Good Life Project - Did You Know Being Humble Can Be a Bad Thing? | Joe Hudson

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Have you felt trapped by self-doubt, negative inner voices, or constant self-improvement? Explore a radically different approach to personal growth with Joe Hudson, Executive Coach & Cofounder of The Art of Accomplishment. Discover powerful practices for embracing all emotions without resistance, holding goals lightly for life's surprising solutions, and redefining authenticity through radical self-discovery.You can find Joe at: Website | The Art of Accomplishment podcast | Emotional Inquiry exercise | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Brené Brown about vulnerability, courage, and leadership transformation. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, from our earliest days, we're taught to be humble. Humility is good, we're told. But what if it wasn't? Or what if humility had its place, but it also came with a potential dark side, one that potentially caused both us and those around us harm? This is one of the rich topics that I explore in today's conversation with Joe Hudson, a co-founder of the Art of Accomplishment, sought after teacher, and a legendary coach to CEOs and top leaders at companies like

OpenAI, Alphabet, Apple, and so many others. Joe has this extraordinary ability to help you see what's been invisible in your life, to break free from self-limiting patterns and live with greater freedom and fulfillment. It's kind of like he's that one friend who sees past the shields, even the ones you don't realize that you put up, then helps you lower them, see what's real, and walk back into a life that feels so much more connected and alive.

In this thought-provoking conversation, we drop into a profoundly liberating perspective on humility and authenticity. One that just might challenge us to let go of the need to think less of ourselves and instead think of ourselves less, fully occupying our place in the world without having to shrink to make others feel comfortable or conform to some dysfunctional norms. Joe also shares some eye-opening insights on allowing and even welcoming difficult emotions without resistance on holding goals lightly to remain open to life's surprising solutions and the transformative shift of self-improvement to radical self-discovery. So excited to share this conversation with you.

I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. It's fun to be hanging out with a new friend. You and I spent some time in the mountains yesterday. Hiking around, really enjoying ourselves. And as we were talking, we were kind of going along and chatting a little bit about what we might chat about today. And you teed up something that's been on your mind for a while now that I know you haven't really shared a whole lot about recently. It's this sort of like thoughts around the notion of humility. And before I try and even describe

what we were diving into, I'm going to turn it over to you because it's not what I expected within the first 30 seconds or so of you speaking. Right. And we're going to dive into this. So take me there. I think the original thought process in humility for people and for me in my experience is humility is thinking less of yourself. And then somewhere along the line, there's this idea that came into my that it's not

thinking less of myself, but it's thinking of myself less. Just literally less thoughts about myself. And now in my journey, what's happening is this phrase was taught to me. And I think it's from the Jewish tradition that humility is, I think the quote is like taking your God given place in the world. And that's been really hitting me deeply right now in my own journey of there's a calling and you follow the calling and if you don't follow

it, that it ends in pain. And if you do follow it, even if it's not particularly the thing that you want to be doing, that it always ends up in some kind of a mess. And so, I think that's a good way to start a conversation. And I think that's a good way to start a conversation. it, that it ends in pain. And if you do follow it, even if it's not particularly the thing that you want to be doing, that it always ends up in some place where you needed to go someplace that other people need you to go needs a, not quite the right word, but something like that.

So, I mean, it says so many curiosity on this one. So when most people think about humility, me included, right? The thing that comes to mind is almost the exact opposite of something like a calling of rising up, um, of saying, I'm here to do this thing. And it's also, I own it. Right. Yeah. Like there's some ownership of the process, the experience and the outcome.

You know, this steps into a place where when most people think of humility, or at least me, I think of the opposite. I think of the pulling back, the, oh, well, you know, it wasn't me, it was something channeling through me, it was everyone who came before me. So it's a bit of a contrarian take on the concept. Yeah, so I think that the reason I said it in the order I did

is because I do think it is a order of operations thing. I think that there's a really important time to recognize that you're not responsible. So for instance, the way we think about ego typically is somebody who's like, I can do anything. That's like big ego, right? You've got a big ego. But the way I think about ego is ego is anything

that you use to define yourself in a limited way. And so a lot of people can take an insult better than they can take a compliment. So you can say to somebody, oh, you didn't do that right there. OK, well, what can I do about it? But if you say, wow, you just changed my life, they're like, yeah, no, that's okay. It wasn't just me.

There's this- I'm raising my hand over here. Yeah. 100%. And if you actually let that through, if you actually let a compliment through and you don't call the other person a liar, which is basically what you're doing

when you're saying, no, no, no, that wasn't, that's not true. If you actually let that all the way through, in our coursework, I see it all the time, is that it dissolves people's ego. It opens up so much energy for their system. But there is a recognition of doing both things. So for instance, this morning I was on a call with some of the people I've been working with for a long time and we were doing this exercise of letting compliments in and we were looking at different ways to block the compliments.

And one of them was deflection. One of the ways to block a compliment was deflection. So somebody gave me the compliment, my job was to deflect. And they're like, your work has changed my life. And my deflection was, it wasn't just me, it was like all the teachers before me. And as soon as he heard that, he saw, oh, that can be both a recognition of something greater than you, which is lovely, but it can also be a deflection. For instance, if I look at any thought that I've ever had, I didn't choose any of them. I never said I'm going to choose to have this thought.

And then I had the thought, yet I call them mine. I don't call them gifts. I don't call them something beyond my control. And the recognition that they are is a really important recognition because it allows you to not be so in control or so responsible. There's also a really important moment where you realize, oh, I have choice. I can control my destiny and I can choose to not have those kinds of thoughts. So both of them are really necessary. The way that I think about it is,

if a hand is always like this, or a hand is always like this. For those who are listening, Joe, just start it with a closed fist and then an open palm. Yeah, both of them, if they're always like that, they're cripple. And so you really want that flexibility. And so there is a way to deflect humility. There's a way to not be humble in the, it was all me, and there's a way of not being humble in the, it really had nothing to do with me.

Because if you actually allow it in, that it does have something to do with you. There's a heartbreak of a love that has to be accepted. There's an ego destruction that has to be allowed if you're gonna really let it in. I mean, it's interesting also, right? Because when you deflect, you're essentially denying the person who might be offering you some praise, some compliment, maybe thanks. You're denying them the feeling

of it landing. And that's a gift for someone. I mean, like Adam Grant talks about this, there's all this research on what's commonly called the giver's glove, right? We actually get a hit when we're generous, when we're kind. Whether we say something, we give something, whatever it may be. When you deflect and you don't allow that to land, it's almost like we're unintentionally doing a little bit of micro-harm to the person who's trying to be kind to us. Yeah. While we were doing this exercise with

the five forms of resisting the compliment right there we had these five forms and While we were doing it. I noticed I wanted to start giving backhanded compliments I wanted to start like not giving compliments Because what's happening? There is like there's people who really want to be seen really want to be appreciated and they're not getting it But every time they get it, they don't let it in. They're deflecting it, so people don't want to continue

to give it to them. And so it's beyond just hurting them, it's hurting yourself, because you're setting up an ecosystem where people aren't going to see you or acknowledge you or give you those compliments. And so it's a double harm that happens. And it makes people a little pissed. Hey, I just gave you a compliment. And you're just spitting on it.

And a gentle spit, but it's a spit. Yeah, I mean, we're wired in such weird ways around this stuff because there's a social code that says, well, we're kind of supposed to answer that way in a way. Like that's, you know, like, and especially in different cultures, you know, Australians, tall poppy syndrome, it changes by culture too. And even family culture, you know, local culture, whatever it may be, it's going to change. And then as you're describing

this and remembering, I think it was Snoop Dogg who was like receiving like maybe a Grammy or something like that. And he got up and maybe it was like MTV music, whatever it may have been. And it's like, I would like to thank me. I mean, it goes through all the readers. Why he wants to thank like his younger self effectively for not giving up, for not listening to this and all this stuff. And it's like the

exact opposite. It's just like, not only am I going to let it land, I'm going to give it to myself and then let it land. But your similar point about there's a difference between having it given to you and receiving it is key. I meditate every morning and towards the very end, I always just do like a little micro version of a meta meditation. Like, yeah, I'll say, yeah. Um, yeah, like maybe a little tease may be safe, maybe healthy. Um, may you feel loved. And the reason I don't say, may you be loved is because you may be loved.

Yeah. But if you're not allowing it to land, it kind of doesn't matter. Yeah, so two things on that. So the first one that hits me is you are being loved. Like if you actually just pay attention, my experience of reality now is that like the whole universe is trying to love me

and waiting for me to let my heart crack open enough to acknowledge that that's what's happening. And when I really look at now working with tens of thousands of people, I can almost boil it all down to so much pain is just the fact that people aren't letting the love in. So that's one aspect. The other aspect that happens is one of the things our mind says if we let in the compliment or if we're letting ourselves be the tall poppy, one of the things

is that we're scared that we're going to use that power to hurt people. And so part of my job is to work with really powerful people. And what I notice is that if a really powerful person hasn't let in the fact that they have done this, that they are powerful, that they are capable, to really actually fully let it in, then they're far more likely to get dangerous. Taking a deeper into that. Yeah.

So, you know, you could take, you know, a famous person who's incredibly rich, really successful and yet they're lying about video games, about like how good they are in video games as an example. So like, what is that? What's going on there? And it's because they're trying to feed a hungry ghost That they're enough that they're capable that they're deserving of love. They're trying to fill that ghost but every time They're fed They're not digesting it. They're chewing it and spitting it out because they're not receiving the compliment. They're not actually acknowledging God's intended place for them.

And so they'll think that it's a better place, maybe to protect themselves, or they'll think they haven't done enough yet. They're still catching up at 40. There's all sorts of ways in which the, you know, the mind plays a game, but all of it is not actually the acknowledgement of this is what's up. This is what's real. I have created a billion dollar business. I am creating a technology that'll change the world and not very many people could do it.

And meanwhile, from the outside looking in, everything is astonishing, but the ghost is getting hungrier and hungrier and hungrier and starving. Exactly. So they have to do more and more to prove to themselves that they're valuable or that they have control or that they have influence. And it becomes incredibly destructive. And it's very, it's hard for a lot of my clients because most clients who want to work with me aren't, you know,

in the part of their cycle where they're saying, you know, I'm not good and I got to drive like da da da. They're in the people saying, no, I got to be really humble to protect not becoming that other person that I see. And then for them to realize, oh, this is part of doing the actual humble thing is to acknowledge it in a way that breaks your heart. And that's the thing is that you can acknowledge it with a deflection. Yeah, I'm a world-class teacher. Nobody can coach as good as me.

Or I am one of the top 1% coaches. And that's all, like the way I'm doing that is deflection. Because I'm not letting it break my heart. I'm not acknowledging that there is also a gift in this that is not within my control. And so it's really both of those two things. It's allowing both the personal and the non-personal and at the same time, which creates real humility. Because if you can dismiss it all, your ghost is still hungry.

If you can't dismiss any of it, if you can't say it is all a gift and I am incredibly fortunate or that life is a dream come true that I never thought possible. Both of those things are necessary for the heartbreak, which is the disintegration of the ego. So take me into the heartbreak side of this. How do we allow it to break our hearts? Yeah.

So first, just, most people resist this idea of heartbreak, like, I don't want my heart. Yeah, you're broken my experiences We run from that experience. We don't want to feel all the time right what we're actually so it's heart Break is heartbreaking open and so what it's it's literally saying Okay, I have to expand my my ability to love has to expand to include this thing Right, I should work out more. I'm chubby My ability to love has to expand to include this thing. Right? I should work out more. I'm chubby. Can I love that?

How much does my heart have to break open to expand to love that, to love both the fact that I'm chubby and also to expand to love the thing that's saying that I'm chubby. And that requires just like a crack in your system to do it. As a matter of fact, I'm sure somebody's listening to that. Like I can't, I can't love that voice. What do you mean? I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this and say like, dude, now you just totally lost me.

Right. Yes. It's like, literally the voice has been in my head and I've been doing everything I can for all the waking hours of my life to try and snuff it out. I've been going to therapy to change its mind. I've been trying to extinguish it because that is the voice of harm

is the way a lot of people experience it. Absolutely. Yeah, and it is. They're not wrong about it. However, that which you resist persists and all of what you just described is resistance and it absolutely, some of it might be necessary actually, because again, this is an order of operations thing.

And I'll go into that in a second, but at the end of the day, yeah, you've been doing all that stuff for 20 years and guess what, it's still there. So you're just doing the crazy thing by repeating something that doesn't work. My experience is that, so I mean, we have this week long thing that we do which is all about changing the negative voice in your head and we get like a standard deviation change and

in the positive direction less negative self-talk and we have looked at lots and lots of exercises and experiments that one can run. My experience is curiosity, far more powerful than management. What makes it say it that way? How does it feel in my system? What's the somatic response? What's its really good intention behind it? What makes it manage me like an idiot?

What makes it manage me good an idiot? What makes it manage me good and sometimes and not good? There's so many questions and to really actually be attuned and listening to it, that's one thing that really helps. At some point, you have to get really angry at it because it's really hard to love something that you feel dominates you or it oppresses you. If you have the feeling that something oppresses you, then it's really hard to learn to love that. But once you realize like, oh, you have choice,

you can dominate and not pay attention to it, then there's this space for love to occur. But the biggest trick is just how you respond to it. I'll give you a simple, we could do this right now if you want, but you, if somebody just closes their eyes and listens to the negative self-talk. And every time it says something that's mean or that, that you wouldn't say to somebody else or that you wouldn't say to somebody you love and your response is

ouch, just sit there, sit there for 20 minutes and just say ouch. Every time it says something and what you'll notice is it just gets quieter and quieter and quieter. Or you can say things like, oh, I see that you're really scared and I'm right here with you. I'm not leaving you. Every time the voice says something. So there's a thousand experiments that you can run about how am I gonna respond to the voice in the head? And what you notice is the way that you respond to it, just like the way I respond to you, creates a different relationship.

If I yell at you every time we're on a podcast, we're having a different relationship than if I'm, and so it's the same thing with the negative self-talk. So if you have a thought that comes into your head, let's relate it back to humility. Somebody's like, you did an incredible job with this project that you're working on. Yeah. Right. My immediate response to them is, well, it was just the team. I literally just did what I needed to do. And then the self-talk that's going on in my head immediately is, you're really incompetent.

You're riding on the coattails of everybody else who made this happen. And you have no business being here. And that's a voice that a lot of people have. So your invitations are, what if you just sat there, let the voice in, and every time it said that to you, ouch, that hurts. Give me some other ways to respond to curiosity. I see how scared you are, and I'm right here with you. You're absolutely right. You totally, totally.

I cannot deny that I'm writing on the coattails of others, and I don't belong to be here. That it's all a gift. I'm with you. Or, hey, how would it be to manage me a little bit differently? Or go fuck yourself. I don't care. Like the modality is on Monday, I'm going to try to respond to it.

And I'm going to try this experiment. I'm going to respond to it in this way and see how it reacts. It's all about wonder still on Tuesday. I'm going to react to it this way. I'm just running experiments with it. I'm learning to understand it. The thing about negative self-talk generally, it does self-improvement rather than self-awareness, self-discovery.

And self-improvement is a lot less effective than self-discovery. So we've all been telling ourselves we should be doing something for a decade that we haven't been doing it. We've all been telling ourselves, here's all the things that I have to do to improve that having improved rather than being in self discovery, actually trying to understand ourselves deeply. And when you really understand yourself deeply, it just changes the same way that once I understand how to talk into a microphone, I speak into a microphone

differently the way that once I understand a camera, I don't need to tell myself be a better cameraman. You know, I just understand the camera and it's the same thing with ourselves. We think that self abuse is the way to have a better relationship with ourselves, but it's actually self understanding. And we have all these fears of, oh, if I give up the self abuse, I'm just gonna lie on the couch and drink beer

and I'm not gonna do anything. But what actually happens is you have all this freedom, all this free energy because you're not working against yourself all the time.. They learn so much more in a year than we ever learn. Because they're not fighting against themselves. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. learn because they're not fighting against themselves. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I mean, the notion of elevating self discovery over self-improvement

intuitively lands with me. Yeah. It's also, it's more interesting to me in a weird way. Totally. Like I feel like we've like so many of us have spent our waking hours trying to like, in the process of fixing everything that we perceive has been wrong. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Some people, you know, profoundly different levels. But it's almost like the entirety of our lives is like just, just incremental pursuit of improvement towards some sort of end where like, oh, like we've quote made it, we finally feel good with ourselves, we've got X, Y, or Z. Rather than your invitation, which is like, what if you kind of let go of that?

And maybe if somebody's watching listening to this, like, yeah, no, like, there's things I want to work towards. There's things I want to change about myself. There's things I want to accomplish or achieve, right? Okay. Maybe if we say, suspended, just for a window. Yeah. Like what would happen using your approach, which is so sad. We've talked about it.

We both are true believers in experimenting your way to things rather than trying to think them through. What if just an experiment? You didn't let go of that for life, but for a moment, for a little window. How about right now? Because, so for instance, the idea is there's something wrong with you. But if you take this moment and you don't go into the past for evidence,

and you don't go into the future for evidence, I can only find evidence in this moment right now, what is essentially wrong with you? And I'm asking you, but I'm asking anybody who's listening. Like, if you do not go to the past or the future, if there's something wrong with you, it would be wrong right now. And yet if you look at what's essential, what is essentially wrong with you right now, there's never an answer. But what if there is, give me an example.

Um, what if somebody, um, is sitting here now and they've just heard this question and they're asking themselves, okay, so, um, what did, like in this moment, not in the past, not in the future, like what, what is wrong with me in this moment? Well, um, I have incredible back pain. Yeah. And how does that make you essentially wrong? So it's essentially. Okay.

So yes, there's discomfort in this moment for sure. So let's tease that out a little bit more. Yeah. Because I think that can get confusing. Yeah. You have back pain, but that's not you. You is the thing that you've been ever since the moment you came into existence until now. If it's not that, it's not you. If it hasn't had existed

through the whole thing, right? I have a thought, it comes and goes, that's not me, that's a thought. I could cut off my arm. I'm still here. So it's not my arm. It's like, what are you essentially is the question. So yes, I can have a sensation. You know, I could even say, hey, the problem is right now, I want to kill myself. I would say that's future and that's something like what's right now. So take me deeper into how this helps because there's going to be a thought bubble, you know, her listening into this and also say, okay, so

interesting experiment. Yeah. Um, maybe even interesting more broadly to say like, what if I just spent time really discovering rather than trying to fix? Yeah. Um, but if I do believe that there's something, what if I just spent time really discovering rather than trying to fix? But if I do believe that there's something broken, or if I'm dealing with a struggle or a circumstance that I do want to be different, how does reallocating my energy to discovery rather than change make me feel the way I want to feel? Yeah.

So there's a whole bunch in that. There's a whole bunch in that. The first piece is, evolution happens whether you're telling yourself you have to improve or not. An oak tree evolves, when is it perfect? When is an oak tree good enough? When it's an acorn or when it's a sapling or when it's 100 years old or when it's 200 years old, when is it

good enough? But yet evolution continues. So in the question, there's this assumption that I have to tell myself I have to improve for evolution to occur rather than evolution just occurs. A three-year-old doesn't have to tell themselves, I gotta, I gotta improve, I gotta improve. And yet, lo and behold, evolution occurs. So that's the first piece of it. Second piece is, how do I feel the way I want to feel is another big postulate in there,

which is my question response is, how do you enjoy feeling whatever you're feeling? I once sat with one of my teachers, his name was Adi Ashante. His name is Adi Ashante. He doesn't teach anymore. I was telling him what we were doing in our work, what's happening. We hadn't seen each other in years,

and we're having dinner somewhere, and his wife and my wife and I said, he said, what's your work? And he said, a lot of our work is going from emotional management to emotional clarity, which is the loving acceptance of your emotional experiences without the resistance. And so we're talking about one of those things, which is to allow the compliment, that feeling of joy in, but it's feeling of anger. And he said, and he was a meditation, non-dual meditation teacher.

And he said, that's 90% of the questions I get. How do I feel this way? How do I stop feeling this way? And that never leads anywhere good. Instead is like, Oh, how, how, how can I be excited to feel sad? How can I be excited to feel heartbreak? How can I be excited to feel angry? That doesn't mean that I am taken over by it.

It doesn't mean that I've lost myself in it, but it's, it's that. So your question was if I want to feel a certain way and you're going to feel all sorts of ways in a day. In this podcast, if you're listening, in our conversation, we both have had 100 feelings. Whatever it is will come and go. Those emotional experiences will come and go. So I can't say that, but as far as evolution,

as far as us continuing to evolve, that happens. The other thing that's a supposition in the question is that there's something wrong that somehow I have to be better to be good enough to be lovable to rather than, Oh, I'm perfect as an acorn, perfect as a sapling. Yeah. And I wonder part of the, there's a, there wonder if part of the supposition there also is that to live a good life, we need to feel a certain set of feelings.

Right. And not feel a certain set of feelings, or at least maximize a certain set and minimize or try and extinguish a certain set. Rather than saying, you know, what if a good life is allowing ourselves to feel the full sweep of emotion? And just letting it all in. I was asked recently, somebody was in a conversation

and people were asking, you're like, how do you define mental health? I mean, such a loaded question, so maybe this. Boy. How do you answer that in a way where you just don't step in some in some way, shape, or way? But then it came to me right away was just, you know, for me, and again, like, I'm not going to postulate

that this is right for everybody. I said, for me, I think the way I would define it is the capacity to feel everything, but not grasp to anything. You know, it's too not grasp to anything. You know, it's too like, to cry. Yeah. Like when I'm heartbroken and to like, not try and stifle it or feel it,

to like laugh out loud around friends and to just to let love land, to feel that gratitude, like to, you know, to feel grief, to feel really sad when hard things happen and not to allow it all in, to let it all in. And also not to spend my entire life in any of it. But we have this sort of like Western overlay that says, no, no, no, that's not the aspiration. The aspiration is as much good as possible

and as little quote bad things as possible, which is not possible. Yeah, yeah. There's a whole bunch of weird things in that. So the first one is just a neurological thing. Neurologically speaking, a grand majority of our decision-making happens in the emotional center of our brain.

So it's not, so therefore, clear decision-making isn't being logical. We're using logic to decide what emotion we're gonna feel. So when a person who has a part of their brain damaged, their IQ stays the same, but it takes them like an half an hour to decide what color pen to use. So if you think about just the clarity of decision making, it comes from, I'm happy to feel one way or another way. And therefore, I'll make a decision that's actually good for me rather than to feel one way or another way. Because so many of our decisions are made to not feel like a failure or to feel loved or to feel at peace or to not feel like a loser. And so if you are happy to feel all that stuff, then you make really great decisions as it

turns out. Second thing is none of the feelings are actually negative or are really actually that uncomfortable. The resistance to them is ungodly uncomfortable, but if you are, Whoa, I so enjoy feeling sad, sadness changes. It's like there's a pipe and let's say, let's use anger. And so there's this channel of anger. And if it's kinked one way, it's nice shirt. And if it's kinked another way, it's you son of a blah, blah, blah, I hate you,

blah, blah, blah. If it's kinked another way, it's if you love me, you would. Those are all kinks in the hose. But when that hose is not resistant, when you're fully allowing yourself to feel that anger, that anger comes out like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. It comes out with boundary and clarity and dignity. And so it's the resistance that's uncomfortable on these, all the emotions. It's the resistance that's uncomfortable, including the resistance to the compliment,

the appreciation. If you actually let it in, it's really pleasant. It tickles. But we're like, no, it's not me. It was my teacher. It's not me. It was my teacher. It's not me. It's the team. And I have a quote that sums it up really well, which is joy is the

matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome. And that's my experience is that when you fully accept all the emotions and love them and can't look forward to them, welcome them, and joy just happens a lot more often. And your ability to feel the joy becomes a lot deeper. Which begs the question, like, how do you, how do you un-tink the hose there? Yeah, like, and I guess maybe that cycles back to a stance of curiosity. Wonder is huge.

Yeah. Yeah. I make a distinction between curiosity and wonder. It's arbitrary, but curiosity, I just define as looking for an answer. Wonder is just being a little kid about it. And I find wonders more effective than curiosity. And yes, lots of wonder, expression, your emotions live in your body. They live in your muscles.

Right now, if I said to you, stop feeling, you have to constrict a muscle. If you're going to completely stop feeling, you're going to constrict a lot of them. That's why resisting emotions hurts. That's why that's the uncomfortable piece. Yeah, there's like a little somatic connection there. Exactly. It's like everything's just tightening up. So there is an expression that's necessary

and a lot of wonder to really understand the emotional system because we've been trained, most of us have been trained our whole life not to feel. What's that about? Don't cry. It's because our parents didn't want to feel it. And their parents. And their parents and their parents. Like, oh, if I feel that I'm going to open up a bag of whoop ass on my life. So I'm just going to push that down into this little corner of my body where it will slowly become cancer, some version of.

You know, or I'm going to push down the anger and be passive aggressive. There's, it always ends up leaking out, but it creates a lot of tension in the system. And the fear is that if I am, really allow myself to be sad, it'll last forever. If I really allow myself to be sad, it'll last forever. If I really allow myself to be angry, it's gonna destroy everything I love.

If I really allow myself to be scared, I'm gonna be incapable. But it turns out if you really let yourself cry, you feel better. If you really let yourself get angry, not at anybody, meaning not to control anybody, but just have an experience out in the woods getting angry. You feel more love.

You feel less like destroying your world. And if you really allow that sensation of fear through your system, you feel very capable. But our brains will tell us that the opposite, because our brains don't get emotions. Emotions aren't logical. Our brains aren't supposed to get them. It's the thing also, like the opposite is true too, because a lot of times

the story we tell us about quote positive emotions or the opposite. If I really allow myself to be happy, that's going to end and then I'm going to be miserable. If I really allow myself to love and be loved, they're going to leave me. Something's going to happen and then it's going to be

devastated. When we look at the quote aspirational Yeah, we tell the opposite story. That's right. That's right And and so so well seen and that's why typically what I notice when people are in the journey of emotional fluidity Which is what my description for what you just said about allowing yourself to feel all the emotions and not be ruled by them Is it's usually? anger sadness first. Some depending like men in middle-class America, anger is more accessible than their sadness and vice versa. But, um, and you do that and then the fear and then the peace, bliss, joy, love,

that actually happens in that order typically. You can't just jump to the positive things and actually have a full sensation of them. So it's like, you have to, there's almost like a pecking order. Yeah, there is. A foundation that has to be laid in. But it also invites us to step into the stuff

that we probably struggle with the most. And it's because, oh my God, if I really let the love in, I will be hurt. I will be stomped on. And the answer is, yeah, and I can't wait to be stomped on because I have felt that before. I know how much freedom is on the other side of that. I know how much clarity is on the other side of that. If you can find a part of me that gets triggered, I am stoked. Like great, fantastic.

Cause that's exactly something I can't see about myself. That's exactly the place that wants to evolve. So yeah, it's, I'm very excited about it. I'm excited to get triggered by somebody because it is more freedom for me. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I want to deepen into that, but there's something I don't want to let go of before we just take that step,

which is if so much of this conditioning that says basically don't feel has been handed down through generations, often by parents, you know, like, or whoever it may be, who's, who you want to have a sense of belonging with. Yeah. So you can conform to whatever the norms were that were taught to you, the family

norms, the local culture norms, you know, part of them saying, okay, so what if I actually start to allow myself to feel, what if I get, like, what if I allow us into wonder around all this stuff, all the feels? Embedded in that, wouldn't there also be a potential, and maybe this is one of the restrictions that stops us from doing it, is that we're effectively rejecting, um, the, the safety, the container of belonging that's been passed down to us through our family

or whoever it was. Yeah, that's right. Where we want to feel safe and want to belong. We want to be accepted. You have to be seen. And part of that was buying into this notion that, okay, so like you only feel a certain way or you don't feel. That's how we belong to each other.

Right, yeah. So part of like saying, okay, Joe, like I buy into this, I'll run the experiments. Yeah. Is also saying, okay, Joe, I buy into this. Maybe I'm going to actually reject or be rejected by those people who I really care about and they're still in my life. Yeah, that is true. There's no doubt about it, but you're already rejected by them.

Tell me more. If I get sad, they will reject me means they're rejecting you for who you are, whether you're showing them or not showing them. You're already living in a relationship where the love is conditional. You can pretend to be something that you're not by not crying, but then you're not loved. The thing you're pretending to be is loved, which is why you feel so unloved in your life. Not you particularly, but you know what I mean. Yeah. But I mean, probably me at certain points and probably almost everybody.

Yeah. That's right. At certain points and probably a lot of folks right now, joining us in this conversation. And that was me for a lot of my life. I learned that I could be really good at being a chameleon. I could walk into a room and a pretty good social awareness and understand the culture of a room, and maybe that's also a family, or a group of friends, friends or kids or a clique.

I could scan the environment and notice, this is how I would need to be to fit in. But in my mind, it was to belong. Yes. I would form myself into that person. Then that person, I'm thinking to myself, oh, sweet. I'm literally, I can walk into any of these groups,

you know, like this group, this group, this group, this group, and it's all good. Yeah. And meanwhile, I'm still lonely. Right. Because as you're describing, I'm not actually in any of those rooms. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. There's right. Yeah. There's something else about it that I find, my experience is very similar to you. I used to even dress in a way that I could blend into as many. I was like just neutral enough that I could flip into any situation in my 20s. It was a really similar situation.

I think that the other thing about you're saying that, oh, if I feel a certain way, then I'm gonna be rejected in the society or in this. I have a story about that. My, first of all, if you have a young kid and you're really interested in this, there's Patti Wiffler has a book called Listen, and the organization is called Hand in Hand Parenting.

It's so valuable. It's just amazing work. And I'm doing this, which is basically being with your child as they're having an emotion and loving attention without trying to get them out of the emotion. But this time it happens at a Whole Foods. So I'm at a Whole Foods. I got my two and a half year old just raging about wanting potato chips or some such thing. I can't remember.

I'm containing her. Every parent is like immediately transferring to some covered place where they're, to that family. So, but I am committed. I am committed to allowing her to have her emotions and I'm gonna be in loving attention of them. So she is having the full thing on the floor. I'm on the floor of this Whole Foods.

And I'm just like, I got you, right here with you. I really hear you want the potato chips. And we live in this little hippie town in Northern California. It used to be a hippie town. And this little old lady hippie comes by and she goes, are you okay? To my daughter. And my daughter's like, I'm just having my emotions. Then she went right back into it.

Yeah, I didn't disintegrate. I didn't get expelled from my town. She didn't get expelled from her town. That, but the other thing that happens is, as emotional fluidity comes as you welcome all of it, there's a short time where like, if you're allowing anger for the first time, you're going to get angry more often. You're like tears, you're going to tears more often, but that, that arc starts

going down all of a sudden, Oh, I feel anger and instead of yelling, oh, I have a boundary. Okay, here's my boundary because I feel that I got that little bit of anger and I didn't repress it. I didn't think I was bad. I didn't wonder what did I do wrong because I'm angry. I didn't wonder what did they do wrong because they're angry. It's oh anger. Oh boundary.

Oh, hey, could we not do this this way? Oh, sadness. Oh, hey, could we not do this this way? Oh, sadness. Oh, that's a longing. Can I, I'll express my longing. Oh, fear, there's something I'm not taking care of myself. So these things become signals. And so you're not rolled over by the emotions and then it and then and you can get angry and you don't have to get angry at anybody can go into the woods and get angry. You can get angry in a safe place.

And it's weird because we're so scared of our emotions. One of the things fear does to the brain is it makes us into binary thinkers. And so we're scared of our emotions and it's either we are going to hold it back or we are going to be taken by it. We are either going to hurt somebody with it or we are going to hold it back instead of, Oh, I can just express it in a way that's not shame based and not bad for anybody. Easier said than done.

No doubt. It's like, I can have long hair all I want. So you're like, well, yeah. Yeah. No doubt. It's like, I can have long hair all I want. So you're like, well, yeah. And then life happens. And it's funny also, right? Because I think early days of meditation, sort of studying Eastern thought, Eastern philosophy, I think I interpret a lot of teachings as you know, not grasping, lack of desire,

sort of like the ultimate, the aspiration, your urgent aspiration is to basically not attach to anything, which I translated to not feel anything. Yeah, yeah, most people, I started meditating, I meditated for whatever, seven years in a room, most of my time, and somewhere along the line I realized I'm started meditating, I meditated for whatever, seven years in a room, most of, most of my time and somewhere along the line I realized I'm not meditating, I am managing myself. I'm not, I'm not being with what is, I am trying to create what is total pain and suffering.

I thought I was meditating, I was just torturing myself. No. I mean, so the imitation is really just like, what if we let it all in? What if instead of, and I guess part of the curiosity for me here is like, do we have to let go of the aspiration to at some future point want to feel different or want our lives to be different or want something to like be changed in some meaningful way? Do we have to let go of that and just focus on what if I just allowed it all in right now in the moment and sat there in the place of wonder and said, okay, whatever it is I'm experiencing, can we hold both of those simultaneously? Or does the future aspiration somehow And then the next thing, huh. Yeah. Huh. Can we hold both of those simultaneously or does the future aspiration somehow stop us

from doing the work of opening to sensation and feeling now that we'll maybe at some point actually get us to where we want to be? Right. So you don't have to do anything. So that, but that's typically the way it works is we tell ourselves, oh, so now I see, I've heard that. So I have to do this and insane.

I have to do it. You're guaranteed that it's not going to happen or not. Not gonna happen easily. Yeah, exactly. So that exactly. So you're in fear, you're acting from fear. You learn slower. That's, that's part of it.

Um, there is a nature part of the way that we evolve is because our nature is to evolve. And so of course we're gonna have thoughts of evolution. I'm mostly suggesting that the way to it is through wonder rather than through self abuse or drive. I don't know how to let go of the call, which is the call to evolve. And like, I haven't tried, don't have a particular want to try. I don't see that it's, it's painful or bad.

And I often, however, don't have a specific outcome in mind or I'll have the goal, but it'll be very, very loosely held because my experiences, my goals suck compared to what happens. Like I did not in my twenties say this is what I want my life to be like. I had a very different vision in my life. I'm so grateful that that vision did not happen. That this vision is so much better than I could have imagined, that the solution set that you can come up with from

the place that you are now is not even close to the solution set that you can come up with, with a place where you have learned to love yourself a little bit more or felt more emotional fluidity or any number of things. So I hold the goal because there's a directionality to it but I don't really hold on to that it's gonna look the way that I want it to look because life has a way of looking a lot better than my preconceived notions. Mm. I mean, it's funny, there's, as you're describing that, what came to mind for me is, I've had plenty of conversations with founders, entrepreneurs, who are like,

this is exactly what I'm going to build. This is what I want to make happen. I have a very clear goal. And there's all this mythology. If you don't know what the drug know, if you don't know what the drug is, like, you know, like there, you're just never going to do anything that will get you there. Like you have to be crystal clear about what the end point is. And, and, and I've often said, and there's data that shows what, like, okay, so if you do have clarity around that thing, you probably are more likely to actually like achieve that thing and there are different modalities to get there and different methodologies. But the point that you're making,

I think is just so prescient, which is, A, is that thing worth wanting? And B, what about the universe of a bazillion other possibilities that you're excluding without realizing it by saying this and only this rather than what if I just allow myself to be really intentional about being and observing

and being in a state of wonder and evolving and letting things in and let that direct me. Like how, you know, I tend to look forward and I'm a maker, like I just love to make stuff. Yeah. But I do it largely, I'm a weird. I just love to make stuff. Yeah. But I do it largely. I'm a weirdo in that I'll write a book. It's been two years writing a book.

My publisher shifts me a case of books, the first thing. It's a case of 24 hardcover books. Yeah. And I'll just let it sit there in the box and open for a couple of weeks. And my wife is like, dude, what? Meanwhile, everyone's doing unboxings online and stuff like this. And I'm like, it, what? Meanwhile, everyone's doing unboxings online

and stuff like this. And I'm like, it was never about the thing. Yeah. For me, it was just about the experience of like, how cool is it that I'm growing and I'm folding and learning? Okay, so like, now there's a thing at the end of it, awesome.

Yeah. But the whole idea of being really rigid about exactly how you want your life to unfold and they're working towards the things you want and the things you want to extinguish from it. Yeah. And that may actually get you closer to those things faster, but does that actually, but, but even if it does,

you know, get you closer to those things faster. But does that actually, but even if it does, you know, is that the way you're gonna wanna be living when you get there? What if you've completely ignored along the way by having the blinders on? Yeah. And I mean, if you've spoken to that many entrepreneurs and I work with them, how many like hit 45 and they're like, I got everything I wanted,

but I'm fucking miserable. all the time I think that the there is also a huge amount of wisdom to holding a goal meaning let's say I have a goal of reaching a million people not my goal by the way or I have a goal of a thousand people well I'm gonna ask different questions how do I reach a thousand people I can go door to door and knock on a thousand doors so well, I'm going to ask different questions. How do I reach a thousand people? I can go door to door and knock on a thousand doors. So, but if I'm trying to reach a million, I'm going to have a different. So I think that the holding that goal is and having clarity on it is really what makes visionaries and the fact that, um, I, I define a visionary as somebody who's

living in a world as if it already exists. I define a visionary as somebody who's living in a world as if it already exists. Gandhi existed as if he was a free man. He existed as if India was free. When they walked under the salt mines, and it was a half a million Indians and 20 security guards or whatever it was, a hundred security guards, and they just walked and got beaten down four at a time.

They were acting like free people. They weren't acting like subjects. And to that, if you can't see the reality, you can't live as if that reality already exists. And so I think that's the power of it. live as if that reality already exists. And so I think that's the power of it. You also can't catch the beauty if you're attached to it. So it's like having it, having that vision,

having that clarity, but also being okay with the fact that life is gonna serve up something a lot better if you're paying attention. Yeah, and there's the tension, right's sort of like okay get crystal clear about that thing the vision of like how you want to be or what you want to participate in making happen. Yeah. And at the same time you know you gotta hold it lightly to certain exactly yeah you know to allow serendipity to enter the experience and wonder. Yeah, and that's where the humility actually is.

Because if it's not you doing it, there's no vision. And if it's not a huge gift, then you're not actually, you're not seeing the serendipity. And so to actually take your God-given place in the world in that, it requires you to both see the serendipity, which is a humility of this is beyond me, and walk into it, which is a humility of this is personal and it's me doing it. It's almost like, this shall be and who knows. Totally. And I agree with you.

I think a lot of people who do astonishing things in the world somehow find a way to hold onto both of those and to let go of all of it at the same time. Which sounds bizarre. Like if you're listening and you're like of all events at the same time. Yeah. Which sounds bizarre. Like if you're listening and you're like, my head is spinning right now. Yeah. I don't get this. Like, how, like, and you and I love conversations like this, but I think sometimes people listen to that and they're like, but what do I do?

Yeah. Like what, like, okay. So, so I get this, I'm kind of nodding along with some of these things really make sense to me. Yeah. Um, but what do we do with this? So I get it, I'm kind of nodding along. Some of these things really make sense to me. Yeah. But what do we do with this? Yeah, so the first thing in that question is, it's pretty ineffective.

That question, what do I do? Not entirely, but often ineffective, because what it's doing is it's cutting off the understanding. Oh, I have this epiphany. If you're listening to this, there's some moment where you're like, oh yeah, what do I do about it? And so you're not letting, Oh yeah, actually register in your entire system.

And, and again, so it's the idea is that you're doing, is going to be more important than your understanding. So that's, that's one of the things. And so to actually allow the understanding to wash over that's one of the things. And so to actually allow the understanding to wash over you is one of the best things. The second thing that you, and these are things you can do, the other thing you can do is just have gratitude

for recognition, like really allow yourself time to be deeply grateful for recognition that you have when you have it. Cause that like deepens that washing over and deepens the understanding. As far as the humility goes, well, there is the how to talk, how to react to the negative self-talk. That's some very good action that you can take. Another great one is to allow yourself to feel a whole bunch of emotions. We have something called emotional inquiry that we can give you a link

to if you're interested and that's a really great way to feel into emotions with a lot of wonder. So that's a great thing that can be done. The other thing that can be done is to, The other thing that can be done is to, let me think of a way to put this, which is, you can notice that you are not, you can literally, one way to do it is to notice that no thought you've ever had is yours, and literally spend an hour noticing like I'm not deciding to have any of these thoughts but the thoughts

are arising. The other way to do it is semantically go back to where the source of the thought is. Describe that for me. Like what do you mean by that? It is not a good way to describe it but if you sit down in a chair and you just watch your thought come up, go back to where it came from. So we can just do that for a minute. We all have tons of thoughts. So first thought will come up in 30 seconds.

And you just semantically go to where that thought arose from. And you just somatically go to where that thought arose from. We say somatophere, saying, where do I feel it in my body? Yeah, yeah. The physical sensation of where that thought came from. And how does it help me? Do it for a long time. Being in the body. Yeah, no, no, I think it's great.

I think it's great. And my response would be do it and find out. Because here's one of the things that I've learned, is that when I discover something, so I had huge authority issues when I was younger. Because I have authority issues, I didn't believe any teacher. I couldn't really allow for teachers in my system for a long time.

But I really wanted to learn. So I would listen, and then I would say, hey, let's test it out. Let's see if they're right. So I would test everything. And in that process of testing everything, what I realized is I would do something, I'd do an experiment, and it would quote unquote work. Oh my gosh, if I loved my emotions, wow, they changed. The resistance was gone and oh my gosh. But then I started loving my emotions to get rid of them and it stopped working. So what you discover is that oftentimes when in self discovery, if you're doing something to change your emotional experience, it stops working. Or if you do something to get you somewhere, it stops working.

If you're meditating to get somewhere, it is far less effective than if you're meditating to get somewhere. So you're not doing anything to change your emotional experience, it stops working. Or if you do something to get you somewhere, it stops working. If you're meditating to get somewhere, it is far less effective than if you're meditating just to enjoy the hell out of meditation. And so if I give like the destination of this thing, what I'm scared will happen is that somebody will hold that destination in their head and not discover what happens naturally.

Which kind of debuts the whole point of it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's a certain amount of faith that comes with this invitation. Certain humility. Yeah. Yeah.

Early in the conversation, you also brought up this notion of calling in this context and the context of humility. Tell me more about the relationship. At some point there was a recognition that if I didn't follow the calling, it was really painful. It's very hard for me to describe what exactly calling is. So if this is frustrating for somebody, I totally understand. But there's a knowing that, oh, this is what I'm meant to do. I might not want to do it.

I might rail against it, but there's a knowing, oh, this is the thing that I'm supposed to do. And then I realized if I didn't do it because I don't want to do that, it always was got more and more uncomfortable until I did it. And when you realize that, then there's a choicelessness in it. You don't get the choice of doing this thing or not doing this thing. You get a choice of having to be more and more uncomfortable or not having to be more and more uncomfortable. There's really no choice in that. And when you recognize that, then

that's a deep form of humility because it's a choiceless life. Phil Crunk will like that. They sure are. And I think, and for good, I think determinism in a lot of ways. Yeah. It's not quite the same way, meaning that's a great thought process. It's not quite the same way, because you can't get to the place of calling until you realize you do have choice. So until you realize, like, oh, I can shape the world

into what I wanna shape the world into, at least somewhat, that I can say no to my boss, that I can not accept this abuse from my husband, that I can not live in a societal standard that I'm supposed to live in, that I don't have to follow this career path and I don't have to have 16 kids or two kids and 2.5 kids at this age and live in this kind of a house.

Until you realize that you actually have the freedom to do what you want, you can't actually, you're not even, you can't even be aware of the calling. And then there's a place where it's, oh, it's all a gift. It's also necessary to get to, to, to get to the place where it's like, oh, this is a calling. So when the calling comes and you see it and you understand it, it includes all of that. It includes, oh, I'm being called to go and take action and do something in the world, which is going to require my determination and it's going to require my showing up in a way

that's uncomfortable for me. Sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. And it's also going to require the recognition that it's, you're not responsible for this, that it is a gift. And all of that requires a humility to get to the place of, I have a choice, but I don't really have a choice. That, that oak tree doesn't really have a choice. The dog doesn't really have a choice. And I get, we do a choice. The dog doesn't really have a choice. And I get we do have choice. So it's

like, again, it's holding the dichotomy both at the same time. It is holding the empowerment of choice and it's holding the faith of non-choice. And if we can't do both of them, then we're still, our little personalities are entrenched and digging in, and which is not the humility. Do you feel like we all, if we allowed this space, if we acknowledge the, if we acknowledge that, that, you know, in so many ways we do have choice, we have agency, So many ways we do have choice, we have agency, which sort of seeds the possibility of something resembling what we might call calling to emerge. And as you said, if we can't even get to the fact

that we have any sense of agency or choice, then there's no space for an understanding calling to emerge, like we can't, because that would imply agency. Yeah, that's really well said. You know, do you believe that we all have that thing inside of us? Because I think a lot of people are probably

say to themselves, because I don't know what it is, I'd never know what it is, I'm in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, whatever it may be, or maybe you're younger. Maybe I just don't, that's just for other people. Then you wouldn't walk. That's the first calling, one of the first callings, reaching, understanding where your hands are. These are all the calling.

This is like the natural tug of evolution. It is the thing that allows the birds to know where their migratory paths are. It's the thing that allows an oak tree. I get emotional thinking about it. That it is the thing that allows them the oak tree, the acorn to know how to become an oak tree and respond to the light. It is. It is our birthright.

We just have to create a ton of resistance to stop it, which is where most, which is what we do. It's how we live. Yeah. And it sounds like the way you're describing also is you don't necessarily, you're not really describing from, and tell me if I'm getting this right. Like we're all born with one singular calling and like, it's this one thing and like, that's it. It's like, no, there could be a myriad

of ways that we're called in different contexts, different seasons, different ways, different parts of our lives. And like, it's not just this one universal thing. It's just like it literally, we're being whispered to all the time. Yeah. All day, every day for the entirety of our lives. And part of the work is to create the space to hear the whispers.

Right. And you can only hear it now. Sometimes I get an idea where it's headed, but it's generally like this right now. This thing is clear. I have to do this thing right now. And so I see people get lost a lot looking for their purpose. So they're calling as if it's an abstract thing. And then I'll know what to do from this point forward. It doesn't work like that. It's you know what to do this point forward because you took the next step on the path. I don't know what to do at this point for it because you took the next step on the path. No, I don't know what to do at the fork until I get to the fork.

I love that. Um, it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well in this conversation. So in, uh, in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Be yourself. phrase to live a good life. Yeah.

What comes up. Be yourself. The authenticity of you is a good life. Hmm. Thank you. You're welcome. Pleasure to be with you. Being well.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode of Safe Pet, you'll also love the conversation we had with Brene Brown about vulnerability, courage, and leadership transformation. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but but just one person even then invite them to talk with you about what you've both

discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.