned your partner, we both use a word wife a couple of times, and in the context of this being a pretty big year for both of us, we both got married. And there's a poem that I was listening to your podcast in preparation of everything we're going through. And I was like, I don't think I saw this in the book.

And I realized I think it was a more recent. It was a more recent poem. Yeah. And there's so many layers to this poem to the self, to the, I'm not going to go into my direct I'm going to ask you if it's okay. I would love you to read it. It's called What is Love? Yes, but interestingly enough,

I'll tell you that that poem is not necessarily about romantic love at all. And it wasn't written specifically with my wife or our relationship in mind. I did a project last year with Northwell Health, and they took a poem from the book called Superpowers, and they animated to it, and they turned it into a commercial. and the commercial was supposed to be a tribute to the doctors and the nurses who were the real superheroes during this period of time, and they played it all around New York.

And as we were creating the project, there was an agency that was in between that was working on everything and trying to get the creative locked in. And we were on a call. And one of the guys was like, hey, you know, can I ask you something? And I said, yeah. And he said, the end of the poem is Save the Day with Love. and he said, would you be open to possibly changing the last word? Because I think, you know, with everything that everyone's going through right now, I think love might be a little bit of a soft way to end it.

And we want something that's more powerful. And I thought about it and I was like, well, no, I'm not going to change the last word. And I said, firstly, I'm not going to change it because the poem already exists. And it is what it is. But secondly, I'm not going to change it because, I don't view love is soft. I was like I view love is hard. And I said life is hard.

And to love through life means you have to love harder. And they said, okay, we said our goodbyes. The project came out. But I hung up the phone and I literally started writing this piece. So I'm happy to do it with you and for you, but it's not specifically about romantic love. And that's also why I felt like the prompt

was perfect for now because we were just also talking about loving the parts of you that we all find sometimes hard to love but are essential in the growth and understanding of who we are as human beings. And then there's the externality of that

which is what does it look like when we love everybody else that's out there even when people have difference of ideas, opinions, context. Because to the self is to the external and to the external is to the self. It's all meshed in. So I thought it would be a perfect poem for the context.

And thank you. I love the background story, you know, that you get a chance to go into. And I've seen you perform so many times. I've been to your live show, other stuff. I love to hear that background story. I literally think, like, when I was listening to your podcast, I was like, he should do. Everybody has an opinion of what somebody else should do. I love it.

Bring it on, bro. But take it as my excitement around your material. I would listen to the same poem every weekday with your, different interpretation of it afterwards. So literally Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you know, every weekday, it's the same poem. But now you take me down a different path. Sure.

It's kind of like some of the greatest teachers that I've had in personal development and finances and other stuff. Like, have you ever heard this guy, Dave Ramsey? He is a really big guy in the South, but he has a radio show that's all about personal finance. It's called The Dave Ramsey Show. Okay.

And maybe different political views and other things like that. And he's very identifies as like an evangelical Christian and everything. And I just appreciate that that's, you know, he is who he is. And that may not be my background or view of the world, but I've used his personal finance since like I was in college. And every day for the last 20 years, he's had a three-hour show every single day. Wow. where he literally answers the same questions again and again from callers who come in because

first of all there's so many people that are struggling with their finances totally but with every aspect of life and people need help and they can't we can't hear when you're into something you can't hear the message enough to help you through right so when you're going through a limited viewpoint where you think it's the other that's the problem the other political side or your partner, if they could finally change and get their act together, then everything would be okay. Or your parent or your other component or that. Anytime you've given your power to the external world,

you need that support on a regular base. So I remember just listening to that. And I was like, every day I could listen to a different interpretation that you had on your poetry and find value on it. So just hear that as endorsement on not just the poetry, but your own director's cut of what the poetry means for people. Well, I appreciate that, man. Thank you very much for something.

I think repetition is certainly important in terms of learning something. And then interpretation is interesting. Usually I actually wouldn't even mention where a poem would come from before doing it because I wouldn't want to define people's experience of it. You know, like, I almost, like, people will ask me often, like, what is my meaning on something? And I'll give it to them with the caveat that oftentimes my meaning, meaning changes over time because I change over time and my relationship to the poem or a specific line changes. That's why like even in the book, like I don't consider these poems dead. They're still

alive. They are alive for the other people that read them. But they're also alive for me because I'm performing them all the time. They're living, breathing documents. And if I feel like, I don't agree with this anymore, I'll change it. I'll edit it out. They're not stagnant. They're continuing to discover themselves. And so anyway, so I don't like to confine the audience to my interpretation of it. I like to have them have their own interpretation, even if it's wrong. Like I did a show the other day and someone came up to me afterwards and she was like,

I love this line that you said. And she like quoted the line back to me and it was the wrong. back to me and it was the wrong line. And I said, what does that mean to you? And she gave her interpretation. It was the wrong line and it was not what my interpretation was. But I literally was like, that's what she needed to hear. That was perfect for her. So really, I'm just like, you know, using the art form as a mirror for people to see themselves. Sometimes I like to even confuse people into their hearts, you know, with with the words. I think that's beautiful.

And what it makes me feel is like they're all, all interpretations and even the question that you sometimes ask at the end of an episode, they're all prompts. Right. They're all prompts for you to go inward. Right. And sometimes, especially when we're in the awe of art, the mind in a beautiful way is kind of still. Yeah.

It's like watching a lava lamp. It's just a little bit of floating, a little bit of existence, a little bit of just stillness in the awe of what's, like watching a lava lamp. of what's created, not just from the artist, but the recognition of this beauty that is just in front of you and all the layers that are there. Like just the recognition of it all.

And I also find that with some of the... You haven't done them with all the poems that you've covered in your podcast. We've done it with a couple of them where you share sort of some of the potential meaning. I just see it as a different hat. It's like, hey, try on this hat. Right, exactly.

And see what you think about that, right? I'm not saying it's the right hat. I'm not saying it's the wrong hat. I'm not saying it's the hat. That's right from you. I'm not even saying that you fucking like hats. Right. But it's just a hat to try on.

And I find that very helpful for folks, including myself, who are stepping into questions and practicing inquiry, which I know is your ultimate goal on the journey that you want to take people down. Well, I'll ask you what your interpretation is after the poem. Yes. And we'll take it from there. Perfect. Let's do it. Love is nice. Love is hard. Love is not smooth. Love is scarred. Love is not perfect. Love is flawed. Love is not quiet. Love is loud. Love is not pride. Love is proud. Love is not certain. Love is doubt. But love is not leaving. Love's turning around. Love's learning to fight.

for the middle ground. Love is not gentle. Love is rough. Love is not fragile. Love is tough. Love is not thinking that love is enough. So I choose to love you harder from the moment I wake up. Love is a revolutionary act.

Love is an attack. Love is not abstract. Love is a fact. when you want to say no. Love is saying stay when you want to say go. Love is staying high even when you get low. Love is going with the flow holding on and letting go because love is not easy. Love is complex.

Love is not right or wrong. Love is context. Love is not black or white. Love is progress because love is not a product. Love is a process. So in the simple moments, when the chaos fades away, in the silence of the evening or the empty of your day, you'll remember what it feels like to give your heart away and think how lucky you have been to get to love someone this way and how lucky you still are to get to love someone this way. It's a miracle to be alive. That's why I have to say, love is not a guarantee.

It will come and it will leave. It relies on your belief. So it will bring you to your knees. Love is weak. Love is lost. Love is grief. Love is lost. Love is risk.

Love is real. But love is worth the pain we feel. And I won't let the fear of losing you limit how I'm loving you. I'm going to love you harder. It's a miracle to be hugging you. I'm going to love you harder more than ever before. I'm at peace with knowing love is war. That's what I'm fighting for.

So love harder. First yourself, then your family. Your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors, and your community. Then try to love a stranger. Try to tap into your empathy. Imagine that you've known them and protected them since infancy. Now try to love the people that you don't love at all. Even people that you hate, they probably need it most of all.

And if you can't love them big, see if you can love them small. See if you can hold compassion for the assholes that they are. Because love is not soft. Love is hard. Love is scarred. Love is flawed. Love is loud. Love is proud.

Love is doubt. And since love is most important when we do not know how, I will choose to love you harder in the never ending now. Beautiful, brother. Thanks, man. Awesome. I'm sure you see it. But it's just nice to take a little moment after you share at the events or if you've done this on interviews, which I know you have.

You were on Dr. Hyman's podcast, mine before, other people's. It's just nice to bask in the awe of just all the things that come up when you hear a beautiful piece like that. Or what does it bring up for you? And, you know, sometimes, like, words are so limiting. Yeah. And then there's the feeling. The feeling is the mixture of all the emotions and the recognition of it at every different

layer and dimension that it is. and when you feel stuff, you feel all of it at the same time. And then sometimes one is magnified and then the other and then this towards the self, towards your partner, towards your family,

towards the world, towards the people that you feel wronged by in life, towards the people that you've wronged in life or feel that you've wronged. So that's like the feeling component. It's kind of all those things pulsating like a heartbeat, you know, with different ones getting more attention

at different times. And if I would translate it into words, which I guess I just did, some of the things that come up for me, especially are so much of the external struggles with love, however that might be defined, just love outside of you, whether it's directed towards a partner, dating, anything like that, or whether it's towards loving the other side, tribalism, people firmly on one side or another, really ultimately comes back to that perception of how we see love in the context of ourselves. Yeah.

And fundamentally, if that relationship with ourselves doesn't have that understanding of duality, that we both can be kind and tough with ourselves and understanding and also, you know, not understanding with ourselves, but just the whole mixture of it all, if we can't be that with ourselves, it's going to be very hard to give that to other people. A hundred percent. That's what comes up for me. Like you can't trust the world. until you trust yourself.

People like to oversimplify something because it allows them to have some certainty in an uncertain world. But really, context is life. Like the middle ground is life. And if you can just kind of, you know, moonwalk on the razor's edge, you're going to have an easier time

than trying to split the difference. We all have glasses that we look at the world with. And I think that when we become aware of our awareness, there's a sense of like, do these set of glasses that I have, which are a byproduct of the information that I take in, my upbringing, the pain body of my parents, the people around me,

generational trauma that might be there. There's a lot of things that go into the different types of glasses that we have. but then there's the awareness that's in between us and the space of the glasses. So then we temporarily put it down and when I think you had a line in there

that said love's context. And I think that's having the awareness which also takes a little bit of courage to ask ourselves, do these glasses that I'm wearing right now, are they in the best service of what's maybe needed in this moment?

Do I need to, to look at my partner through these set of glasses right now? Or can I take them off and just not use any glasses in the moment? Yeah, I mean, I did a pretty like intense medicine journey relatively recent. And just for context, let's use that word. I'll tell you what I took. It was like guided with someone. But it was, you know, two hits of MDMA.

And then I took six grams of mushrooms, which is a lot of fucking mushrooms. I think like four grams is considered like a hero's journey. Right? Yeah. So I was really, really high and then I smoked DMT. This was like a 12 hour period. And at one point, and there was lots of different journeys within the journey, but at one point, I literally did not know who I was anymore. Like I remember asking myself the question of what is your name?

and I could not answer. I didn't have any sense of my identity. But when I came down, I started to think about who was asking that? Because I didn't have an identity. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what my name was, where I was from. But some part of me was asking the question. So what was that?

All of these different glasses, man, are like, you know, programs. Some of them were given to us. Some of them were created because of our experiences. Some of them were conscious to. Some of them were unconscious to. But you can always take them off. You can always try on something else if you don't take them so seriously. You know, if you remember that they're just glasses or programs.

For me, one of the things that was super interesting is when I finally came down, it was like a rough landing. Like when my identity, like, came back. into itself, I could hear the difference in my mind between the lyrics and the tune. You know, like some songs, like, the friend songs, like the perfect example, like during the pandemic, like my wife and I, because she loves friends. You know, she had a complicated childhood, and she loves watching things that just make her feel good. It was just familiar when she was young. That's what she did. She watched the same stuff over and over again. So I literally watched 10 seasons of friends, bro. Like, you know, and she likes

listening to the beginning, the song. She never wants to, so she starts singing it and then we sing it together. You know, it's like corny and fun. Yeah. And so as a lyricist, I've like literally remembered all the words, you know, no one told you life's going to be this way. Jabs, joke, you broke, your love life's the away. It's like you're always stuck in second gear when it hasn't been your day, week, your month, or even your year, but I'll be there for you. Yeah, I'm doing this.

When the rain starts to pour, I'll be there for you. Like I've been there before, I'll be there for you, because you're there for me too. You know, that. But then I started thinking about the lyrics on their own, you know, because I just drive around. I think about, so I'm literally like, these are the lyrics as a poem, okay? See, no one told you life was going to be this way.

Your job's a joke. You're broke. Your love life's D-O-A. Dead on arrival. It's like you're always stuck in second gear. When it hasn't been your day, week, your month or even your year. But I'll be there for you.

When the rain starts to pour, I'll be there for you like I've been there before. I'll be there for you. Because you're there for me too. So there's a difference between the tune and the content. So when my identity came back in, I could hear the difference, bro. And that was deep for me.

That was a really, really great experience. And it's enlightened my life in many ways. I mean, just even you reading it like that, just even the first lyrics, words that you read from the Friends theme song, it just hits you in a different way. Yeah. I wrote this piece afterwards. I'll share it with you.

It's very personal though. But, you know, I had a friend, or we weren't close, but this guy that I knew, you know, that just recently passed from high school. I don't know any of the details or anything like that, but I found out two days ago. And like I feel heartbroken for his family. But I also just thought, you know,

we just think we're going to be here forever, everybody, you know. and we really don't know so anyway I feel like I should just do whatever is most present and most vulnerable I gotta find this piece

okay this is what I wrote after the trip ended when I met my inner child I told him I'm not trying to change you I'm trying to liberate you he didn't believe me so I held the space for as long as it took

he was angry that I hadn't shown up sooner he raged around the room and screamed at me to leave he threw punches that went through me he forged weapons out of his imagination and killed me a thousand times before he realized I wouldn't die look at how strong you are I said You protected us for all of these years, but there is nothing to defend anymore. Beautiful.

Got to take off the glasses, man. You know, first of all, my condolences for your friend. Yeah, it's not my tragedy because we weren't close, but, you know, the point is, is we're under this illusion that we're going to be here forever. and that we will always have time. And we don't have time. Time has us. And time always wins. But within this never-ending now, like I was saying earlier,

it's infinite possibilities. You know, in order for us to be alive, we were literally in a race against, what, 350 to 400 million sperm. And we fucking won. You know, but we have the nerve to walk around like we're mistakes. We're miracles. We're miracles.

And in the past, with especially a lot of our more ancient traditions or lineages that we all are from, because life was, you know, kind of tough. You have to fetch your water, food, war, famine, infant mortality, right? Being one of the biggest ones. When people talk about people, the average age was 40 years old that they lived to, it's mostly because we had so much death and childbirth. And oftentimes, there was women themselves too. And then when somebody died or somebody was old or they were sick,

they're in your community. You see them. They're your grandparents in your home. It's the body that is trying to survive that's in front of you. And there's no distance or separation between this reminder that life is big and it's also short. There's so much there. There's so much richness and so many things that we get a chance to do. But those reminders from just the constant living, which naturally, as humans have done,

in our best intention, we've kind of minimized those reminders. and some of that as a byproduct of just, again, well-intentioned things. You know, parents want their own life. They don't want to live with their kids anymore, even if the kids would want them, you know, to be under their roof. They want to do their own thing. And people don't want to be a burden, so they'll put themselves in the nursing home and whatever might be. But in India, I remember my dad saying, and in Kenya, where I was born, people still, this is like within his generation, they would pass away. And when they passed away, you would carry their body.

paraded through the streets and the whole entire village would go to the, you know, just outside the village a little bit more rural and in my culture, cremation is a,

primarily, you know, there's no bearing in India, really. And everybody would sit there and there and there and something that existed is now returned back to the ashes. And there's just that sense of in a way now through hearing this story about your friend if you are in a place where

you're taking care of somebody who's older and you're in the hospital at the same time we're not really around a lot of that we're not really around a lot of those reminders that are there and so it's easy to forget it's easy to forget and to think that we will live forever so in a way we almost have to feel like I think like we have to meditate on it or give it a little of attention. Otherwise, we end up giving attention to things that absolutely don't matter proportionately. We give energy to our problems that don't really exist in the context of this reminder that we're going to die. Yeah, I mean, ask yourself the question, who would you be without your problems? It's actually a really deep question because for many people,

their problems are their identity. So who would you be if your problems weren't your purpose? You know, what would interest you? I've been to Varanasi and I've seen the cremations. I've been on the Ganges and watched and it was one of the most beautiful

and powerful and ugly and scary and inspiring experiences of my life to watch how much belief to feel the energy of I don't even know how many years have they been cremating in that one spot in Varanasi I mean at least I mean you have where the Buddha gave his first lecture right in that town of Varanasi yeah I mean that's like 5,000 6,000 years ago yeah so think about all of that collective, energetic history, the power of all of that combined belief. Yeah, it was something that really stayed with me.

I mean, being alive is the coolest fucking thing in the universe. Think about anything else you could be in the universe. Being alive is cooler. You know? if I had a minute left to live and I knew it for some reason like I knew a bomb was going to come down and I couldn't call my wife I would just sit there and I would breathe and I would look around I would feel the weight of my body and I'd like really like

see the vibrancy of all of these like colors and shapes I'd experience being separate you know the wind on my skin the taste in my mouth the smell being alive is the coolest thing in the universe and we just take it for granted all of the time

and as you said we waste our energy on the silliest of things, me included. Then I catch myself and I go, I don't want to listen to that record anymore. It's like life is you wake up, you fall asleep, you wake up, you fall asleep, you wake up, you fall asleep. But hopefully on a long enough timeline, if you're working towards incremental and accumulative growth, you start to like wake up longer. you know and when you fall asleep it's only a quick catnap you know eventually i'd like to just be awake before i really fall asleep for me it feels like meditation is one step into practicing that presence because you get that component of like this is this is it this is the now

This is what's here. And if we don't have those reminders, it's too easy for the inertia of life, even if you're a well-intentioned, positive human being and all the things that come along with that, the inertia and the momentum of life will trick you into thinking that there's a future and then there's a past

and there's all this stuff that's there and we live most of our lives in the future and past. And we just need that reminder to bring us back to this moment and just see. Just to see, it's a palate cleanse. When I was really high, I had this image of a spiral staircase in a circle. And I was like, that image represented life to me. We think we're going up or down.

But we're really just, you know, moving in a circle in a circle, in a circle. And how fun is that? You know, if you think about consciousness, you know, higher, lower, and you think about like, I have to get somewhere. And once I get somewhere, everything will make sense or I'll be happy or whatever. It's just never an arrival point. It's a never-ending journey. The journey, the journey. journey is the destination. But the culture has reflected back to us that there is an arrival point, that we have to buy something, achieve something, you know, be with someone that at that point, we will feel full. But it's just a bunch of empty calories ultimately. Only you really know

what it is that lights you up. And a lot of the stuff that's out here, the over-consumerism, the over-consumption, is ways that distract you from your true voice. Like, the purpose of my life is the expression of my life.

I was watching Dune the other night, and the guy was like, you know, it was like a point where, One of the guys goes, something to the effect of life is not meant to be understood. It's meant to be experienced. And I was like, yes, exactly. The purpose of my life is the expression of my life. And the expression of my life is right now.

I don't want to be so, like, concerned of not knowing that I'm always in fight or flight. I want to be actually, like, curious about not knowing, like, not need to control. every moment. But it's a process, you know, and I'm like taking off my disguises one at a time, you know, noticing when I change, and just trying to connect to who and where I am. I love that term.

It's a process because it's a process and it's a practice and we're all practicing it right now. For sure. We're doing the best that we can. And I think that if the person who's listening or watching this today, can step into truly you literally are doing the best you can with where you're at. Yeah. That doesn't mean that we haven't messed up. That doesn't mean that there aren't

aspects of our life that we want to be better or to look different, but some recognition of we genuinely are doing the best that we can. And actually, when we stop beating ourselves up, we stop giving so much power to these external things that are either promising to fix us, cure us, tell us why we are the way that we are. And it's so much easier to move forward from there. But when we're stuck in beating ourselves up because we don't feel worthy,

we don't feel good enough, which all comes back to all the childhood stuff we've all gone through, right. It's very hard to make progress and even when our life looks better even when things improve, we can't really fully take it in. We don't even notice it.

We're living in delusions often. You know, I mean, I like to assume that everything happens at the right time, even if it's the wrong thing, which is not something that I understand, but it is, like I said earlier, something I tried to experience. And in that way, I can try to plug into the reality of what's happening rather than my projection of what's happening. That old record that is constantly playing, everyone has, you know, a different song, right? but it's so powerful it's like that siren song that continues to draw us back into whatever that

stuff is and then as you said even if our life changes and there's actually like all these blessings around us we don't notice it because it's not what we're focused on or we see some distorted image in the mirror that's not actually us yeah you got to be your own best friend you have to try to be as kind to yourself as you would to the person that you love the most nobody is going to live your life for you which means nobody's going to experience the blessings for you and nobody's going to be miserable for you you know it's it's only you when you were reading that poem what is love a little earlier one of the other things that came to I had an influential person in my life was a monk from the Jane tradition,

which is this tradition that's from my mom's side in India. And he was a Jane monk who left the path because he was really inspired by Gandhi's story of nonviolence and action. And he got an invitation to teach at Harvard's Divinity School of Divinity. So he left. And at the time in India, he's since passed away. His name is Guru Dev Chituronoggi. He's passed away about five, six years ago at the age of 93. He lived an incredible life.

But at that time when he was invited, Jane monks weren't allowed to travel over water. They weren't allowed to travel. And there was this fear that they would succumb to the temptations of the Western society. So that they would get interested in women, that they might start eating meat or other stuff. So it wasn't the water. Yeah. It was the land. Got it.

Exactly. So they had to walk everywhere. They wanted to go anywhere. They had to walk, literally. But he was invited. He said, you know, this message is important of meditation, nonviolence, other stuff, so he accepted that. And he also left the tradition, you know, behind, kept the practices but got married and everything else.

And in his lectures, which he's done a ton of them, I'll link to some of them in the show notes for anybody that want to check them out. You know, people would ask him like, why did you decide to get married, right? after being a monk, you decided to, you know, then marry and start a householder's life and have kids and everything. And if anybody's heard that sort of famous Ram Dass quote, you know, you think you're so enlightened, go spend a weekend with your family.

Yeah. Right? When you're solo and you're doing it all on your own and you're a monk and you're just going village to village to village, you're not responsible for anybody or anything like that, there's only so much practice that you have. And when you are, are living the life of a householder, getting married as you and I did,

and interacting with another person, building a company, speaking, interacting, creating something, volunteering, being a part of a church community, creating something with other individuals. Now you can actually see, are all your theories, what do they look like in the real world? And how do you have to practice them and understand

and see blind spots and shadow parts of you that you may have not known when you're just sitting in a room by yourself, and it's just you and your own thoughts. And you can justify and self-grandiose and all these different things. So I'm curious for you. It's early for you and it's early for me.

By no means are we talking in the context of people who have been there. But I think that one advantage for I turn 40 next year, and I think for, you know, you're also in that same age range too. Getting married later in life. It's not like we haven't had relationships. It's not like we haven't lived life. But there's a wisdom that you get a chance to bring to it. But nothing.

beats actual practice. Yes, that's absolutely true. And that's one of the takeaways that I had from that poem, what is love, is that one of the best ways to learn is to actually practice with another human being. A thousand percent. Because it's the difference where we were talking about earlier between like trying to conceptualize your life and experiencing it. Now, as a poet, a lot of what I do is conceptualizing what.

what I've experienced. But I also know that even in doing that, it's never gonna be the truth. You know, it's just gonna be an angle of the truth at that moment. Because practice, actual experience is the truth. That is the truth. The description of the truth is inherently not the truth.

But boy, I'm glad that we have these words that I can use to try to describe it. I mean, imagine life without language or storytelling. But really, I just said all of that to say that I can relate, you know, even in like shows for me, like when I'm performing, it's very different, like when I'm practicing in my room in terms of what I learn about my art from when actually doing it to an audience. There's only so much I can do in my room, you know? But the most that I learned is when I'm actually like with people, like in the moment sharing it, having that sharing reflected back to me.

In terms of what you were talking about for romance, I'm so happy that I waited. I literally feel like I'm on cloud. nine not trying to say that everything is perfect because i don't want to like put that out there for people either i'm not trying to be like oh it's a perfect relationship and we never have issues or anything like that i'm not saying that um and i'm not selling a fairy tale to anybody but i'm with my fucking best friend you know i am so connected to this person and i don't think that we could have met at any other time

I just wouldn't have been ready. And a lot of my previous relationships, I mean, they were so valuable, and I have so much respect and gratitude and appreciation, you know, for those women and our relationships. But, like, I just kind of, like, look back now. And I'm like, a lot of the relationships that I had, at least at the beginning, you know, when you're falling in love, you like you ever see two people that like are like out at a restaurant or something and they're like

you know in love or whatever and you're looking at them and they have the spiralized thing but they're not really like seeing each other they're like almost seeing this like projection bubble in the center it's like you know you'll meet somebody and you're like dating and you like want to have a serious relationship and so you take like you know three or four connection points that are real like oh they're beautiful you know they're intelligent they like Seinfeld and Kendrick Lamar and you know whatever these these things are and then you fill them in with the rest and the rest is that projection and then you fall in love with this projection and then time goes by and they don't live up to the projection and then you resent them for your

unexpressed expectations you know and that's when the relationship starts to fall apart i was at a place when i met my wife where for whatever reason neither one of us did that and by the time we decided to take it seriously we were seeing each other and so we started to build on a solid foundation and um you know i uh very very happy that that i waited as long as i did and i did and i'm very very happy that that I waited as long as I did. When we had our first date, she asked me basically like, you don't have any kids? I said no.

She goes, you've never been married. I said no. And she was like, how old are you? I told her. She goes, what's wrong with you? And I literally refused to answer. I was like, and the reason I refused to answer is because I had kind of been asking myself the same question.

And so I went, I don't feel like answering. And then it got kind of awkward. And the date ended, not soon after like it was like 10 15 minutes after that and we left and both of us kind of thought that that was going to be the last time we saw each other even though we had a great date we just didn't like see much of a future i guess at that point and um and luckily i got another date so when i finally asked her to marry me in the poem that i created to ask her i answered the question it was that on our first date you asked me why i hadn't settled down

I refuse to give an answer, but I have your answer now. I was always waiting for you. You're the reason that you asked. And so, like I said, there isn't another time and there isn't another person. And I know that I'm choosing her every day and she's choosing me every day, but I'm so grateful that I get to make that choice. As a couple, are there any sorts of things? like I'm sure when you were single, right, before her, like meaning not married, there's rituals, there's traditions, there's other stuff that you just have in your life that helps you be who you

are and those have evolved over a period of time. Any of those that you've brought into or that you guys create your new rituals together that has been helpful to be that reminder, to be that reminder of that container. Is there any gratitude stuff? Is there any, you know, we're going to walk together. And listen, you don't have to answer this question. I'm just curious, actually, just out of genuine curiosity. Do you have one that you're thinking about from your relationship that you could give as an example and then maybe I could bounce off that?

Yeah, for sure. So me and my wife will do at some point. Sometimes it happens at like an evening, like we call it like three things. Like just three simple things we're grateful for in the day. Or we have a weekly planning session, right, where we just talk about like the practicality of lives and two people who are entrepreneurs with big families and having to be in a lot of different locations. And we'll sit there and we'll say, okay, before we go into what the rest of the world wants

from us, we answer basically like three questions that came from this gratitude practice that I've taught on the podcast before. What's something that we, what's something that somebody did for us in the last couple weeks or in the last couple days, no matter how big or small. What's something that somebody did for us? Just anything, out of gratitude, out of anything like that, something that somebody did for us.

What's something tough that we went through? That we came out on the other end of it, no matter how big or small, that we're grateful for. Just something tough, whatever was. Maybe a difficult interview, something you didn't think that was going to go that well, whatever.

And the last one is just what's something that we did for? for somebody else, no matter how big or small. So just a prompt, nothing fancy, and there's weeks where we miss it, and then we get back on track the next week, but it's a reminder for us of just a sense of, let's zoom out for a second.

The other thing I wrote about this on my Instagram is that we, I know I have a lot of projections, and I know that those projections of who the other person should be or shouldn't be or how my relationship should look or not look, I'm trying to catch them. And there's something that I don't even know about.

So we found a really great therapist in LA. It's from the Gottman Institute. And we really resonated with him. And he was the one that kind of took us on a little bit of a premarital with each other. For sure, that's helpful. And really get on the same page about what are we not on the same page about,

but where is that also okay? Right. And where is that not okay? If there are. And we went through a bunch of different aspects of life. Actually, Gottman Institute has this 52 deck of cards. It's called 52 questions before marriage and moving in. Cool.

And we went through them together. You know, it took us a good six months, but we went through them together. So, so the gratitude and at least, you know, monthly is what we're doing right now. We just meet with somebody external, third party, whatever, it's coach, therapist, somebody, to just talk about stuff. And we don't really have a lot to talk about. We've only been together, you know, for about two years. Right. But it's not about that.

It's about for us is just talking in general, hearing each other. How do you argue and bring up stuff in a way that's actually helpful for the relationship? Are we practicing the basics? So those are just our thing. I'm not saying it's right for everybody else. I'm not even saying that it might change in the future is just something that we're doing right now. So those were some things that were important to me that we talked about how do we want to bring that into the context of our relationship to remind us about the bigger picture and also not try to change each other and recognize the individuality that brought us to each other in the first place. I love that. I mean, everything you said is great. We should use some of that stuff. We don't do, we don't have practices like that. I mean, we've definitely gone to therapy before. And that I think was really helpful. I think her and I, we stay on the same page every day. And I don't know if that's something that we ever like expressed to each other as like important in the relationship. But we're both like,

communicators and we had very different paths but um we can really relate to each other's story and we also know that you know there's a difference between the story and who we are now in this moment and so we can kind of like remind each other of that when we're like slipping back into the story. And we each have our own story, and then the relationship winds up having a story, and so you have to continue to, you know, unveil into whatever the new moment is.

And we have a lot of fun together. So I think those are really important to us, is having fun, laughing, you know, allowing ourselves to, to just take off our cool. You know, like the Andre 3000 song, like, I don't know, I think it was on The Love Below.

It was like, take off your cool. Have you heard that song? It's such a great. If I hear the lyrics, I might know it. Oh, it's such a great song, man. But. Is it basically like stop fronting? Yeah, well, just take off your cool, man.

You know, it's like, yes. But, but not only fronting, I mean, because you have to kind of like have some sort of a front to, navigate the world. The world is a wild place, you know. But like all the good stuff, I think, is when you take off you're cool. So I feel like her and I do a great job of that.

And on the other side of that, it's just a lot of fun. And, you know, being there for each other and not judging each other through the difficult times. like really kind of like supporting each other, loving each other unconditionally. Yeah, so I don't know if that answered your question. I guess we don't have any like specific practices. And I think what you said is really actually quite inspiring because I'd love to have a little bit more structure around thinking about gratitude and stuff like that as just a person and also as a couple.

It's so easy for things to happen that are so incredible. and then you just almost forget that they happen. So just putting your attention on them for a moment. You know, there's this idea of like, if I was to give you a gift and you received the gift and you were like, well, this is cool. Thanks, man, but it's not exactly what I wanted. You know, I kind of wanted like wanted this other thing, you know.

But this is really nice that you get this to me. Thank you very much. Well, I might be like, okay, like, I'm not going to give this person another gift. You know what I mean? And I think it's reasonable to assume that the universe is exactly the same way. I don't know that it's reasonable to assume that it has like a consciousness around it or that it has a judgment around it or that it has a decision around it.

But it is reasonable to assume that it has an energy that we're all like kind of vibrating energy and, you know, you tend to match up with whatever the frequency is out there. Like I remember I used to be angry all the time. I used to have like a lot of anger issues in my 20s. And I would like walk into a bar man. And whatever my vibration was at would always match up with the other person who was angry. I would like be looking for it because that's where I was. And so then I would notice it.

And then they would notice that I was noticing it. And then you would just start to have that thing. Now I walk in. I don't even notice when people are upset. I notice when there's a danger. You know, I'm still like aware of shit. But I don't put energy there. It's not where my attention is because it's not where my frequency is.

So this is a long way back to the point of the universe. You know, gratitude is a frequency. It's an energy. The universe gives you something and you don't even pay attention to it. Why would the universe want to give you anything else? So having the attention like you're talking about within the couple especially to like acknowledge where there has been things that you're, grateful for gifts that were given to you by people, by the universe, and saying thank you for that,

that would make the universe say, hey, I want to give you some more. Yeah. I see it in the same way, and it's like gratitude is meditating on the beauty that already surrounds you. It's no different than opening a window in what was seen as a dark room, right? We're in Santa Monica in my little studio here, and it's all curtains all around us. But what if there was the most magical view that was on the other side of this curtain that's behind you or behind me?

And we just opened the window and we say, let's look it out together. What do we see? And I tend to be somebody that needs that structure because I run so fast in life, I overlook it. And there's something beautiful about how even some of your own faults and blind spots, there was a moment where I caught myself early

when we were living together before we were married. And I had realized that that week, I was more negative. Like, I just was picking up, letting small things bother me. And in the background, there was a few things that not even related to my partner, that I was feeling like didn't go the way they were. And it's a whole story about me and life

and what's not working out for me. So I bought into that story. What is that story, by the way? You mind me asking? Oh, yeah. I'm very clear that ultimately all my stories come back to really sort of like two main stories that are there for me as the primary narratives that are there. One is that people don't have my back.

That's number one. And people say, you know, you're such a good friend. You show up for people. You're there. You're connecting other stuff. I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I felt on the opposite and I had a whole story about why

I didn't have that in my life. And I'm thankful for those wounds. I'm thankful for not fitting in when I was younger. For moving around a lot and feeling like I didn't have friends. For moving around a lot and feeling like I hated school. I'm thinking for all those unique experiences, whether it was being bullied or whatever, that led me to have this viewpoint in life

where I think like, how can I make a difference in somebody else's life? Now, when I was younger, I would let the, that turn into people pleasing. Right. And I would so go beyond my boundaries and take on stuff and volunteer and do all these other things that I would drive myself into burnout.

Right. And I burned out a lot when I was young simply because I was trying to get love by people pleasing. Right. And it never, it's like an addict who never gets enough. And that was definitely a big part of my story. So let me put a pin in that because, it's almost like what you were talking about earlier, you know, in terms of your wife got emotional in the giving, you know, because it was a little bit out of her comfort zone to do it for some random person, like, you know, that she had never met in a context that she wasn't used to. And for you, you know, someone not having your back or the community not having your back or whatever is that story.

So it's interesting to create experiences that give you the opportunity to have the opposite in a way that is purposely uncomfortable for you. And in doing that, that's the exercise to rewrite the story and to create specific structure around it. I'm talking to you about your story, but as I'm talking to you about your story, I'm thinking about my own. Like how could I create structure, like an exercise around that for myself, you know? Which goes back to the thing that you opened up with, which is receiving has been challenging. Yes. Right? Yes.

Receiving has been challenging. Same on my end. So what was the other story? Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. Well, actually, a little bit more about that is that to me, receiving, which is a, you know, a sense of sitting in the fact that somebody wants to do something for you, no matter how big or small. Could even be a compliment. Right.

I equated receiving in the past to some sense of being vulnerable and not in a good way. That's the viewpoint that I had. Because if you have a sense of receiving, is that going to be linked to expectation? Is that going to be linked to a sense of you are getting your hopes up and being let down? Which all comes back to pain. Mm-hmm. Avoidance of pain. Avoidance of pain.

Avoidance of pain. multiple situations when I was younger, feeling like I had my hopes up and a pain came from that expectation not being met. Right. And it's amazing how everybody around you can see it, even though sometimes you can't see it. So my whole family and my friends,

my close group of guy friends that I have here, we go hiking most Thursdays in the morning. Hiking is a generous term, you know, could be going to walk or whatever. It's an hour, it's L.A., it's in the morning. You know, we try to get in, whatever we can at the beach or Will Rogers or whatever. And my guy friends know, like, I'm going to be the person that's not going to ask for anything.

So after I got married, you know, they had planned this elaborate sort of gathering to celebrate me and the union of me and my partner. And they were like, we literally have to like be super stealth about this whole thing. Because if he gets a whiff of this happening, he's going to want to. to shut it down or say like no don't worry about it or whatever like let me be involved in the planning of it and they completely surprised me beautiful and it felt good and I've been working on stepping into receiving and just even a compliment just a just something and just sitting there and it's like where is this making me feel uncomfortable and can I just love that part of me

that's there you know I would say that's not even worth going into the other story I would say that's a primary one that's there and that it's needed love and even life and the universe is so beautiful, you'll find a partner that will bring out your shit. Of course. And that's the best growth. That's one of the best growths that's out there is to see those blind spots inside of you

and have somebody who's there that you perceive it as pushing your buttons and yet there's no better partner that the universe could have picked to help you evolve and grow in the direction that you want to. Yeah, because your buttons are always there even when they're not being pushed.

and they are still obstacles to flow. And so what a gift to have someone that you have to walk that walk with together and separate who pushes your button. So you get a chance to figure out ways to self-soothe and integrate. those buttons. Maybe open up all of the closed doors that are inside of us, you know? Curious for you, is there a pattern

that showed up stronger? We all have them. Is there one that you feel comfortable talking about or feel present to that showed up stronger in the context of your relationship? Something that made you look a little bit more inward at something that either you thought

you had made progress on or you didn't think was as much of a, I have a component. Well, because of kind of my history, in all areas, by the way, you know, not only just family stuff, but just in every area, I think that my primary story is that I have to change who I am

in order to be loved, and I have to change who I am in order to love. And those are different things, actually. you know like i have to be a certain person in order to be loved and also the only way that i can love someone is to love them in the way that they need um and that i never will be able to accomplish either one of those things you know so it's like the uh what's that lincoln park song like i you know I try so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter. You know, like that song, unfortunately, resonates with me.

And, you know, we know what happened with the lead singer. So, you know, that song represents a kernel of truth for many people. And for me, there's this inherent. satisfaction that no matter how I try to change myself in order to be loved or to love people, that in the end it'll never be enough, which means that I'll never be enough. But the thing is, life isn't about figuring out who you are. It's about discovering who you are. And so I've been working on that story a lot. It's shown up in the relationship. It's shown up outside of the relationship. It's always shown up in some way. And ultimately, I'm just working on loving myself first

and then loving other people in the way that I want to love them, whether or not they can see it or feel it. And yeah. On a practical level, is there something that you do that is in that context that is the practice of loving yourself for you. Doesn't mean it has to apply to everybody else. Does that show up in anything no matter how big or small, even if it's not something what somebody would say is you practicing loving yourself? It's just contextual to your life and your experiences. I mean, I'd say the writing has been the biggest source of therapy for me in my life. Shout out to your book, by the way. Thank you. You were on the podcast. last time we talked about it, but it's incredible.

You literally made, it's the only time my business partner, Dr. Hyman, has cried on his podcast. I love Dr. Hyman. Is hearing poetry from your work. Yeah. Well, that's a book. That's beautiful, man. That really, like, you know, it's a feather in my cap. I've made a lot of people cry over the years.

I made a Matt Damon cry once. I had a show at Davos in Switzerland, and he was theirs for a water charity. And I did a piece, and he came up to me afterwards. and he was like, man, I was crying while you were performing. And he was so nice. But in my head, I was like, I made Jason Bourne cry. You know, he was an awesome guy. We chatted for a bit.

But I don't know. Yeah, this book was medicine for me to write. I know it's been medicine for people to read. I had this experience recently because I was, I don't know if this is going to answer your question, but it's just something that came to mind right now. I was in New York and I just did the book tour after literally two years. We had people who had tickets for two years to come to the book tour. But this was released March 30th of 2020.

And I mean, it's a very difficult time to try to promote anything. People were literally still getting into fist fights for toilet paper in the supermarket. That was the week that I was trying to be like, buy my poetry book. I love this piece of art. And I was obviously going through my own stuff. So it was a very strange time to have to promote anything, even something that I loved. But people held on to these tickets for that amount of time. And we finally had the New York show.

And this guy came up to me. I'm not going to say his name because, you know, I don't know if he wants the story out there like that. but they had come in from Philly, him and his wife were there. And he kind of like had tears in his eyes and he said, hey man, I've been literally looking to meet you for like whatever it was, 17 years. Wow. Something like that. And so I was like, really like, you know, and he goes, yeah, can I tell you a story?

And I was like, yeah. And so we sat down and he goes, you know, I had to be. I had never met my dad and I was in my early 20s and I watched a video of you doing the poem about your father because my father was never around and I have this piece called Father Time that's in the book but I had also created a video. I was at a small little theater and I shot a video around this piece. We put it out on YouTube. Drew, I remember that it got maybe 2,000 views.

Okay. And by the way, that was part of my victimy record. Because I remember at the time, this piece was about forgiveness, but all of my pieces are either me purging or praying or both. Some pieces are manifestations. They're things that I want to embody, but I'm not yet there. And the piece is a roadmap for me to get there. And so I had recorded this piece, but really at the time I couldn't keep a relationship. You know, I was broke, didn't know how to monetize my poetry.

I had like substance things that were going on at the time. There's a lot of stuff that I wasn't proud about. A lot of darkness. I had insomnia, you know. Anyway, this dude doesn't know any of that. He watches the video that only got the 2,000 views that I went see. Only 2,000 people. You know, I made this video, nothing ever matters, nothing, you know, that fucking voice.

This dude saw it. But he got so inspired, he goes, I'm going to find my dad. So he does research, finds out his dad's in the military, finds out where, flies out there, doesn't tell the guy he's coming, goes to the office, turns out that his father had coincidentally retired the day before. So he's not there anymore. but the guy said maybe he's at this address. He goes to the address, knocks on the door,

guy comes to the door, tells him, are you my dad? No, not the right guy. He goes, I think I know where your dad is, though. Gives him another address. Goes to that address. Knocks on the door. Someone comes, not his dad again,

but gives him a number. This is your dad's number. Calls him. Says, hey, I'm da-da-da-da-da. Are you da-da-da-da? I'm your son. Now, the back story was that the family had had a lot of issues and they were not in contact anymore, right? Mother, father, no contact.

They started a very slow relationship. He said they became friends. And over time, without getting into all the details, the father and the mother remet fell back in love, got married, okay? He shows me a picture of this amazing, vibrant family. You know, he's like his two kids now know their grandfather, his father and mother are in a great, amazing relationship. He's best friends with his dad now, talks to him every single day.

His siblings, they're all there smiling. And he goes, it was all because of the inspiration of your poem. So I, like, connected with them. I gave him a big hug. We took pictures, you know. We are in contact now. We've been emailing back and forth. But, dude, what was so crazy to me is that I thought nothing had happened.

So whenever that piece was, 17 years ago, 16, I don't know, it was a long time ago. I remember going, eh, nobody watched, you know. dance into the music right but just because I thought nothing had happened it didn't mean that it wasn't happening all this time

something that I created that was not something that I could yet embody was something that he embodied before me and he changed something in reality that changed other things in reality for people

that he loves. And it just goes to show you, man, you know, what you say matters to yourself and to other people. You know, the difference between the content and the tune in your head. What you say matters. And you can say something that you think is random to somebody. You can buy someone a croissant. And it can be a seed that you plant in their mind that grows into a tree that you never find out becomes a forest. You know, so poetry has been my biggest therapy personally. And it's not only something that I love to share with other people from what I create, but I love when other people create for themselves. You know, what we were talking about earlier in terms of like writing is hard. Yeah, it can be. Some of the hardest poems for me to create were some of the best poems

for me to create. But also some of the easiest poems for me were some of the best poems. You know, so pay attention. Pay attention to when you're inspired. Pay attention to when you're moved. Pay attention to when you're pissed off and create something with it. You know, it's so much easier to destroy than it is to create. But creating something, To use the gladiator term echoes in eternity. And part of that destruction is also criticism. It's criticism towards the world. It's so much easier to be critical towards the world and ourselves than it is to create.

And criticism also sparks dopamine. It makes you feel good. You think you're accomplishing something. Yeah. But stepping into creation, which is a little bit of the unknown, there's so much joy in that because that goes beyond the critical mind. In that moment, you have to keep open

and allow something to flow through you, which is why I feel like, you know, maybe I got so many people that reached out on our first podcast, including my mother-in-law. Neloo, shout out to Nih-Lu. She listens to this podcast. Okay. Saying that I didn't know I would be into this.

And by this, you know, poetry, spoken word, whatever it might be. But the instantaneous recognition that that art is a reflection of their own art, whatever they do. In her case, she's painting, makes jewelry and other things. In other cases, for people, it's going to be their art is being a great dad.

Yeah, that's right. Being a great mom. Being a good uncle. Somebody's art is showing up at work and doing a good job and enjoying the team they work with and being the one that usually has some positivity to bring to what could be challenging work. It could be the person out there that's building an organization, a business,

trying to create job opportunities for people. That's their art. It's the pastor or the person who's working in their local church or my dad who's involved in his local Hindu temple community in San Diego and just volunteers a little bit here and there and tries to bring people together and sort of his own men's group that walks every day at 7 a.m. Beautiful. It's in my jeans. That's their art. And it's that recognition of seeing somebody's art.

Sometimes it's very explicit like yours that's beautifully put together. And I highly recommend people get the book. It's that reminder of what is your own unique contribution to the world. Yeah. That is above all the noise that's out there and takes us out of the consumption economy into the creation economy. And I think it's really the path forward that we need. I totally agree. I think you did this poem last time, but I just feel like it's so important.

And it wasn't even on my list of notes of poems. I forget the title, but it was about the recognition of what if somebody that you looked up to didn't do the work that they were meant to do? Like what would the world be? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember the whole piece, but I'll tell you the beginning. If there's another one that's in alignment that you feel in the context of the reminder of why we're here and what it means. Yeah, absolutely. But just to give you the context, or not context, but the beginning of that piece, that one is, is, what if Martin Luther King, Jr. was into video games? What if Gandhi wanted to Netflix and chill? What if Einstein was on Prozac?

What if Buddha was too stressed to sit still? What if Mother Teresa counted likes instead of counting hugs? What if Cleopatra was a supermodel who spent her nights in clubs? What if Socrates was a contestant on the Bachelorette? What if Rumi was an advertising? Would we buy his shit? Anyway, so that's, you know, it's like the whole, I don't remember the rest. Even that right there.

And you set up the poem last time. You're like, look, nothing against these things or that or whatever, other stuff. But there's an inherent reminder of why are we uniquely here? And mine is not yours and yours is not somebody else's, but there's a gift that we're all meant to bring to this world in our own container of what that world looks like. It's not have to be somebody in the history book.

It's somebody in our own unique personal journey, our hero's journey, our own history books, our comparison to our own life that's there of what we're drawn to, what makes us excited. I love that idea of your life is your greatest start and that everyone is an artist, everyone is a poet, and how different the world would be be if we all took ownership over that, you know, knowing that every day we are waking up,

our decisions, our brush strokes, you know, in our actions we are creating. And how beautiful and powerful that is. You know, so don't let anyone ever limit your impact, including yourself. you know just even that idea earlier when we were talking about like open closed open closed like of course like people want to you know it's easier to hate than it is to create of course right we know that you know because it's come against something me you know you get that dopamine hit as you were saying and it's easier to close off than it is to open up but to open up to be surprised by life what's going to happen next. Anyway, I have a good piece, I think.

Yes. Okay. Please. Close us out. There is nothing in life that you cannot breathe through except death. And since we're all alive, it means at least there's one breath left. So pull it deep into your chest, into your bones, into your breasts, into your blood, into your neck, into your neck, into. into the mud, into the depth, until it hugs your souls and suffocates the space that you have left,

until it tugs your heartstrings and leaves your molecules caressed. Just a few precious seconds, right before eternal rest, will you fight for your survival from this uninvited guest? Will you rolydex your history to glamorized regrets or set your sights on new arrival and go sprinting up the steps? Me, I'll revel in the wonder of the colors and the shapes. The way the light resembles floating diamonds dancing on the lake. I am nobody's mistake. But my existence wasn't planned. I had to sneak into the party.

They were out of wristbands. Now I'm sinking towards the exit like it's made of quicksand. See, I got used to spinning my wheels but hit the kickstand. I want to truly view. you the world around me while I still can. I want to worship every flower giving prayers over the land. I want to open up my eyes so wide that what I see expands. And the beauty beams so bright, it overwhelms woman and man, forget a portal to the light. I want to scream. I want to fight. I want to eat and love and drink. I want to touch. I want to think. I want to feel and taste and see.

I want to live, I want to be, and I'd give anything but life because I'm dying to be me. I spent half my life trying to be anything but me. Now my afterlife is spying on my new reality, and I'm vying for another breath before it sets me free. I'm defying death with everything because death's defying me. I will rant, I will rave, I will spit, I will rage, I'll go barefoot on the sun or swim a sea of razor blades. I will grow, I will age, I will slow, I will fade. I'll sleep on hot coals or juggle chainsaws and live grenades, and though I know I'll never give up, in the end I'll give way.

I'm sure there's someone else with something more important to say. but until then I'm living each and every fucking day so when I take a breath I do it like I swear I'm here to stay beautiful brother

thanks man thank you for that the book is out there in the world it can find it in the show notes inquire within any couple things you want to say about the book and it's being out there in the world and people consuming it, any additional bonus stuff. I think you've been doing writing workshops as well as an extension off of that.

Just give you an opportunity to talk about anything in your ecosystem. Yeah, I mean, the book is one of the main things, and you can get it, of course, on Amazon or at any retailer. You can also get the audiobook. We were nominated for an audio award. And so that was like a nice little thing. That's beautiful. Because that's people's favorite is when the author

themselves reads it. Is that what it is? It's you reading it? Yeah, it's me reading the poetry. And a lot of people get the book and they love it. And then a lot of people get the audio book and they love it. And then a lot of people get both. And they've been reading them together. I've actually had people reach out and say that they've taken mushroom trips and listen to the whole audio book straight through, which was I imagine pretty overwhelming, but hopefully also inspirational. And yeah. So, That's certainly one thing. We also have like an Amazon special of me doing live at the Ace Theater that's up on Amazon Prime so people can check that out. Yeah, it's a beautiful show. I was there in person. Yeah, man. That was so, so awesome, man. Just thinking back on that. And that, of course, we were

talking about time before the podcast even started and how elastic it is, especially since the pandemic. And man, that feels like 10 years ago. It does. So much has happened. But I love that we captured that. and have that as a memory that people can continue to consume over and over again and whatever time they're in. So that's out there. And then, yeah, I also do public shows. I do corporate shows. I do corporate workshops. I do public workshops.

And I just love being with people and sharing the poetry and asking people to go a bit deeper and asking myself to do the same. Well, it's why when I made a list, I was chatting with my team a few months ago, and they're like, okay, great, we need a next round of people that you want to invite. So what are a bunch of lists of names of new people that you want to bring on the show? And I said, you know what? I want to first before we do that, I really want to take a step back. It's been a couple years now since the podcast. It's been a lot of fun. I have an incredible community. You know, thank you guys all so much for listening. I said, I want to go back to a few people. and I don't even know if they have anything to promote or I don't even know if I have anything set aside that I want to do, but I just know that if I have a conversation with them, it's going to be great. And before I was coming here, you know, I had a few poems that I listed

that I wanted you to perform. But normally I'm sitting down anybody who knows me. I have like a whole list of show notes and other stuff. And I do regularly listen to your podcast, not in preparation of this, but you were at the top of the list of just, he's in L.A., we have this connection. I've seen you perform so many times. Your work means so much to me.

I love your book. I love all of our conversations. I just know just us getting together is going to be a beautiful conversation that's going to add richness and value to people's life and they can eavesdrop on the things that we have to share. So I want to extend that gratitude to you for being the human being that you are.

And I don't know how many years we've known each other now and through the whole world of summit, you know, constantly bringing us together. Yeah. And I just want to say that I appreciate the duality that you bring to life. the expression, the vulnerability, the openness, and for putting your work out there

in a way that constantly has a self-reflection of asking people, would you be of benefit to potentially putting one of your viewpoints of the world down, just momentarily, just trying it for a little bit of time, and how does that feel? Then you get to decide where to go from there. And that's what your work means to me.

I know it means that to a lot of other people. So I just want to honor you and say that I'm grateful for you as a human being and a friend. Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. I felt so uncomfortable receiving all of that. I really did. And, you know, I would just say the same thing back at you, literally, you know, without making you too uncomfortable, ditto. You know, I really value our friendship, and I valued this conversation.

I always love kicking it with you. And I liked showing up without an agenda. You know, I brought my book to propped up over here, because, you know, you know, I brought my book to propped up over here because I have enough material for another book now, but I want to get this one more out in the world before I do that and because I'm so proud of this thing. But I had no agenda. I didn't want to have to move the conversation in any direction.

It was just so fun to not have any parameters and see where we went. Yeah, such a beautiful conversation. Some of my favorites that are out there. Guys, the book is there in the show notes, no agenda, but we would love it If you would buy it, it makes a great gift. Talk about holiday season and overconsumption and other stuff. Give the gift of inquiry. This book is a great gift.

So, Adam, thank you for being on the podcast. Appreciate you, brother. Appreciate you.