Good Life Project - Kristoffer Carter (“KC”) | Permission to Glow

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

I first met Kristoffer Carer nearly a decade ago when he raised his hand to participate in the inaugural Good Life Project immersion. It was a yearlong deep dive into work and life that we ran for about 5 years. Kristoffer or KC as most people call him, was running fast. I wasn’t sure if he was running toward something as much as he was running from it. In the end, like most of us, it was probably both. A married dad of three living in Ohio and working at a Chicago ad-tech startup after exiting life as a touring musician, he stumbled upon a book that would change the direction of his life. Our lives intersected just as that existential reimagining was shifting into high gear. There was this moment during our first weekend together, 15 strangers who’d become fast family in an industrial space in downtown Manhattan. I caught him out of the corner of my eye, sitting cross-legged against a 100-year-old wall of leaded windows, the light pouring in behind him. Hands laying open over his knees as he sat in meditation. It was a moment of powerful foreshadowing. In the ensuing years, KC would become an initiate of Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship, a Kriyaban yogi meditating hours a day. He’d find himself exiting his career to carve his own path, bridging the worlds of spirituality and business as an executive coach, founder of This Epic Life consultancy, and someone who remains fiercely devoted to bringing all parts of himself - the deeply spiritual yogi, the bouncing-off-the-walls kid and musician, the wise mentor, husband, and dad - to everything he does. In his words, full life integration. And along the way, he developed his own philosophy he calls the four permissions, which also happens to be the focus of KC’s new book, Permission to Glow: A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership.You can find KC at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Daniel Goleman about meditation, which it turns out, changes you, on the level of DNA.My new book is available!Order Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive today!-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I first met Christopher Carter nearly a decade ago when he raised his hand to participate in the inaugural Good Life Project immersion. And it was this year-long deep dive into work and life that we ran for about five years. And Christopher, or Casey as most people call him, he was running fast at that point. I wasn't sure if he was running towards something as much as he was running from it. In the end, I think like most of us, it was probably both. A married dad of three living in Ohio, working at a Chicago ad tech startup. After exiting life as a touring musician, he stumbled upon a book that would change the direction of his life. In our lives, they intersected just at that existential reimagining moment as it was shifting into high gear. There was this moment during our

first weekend together, 15 strangers who had become fast family at this industrial space in downtown Manhattan. And I caught him out of the corner of my eye, sitting cross-legged against this, I want to say, hundred-year-old wall of leaded glass windows, the light pouring in behind him, his hands laying open over his knees as he sat in meditation. It was this moment of what would become powerful foreshadowing. In the ensuing years, KC would become an initiate of Yogananda Self-Realization Fellowship, a Kriyaman yogi. Meditating hours a day, he'd find himself eventually exiting his career to carve out his own path, really bridging the worlds of spirituality and business as an executive coach, the founder of this epic life consultancy, and someone who remains fiercely devoted to bringing all parts of himself,

the deeply spiritual yogi, the bouncing off the walls kid and musician, the wise mentor, husband and dad to everything he does. In his words, full life integration. And along the way, he developed his own philosophy that he calls the four permissions, which also happens to be the focus of Casey's new book, Permission to Glow. So excited to dive into this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. And away we go. That's how I'm starting all of my new podcasts, by the way. And away we go. Christopher Carter, we are family, which makes this an interesting conversation and an interesting opportunity to dive in because we've known each other for a long time right now and been through a lot of stuff together. And I have seen you navigate literally every part of your existence, your world, your career, your family, your internal life, your spiritual life. I'm going to take this opportunity to ask you questions that I have never asked you. Oh, wow. And we're going to completely deconstruct your life.

Oh, perfect. That's great. Just so just like just easing into the shallow end. In the most terrifying way possible. Absolutely. That's great. So as we sit here having this conversation, you're at a moment in your life where you have built a really beautiful professional life, an incredible family life, a deeply devout spiritual life. And you wake up every day and a lot of your day is spent helping, guiding, coaching some of the highest level people in industry, C-level people, senior level leaders. But if you were to look at your early life, at sort of like the thing that you stepped out of adolescence and into as your potential vocation or career and projected out forward that this

is where you would be, it would be almost impossible, I think, to guess that this would be your life. Because in the very early days for you, you were kind of obsessed with music. Like that was your everything. Yeah. So I'd say those formative kind of inflection points. You know, I thought as you were saying that, I was honestly thinking about sparkotypes, truly. I'm a performer sage.

And performer, which you alluded to, yeah, I wanted to be a musician and an artist since I was a little kid. And when I was about four years old, your parents always tell those stories that just make you grown. And you're like, please never again tell that story. Well, I have to tell this quick little story is that apparently, and I kind of remember this a little bit, so I know my mom just didn't make it up, but I asked my mom for a piano when I was about four years old because I was obsessed with Barry Manilow. It was that album cover when he's wearing all white with a really low cut V-neck thing with a star necklace on and his eyes are blue and dreamy and his hair is perfect. And I would gaze at this thing for hours

and I asked her for a piano and she said, why do you want a piano? And I said, well, because I can't become a star without a piano, duh. And I just always wanted to be a performer, a songwriter. And I think that my mom's love of music really infected me early on with that love of music. And she was so supportive with me eventually getting that piano and cello and a bass and a guitar, all the things I ended up playing. So I think that kind of set me off on that path to become a performer. So it's one thing to get a five-year-old kid a piano because you think, hey, they want to be a performer. They're going to do all sorts of awesome stuff in elementary school and middle school and high school. But then the notion of

a parent thinking, oh, what seed did I actually just plant? And like, so this kid is now going to go out into the world and try and become a professional musician, like build an actual career as a full-time touring musician. And I'm curious what the dynamic was there as you sort of said, okay, so this thing that I've loved doing, it's actually what I want to do for my main thing. Like, this is what I want to do in the world. Yeah. I mean, my mom was super supportive. I was raised by a single mother and my dad lived in another state. He was less supportive of the arts, but he understood it. I mean, I think he appreciated that I was into it, but my mom had this kind of like one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas approach. You know,

she would fan the flames, but then when it came to making career choices or college choices, it was always have a backup plan. By that point, I had become a professional bass player. And the mantra was always bass players are a dime a dozen. Ha ha ha. That's her joke. But it planted that seed of finding a plan B and working on plan B. And I don't falter for it. You know, I'm going through the same thing these days in my house with our own teenage daughter, who's also a professional musician, except we're only pushing plan A this time. But I do remember that kind of awkward tension between knowing I was here to express something and being very naturally talented at it. And also, I skipped the part

where I drove my mom crazy for many, many years practicing. You know, she said my piano would have like rotten eaten apple cores lined up on it, you know, as if it was, you know, if it was Billy Joel's piano, it'd be like empty beers. And mine was like rotten apple cores. And I would just sit there and eat apples and practice the piano for hours and hours and hours and just drive everybody crazy. And if I wasn't doing that, I was sawing a cello in half. And if I wasn't doing that, I was playing my bass through a distortion pedal, trying to learn Cliff Burton's bass solo from Metallica as a rite of passage. So all these kind of formative years trading in my social life as a kid for musical skills. And I never knew exactly how I would use them until I, you know, I was two

years into college when I finally got an opportunity to, you know, hit pause on school and go do the pro thing for a while. So I want to go into that because I know you spent some time touring, but you also just brought up something which is really interesting to me. So you have a daughter who is, you have three awesome kids. Your oldest daughter is now in high school, a professional musician, part of a band. They're getting a ton of attention. And you just said, okay, so you were always taught have a plan B, but as a parent now with a child

who is stepping full steam into the world of music, you guys are focusing on just have a plan A. Talk to me about this. How does this evolution happen to you? Well, it's her senior year of high school. She's been singing in this band since she was 12. She just turned 17. They are playing festivals. A lot of kids and adults are showing up at their shows, wearing the shirts, singing all the lyrics to the songs, driving from a couple hours away. So it's actually happening. There's no doubt about it that something is happening. They played this little street festival that Elliot, when she sang with me the first time,

she was eight years old. I think you might remember this. It's called Porch Rocker. 2013, she plays with me, performs with me for the first time singing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. And it was a beautiful moment. 200 people showed up and this little tiny girl saying this thing. And now her band shows up to play that thing. And about 2200 people pack a yard to see these kids play. It was utterly ridiculous. It shut down all the other stages in the block. And, you know, we're scratching our heads wondering what the hell's going on. But it's obvious that, you know, I don't know if it's because I'm a coach or she grew up in a household where people like you come to visit or people like Cynthia Morris or Ani DeFranco, people that really kind of live and breathe possibility and live and work their plan A. It's not me preaching

that. It's as much as it is me just kind of defending that, you know, as, as she's a senior in high school now, and like the mailbox every single day is packed with stuff from different schools. Come here, come here, come here. I just put them straight. I take the whole stack and put them straight into the recycle. Cause I know she just doesn't even want to see them. You know, she, she wants to get in the van with her band. And if she's going to go to school anywhere next year, it'll be where her bass player

goes to school about 15 minutes away. Yeah. I mean, it's, you say that with such conviction and I know that it's not fabricated. It's not like you're saying, let me say this over and over and over so it becomes my belief system so that I'm okay with it. It's not a coping mechanism for you when you say that. It's sort of like, no, I truly believe that this is the right thing to do in our rock band? Everything kind of changed. And from the beginning, I realized that this experience is just so funny and painful for me as a coach, because it brings up all of my old dysfunction about bands, like all the personalities,

the creative struggles and compromises. It brings up all that stuff on the regular basis. But at the core of it is that big dream that we all have on some level when we're kids. And I don't want to be the one to get in the way of that in any way possible. In fact, quite the opposite. I will do anything to facilitate it, including if she's ever ready to not do that thing, I'll be a hundred percent supportive of it. But right now, if she, I'm always looking at her and saying like, are you all in? Cause when she shows me, she's all in, I'm like, well, if you're all in, I'm all in. And we have a good time with it.

Yeah. I love that. I mean, I kind of look at it as, so music is such a hard business. Yeah. Working into the business is so hard. Growing in the business is so hard and succeeding and then sustaining success is so brutally hard that if you have the internal fortitude, the strength, the initiative, and the ability to just wake up in the morning and take action over and over and

over for often years and years and years in the name of working towards this one powerful vision that you hold so deeply in your heart, even if it doesn't work at the end of that, if you've shown that you have the capacity inside of you to do that, and then you hit a point five years down the road, 10 years down the road, where you're like, you know what? This just isn't it. I need to tap out of this. You've demonstrated the ability. If you could take that exact same drive and initiative and work ethic to anything where it's actually not nearly as brutally hard to step into it and do well, it just seems like it's extraordinary training, even if at the end of the day,

you decide to step away from it. Well, it's so crazy making about music is so much of it at the end of the day is left up to chance, who you know, who likes your stuff, which executive was rubbed the wrong way by not getting tickets to something. I mean, there's so many millions of variables, right? But these kids have shown repeatedly that they have something special to get them the attention, the airplay. They're getting ready to take on a much bigger national level manager. And these things come from having something special. So I think just nurturing that creative flame while also, you know, keeping other doors open. I mean, Ellie's also a talented visual artist. She's always working on visual art. She designs all the t-shirts.

So, you know, at this age, I mean, I watched you raise a teenage daughter too, you know, you're just trying to instill some level of work ethic, you know, you might as well fall in love with working your ass off on something, you know, you might as well fall in love with working your ass off on something, you know, because it's what's required at some point. So she's just now starting to get inklings of that, you know, and still resists it. I mean, it's, you know, it's not easy to sit down and write new songs. Yeah, no, for sure. So, I mean, when you think about your experience on the road, it's got to be so interesting because on the one hand, you're a dad and on the one hand, you're a coach. So you've got all this training on how to actually interact with people

in a constructive way. You're also that you have this incredible past life as a touring musician on the stage. I imagine there's sort of like this constant, you know, it's like you have three little things sitting on your shoulder saying, say this, say this, no, say this, no, say this and do this, don't do this. But I want to talk about your time on the road also, because so you eventually do become a full-time touring musician. What is that life like for you? I mean, because there's a lot of the mythology around it, you know, and then there's the reality of it. It was a little bit of both those things. So I auditioned for and got into my favorite band at the time. If you could picture that insanity for starters.

I used to go see this band every weekend that they would tour through Bowling Green, which is where I went to school in Western Ohio, Bowling Green State University. And when the twist-offs came into town, the town kind of shut down and all the kids would go there and get crazy. And I got thrown out of their shows. I was a rowdy 19-year-old kid getting thrown out of their shows. I was a rowdy 19-year-old kid getting thrown out of those shows. And over the summer when I was home at my mom's house, I saw that they were auditioning bass players and I got an audition

and I was so terrified to even show up to audition. I couldn't talk to these guys. They were like my heroes, right? So I couldn't get a word out and I wanted it. I left my car running. I was gonna drive away, but I went in and I did well and I got in. And so for the first maybe six months of the band, I didn't really drive away, but I went in and I did well and I got in. And so for the first,

you know, maybe six months of the band, I didn't really say a word to anybody. I just kept my head down and just tried to learn the 50 or whatever song. So I love the musical challenge of it. I loved using my chops every single day and just like that workout, wood shedding, and got to play with a lot of my favorite bands at the time, Blink-182, Sublime, just the height of the ska punk explosion. But yeah, on the other side of know, five days of campus shows during the day and then another club show at night. And we went 11 of those days without showers. And just the reality of living in a stinky school bus,. I mean, it was, it was crazy making, I mean, it did a lot for my sense of humor. It developed my, it brought me out of my shell, you know, but also it was, you know, all the things, disgusting, sad, depressing, a lot of waiting around to play that hour on stage was euphoric. And the other 23 hours were frustrating, mildly frustrating. And I, and I try to pass all of this

information along to my daughter, just, I'm like, just so you're aware. And there's this great movie that Dave Grohl just put out called what drives us. I'd highly recommend it. It's so great, but we made all the kids and their families sit down and watch this together to really see if they want to do this thing. Cause it's what it takes and they're all super gung ho, but it is a young person's game, you know? Yeah to make you say, okay, so this was my dream band. I'm touring with them. I'm on stage with these iconic bands from that particular time. And what happens to make you say, okay, it's time to tap out? Well, I was always really into true songwriters. I loved the Indigo Girls. I loved Paul Simon, Elvis Costello,

Ani DiFranco, who I mentioned, just obsessed with song craft. And this band, once I got into it, and they were great writers and they had great stuff, but we signed a record deal and they wanted to go back and re-record like a retrospective of the best stuff from their career prior to me

joining. So it just felt like I was playing in a tribute band. And I remember feeling that way at 20 years old. I didn't want to feel that way. I wanted to make it work, but it didn't work for me creatively. So I decided to form my own band and take us out to Los Angeles. So you tap out of that particular band, but not out of the industry. At that point, you're still like, okay, so the way that I'm showing up, the people I'm showing up with, it's not right for me, but I'm still all in on the industry. So let me go out to LA and do my own thing. What happens there? Yeah. Well, I got married young and around the age of just turned 24, married my wife, Gail, and we moved out to Los Angeles together. And she always knew that that was who I was, that she married a musician and

that that was my natural path. But when I got out there that time, I really realized the daunting task of what it would take to learn how to write songs. I mean, really write songs. I was involved on that level before in bands, but not at the level of craft that I was dreaming of. So I started hooking up with other writers and it was a lot of hours sleeping on studio floors and just trying ideas and laying around like zombies trying to come up with a word that rhymes with this thing or, you know, not a corny metaphor. Doing that long, lonely work of songwriting that Tom Petty talks about so brilliantly in his book. And yeah, so I was in the industry. And during the day, because I had a young wife, I was working in PR and eventually home entertainment, just trying to get by, pay the bills. And so I was getting on one level, my life started, my career started,

but then creatively, progressively more and more frustrated. I was spending on one level, my life started, my career started, but then creatively, progressively more and more frustrated. I was spending more time stuck in traffic, less time on my instrument, more time paying bills and just starting to get a lot of that early life angst, you know, trying to figure out a way to do the creative thing, you know, like LA seemed like the destination to do it in, but there was so much work involved just to get back to practicing or playing. Yeah. And also, I mean, for you, if like you shared your fundamental impulse is around performing, it's, you know, like it is taking a moment and interaction and experience and energizing, animating, enlivening it. And it sounds like the part of it that you love most turns out like it starts to become the part of it that you love most turns out like it starts to

become the part of it that you're most disconnected from when you're out there. Yeah. When I look back on my LA experience, I realized that there was about a million things in between me and just having any opportunity to perform. Like even promoters who make money on you playing shows didn't want you to perform too often in the market because it's so saturated. And I started realizing over time that the thing that I always felt like I was here to do, be a performer, it was either the thing I was resisting the most and or the thing I was just trying to pack a million other things in front of in my life. So yeah, at that point, I just remember being very disconnected and frustrated and searching. So what, because you go from there, you're working in sort of like different jobs to take care of everything. And then you're on the road and you're doing this thing and all of these

realizations are happening and you make this interesting move. You go from there and you basically say, okay, I'm going to put this aside for now, at least as my central devotion and just go all in, in the world of, was there a step between that and basically diving headlong into the world of startup tech firms? Yeah. So I was, I was literally forced gumping it at this point in my career. There was not a lot of intentionality. It was all happening a little bit on autopilot and by accident. And I think what I was throwing myself headlong into was just trying to be a more dependable partner and spouse to honor my earlier commitment. We got married pretty young and I just wanted to give my wife really a

sense of stability. And so I started out in home entertainment, as I mentioned, at MGM. And I was really lucky to work for some real conscious leaders there, like high EQ, culture first, people first, that really had a big influence on me. And then we decided to move a little bit closer to family. We moved back to Chicago. And Chicago, that experience was getting into advertising. And gosh, I hated advertising so much. It just felt like such noise and distraction and such a pressure cooker of deadlines.

That's when I made the jump into advertising technology. And I kind of found my family for the next nine years of my career, which was Centro, this digital media startup led by Sean Riegsecker. And that was just an incredible experience to start trying to figure out this intersection between business and consciousness on some level. Like there was, there was, it was so fast moving and so relentless. And I just got really caught up in, uh, in, in the velocity of that. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, especially business and consciousness in the context of a really fast growing tech-based startup, you know, in the ad world, which is generally sort

of like it, it spins at a million miles an hour anyway. It doesn't seem like those words go together. Sort of like conscious, like really a focus on the human being within this bigger thing, because it's moving at an incredible pace, yet you somehow were able to zoom in on the experience of the human being within that context. Yeah, I think what I did, and I do credit the founder, Sean, for giving me the space to do this. Sean Rieksacker, he truly is special. He was raised Mennonite, which is people that can use technology, but also very high integrity, very spiritually connected people. And he gave me the space to really focus on the culture and to fly a flag for that thing. I was also still kind of not so much into the advertising. We were in digital

advertising, but it was advertising nonetheless. I was less concerned about the business offering and more concerned about the people that powered it. And he gave me a lot of opportunities to speak to the new higher classes. I was one of 44 people when I started in 2008. And by the time I left in end of 2015, we had well over 900. And the groups of new hires every single month were larger than the company that I started with. We'd have 45 to 50 people a month starting. Yeah. I mean, meanwhile, so you're in this company, you're literally like going back and forth. You're in Ohio, the company's in Chicago. You're sort of like bouncing between these two things. And a big part of what you're doing is you're in the world in part, like in the

early days, especially, I know there's like a big sales, a big biz dev side to what you're doing, which generally means going out and drinking and partying and being hyper-social., it all comes to a head for you. You know, you're doing really well in the organization and you're doing all these different things, but you hit a point where you're like, okay, so there's got to be something more. And it sounds like a huge part of the tipping point for you was literally stumbling over a book. It's true. And yeah, it's, it's the book that everybody told me I should read for about eight years. You know, it just kind of starts smacking you on the head

like this is your book. You should really read it. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get to it. You know, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. And when I finally sat down to read it, it was towards the end of 2011

while my wife was in childbirth with our third child at this point, Leon. We were back in Akron, Ohio at this point. I was traveling all the time. Yeah, like kind of frustrated salesperson, probably drinking too much. There's a million excuses to drink when you're a dad and a salesperson and a musician. And I finished that book while she was giving birth and it just really gobsmacked me. I just really felt a deep resonance with me and it made me question kind of everything, question my path and start to get more serious and clear about what it is I wanted to get out of, out of work and how I impact the world. So I'm curious. I actually want to dive into this a

little bit because, so that book, Autobiography of a Yogi, is a book that has been around for a really long time. And that so many people who I know and who I've known over a period of decades now point to that book as this profound, almost like rupture slash launching point of something new inside of them. I'm curious when you read that at that moment in your life, do you have a sense for what it was about it that was able to just sort of like give you this entire new frame on how you want it to be in the world? Yeah, it is so deep. I mean, and just for a little context, I mean, it definitely had that effect on Steve Jobs. He read it every year from the time he was 17 to when he passed away. He gave it to everybody at his funeral. And what's funny is your book, Uncertainty, was the next book I read after finishing autobiography. And it was literally like you had dropped into my life

just after that. And when I look back at all of my teachers and coaches and mentors and the people that inspire me, they all started arriving in pretty sequential order from the time I finished that book the first time. And I think what it was, and let's be honest, for as many people that resonate with the book, there's a whole other army of people that just don't get it on the first or the fifth try, that it's too dense. There's too many miracles. There's too much wild levels of spirituality.

And it's dripping with divine ardor, like the love of God is dripping out of it. So I was not particularly qualified to pick that book up when I did. But what I started realizing was that when I go back in my entire life to being three or four years old, looking at the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I mean, what kid doesn't look at that vinyl cover of all those faces? And four of this lineage of gurus is in the cover of that album, mostly due to George Harrison. And I started realizing that the guru and the teachings, and when Yogananda left his body in 1952, which was about six years after finishing his autobiography, that book just celebrated its 75th anniversary.

He said, the teachings will be the guru. And I think what I resonated with on that first, it was undeniable on that first reading was that I felt like I was coming home to something. I didn't know what it looked like yet, but it felt like it had always been part of me. And I started piecing back together my LA experience. This is what's crazy, Jonathan. I've been back to LA for work now, speaking or teaching or doing my work experience. This is what's crazy, Jonathan. I've been back to LA for work now, speaking or teaching or doing my work now. And literally, I'll be looking at an intersection in downtown Los Angeles. And I thought, well, wow, that's where my band practiced. And I was usually high and very unhappy. And on that next corner is where Yogananda left his body in 1952 at the Biltmore Hotel. So these things were always right in my face, even when I was at my most disconnected.

And I needed the book to start threading all of this back together for me. So yeah, it did feel like a reminder of this has been my teacher, perhaps from other lifetimes, some level of resonance. And it's a book I literally can't stop reading. Chances are, it's usually the only book I'm reading. And I'm probably on my 12th or 13th read through of it. Yeah. I mean, this becomes so powerful for you that you decide that you actually want to devote a chunk of your life to the path laid out to the tradition and become... What's the word for Self-Realization Fellowship? Yeah word for Self-Realization Fellowship?

Yeah. So Self-Realization Fellowship is the organization that Yogananda founded to spread the teachings. And 2011, I finished the book. I read Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields. You launch the Good Life Project Immersion. And so I spent 2012 in this ridiculous, ruthless self-knowledge kind of search. There was all the levels we were opening up in the Good Life Project immersion. And then there was the Kriya Yoga lessons, the at-home lessons of Yogananda, which made me question everything from what I'm putting into my body, how I party, how I don't... It was questioning everything. So it was a very hard... You might remember I was a little bit of a disaster that whole year, just searching wildly for what, feeling so untethered. And things started

coming into focus towards the end of that year. I reinvented my career, moved from sales into training and development with a lot of the people's help in the immersion, just people saying, don't blow up your career. You have a family of five at this point. Chill, man. Just go slow. But by that point, I was meditating about an hour each morning and just starting to surrender more into the path of becoming what they call a Kriyaban. And a Kriyaban is somebody who takes the vow to practice for the duration of their lives. And taking those vows didn't come until the fall of 2013. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk so as you're deepening into the side of yourself and you're reorienting you're still in the same company still in the same culture but you've changed the way that you're actually stepping into it and also what you're doing so that yeah there that you're stepping into it from a place of more, let me educate and uplift and actually build more consciousness within the organization.

You created this shift. You're also in the world differently. Like you say, meditating an hour a day, you're going on retreats. You start wearing the traditional prayer beads also. I'm curious what's the feeling in your family as you're going through this? You're married and you've got at that point, three little kids. You've been this person that they know in a particular way up until that moment in time. And all of a sudden there's this profound internal change in you that starts showing up in an external observable way on a daily basis, not just through the practices, but the way that you're carrying yourself. But also it's not the typical way that sort of like you people around you, people in your community show up in the world or in your family. So I'm curious what, I'm always curious

when somebody goes through sort of like some sort of profound awakening, be it spiritual, whatever it may be, how that ends up being experienced by the people closest to you and how that impacts your relationship in the early days? Well, I think it's a real spectrum of responses you get from the people around you. I mean, my wife has been incredibly supportive of everything I've ever done. And she was very happy when I chose to be sober in about May of 2012. And I'm coming up on 10 years next May. And she knew that I wasn't happy and didn't need to be a drinker. I know full well how to party with or without any type of chemicals. So she was supportive. And I think she would say, honestly, that I was

starting to become a more present dad and less frustrated. I mean, the frustration still happens to this day. I mean, that's life, you know. But, you know, I have other family members that, you know, assume that because I make different choices to be either more spiritual or less drunk or more sober, that I'm judgmental of them in some way or that my choices somehow indicate, you know, judgment of theirs. And so it was hard. It was hard. You know, I mean, it definitely changed a lot of my relationships. Certain friend groups definitely fell away and made room for new friend groups that were more in line with my new values. But all in all, I'd say at the heart of it was that I was just trying to find any way to really

be myself and be happy. And the more I got into meditation, the less I got into drinking or running away from home to travel, the more I started to feel like me and started feeling like I was here doing what I was supposed to do. And you were such a massive part of that journey as you are for so many of your listeners. I mean, just to have a fellow dad that says that it's all right and it's all right for it to be hard and it's all right to do your best to love everyone at all times, even when they're being difficult. I really feel like autobiography and my practice helped open the door for friends like you to support me doing that evolution. I appreciate that. It is really interesting. There's this popular sort of psychology that says, if it's hard, it ain't right. And I'm just like, no, man,

there are a lot of things that are really, really hard in life where you're gonna stumble and get knocked down and have to get up and work relentlessly to bring it to realization. And it's right. There's this really interesting mythology around people realization. And it's right. There's this really interesting mythology around people saying, when it's right, basically the universe rises up to support you. All of the

obstacles become magically cleared and everything just opens up to embrace you and step forward and step forward and step forward. And I'm like, I have heard those mythological stories and I've known people that have had one or two steps go that way. But then the third or the fourth ends up like falling off the trail. And not because they're not headed in the right direction, just because things can get hard. It is the fundamental nature of the way we are. I think that's in no small part the reason I meditate is just to be able to see more clearly and to respond to those moments with more intentionality rather than reactivity. And, you know, but, but so it's interesting to hear your reflection on that. When you start to do this, it also starts to really rewire you from the inside out and over a period of years. And I've witnessed this because we've known each other

for a long time now. And from the first time that I met you to literally probably like five years after that, you were showing up as a different person. And it was interesting. It was like you said, you know how to party. You don't need substances. You know how to have fun and be joyful and be present. But there was a groundedness.

There was a certain spaciousness around you, even when I saw you struggle, which you have and you will again. But you hit a point where you're going through this personal evolution. There's almost a liberatory process happening inside of you. You're seeing yourself in the world differently, but the world around you, especially in the context of work, is not changing. Right. What's that like?

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to balance in Western culture when you're a dad and you're a provider and you are trying to figure out what it is you're here to do. I mean, there's bills to pay and a lot of reality. I love what you said about the struggle too, is that I think it is supposed to be hard. I think that the world needs to know how bad we really want it. And I think that all of this, to me, comes back to the spiritual path because these monks that I counsel with throughout these different touch points, it gets hard. I mean, it gets hard so much because you're creating

heightened levels of awareness at all times. So you're more aware of the struggle because you're creating heightened levels of awareness at all times, you know, so you're more aware of the struggle and you're more aware of how you're not showing up or you are showing up to it. And I think also part of that good life project experience for me was surrounding myself with extraordinary coaches like Karen Wright, Cynthia Morris, these people whose job it is now my job as a coach create heightened levels of awareness. It's like the running theme and it's, it's exhausting and hard and not many people want it, but that's where all the growth is. And yeah, I couldn't deny that I had outgrown my company. I had outgrown the business mission of the organization. I loved what we had built together, but my time was coming to an end and

I didn't know exactly how it would, it all kind of came to a head. We did a New Year's Eve meditation when I was out in Encinitas for a sabbatical. This is like the end of 2015. We do a three hour meditation from about 10 PM until 1 AM, like over the new year. And I remember walking out towards the end of that meditation, kind of pleading with God and guru, just asking for reconciliation on my career. I was at a breaking point. I couldn't hold it anymore doing the old thing. And I got this kind of intuitive hit when I was leaving. And to this day, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I just got this feeling that reconciliation is coming. It almost sounded like a whisper in my ear, like, brace

yourself. And I was, of course, fearful. And it did. My job was eliminated while I was on that sabbatical. And I found out a week later that I had bought a dream house at the same time, had no career to support it. And now was my time. Now was my shot to build my own thing. So on the one hand, okay, so now's your time. Now's your shot. You've been doing all this practice on the other hand You come out of this profound experience and then you step back into your life realizing I've got a new home a mortgage Married with three kids. Yeah, and now no job, right? Oh, you remember these calls. I called you quite a bit The uh, I remember because i'm just thinking like a lot of people are

experiencing their version of something similar now. Yeah. And it's a beautiful time to be in that game of transformation. I mean, it's part of the reason I'm so excited for your book is that everybody's looking for that vocation piece and now we have a shot and the job market is supporting that. But yeah, at the time, beginning of 2016, I had all this stuff and no income to support it. And I remember we did a kind of staff immersion outside of New York City together. And I was a mess. I'd grown a beard. I was really freaked out to even get started. What if I mess up? I didn't have the language to describe what I was trying to market. I wasn't sleeping at all. It was just a whole lot of reality kind you know, kind of crowding around me.

And truthfully, what worked for me was sticking with my meditation for sure. And then a lot of those foundational processes that we were recommending to people in the Good Life Project immersion, you know, journaling, the perfect day exercise, the three to five year painted picture, just really getting clear on what it was I was trying to create separate from the money I needed, separate from the, you know, the three to five year painted picture, just really getting clear on what it was I was trying to create separate from the money I needed, separate from the pressures, but what was I designing? And that started materializing within the next six months. The clients started to flow, the lifestyle that came with it started to emerge. And so I think it was a degree of like surrender and intentionality, but yeah, I didn't sleep very well for that entire year. And, you know, so I think it was a degree of like surrender and intentionality,

but yeah, I didn't sleep very well for that entire year. And you kind of told me I wouldn't. I think that's one of the big, you know, so you essentially end up building a consulting practice and now it's just growing into a training company. And, but yeah, I think one of the myths of entrepreneurship is like, you know, like the minute you start your own thing, it's elation and everybody shows up. Yeah. Everybody cares. Right. And it's like, now I'm in control. And it's like, no, no, no, no. You are 100% not in control. The world is in control. The people who you want to be your clients are in control. And it takes time. And in the world of tech startups, especially there's like this term that came out of that world, the trough of sorrow. And basically nobody avoids that, whether you're building a private practice, whether you're starting a company, whatever it may be, there will be a moment very often early on

where like things are going good for heartbeat. And then, you know, like you move into the trough of sorrow where you start to doubt everything that it it was just the wrong call with what's going on, should I go back? And when you have something like that, I have to imagine that the years that you had already been developing a practice were so, so pivotal in your ability to not say, okay, I just need to run back to what I know. Gosh, I mean, there's a saying in yoga somewhere, just water the roots. And I had been watering those roots for a lot of years at that point. And if I hadn't been, and I'm talking about not only my work ethic, because I was working with you, I was working with Centro, I was working on This Epic Life, which became my company, like three jobs and dad of three

and all that entails. And then also working on just the, I think the meditation practice, it gives you self compassion. Thank God, right? Because you're constantly judging how terrible you're doing everything and why people aren't showing up or why your phone isn't ringing. I mean, it's maddening. So I feel really grateful.

If I'm grateful for anything about that brutal year of transformation, it's that I had gotten a jump on it through good role models and coaching and a guru to do the practice, to build that root system that would sustain me until things started to move and started to shift. Yeah. I remember you also coming to me and say, as you're starting to actually step into this new space and you're saying, okay, I'm going to define what I want this to look like moving forward over time and interacting with people. But there were two things that popped out in the early days. One was you getting really clear on what you call the full life integration. Like no part of you gets left behind. And the other was this idea of being very precise about defining non-negotiables in life. Talk to me about each one of those two ideas. Yeah. So one of the things that you coached me around, which was a huge

pivotal thing for me, it was launching my first manifesto, the Full Life Integration Manifesto. And that's what launched this Epic Life in 2012. And it was all built around this theory and this experiment I had been running called Full Life Integration, which was to define your non-negotiables and mine are soul, vitality, family, art, and work. And then to do the work to integrate those things together as seamlessly as possible. So meaning, you know, if you're subdividing your day into when you get to work out or when you get to meditate and when you get to work, by that point, because I had been working from home and thank God people have the chance to figure this out now, like after this pandemic, we all get to either figure this out or suffer the consequences, is that

you get to do all of these things within a given work day. So just because I'm working doesn't mean that I won't lift the barbells that are over there or sit down to meditate at my altar right here. It's all my work. We are our work. And I think running those experiments prepared me to certainly to pull the crazy hours it takes to build a company, but also the self-compassion and the temperance you need, I think, as a parent to know that it's okay to shut down at five o'clock sometimes or at two o'clock to go pick up your kids. I mean, that is a very, very hard thing to navigate when you're responsible for the revenue. But yeah, integration is key and it's stuck around. I mean, it's the constant pursuit is integrating everything together.

Yeah. And it's also integration of what's been fascinating to see is I feel like so many of us feel like we need, if we want to be taken seriously, seriously enough for somebody to show up and say, you have value, you can help me. There's something that, and I'm going to compensate you for that insight that very often there are parts of us that we need to hide from that person in order for them to take us seriously enough to actually allow us to sustain ourselves in the world. There is a part of you, which is goofy, playful, out of control, raging extrovert. In front of my colleagues, really? Right. So for context, dear listeners, we ran, as many of you know, for five years, an adult summer camp called Camp GLP, where we would take over 160 acre sleepaway camp and 400

something adults would come from all over the world. And, and Casey and, and then another dear friend and member of our faculty, Amelia would effectively be like the cruise directors, but also they would run the vibe for the entire thing. And it was not unusual for you to be seen running around in a bathing suit, you know, like sneakers and a massive inflated unicorn and a bullhorn. Right. Right. And that's a part of you. And you had so much fun doing it and people love seeing you doing it. And then like, I'm picturing you sitting down like in that, like a business development meeting with the client and then saying, Christopher, I've seen some video of you online. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And the evidence, the case file is thick. But what I realized at that Camp Good Life Project experience for five years was that you gave me this role and it was a lot of responsibility to help hold space for those people because I would literally scare people

into wanting to get back into their cars out in the parking lot, the introverted folks. But I also led the 6am meditation every morning, you know, and a few hundred people would show up to meditate together at six in the morning. And later in the day, like clockwork, somebody would always say around lunchtime, you know, like when I'm back in my unicorn regalia or whatever, they'd say, wow, man, your brother is so chill. And what's wrong with you? And they're talking about the guy that led meditation at six in the morning. I'm like, oh, that was actually me as well. But what I started realizing was the crazy, the funny, the really playful side, it's kind of the sugar to help the medicine go down. It's the permission to what I call glow

in the dark to say, it's okay to be your full self and to bring your full self. You gave me that privilege of doing so. And as long as I was, and as long as it came from a wholesome, loving place, I'm super proud of it. Most of my clients, they'll say, God, I wish I almost went the last year and I'm kicking myself for not going. They feel like they missed out on something extraordinary, which they did. And it's something I try to bring to all of my executive retreats now. So like some of my clients will know me in this very, you know, tactical, you know, serious relationship of coaching. And then when they can see me on relation on, on retreat,

they're wondering while I'm sailing, why I would be sailing over them in cannonball position, like a fully clothed, creating a, you know, a splash and getting everybody soaked. It's because this is hard enough. It has to be fun, you know? Yeah. And within that also, you know, I think there's this really interesting line that you, you dance where that exact same thing can be perceived as being out of control. But if you have done the work to create a shared understanding and a container of safety, that exact same thing is being perceived as permission to drop the shields and join in, which people want so much right now, which is, I guess, one of the central messages really of your new book. And really,

it feels like it's distilling everything you've learned over the last decade or so into your own ideology. And you come up with this model of the four permissions in this book. So first, how does this emerge into your mind? Well, maybe about six years ago, I started saying, and it was coming out of the camp experience saying, you know, I give myself and everyone around me permission to glow in the dark. And then I started realizing through meditation that it wasn't my job to give anybody permission. I could barely give myself that permission. So it's my job to try to dance with my own fear and being mortified because most of the

time before I walk out on stage, not many people would know this, but before I walk out on stage, you know, in a, you know, unicorn unitard or whatever the ridiculous thing is, I am mortified. You know, I can't believe it that I, that I, that that's my job, you know, and how do I explain this to my kids when the pictures hit the internet, you know? And then when I, but, but when I dance with the fear and go do the thing anyway, all of the joy and the acknowledgement and the fun is on the other side of it, you know? So I started using permission to glow in the dark as language at the company. I helped build a Centro. I launched the first meditation program, which was called the pause. And that became permission to chill. And then the, the later to arrive through coaching, lots of executives. And, uh, but what I started realizing

was that the, the four permissions framework is yoga at its root. It's something that's kind of taking over my entire life. Like if you would have told me four years ago, I'd be writing a book on four spiritual permissions and making it for a corporate audience. I think you are crazy. That is a asinine thing to attempt. But I realized that similar to Yogananda's teaching, it's always been a part of me and it was my job to articulate these permissions in this way. Yeah. I love that. It's almost like you're the whisperer of this thing. How do we serve it up in a way where people will interact with it? It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. I want to walk through each one of these permissions just a little bit, because I think it's interesting to touch into them. You mentioned two of them, but let's start with permission to chill. Tell me what you actually mean by this. So permission to chill, I mean, at the foundation, I want to encourage everybody to create a meditation practice. But when we're willing to pause, we get to be with what is, whatever rises up in the moment to test us. And that could be the virtue of sobriety, if you think about it, just the willingness to be with

whatever rises up. And we can't do that unless we're willing to slow the hell down and stop being speedy rabbit and to just notice and breathe. And the meditation practice supports giving yourself permission to chill. Yeah. One of the things that evolves out of this, and I know you write about, and I've experienced personally having a long-term practice is this experience of discernment. Huge. And I think right now that is so, so important. Talk to me a bit about this. I'm curious how that has shown up in your life too. Gosh, I don't know if I would have survived the last six years truly if I hadn't built my discernment muscle.

So your discernment muscle is the muscle you build of your meta attention. So when you bring your attention back is a thousand times if necessary in meditation, it's not the absence of thought, it's your willingness to sit and to bring your attention back to your breath, back to the mantra, whatever it is.

So in strengthening that meta attention, you strengthen your discernment and the discernment helps you navigate these topsy-turvy, crazy, volatile, uncertain, complex times that we're in. And the last five years in the United States felt like back to the future too when Biff is the mayor. I mean, it felt really dark and weird, right? So just to have a way to touch stone and to navigate back, that's what discernment gives us. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really powerful experience for my experience of it is that the practice allows me to see more clearly, more quickly. So I can try and get closer to an understanding of, I'm always trying to get sort of like one step closer to the capital T truth, you know, rather than the truthiness that floats around the world these days. Like what is the actual fact? Like what is the actual fact?

And what is the fact now? What was the fact generations ago? And how can I see past my overlay and the overlay of all the people around me to get as close to the fact as only possible, knowing that I'm probably as delusional as anyone else? But how can I get through that? For me, the practice, one of the things is the ability to, I feel like it lowers some of the veils. It clears away some of the fuzz. It's like the fog on the window. And then that, being able to see more clearly, is the thing that leads to discernment because you can make decisions based on better information. Has that been your experience also?

Oh, gosh. Well, one of the things I write about is that in coaching, what we realize, what makes us suffer or what keeps us from achieving our goals or dreams are all these interpretations, what so-and-so thinks, what the media thinks, what the weather says, how we feel about it. And I love the pursuit of truth, I think is free from interpretation or at least noticing your own interpretations and owning it versus operating as if that's omnipresent reality. And that closer to reality,

it's something that Yogananda has taught. It's based on the ancient rishis' teachings for thousands of years. Like true objective reality is joy. It's free from that interpretation. And that it takes conscious work to sit down and try to find that because we are constantly being buried

in new interpretations. Yeah, that resonates. Permission to feel all the feels. Represented by the unicorn. The permission to feel all the feels is where all of my breakthroughs continue to happen because I wanted to be a superhero and performer. And I interpret this as the permission to be at peace with what wells up in your heart to guide you. When we do the earlier work of giving ourselves permission to chill, we could then hear some of the wisdom our body is speaking to us through our emotions, through our feelings, versus just suppress them or drown them in more scrolling, more booze, we can use those as data to guide us. And I think that that's part of deepening our, or raising our emotional

intelligence, certainly, but also tapping into our deeper intuition and being guided from within. So, I mean, when you say it, it's like, yes, okay, that makes a lot of sense. And yet so few people live from that place. What is your sense of what stops people? I think it's the constant second guessing we grow up being trained to do. We all have that little voice inside us and we think it's crazy, or we think it's imagination or whatever. Or we think we're being, you know, we use terms in our culture, like ugly crying, you know, why the hell should crying be ugly? I don't know. I guess, I guess it's a joke. It's like mommy's drinking wine all day in yoga pants. To me, it's just not funny after a certain point.

I get the ha-ha aspect of it, but when my clients say, oh, I'm ugly crying, it's such a cop-out. It's basically diminishing your beautiful humanity and that release has something to express and it has something to inform. And I think if we write it off as some joke or something ugly that we're missing a big opportunity. So, I mean, how do you convince people of this? Because if in fact the thing that stops us from going there and then leads us to give the sort of these, you know, humorous or socially acceptable overlays or, or, you know, like angles to those rare moments when we actually let it out, like how it is so deeply ingrained for us to not quote, feel all the feels, you know, or when we do to, to basically stifle it down the second that we feel it and not let anybody around us be a part

of that or know that this is what's going on. Like, how do you even begin the process of getting okay, letting it out? Well, I definitely name check our friend, Amelia Zivitov-Skaya, because her last name is so fun to say. But she has this thing, she teaches positive psychology and she has the Flourishing Center in New York City. And I love her framework, Notice, Name, and Navigate. It's very simple. And it's as simple and as complex as that.

So if you are meditated, which helps, you can notice what that thing is. Oh, I am clearly upset right now. I am angry. I am not happy. Noticing is the first step, naming what it is, and then navigating accordingly. And know, and you can't just like slap a happy face on it and say, oh, I'm happy now. That's not feeling all the feels. That's what I call game face, you know. But if you're willing to navigate back up that emotional scale from where you are, maybe into mild frustration or back to center, wherever that looks like for you, I think that's, you

know, just even having that practice. I notice this, I practice this literally every night at the sink when I'm doing the dishes before dinner. When the dog wants fed, the kids want fed, everybody's anxious and annoying and annoyed. And I just want to blow my stack like Yosemite Sam. But I'll just notice the water on my hands, notice the anger and work with it. And it just becomes access back into being with what is, you know? Yeah. No, I love that. And it's not even, it's not even like that you're saying, okay, share all the feels. Sometimes maybe if it's appropriate.

That's not always appropriate. But some, but I think the, right, the bigger hurdle is just allowing us to feel it and often not feel a sense of shame that we're even feeling it, you know, and just say like, no, like this is legitimate. It's going on inside of me. Just be with even feeling it, you know? And just say like, no, like this is legitimate. It's going on inside of me. Just be with it and see what comes up. You know, we push stuff down in a way so often because we're told we're not supposed to have that feeling.

But just allowing it to be inside of you is a huge first step, I feel like. And I think we're so drawn to people who give us permission to be human, you know? And we earn that privilege when we give it to others, like meaning that if we demonstrate that or that at least we're willing to try or be perfectly imperfect or accept when we're messy or whatever. I think, you know, people like Brene Brown come to mind just giving us what like what a gift that is, you know, to let down the facade. Yeah, for sure. Glow in the dark. Third permission. Glow in the dark.

Ah, I love permission three. Permission glow in the dark. It's like full expression with witnesses, despite the ever present fear, learning to dance with the darkness. You know, I think of Olympic ski jumpers in the winter Olympics that just sail off the end of the ramp towards glory, leaning off the skis into the wind. Like, how do you figure that out? Right. And that's same, you know, my same experience with entrepreneurs are very similar wired, but that is the practice of building courage through dancing

with the fear and doing the thing anyway, you know, cultivating your audacity muscles, you know, it's hard. You know, it's interesting. I probably never told you this, but there were moments where, you know, we're at Camp GLP surrounded by 450 people. You're running around with, you know, like the unicorn outfit or, you know, like literally like 12 layers of clothes, multicolors and screaming on the top of your lungs with a bullhorn and leading spontaneous dance parties. And I would look at you and I'm like, I'm a quiet person, I'm an introvert.

And I would look at you and I'm like, why can't I be like that? Gosh, well, let me, and it's not that I want it to be you. It's that there's a level of comfort that you've cultivated at this point in your life, simply stepping out and being you, whatever that may look like. It could be a quiet person.

It could be a loud person. It could be funny, right? It's dorky, whatever that may be that you've cultivated that I'll sometimes catch myself looking at you and saying, I'm not there yet. And then I look at you and I'm like, wow, there's something in you that has found a way to be utterly okay in that space.

That is just beautiful. It's like grace. Well, like I said, I was surrounded by really good mentors that were like fanning the flames. So like, I think we're, I think we're snake charmer, you know, like I picture the dude playing the flute and the snake is kind of like doing the dance. And I get to do that with 400 people or whatever at camp, you know, just come out to play. It's great out here, you know, and some people are totally mortified. I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm totally fine back here. And part of me is that in that spot too, right? But with you, one of my favorite moments at camp was the very end where, you know, you, I tuned up your guitar that you built by hand backstage. And I came out with the unicorn head on and I handed you a guitar

and we played and sang Don't Stop Believing by Journey. And it was just so preposterous. And there's a picture of you singing it full voice and throw it right next to me. And I'm like, see, this is where we both get to like mesh and learn. Because I learned so much from you just in the being piece, the being calm in all these tumultuous times, like the being a dad when it's the last thing that feels like there's time for sometimes. Like you gave me that permission

in so many powerful, profound ways. And yeah, it's a joy to hear you say that. It's, you know, I think you are there. I think you put yourself out there and glow in the dark and, you know, ask anybody on the street of Jonathan Fields' clothes. You know what I mean? In a different way, maybe. Let's wraposterous to think that we have a friendship. And she said during one of our conversations, she said, what if we just transcend the fear and there's no more darkness? What is glowing in the light? I want that, like beacon level.

And it just planted the seed. And another friend, Lauren Neff, said the exact same thing. What if we move past this? What does that look like? And it was the earlier work of the first three permissions of chilling, feeling, and glowing in their own darkness. They wouldn't be confronted by competition or scarcity anymore. They would be more concerned with uplifting everyone around them and inspiring everyone around them. And I know that can sound Shangri-La or utopian. However, what other choice do we have when things are this heavy is to integrate as one much larger system to support one another and create some light around here? participating in a process of change that the fiber of the fabric that we've woven that we're trying to change slowly goes from dark to light? Yeah, it's an interesting question. So these four things, they take work. They make a big difference, not just in our work life and

how we show up, but in our personal lives, in our relationships, in our relationship to ourselves. Effectively, what you've done is written your own spiritual manual in the guise of digestibility, fun, and also to a certain extent, business. But still, everything that you're talking about is hard work. And we're going to stumble a lot along the way. One of the things that you wrap with is this notion of compassionate change. Yeah. Well, our mutual friend, Susan Piver, one of her many brilliant quotes about meditation is if meditation was a pill, everybody would take it. It's like, of course they would because the benefits are just so undeniable, right?

But it's not easy to show up every day when your head's a mess and all you want is your coffee or whatever, your dog's barking in your ear. So I think that that is the invitation of the entire book. And yes, it's wrapped in a lot of 80s pop culture references and humor, ridiculousness to get that medicine down that this does take a lot of showing up and a lot of work, a lot of practice. And it ends with the mechanics of compassionate change, because the only thing I've noticed in coaching a lot of leaders, a lot of powerful creators that have

no problem getting anything done, but stop shy of changing themselves, which is why they hire a coach sometimes, compassion is the grease and the gears, man. It's like the thing that allows us to be gentle with ourselves enough to give our dreams a fighting chance, you know? So I'm, I'm trying to just give people that permission that my, I think my coaches and my wife and my mentors gave me, which was to be patient with me. You know, we're not, we tend to ride ourselves like a crappy little horse jockey. And I felt like that came out of like 1980s personal development, the whole, like, I got this movement, you know, like that really like rah, rah,ver, I got this, I got this, rah-rah. And I loved all, like, trust me, I grew

up on all that stuff, if you can't tell. But the we got this, the surrender into maybe I don't got this and I'm a disaster most days, you know, that gives us a foothold into what I call crossing the desert, the conscious incompetence it takes to create lasting changes. Yeah. It's all about compassion. Conscious incompetence. It's fun. Super fun. Yeah. Beginner's mind always every day, but it's not easy to step there, especially when you, especially I think if you, if you perceive yourself as being someone who has accomplished a certain amount in life or somebody who has reached a certain status or to sort of like say, no, actually there's a whole lot of me, which is more or less, um, a perpetually evolving, uh, soup of disaster. That is not necessarily the easiest thing. And

then to actively step into that space and say, let me be with this and see what emerges out of it, because I'm just going to have faith that something worth the effort will. It is not an easy yes, but what's the alternative? Well, two quick things come to mind. One is there's this excellent movie by Jerry Seinfeld from many years ago called Comedian, a documentary about him creating... This is after he sold the show into a billion-dollar syndication deal. He goes and starts bombing at every single club just to create a new hour of comedy, the most humbling thing.

And something I say in the book that made me laugh on the final read-through is that crossing the desert of conscious incompetence is like a nude wind sprint through the cold cafeteria of personal growth. Because most of us are not willing to suck at anything. Like, let's be honest, you know, our cultures like beat that out of us. Like, we'll just stay safe over here and do the thing I'm great at, you know. But the willingness to do it, the willingness to try, it does create beauty, it creates new art, it creates new permission for people around us, it certainly creates high EQ leadership. You know, one of these conscious leaders I've worked with for many years, he said the seven most powerful words in business. So when he says that, he's like,

I listen, you know, I'm about to chisel them in granite. He's like, I don't know. What do you think? Those are the most powerful words in business from a guy that's built a massive company. I'm like, yeah, right. I don't, the willingness to say, we don't know, you know? Yeah. And I mean, what's the alternative is, is stasis and eventually regression, you know? Yeah. Nobody wants that.

Like if we, if we rock that, I got this attitude too much, it just perpetuates more of the same. And over time it kind of looks to me like mediocrity. But if you leave yourself open for something more or just surrender, there is a divine response that comes. If it doesn't come directly from some sort of source, it will come from your friend saying, you know, have you thought about, you know, just admitting we don't know. So I want to start to come full circle with you. You started introducing the word divine earlier in our conversation around Yogananda and you keep looping it in and referencing back to it. Before this, what I'm going to call an awakening, you may not call it that, but from the outside

in, this is what I've seen with you over the last decade. Before that, did you consider yourself in any meaningful way a faith-oriented, religious, or spiritual person? And when you use that word divine now, what do you actually mean? Yeah. Well, to answer the first question, I always considered myself a deeply spiritually curious person, decidedly turned off by organized religion as a child, scared, witless, and shamed into finding better teachers, which made me spiritually curious. And I think that that whole lifetime of searching when I found Yogananda's work and it just all this stuff started quickening and

compounding into whatever this is today. And if you were to ask me if I thought I'd be a spiritual teacher at the intersection of consciousness and business, I'm like, no way, not me. But then the more I learn about it, I'm like, no, it's kind of an awesome job. It's super fun. It's inspiring. I get paid to have inspiring conversations all day long. And when I think of the word divine, I think of just any level of surrender to something bigger than us. And because I am a person of faith now these days, but I've earned that faith through a lot of direct practice. And Yogananda said, when you're willing to practice yoga at this level, and Kriya Yoga in particular, it has scientific returns, meaning that the level of effort you put in, you get predictable benchmark results from it. And I think that's what's

increased my faith substantially over the last few years. So I say early in the book that it doesn't call it whatever that thing is, God, goddess, the greatest of all time, whatever you want to call that thing, it doesn't care what we call it. However, that when we acknowledge that something exists, something unifies us, we could do what Yogananda said, which was to dissolve this little singular wave on the ocean into this vast ocean of benevolence. And that to me feels like yoga. That to me feels like unity. It feels like something bigger. And I think as a coach and as a dad, frankly, my job is to unlock the potential of others.

And I will do that by any and all means necessary. And I truly feel that at its heart, it is a divine, it is a spiritual conversation. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So sitting here in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Writing your own script, living your own script, not defaulting to the script that others hand you and being in the joyous discovery of how messy and exhilarating that script can be. That's been a gift ever since I met you, Jonathan. I've heard you ask that question

to hundreds, if not thousands of guests. We ended up creating the freaking theme music for this on your guitar. And I've always wondered what I would ever say when you asked me that question. But that's what comes up for me. Thank you. It's been a pleasure, man.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Daniel Goleman about meditation. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so,

go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we're doing here at Good Life Project, then please go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about your favorite subject, you, and then show you how to tap these insights

to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Till next time, I'm Jonathan Field signing off for Good Life Project. I'll see you next time. to mastering a strength program. They've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton.

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