In Search Of Excellence - Matt Brannigan: Why Success Still Feels Empty | E194

Starting point is 00:00:00 They're very successful and they're fucking miserable. Absolutely miserable. For a lot of people, it's like if I do the hard work, I'll have the money and then I'll be happy. In our estimation, spirit is just you at your most authentic. And authenticity doesn't mean like enlightenment or perfection. It just means that you're moving through the world in a way that is truest to who you are without the patterns interfering. A lot of self-aware people wonder why am I so stuck.

Starting point is 00:00:23 It's good to experience sadness at times. But we've probably all encountered people that get mired in that sadness, even when life is bringing them richness and gifts and things that they could move out of. When I went to Hoffman, I wasn't sleeping. I was depressed and I was carrying all of it alone. My guest today is Matt Branigan, the CEO of the Hoffman Institute, a nonprofit that for more than 50 years has helped over 100,000 people stop suffering in silence, heal the wounds they've carried for a lifetime, and finally find peace with themselves.

Starting point is 00:01:07 And Matt knows it from the inside. He went through the Hoffman process himself when he was 20 years old, two weeks before he deployed to an active combat zone in Iraq. the outset, I want to say this episode is explicitly different from every other episode I've done since I started my podcast show five years ago. Normally, on In Search of Excellence, I walk through my guest's entire life story, their family, their education, their career, their successes, their challenges, and the lessons they've learned, all of which are designed to motivate and inspire you to make big changes in your business and personal lives, to achieve your dreams, to make

Starting point is 00:01:38 positive changes, to grow your business, to advance your career, to get up off your ass and do something you've been thinking about doing for many years and to give you the courage to actually do it. This episode is about none of those things. This episode is about something we almost all carry and almost all neglect our mental health. We ignore it, we push it down, we work harder, achieve more and tell ourselves we're fine until the pain comes too acute or too constant to ignore any longer. This episode is about an institution that over the last 50 years has helped over 150,000 people heal and live better, healthier lives. It's about a method. It's about transformation.

Starting point is 00:02:14 It's about something that changes people not on the surface, but from the inside out. And it's here to tell you that there's a way to feel better about yourself, to forgive yourself for your past mistakes, and to stop carrying whatever burdens were never meant to carry. And now I want to make this personal. For more than five years, I'd heard about the Hoffman process from several people in L.A. in New York and even from a 30-year-old woman randomly sitting next to me at a wedding in Tuscany last summer who'd had cancer and was in remission.

Starting point is 00:02:39 Every single one of them called their experience at Hoffman life-changing. Six months ago, after years of thinking about it and being terrified to go, I finally went. At that time, I was a complete mess. I was in the middle of a painful divorce. I had several businesses that weren't going well, and I needed help and guidance to get through one of the hardest periods of my life. But it wasn't just my divorce or businesses. I went to confront things I've been caring since I was a child.

Starting point is 00:03:03 My parents divorced when I was two and a half years old. The bullying I'd suffered my entire childhood for a starter that at times left me barely able to speak. The 10 years that I lived in a deeply unhappy me, massively dysfunctional household with an asshole stepfather and three stepbrothers who made life very difficult and at times a living hell. When I went to Hoffman, I wasn't sleeping. I was depressed and I was carrying all of it alone. I'm sharing all of this with you for one reason. My goal with this episode is simple. If you are struggling, if you are carrying pain, you've never put down, if you've been telling everyone around you that you're fine when you're not. If you feel like shit for a long period of time,

Starting point is 00:03:37 I want you to know that help exists and that seeking it is one of the strongest and best things you'll ever do. One important thing before we begin. If you're listening to this and you're in a real crisis right now, please don't wait until the end of this episode. Call or text 988, the suicide and crisis lifeline. It's free, it's confidential, and someone is there 24-7. We put more resources in the show notes. So, without further ado, Matt, thanks for being here. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. So I want to start somewhere unusual. You were 20 years old. You just come out of three years of active duty. Then you did the Hoffman process when you were 25, the most emotionally intense week of your life. Then two weeks later, you found out you're going to Iraq. Well, I came out of

Starting point is 00:04:16 active duty, and at that point when I was 20 is when I actually began to kind of engage in my own personal development. I mean, I could even say my three years of active duty were my first foray into that, where I really learned a lot about myself. And so I was doing some other personal development work, and the Hoffman process was seen by the people there as like the graduate course. A few years later, I found myself doing the process, which, as you said was an incredible emotionally deep experience. Two weeks later, so I came out of the process, I'm integrating the work as best I can. I got notice that I was being reactivated and would be going to a rack in a number of months. So it was a real shift for me in that moment from place of

Starting point is 00:04:59 working on myself to then the realities of, you know, I'm getting called back into active service. I'm going to be heading into a combat zone. And, you know, the process, and I could say a lot about this, but the process really helped me both in that preparation and then certainly in my time in Iraq is where I actually felt that I could recognize how much I truly gained from the work of doing the Hoffman process. So you were dropped into a war zone. How did the Hoffman process change how you were able to adapt and survive? And how deep did the combat get when you were doing that tour? Did you kill anybody or, you know, blow anybody out? Yeah, well, I was. in the infantry. So I was in kind of combat operations. And at the time, I was in an area that was

Starting point is 00:05:44 one of the most active areas in Iraq. And I was a leader. I was leading other men in that environment. And I think what the process really gave me was an opportunity to kind of recognize not from a military standpoint, but from a human standpoint, what we were all encountering in a way that allowed me to really kind of connect to and support the men that were serving both alongside and under me. In a military environment, it's much different than, you know, other organizations. Like, you're responsible to know your soldiers deeply. You know, the morale and welfare is a really important part. And so you know your soldiers, you know who their family is, you know their relationships. You're trying to keep them healthy and capable in that environment, regardless of whatever also might be going on back home. And I think

Starting point is 00:06:30 the process helped me to be a leader that I don't think I otherwise would have. Like, I was good with the tactics and the strategies and I could do a lot of good things militarily. But what I came away from that experience, knowing more fully, was that I was a capable leader of other humans and that I did so in a way that could really help them be seen and be understood. And I think it was of service to me, and I hope that they would say it was of service to them as well. All of the people at Hoffman that I know who teach went through the process himself. I think you have to go through the process. We'll talk about the qualifications and what needs to do to be a Hoffman coach later. But how did you go from being a student to a coach to running the place? In those years between 20 and 25, when I came off of

Starting point is 00:07:17 active duty, I, you know, I completed my degree. And then I went to Sacramento. I went to Sacramento State as a sociology major. And, you know, that's something I'd started as a sociology major when I was in the military. I love the idea of groups and how groups form and how they work together. And so that was my initial education. But then I went and did a master's program in transpersonal psychology. So it's kind of, you know, for those that don't know that, it's a psychology that allows for a greater spiritual or mystical component with it. And it's a lot of consciousness study. I had completed my master's degree in transpersonal psychology and was looking for ways to apply that.

Starting point is 00:07:58 When I first got back from Iraq, that was a time where Hoffman did a call for teachers. I had a mentor and friend who was engaged with the Institute. He was somebody who had been part of me enrolling as a student in the first place. He and his wife really encouraged me to apply. And in all honesty, I had a fear of public speaking. So I thought, you know, I'll apply. I'll put a good foot forward. And, you know, hopefully they'll get me a job in the office, if not a teacher.

Starting point is 00:08:27 And, you know, it was actually to my surprise that I was chosen to be a Hoffman teacher. and I was rather young then. I was 28, which at that time had me more than 10 years younger than any of the Hoffman teachers that were on staff then. From there, I just found that I fell in love with the place. And I loved being a teacher. I still do. I teach less now than I used to, but I still teach. I feel like that is really important, even in my role as CEO, is to, you know, be there where the transformation is occurring and be able to witness it. But I went along a path of being a teacher stepping into the role of director of faculty and overseeing our programs. Then we went through a really significant transition in the last couple of years where our kind of, we call them the founders of

Starting point is 00:09:13 the Hoffman Institute Foundation, Raz and Liza and Grasse were preparing for their retirement. And I'd been working closely alongside them. And, you know, they prepared me to step into what we really consider to be a lineage. You know, my role as CEO is in this environment is to steward an organization that we see is a strong lineage, tremendous history, dating from Bob Hoffman to the Angrasis and now to the team that is here and helping carry it forward. I hope you're enjoying this video so far, but before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies.

Starting point is 00:09:52 I've invested nearly 100, including Google Lift and Seagate, and I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than $15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey, and at this stage in my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals.

Starting point is 00:10:13 I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others, and I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions.

Starting point is 00:10:28 And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. So let's talk about what Hoffman actually is. And we'll start with the founder, Bob Hoffman. In 1967, he created one of the most powerful emotional healing frameworks of the 20th century. He was a tailor by trade, not a psychologist, not trained in any therapy, not a therapist. How could that be? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Well, I like to put myself in the perspective of what the Bay Area was in 1967. Like, yeah, and I was not yet born, right? I wasn't there myself, but I look at all that was being created in that time. And, you know, it was a really interesting dynamic, right? So you have just down the coast, you have Esselon, which is seen as the origin spot of the human potential movement throughout the Bay Area and Burk. in particular, you have all of these individuals that are, you know, helping bring this human potential movement to life. You know, Bob, to my understanding, I never had the good fortune of meeting him. Bob was someone that was just incredibly intuitive. And I think we've all encountered those people in

Starting point is 00:11:42 our life who maybe they never make it a career or a profession or they never create a program or a course, but they're that person that you can sit down with that really empathizes and understands and supports you and whatever life's challenges there are. And Bob was that person for his community. And as he started to progress in that, people kept saying, you know, your tailoring is a great service, but what you're doing, you know, for the people that come and engage with you is much more. And he began to build out the kind of theory behind what became the Hoffman process. And he shared it with folks who, you know, helped support him and bringing it into a program. Bob himself wasn't somebody that, you know, was so aligned in creating a program.

Starting point is 00:12:28 He just wanted to sit with people, talk with them, understand their lives, their childhoods, and support them in getting over, you know, the places that they were stuck or holding energy. And as the kind of 70s progressed, you know, people like Claudio Noronho, who was as a famous Chilean psychiatrist, you know, helped him put it into a program that was able to be more than just Bob delivering, but something that could reach more people. because what he was doing was creating tremendous results. And so it took on a lot of iterations of ways that it was delivered all through the late 60s and into the mid-80s

Starting point is 00:13:04 before it actually settled into being a retreat format as we do now. History is awesome. For those people who are now listening, if you had to explain the Hoffman Institute in one sentence, how would you explain it? In one sentence. I hope you're enjoying this video so far. But before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life.

Starting point is 00:13:32 Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google Lift and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than $15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage in my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goal. I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others.

Starting point is 00:13:58 I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions, and if you're a good fit,

Starting point is 00:14:12 my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. Okay. It's a place that provides an opportunity for people to deeply explore their life's vision while eliminating the things that get in the way of us actually stepping into that vision. And in truth, you could ask me the question, you know, a different day, and I might have a subtly different answer because it's so many things that reducing it to one sentence is challenging,

Starting point is 00:14:42 but, you know, it is a place where people get to walk this path together and, you know, what you get out of the process may be different than what I got out of the process, but it delivers and it's promised to help people create change. step into a greater vision for their life. Yeah, I've talked about the reasons that I've gone through the process, and I think that the majority of people and the 40 people who go each class session, we're going through some major life crisis. I've asked a lot of people in preparation for the show why they went to Hoffman, I've done research on this, and there's basically, I've narrowed down to 15 reasons, but I want to go through a couple of them. One of them is people have said,

Starting point is 00:15:21 I've achieved everything I've set out to achieve, and I still fall empty inside. How common is that one? I think quite common. Yeah, I mean, I'd say every process. So, you know, we, we often, at least in our California site, we're doing groups of 40 people. And I'd say that there's at least a handful that would resonate with that sentiment in every process. So here's another one. The person who goes through the motion alive, but not really living, do you see a lot of that? Sure. Yeah. And some of those are exactly the same people. who would have expressed the other. But, you know, there's a lot of people that are drawn to the process that have tremendous life success and all of the measurables that you might imagine, you know, a relationship, children, good career, you know, well taken care of financially, but are lacking that kind of fulfillment that they would expect with that. You know,

Starting point is 00:16:11 they checked all the boxes that they wish for and yet they find themselves missing something. You know, that is a really common dynamic for people that come to do the process. The people like me going through a major life crisis. Yeah, I'd say that's about a quarter to a third of an average class. You know, what resonates as crisis, I think, differs for everybody. But the people that are in significant life, I would say, life transition and or crisis as a big component. What's the difference between the person who comes to an obvious crisis? It could be divorce, death, a collapse.

Starting point is 00:16:44 And a person is just a successful but quietly unhappy person. I mean, I think in one way you described the difference. But at the same time, you know, the work that we do in the process is very much the same for each of those people. Because we're looking at the origin of how do we get to it, whether we're getting to a life transition or crisis that we're struggling to manage or whether we're dealing with somebody who has checked all the boxes but isn't experiencing the joy or excitement of their successes. You know, so much of it can be traced back to the certain kind of patterning as we talk about it that interrupts their ability. to be their authentic self within it. One thing I'd add is that having people who are there with different kind of experiences and different desires is one of the great gifts of doing work like this in a group setting. Like, not everybody has to be at the same point in their life or on the same

Starting point is 00:17:40 trajectory to benefit. And in fact, I think it actually helps build the kind of camaraderie that can occur in a class. And it brings people into this space of just recognizing the humanity, right? So somebody that's struggling, you know, when I did the process, I was, you know, 25, just turned 25, was trying to find out what my career path was and whether the relationship I was in was going to last, right? At the same time, I walked into my room at that time, I had a roommate, and I actually recognized who it was. And this is somebody who, like, was at a position like I aspired to be. It was a very, you know, kind of famous. And, you know, leadership consultant and leadership development person who, like, I aspired to be like him. And so there

Starting point is 00:18:28 was something leveling about me being in there, sharing a room with a guy who I thought had made it. Like, he had the job that I wanted. And we became very good friends. And there was something inspiring, actually, about knowing that, no, it wasn't the career that was going to solve it for me, because it wasn't the career that solved it for him, that there's so much more that we have to to work on as individuals to create the sense of fulfillment and happiness that we might aspire to have. Yeah, I want to modify what I would, Modify is the wrong word. I'm going to put my own take on what I saw there. Everyone there was in some kind of serious crisis.

Starting point is 00:19:09 And it didn't have to be acute at that moment, but it was, I never felt good enough. You know, I could never speak up for myself. My family is too close to me. I can't break away from my family. I've never had self-confidence. It's defeated me. I never got over the death of a parent. And then this one surprised me a lot, which is my wife made me go or my husband made me go. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And one thing I really have to stress now and we'll talk about it later. People are like, what's going on? You're just talking to a room full of people. Confidentiality is everything. You got to sign a forum. You never talk about the people that are there. I mean, ever, ever, ever. It's like a sacred rule. And so all the people who are listening, like, why? Why? Why? hell with people. Share all this stuff in front of room of 40 people. It's because of the confidentiality and you do feel comfortable and the camaraderie is one of the best things that comes out of the program. I mean, you know everything about everybody and you bear your soul

Starting point is 00:20:02 and we'll talk about, you know, how difficult that is, you know, at the beginning. But in terms of relationships, also what I heard before and for those people have been through the process, You should never tell people what you go through at the process. It kind of ruins it. And so that's a rule. So, you know, don't tell people what goes on there. You don't want them to prepare for some of the exercise. We'll talk about the framework, which is public, but in terms of what you actually do there, but I learned that marriages break up after they come back from the process because they should have been married to begin with. You know, you explore all kinds of things that are there. And I think also that's a reason why people fear coming. You know, they don't want, you know, they don't want change.

Starting point is 00:20:50 And we'll talk about the fear as well because I was petrified. Most people are petrified. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I think it's a big step. I mean, some people are just petrified of putting their phone away for a week. Right. Okay, so we'll talk about that now. So I was petrified because you, like you said, turn in your phone.

Starting point is 00:21:07 It goes somewhere you don't know where the phone is. And obviously no computer, no contact with the outside world, afraid to confront demons that have been there forever. And it's like the emotional component of that and just going back in 40 years and just brutal. You bury it like most people do. And the phone thing was big. So I did this thing, which I'll share with you, I was getting divorced. Before I went to the Hoffman Institute, I wasn't dating, but there's a very famous woman who I've had a crush on forever.

Starting point is 00:21:39 I follow her on Instagram. and she has, and she said on, she's a podcast, and, you know, she posts her I would love to find a nice guy and boyfriend, whatever. I'm even afraid to say where she lives, but we'll call it Tennessee because that is where she lives. And I couldn't find contact information. So I have a service that I pay for called Lucia. $79 a month. I get emails and cell numbers for people. It's just, it's there, nothing for her.

Starting point is 00:22:09 So I sent her a DM, of course. She's got like 10 million followers. She's not gonna read that. So I called Scooter, text him about a real estate deal. And then I saw on Instagram, he was friends with this woman who had 10 million followers who I had a crush on. Okay, had no way to get a hold of her. The DM, she had 10 million followers,

Starting point is 00:22:28 wasn't gonna go through. So I texted a scooter, hey, do you know her? I'm getting a divorce and I want to meet her. So he writes back, I don't know her well enough to introduce you. So I'm like, all right, well, I don't take no for an answer. I wanted to meet her.

Starting point is 00:22:43 So I looked up who produced her podcasts because I couldn't find information about it. There's nothing. There's no contact me or anything like that. I sent a email to the CEO of the podcast company. We just said, hey, I'm single. I'm a great dad. I sent my resume because, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:58 I didn't want to look like I'm a crazy person and I'm a stalker. And so I sent it maybe 20 minutes after Scooter text me. Scooter calls me. 20 minutes later, he's like, Hey, you sent that email to so-and-so. I said, how did you know that? I said, because she called me.

Starting point is 00:23:17 And so I said, oh, that's it. It's like, you're not ready to date at all. You're getting through a divorce. And we started talking about it. I said, yeah, you're right. Then he mentioned the Hoffman Institute. I said, I'm going, actually. And so he said, you know, he told me about his experience that,

Starting point is 00:23:32 and he said this all publicly, that he was suicidal. He had three kids and his life was, you know, blowing up. And I was like, gosh, you know, I'm not suicidal, but my life is completely blowing up like yours was. And so we're talking about it for 20 minutes or so. I'm like, hey, Scooter, I can't imagine giving my phone up. And he said to me, Randy, I was the most successful telemanager in the world, Bieber, Ariana Grande.

Starting point is 00:23:54 He named all these people. And I had two phones with me 24-7. He said, I was terrified. You know, just think about that. I was terrified to turn to my phone. And he said, when I came out of Hoffman, I didn't want my phones back. And I got a burner phone and gave it away to my six best friends. And so, you know, I would call him regularly, and I said to him, too, I mean, there's people that

Starting point is 00:24:16 don't have any money who go and you provide a scholarship for those people. And then there's successful people. There are some well-known CEOs there. You don't know what people do until the last day. I would, I said to him like, did you get there and think, okay, I mean, fuck this. It's too hard the first day. I am going to leave. And he said, of course I did.

Starting point is 00:24:36 And like you, I have the means to do it. And, you know, no one's going to tell me what to do. And I said, I did it for my kids and for myself. I thought, okay, that was great. So that made an impact. And I'm like, God, it's like, it's going to be brutal. And then I remember texting him on the way up there. I'm like, 30 minutes away.

Starting point is 00:24:51 You know, I'm driving with my son who took me up there. Like, hey, you know, scooter. I'm just terrified. Like, you got this. And it's just, it's very hard to confront, you know, what you're up to and, you know, what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. And, I mean, with the technology piece, it's, in some ways it's such a minor piece.

Starting point is 00:25:07 It's just like our, our mind is, you say. it aside and it allows you to actually just be more free of distraction so you can get the most out of the week. But you'd be surprised how many phones we have to ship back on Friday because people are so happy to be without it. They just leave it on the table. Yeah. You know, we put them out for them to grab their phone and they just leave it because they recognize that it is such a reliance upon a device, if not an addiction. And I think, you know, this speaks to why it's hard to distill the process into one sentence because any place, you know, place, I would say, and we're just one of many places doing great work in the world, but any place where you

Starting point is 00:25:45 really commit yourself to something like a week's worth of a deep dive into yourself, you're going to find things beyond what you anticipated or expected when you arrived as part of that kind of journey of growth or healing. And, you know, like in this day and age, we have a lot of things distracting us from being present to ourselves and present to others. And I think a lot of parents recognize their challenge in being present to their own children. Big time. Me, me included. Yeah, and so this thing that was like a kind of a secondary result of the process

Starting point is 00:26:20 has become itself for many people, one of the largest things that they generate out of the process, to have boundaries for themselves with their own devices. I can tell you that after a certain amount of days, I don't know, it was a third day, and I'm always reaching for my phone. My genes felt like. It was like having a wedding ring when I found it.

Starting point is 00:26:40 took off my wedding ring, you know, you're going like this for a year. But it was actually peaceful in a way that I had never thought about. I do want to talk about, you know, people listen to this show. Is this right for me? You know, who goes there? In our group, there was a 25-year-old river rafting guy. And then there was the CEO of a big company. And once again, you don't want, I think, well, what's the reason why you don't reveal what you do? Like the final day, you get up there, people know your real name finally, you go by a nickname when you're there, if you have a nickname. So no one knows your real name. And I'd say 70% of the cases, the name's worth the same, and these are nicknames from your youth. And then you get up there

Starting point is 00:27:23 and you tell people what your real name is and what you do. So why do you wait to do that? Well, I think so many people are overly identified with what they do. And, you know, we use this kind of very basic humanistic psychology principle of focus on being, not doing. You know, a lot of times that's how we introduce ourselves. That's how we relate to the world. That's how we actually lead our presence through the world is based on what we do. And it can be limiting or minimizing to kind of live from that place. And so we set that aside. We set aside conversations about politics, about, you know, sports, about things like that to allow people to actually drop more deeply into who they truly are, the authentic person beyond all of the things that might give us. stature or lead us to introduce ourselves in ways other than who we actually are. What are the goals of the program? Someone walks out of there. What are you hoping they take out of it? Well, I think there, again, you know, because we work with so many different people, we do like to align on what their personal goals are. But if I was looking broadly, it would be to kind of minimize

Starting point is 00:28:32 the patterns that actually interfere with you being able to reach whatever your individual goals are, and to create a greater alignment with, you know, what we call the quadrinity, and I think we'll talk about that, that quadrinity of emotional self-intellect, body, and spirit. In that alignment allows us to kind of engage more fully, again, as like who we truly are rather than who we're trying to be. Okay, let's talk about what I'll call what Hoffman actually is and how it works, and we'll talk about the process. There's three steps. Let's start with the big one, the negative love syndrome.

Starting point is 00:29:11 What does that mean? And why is that the core founding principle of Hoffman? And there's a famous Bob Hoffman quote, which is, everyone is guilty, but nobody is to blame. The negative love syndrome is something that was, you know, you won't find it in other literature. It's Bob Hoffman's kind of original theory and how he approached the work. And in his estimation, and we're seeing this to be true, and it's not so far from what is also shown in a lot of developmental psychology. But we as kind of infants, as babies and infants,

Starting point is 00:29:47 and into our toddler and into our young adolescents, we're really dependent on mom and dad. And we're striving to get what, we may not even understand it yet, but striving to get what we may not even understand it yet, but striving to get what we understand to be love. And that comes to us in our infancy through kind of attention, connection, you know, being held, being touched, being talked to. And, you know, you're a parent.

Starting point is 00:30:13 So I think you can probably recognize it's really, you know, a difficult job to be there 100% of the time for your children. And so within that relationship between parent or caregiver to child, like there are these natural places where there's a negative energy. that exists, right? Sometimes it's an absence. Sometimes it's being a parent who is experiencing frustration, right? Maybe unrelated to your child, but it's playing out around your child. There's, you know, parents who, you know, do get angry and upset and lash out. There's parents who also perpetuate abuse on their children. And so the negative love syndrome is looking at the fact that for all

Starting point is 00:30:53 of us in our childhood, like we experience things that are not true love, that, don't give us what we actually need, that don't meet what we are, what is necessary for us to thrive as children, it shows up. And as children, before we have a developed intellect, we begin to actually associate some of those things with love. For instance, you know, there's times where, you know, a parent may like lash out at a child. I've never done that. Never done that. Yeah, no, no. But in that lashing out, right, in that moment, the child gets attention, right? it becomes normalized. Maybe previously the parent was absent, maybe just absent as they were attending to their needs. But if a child needs constant attention and affection from their

Starting point is 00:31:39 parents, we learn to pass off certain things as that as affection. And so it builds within a certain programming. Now, it doesn't always remain that, like, at that place where we're kind of falsely believing any attention is good attention. Like, sometimes our patterns as we start to develop an intellect, like we start to develop patterns to avoid those behaviors, to distance ourselves from them. All of this is what Bob said is the negative love syndrome, and it's at the foundation of our work, because what we're often looking at is, is here you are, you know, as an adult, a parent going through a divorce, you're probably doing some self-reflection in that period of time, wondering, how did I get myself here? And maybe, and you correct me if I'm

Starting point is 00:32:25 wrong, but maybe looking at, you know, places where you recognize. hey, I wasn't my best self. I made some mistakes. I knew better. And, you know, I know you only a little bit, but I recognize you're a pretty smart and introspective guy. And I imagine there was times where you said, wait, like, why do I keep repeating the same mistake? You know, Bob Hoffman loved to look at, like, how did those mistakes that we make, the patterns that we enact, become so entrenched in our life? And a lot of it, he could trace back to saying, like, look, here's what you learn from mother and father, and here's how you're playing out in your life. And that's not yours, right? You're just repeating a model that you were taught or a model that you created to avoid certain interactions. And so when

Starting point is 00:33:11 that quote, everyone is guilty, no one is to blame, you know, I think it can mean different things to different people. Like, I think somebody that's a parent often hears it differently than somebody that's just kind of looking at it what it means in their own experience of their parents. But, you know, Bob's idea was, like, we need to learn to forgive, you know, mom and dad. Some people don't recognize they need to, and they come to the process and realize they've been holding resentments. In recognizing everyone's to guilty, everyone is guilty, we're saying, look, humanity is filled with mistakes. We cannot move through the world without making mistakes, particularly parents make mistakes and their children are impacted by those. But do we want to carry the energy of blame, which in blame, it's alive, it's active.

Starting point is 00:33:57 It continues to exist. Sometimes we can be in blame for something that happened 50 years ago. And Bob thought that that is something that needed to be corrected and that we could create great change individually and collectively if we address the held blame that we have for our parents. So part two is something called patterns. So what is a pattern and how does a pattern differ from personality? A lot of times what we have as patterns and personality, I think, are quite similar. But what we look for is in our patterns, we're acting, and we say this time and time again, but compulsively, automatically, reactively. In my family, a sense of humor is really valued, right?

Starting point is 00:34:37 Like, we love to laugh. We tease. We, you know, sarcasm is allowed in my family and we laugh at it. It's not, you know, not for everyone, but a sense of humor is a good thing. I've gotten in a lot of trouble in my life for using my sense of humor in ways that were maybe too irreverent or ill-timed or actually in my younger years I could be a little hurtful with what I thought was funny. And so, you know, I use that as an example because sense of humor is still a part of my personality and it's still something that I enjoy and appreciate. When we look at the pattern, it's about looking at the compulsivity of it. And so when we diminish patterns, we actually bring rise to more awareness and more actual choice. And it's not choice that needs like lengthy deliberation. It's just that difference between moving authentically and letting kind of an automatic form of living kind of overpower our personality.

Starting point is 00:35:31 That distinction is sometimes very nuanced for people, particularly we get a lot of people that have done a lot of work on themselves at the process. And, you know, they struggle with the idea. Is that a pattern or is that part of my person? personality. And we just come back to, is it showing up compulsively and automatically? Or are you feeling authentic, aware, present in that moment as you engage? I think we talk about humor. I think I'm modestly funny. And I get in trouble at home for, and not just at home, for bathroom humor. You get very raw and sexually humor with my kids that don't ever bring that up again. But I think, I think part of being funny is saying things that are sometimes outlandish that are in your mind.

Starting point is 00:36:10 The interesting thing about humor, if you look at comedians and just regular people as well, a lot of them are very sad inside. And this is another behavioral pattern. I'm humorous and try to make people laugh because I feel horrible inside my body. Yeah. And if you then kind of bring it back to this idea of pattern, right? It's like sometimes if I have one form of consistent engagement, then I'm actually at times losing connection with the other person. I'm not like curating my approach to actually need. and deeply connect. I'm just falling back on what is, you know, natural or consistent for me. And so, you know, I think it is true. I get to spend some time around comedians. And, you know, there's something great about being able to express oneself in the absurd or the ridiculous and kind of bring light to that. And then there's other ways where if it becomes too much that my personality is to always be on with my humor, then you're like, do we lose the opportunity? to more deeply connect, to allow others to come forward with what they're looking for in that connection or in that relationship with us. And so, you know, the idea of patterns and

Starting point is 00:37:22 exploring patterns in the process is not about like getting rid of these things that actually work for us in many ways. It's about distinguishing between when we're on autopilot and when we're consciously engaging that. So I'm just going to make an ask to all my viewers and listeners. I have not had a comedian on my show. I've had amazing people from all walks of life, which is intentional from motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, CEOs like CEO of Goldman Sachs to Dana White athletes like Mike Tyson, Mark Cuban, all these interesting people. But I want a comedian on my show. Nicky Glazer, if you're out there, someone knows Nikki. But somebody, you know, Jeff Ross is fun. I mean, there's just so many, but DME, if you know anybody. Let's talk about the third step, which is really

Starting point is 00:38:09 a lot of the core of what we talk about at Hoffman called Quadrinity. I don't want to lose people here, so I want to keep it somewhat simple. What is it and how does it all work and fit together the four ingredients? So the quadrinity as we look at it is a way of kind of looking at the human system through four aspects, the emotional self, right, that part of us that feels, the intellect, the thinking aspect of us, the physical body, which experiences the world through our sensations, our movement, our senses, and then the spiritual self, which, you know, we use spirit in kind of a loose form of saying, like, you at your most authentic. And in essence, it's kind of you without your patterns. We look at all four aspects, and we work with people to kind of identify how they can bring

Starting point is 00:39:03 them into greater integration so that you're using all of the resource within you. in order to move through the world. And I think it's really meaningful for people. I'd say, you know, a lot of people that come to the process are very much experiencing some distance between their intellect and their emotional self. Like they're trying to think their way through their life's problems without recognition of what they're feeling or they've become overwhelmed with feeling and they don't know how to interpret it and they're trying to use their intellect to do so.

Starting point is 00:39:34 And I think this idea of the quadrinity supports people in really checking it. and with all aspects of themselves in order to kind of find truer or more deep answers from within. Right. Let's just go a little deeper one by one because we gave the list. But I think, again, I want to, this can get very long and very complicated. And I just want to keep it so, okay, I get that. I get that. I get that. So maybe just maybe one minute on each of people really can comprehend what we're talking about here. When I heard this for the first time, I'm like, huh? What? And then as we got into it, After a full week, I really got it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:40:11 So the quadron, again, these four parts. So, like, the emotional self is the one that, I would say, for many people, we feel like we spend the most amount of time within the process. Because we do check in a lot on people's feelings. One of the things that Bob Hoffman was aware of and that, you know, was a foundational part of this process is that people don't have, like, the ability to go right to their emotion. They often filter it through their intellect. And so the emotional self is that part that feels.

Starting point is 00:40:42 We actually give every person a feelings list because we understand that the vocabulary that people have around their feelings is often so limited. So you might remember it's already on the back of the workbook so it's easily accessible when you come to the process. But it is very much that part that connects us to our emotional reality in the world. And so even throughout the process, the most common kind of questions, that we ask people to reveal is what are you feeling right now? And it's not an evaluation of how you're feeling. It's not, you know, it's not to begin with the words I think I'm feeling,

Starting point is 00:41:19 which then tells us that it's, you know, the intellect that's speaking there. It's like, what is the true state of your emotions in this moment? And, you know, people really often have to develop that through the course of the week. It's very hard to identify your feeling, even when I'm with my therapist, well, really feeling right now. I'm good. Yeah, well, no, I, I mean, you know, you go in there. Yeah, you know, what's up today?

Starting point is 00:41:45 I'm good. I'm bad. I feel like shit. And when things aren't going well, you know, it's like, well, where do you feel? You feel it here. Do you feel it here? And Hoffman was really good at helping delineate what we're all feeling. I mean, you know, your coaches are amazing.

Starting point is 00:41:59 We'll talk about them a little later in the show. But it's very hard for people to do. The thing I'd add is we also. look at through these aspects, the ways that there's then patterning in relation to it, right? So some people experienced patterned emotions, right? There are emotions that they go compulsively to or get stuck within, right? Like sadness is valuable, right? It's good to experience sadness at times.

Starting point is 00:42:28 But we've probably all encountered people that get mired in that sadness, even when life is bringing them richness and gifts and things that they could move out of, Sometimes it's like the compulsive relationship to emotions that were so consistent or constant in our childhood that then forms part of our way of interacting with that aspect of ourself. So why is sadness a good thing? When I'm sad, I feel terrible. I wake up. I feel depressed. I'm like, what am I sad about? And you know, how do I get out of it? Yeah, we need a full. Take a gratitude walk. Yeah. We need a full range of emotion, though, right? Sadness is indicative of something, right? It's information. that tells us, hey, there's something to pay attention to. Or I could say anger is the same thing. Some people are taught, you cannot be angry as bad. But anger also allows us at times to recognize, for instance, that a boundary has been crossed

Starting point is 00:43:20 and that we need to reestablish that boundary. But if we're constantly angry or we're angry out of scope to a situation, then we want to be curious, is that patterning and where did it come from? And so, you know, that's, it's how we, you know, bring back this quadrinity as part of, you know, the negative love syndrome that we've talked about, right? Like, we're looking at an authentic part of these aspects of self. And then we're looking at the programmed part that needs to be, you know, explored and even dismantled in certain ways. So we've hit emotional self-emotional child, sometimes we call it. Intellect comes next to kind of with a little brush, touched on a little bit.

Starting point is 00:44:01 Let's go into intellect and the conflict. then we'll finish the quadraternity. Yeah, so intellect, again, kind of the thinking aspect of ourselves, right? Which, again, like, we need to think. We're thinking is valuable. It's a good thing. Like, I think we should all think and actually think deeply. And sometimes there's, again, there's programming or patterning within that.

Starting point is 00:44:22 We can have a program part of our intellect that places it's above the other aspects of self. For many of us, and I think, you know, if I've listened to some of your podcasts, like, You have some really deep and engaging kind of thinkers on your program and people that are probably highly valued for the way that they think. That's great. Like we need great thinkers out there innovating, creating, doing that. But if we went back to a question you asked early on about, you know, why people come to the process, why are some of those great thinkers who are out there innovating, creating, having tremendous success, why are they struggling in their homes or with their children or just with their relationship to themselves? And sometimes we can look, you know, quite easily at the programmed kind of belief systems that they think about in the world. And so, you know, I'll just give another for instance, right? So many people that are like high success, high achieving individuals, their thought process is, you know, I need to outwork everyone. And, you know, I need to give, you know, 20 hours a day dedicated to this. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Starting point is 00:45:28 I'm not judging anybody that does that. But then those same people sometimes come to the process and say, hey, why do my kids act like they don't know who I am? And why has my 10-year-old stopped listening to what I have to say? And why am I not enjoying myself when I, you know, take that Sunday afternoon to finally spend some time with my family, right? A lot of the times it's that disconnect between a part where they think they need to be a certain way and they're not pausing to connect to what they're actually feeling. and from that place, recognizing what the people around them are feeling. When we do that, we create this kind of conflict between the emotional self and the intellect. And that's a big part of the process is kind of resolving that so that you can use the feeling part of you and the thinking part of you together in more harmony to actually, you know, get a wider perspective of the life that you're experiencing.

Starting point is 00:46:21 Yeah, I mean, I remember hearing about the first time, your emotional self, you got to yell out as a five-year-old. old, 10-year-old kid, and I'm not going, no, wait a minute, I can solve this mentally, and it's very hard to do. We all go through it. I want to mention something again, because we talk about who goes to the process, and some overwhelming majority of my listeners and followers to the show are in business of some time. They're executives, their founders, business owners, so many of them, and so many people I know in the business world who have been in the process, they're very successful, and they're fucking miserable, absolutely miserable. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, you come back to my friend who ran a $12 billion fund,

Starting point is 00:47:01 making $50 million a year. And we're at lunch right now. And it's funny. Like, we're both successful in our careers that we've achieved things that we hope we would do as a motivated kid. We're sitting there at Katsuya and, I'm like, hey, Michael.

Starting point is 00:47:14 Like, hey, what's up, Randy? Like, he said, I'm fucking miserable in my job. I hate going to work every day. And I said, hey, Michael, do you remember when we were just kids growing up and we didn't have a lot of money? We wanted to make a lot of money. He said, you know, sometimes the reality is not as good as the dream.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And I think for a lot of people at the process, too, again, you don't know what people really do. I mean, you can kind of get a whiff of it at some point. But if you're an executive out there, and I'll say this to people and, you know, the business people, I know a lot of really rich people, including billionaires who are miserable. And it's just a really good, good place, great place to go. Yeah. And I think we sometimes talk about it as like, you know, for a lot of people, it's like, if I do the hard work, I'll have the money and then I'll be happy.

Starting point is 00:47:56 Yeah. Right. And we don't always get the happy, I'm saying happy generally, but whatever it is that we think is the end state of all of that. And so our work is really about putting the B first, right? We're going to, like, if you understand your being, then, and that kind of informs what you do, then you might have the happiness you want. It's seldom the money that creates the happiness in my experience.

Starting point is 00:48:24 Yeah. As somebody who doesn't have a lot of money, it's easy for me to say. If we're missing the being part, then how do we even know what happiness and fulfillment is? How do we know how to be anything other than miserable if miserable has been the state that we've been in for so long? I think to all the young motivated people out there who are, again, watching the show, listening, you know, focusing on mental health, which they don't focus on. I mean, I get DMs all the time. They're flattering. Like, you've done so much.

Starting point is 00:48:51 You're so successful and you do this at the end of the day. you put on your pants the same way as everybody else, you sleep in a bed every day, and I was just destroyed when I got there. I mean, destroyed. And I appreciate your candor about that too, right? Like, it's not always easy for people that have achieved a lot to be open and honest and authentic or vulnerable in acknowledging that.

Starting point is 00:49:16 And I think, you know, just bringing it into the conversation is a great step. And then for those that you're speaking to that was shared, the sentiments, it's like, whether it's Hoffman or somewhere else, like, go and work on it. Because you're probably also not that far from having what you want to attain, you know, like the happy, like we can all find the ways to be a better, you know, a better human partner, father, friend, community member. You know, I just hope the people that that hear that and resonate with your story, you know, they'll find their place. Yeah, well, good, me too. That's what we're here today. So let's talk about the body because we don't even realize it.

Starting point is 00:49:54 as much as we're sitting there in discomfort or you're aggravated out of the phone or someone pissed you off or this conflict at home. Like, what it, for me, it actually helps my abs. Because I'm like squeezing them all that time. It's like, holy shit. Like, I'm, but it's, it's tension. It's tension in the neck and the shoulders. So you have conflict between emotional child, emotional self, intellect, and then it comes here.

Starting point is 00:50:19 Yeah, who pays the price, right? If we're talking about these four aspects, who pays the price for that conflict quite often. the body. And so, you know, I can recognize from my own life, like, you know, we talked about how I was in the military. And, you know, before going in the military, all I wanted to do as a kid is play sports. And, you know, my idea of my body was that it was like a vessel to have, you know, to fulfill these activities that I enjoyed. Or then once I became part of the military, it was like, the body is what you need to perform the task and, you know, you give it enough maintenance to ensure that it doesn't break down, but don't listen to it too closely because it's going to tell you

Starting point is 00:50:59 you're hurting, and if you're hurting, you can't push through, right? So I had a lot of things that kind of came up for me around my relationship to my body, and the process really helped bring that into focus for me. It's still at times a struggle. But when we look at it in the process, you know, we're looking at one, the relationship to your body, how do you nurture it, how do you care for it? How do you listen to it beyond, you know, kind of its basic information? But like, you your body is often the first warning sign that's something that is amiss, right? A lot of times if we go back to like anger, you know, maybe, again, a boundary has been crossed. Like, where do we first notice the anger?

Starting point is 00:51:37 We get kind of flushed. We notice our fist clench, you know, our jaw tighten, something like that. It can be different for everyone. But it's a signal. And if we can listen to our body and then check in with our emotions and our thoughts, now we have a system working in collaboration to move us forward. at the same time, and, you know, I'd love to see even further research about this through the Hoffman process, but there's a lot of adjacent research. Like, it's becoming more clear how much, you know,

Starting point is 00:52:06 the kind of unresolved issues from our past, right, unresolved issues from our childhood, from traumas, from crisis that we've experienced, you know, how much that then is being incorporated into our body structure and our body chemistry. And so, you know, we don't go so deeply into the scientific aspect of that in the process, but people, I think, are becoming more and more aware that if they don't resolve their emotional issues or their thought issues, their body is going to break down as a result of it. Another thing I would say, and I know we wanted to keep it at like a minute for these, but it's like sometimes our patterning around our body is just we take on the mannerisms, the faces, the tones that our parents took on. And then we don't like

Starting point is 00:52:51 ourselves for it. And like, I'll give an example from my own family and I'm probably going to hear from my sister about this, but like I have amazing nieces and nephew. And one of the kind of brady youngest brother way, one of my greatest joys was when my nieces started to roll their eyes the same way that my sister rolled her eyes at my parents and to see her getting back what she created in the household growing up, I found very funny for a while. At the same time, you know, like, you know, my nieces are, are incredibly self-aware. They're in their 20s now, and they're recognizing, oh, you know, this was just me taking on something that was there and unconscious in our family. And they're not necessarily, you know, proud to be that eye-roller. And perhaps they're thinking of their own children,

Starting point is 00:53:37 maybe down the road if they go that path. And, like, they're working on creating the changes. So the patterning in a family doesn't get repeated, you know, one after another after another. The fourth part of Quadrinity is our spiritual self. I had a hard time with this one. Is this Randy being the perfect person in the world and always doing the right thing and not having any negative qualities or trai is trying to put yourself in that, hey, I'm just all good state? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:06 Well, I would say first it's not that. Like not in our description of spirit, right? It is you without the patterns in a given moment. And, you know, the thing that we're most trying to connect people to around their spirit, and we give, like, a broad pathway to spirit, right? Some people come in with spiritual or wisdom traditions that they're already very involved with. You know, like, we want to honor the different ideas around spirit or spirituality. But in our estimation, spirit is just you at your most authentic. And authenticity doesn't mean, like, enlightenment or perfection. It just means that you're moving through the world in a way that it's a way that it's. is truest to who you are without the patterns interfering. And so, you know, for me, I, I, what I appreciated in kind of learning about and discovering my own sense of my spirit is it, it shows up in the, like, everyday moments. Like, it shows up in a moment, you know, sitting next to my wife just watching a favorite show, or when I come home and my dog greets me and I let it jump

Starting point is 00:55:10 up on me, which I know I shouldn't, but I love the way that my dog jumps to greet me. And the joy that that brings me. It shows up at times as like a Hoffman teacher where I'm connected with somebody in a way that I feel like I feel the kind of give and the take of the relationship, that reciprocity of connection. And so it's not necessarily some level of kind of spirit that is bigger and outside of ourselves. It's very much a spirit that kind of exists within and then is, you know, can be shared and given to others, that it can also be, you know, deeply personal and contained within. But if we're saying the most basic definition of spirit as we look at it, it's it's you without your patterns in action. So we finish quadrinity. And I want to take a step

Starting point is 00:55:58 back because the work at Hoffman starts before you get there. So you get this whole checklist. It's an assignment pre-enrollment assignment. And I can do it. I can tell you from doing it myself. It's not what you expect. So describe the assignment in the three columns and what you do with that information after you get it. Yeah. You're describing the pre-process work, which is a way when people have signed up and then they're fully committed, they have a date on the books there. They're ready to come. We introduce them to this pre-process work. It is rather lengthy, right? I think we estimate that it'll take around 10 hours to complete. Some people do it in less time. Some people do it more time. But the goal, in it is kind of twofold. One, it's to get you to become more reflective of the, you know,

Starting point is 00:56:47 the things that we've been talking about, particularly the patterns and how they came to be. It also provides a bit of an intake for your teacher, right? Everyone that comes to the process, we have a teacher for every eight students, right, the teachers teach in teams. So again, a class of 40 would have five teachers. They read for their small group. So like right now, I'm preparing to go teach a course in Canada. I'm reading eight of the students. I'm reading eight of these pre-process works, each about 50 pages, some of it narrative, and some of it is just going through pattern checklists. And that's like giving people the opportunity to explain, hey, here's what my parents were like and here's what I experienced in my childhood. Here's, you know,

Starting point is 00:57:27 also what I'm here to gain out of the process. And, you know, and we look at kind of different areas of life, love life, career, parenting, things like that. So we get a little bit of information about people's childhood and their current life. And then we give them, yeah, a many page, I don't know how many patterns in total we list checklist where they're going through it and they're identifying with these patterns. Do I do this? Do my parents do this? Does like mother do this? Does father do this? And we even engage with like surrogate parents. Many people were, you know, had another influential parent or several influential parents in their life, whether they were step-parents, grandparents, or other caregivers that were instrumental in their parenting.

Starting point is 00:58:09 And so they go through and they identify, is this true for me? Is this true for them? That 10 hours is intense. I didn't know what I was going to get. I heard, oh, 10 hours of work, I get this form. We've got to fill out the form. You know, you do it online. Then you submit it. I couldn't help but cry doing this form. It really starts taking you back to when you were younger some of the questions. I really don't want to go through them because I, we don't need to. We will talk about some of the things on the checklist, but it really makes you go back and evaluate all the trauma as a child and throughout your life, things that you bury and don't want to deal with.

Starting point is 00:58:47 And then you realize, God, shit, this is the reason I was afraid to go to Hoffman because I'm going to have to really address all these issues and heal from these issues. And I'm just going to tell everyone again, you're afraid. Everyone's afraid before they go. And then everyone walks out of there. You know, holy shit, this is the best thing I've ever done. But I do want to talk about the checklist now, and it's broken up into different sections, as you said. And there's three boxes on there.

Starting point is 00:59:14 They're squares. You got the pattern. Then you have three squares, and you check off which pattern you got from your mom or your dad. And you really don't, like some things you know, like I have a short temper. I get that from my dad. I get that from my mom. You know, and then there's other things that you don't even consciously realize. are just so, I think it's over 500.

Starting point is 00:59:34 And so it really helps you identify. Like, oh, my God, like, I did get that. I didn't even realize I had that pattern. I've never thought about that pattern, but I do have it. And it almost always, you got it from one of your parents. I mean, we say, gosh, you know, I don't want to take, I don't want to be one of my parents, you know, when I grow up. I mean, some you do, but, like, you know, you say, oh, God, I hated where my parents did that. And I'm like, like, we already said, oh, shit, like, I do that, you know, to your own kids.

Starting point is 00:59:58 And I see it. I've got younger kids, you know, I have kids, 24-year-old, two. twin girls, my 22-year-old son, a nine-year-old girl, five-year-old girl. Like, shit, where'd I get all that from? They got it for me, you know? I wish I could just give them all the good, good pen. But let's just go through some of them so people know what we're talking about. So the example, we'll talk about behavioral patterns, things like criticizing, being late, busyness, overworking lying, avoiding conflict, being controlling, perfectionism, passive aggressiveness and chronic lateness. And going through, shit, like I got to go through all

Starting point is 01:00:32 this. You know, I've done all these things before. Then we got belief patterns, examples are other people will let me down. I can't have what I want. I'm a fraud. I hear that all the time from successful people or even unsuccessful people. Having enough money means I'll be happy. We know that's bullshit. I'm not good enough. I'm defective. Nothing I do is ever enough. Then we talk about roles or personality traits. We talk about being a joker. Caretaker. There was a woman in my class who was just devastated by being a caretaker in my coaching group who was just devastated being a caretaker a whole life and had to separate had all that family pressure rebel savior heard that a lot from people who had family members addicted to drugs or alcohol martyr that was a huge one also

Starting point is 01:01:18 peacekeeper perfectionist social climber and performer they have these compulsive moods in feeling states resentful, anxious, cheerful, chronic grumpiness, joyless, armored, depressed, and numb. When someone with a list like that, I mean, I was going through this, like, God, I really am fucked up after I read all this. So is that what you're supposed to feel after this? Not necessarily. I mean, I think some people feel excited that they're, you know, surfacing all of this stuff. Some people feel depleted because they're surfacing all this stuff. Some people are confused because they kind of recognize it, but they don't quite know where it comes from. Yeah. And so a lot of different things

Starting point is 01:02:00 can emerge for people, but I think the hope is something emerges, that it's not just a rote kind of experience of going through, that it is something that they're finding resonance or connection with. And, you know, what I should add is we then as teachers, even before people arrive for the week, at least in the U.S. and Canada process, we meet with them, right? We do a pre-call with them. But the other thing is we have these incredible enrollment counselors. Like our enrollment team, they're not a sales team. We don't need a sales team. We don't advertise. We don't advertise. There's a long waiting list to get in. There's a long waiting list. People are knocking on our door to get in. And we're working to find ways to create space for people. But our enrollment counselors, what they're there to do is actually

Starting point is 01:02:43 support you as you go through the work like that. Yeah. They're very skilled. Many of them have become teachers later. Like they started as an enrollment counselor, they become a teacher. And they're, They're there to kind of empathetically work with people and help them look at these things that are getting surfaced and hold them in such a way that, you know, it doesn't overwhelm them before the process, but it actually inspires them to say, okay, I'm becoming more deeply or more acutely aware of what I need to work on. And it brings them into a state of readiness to do the work. I don't know if that's true of your experience, but I think for many people, they look at it and they might have kind of conflicting feelings of like, whoa, oh, this is a lot. And at the same time, like, I'm so glad I'm going somewhere to actually finally look at this in its totality. I went through that thing, and I did have to take a break after a few days.

Starting point is 01:03:35 Some of them, I couldn't even fill out the whole answer. Okay, it was too much for me. And you really have to find a time where you actually have the peace and concentration. Your kids aren't around. We encourage people to do it over a series of days. Yeah, and it was also another reason. And I had this fear of tackling emotions and bearing things for a while. And then I thought about the checklist.

Starting point is 01:04:00 My son drove me up. He lived in Menlo Park. We had to see actually Shane Gittland the night before, a comedian. So I'm going to laugh my ass off. Then I'm going to cry my ass off, which is exactly what happened. I mean, I was crying in the car on the way up there. He dropped me off. It's like from the minute you walk in there.

Starting point is 01:04:18 Well, let's talk about the wait list. Then I want to talk about what happens. there's a wait list, right? I've heard it's as long as a year. It really depends. You do have other locations. I live in California. I wanted the one you had in California.

Starting point is 01:04:30 And then I went online. It's like, okay, nine and a half months. There's no way I can wait. Like, I got to get in and saw him in the crisis. I'm suffering. That's how I said. I'm suffering every day. I just need help.

Starting point is 01:04:41 And so someone I knew in L.A. said he was friends, and I guess we're all friends with the intake person. And the way people get in is people, cancel because they're afraid or because something comes up and I had to wait three and a half weeks to get in. It's like, God, I just counten the day. I can't wait to get there. Can't wait to get there. Hope I can handle it and hope I can stay there. So what do you do with people like me in crisis who know they need Hoffman? You're not going to take more than 40. That's a hard rule. So what happens

Starting point is 01:05:12 to those people? Do you have to turn them away? Not necessarily. I mean, I think for every course we have a wait list. And as you described, like the people move out of the You know, sometimes it is because they recognize they're not quite ready. More often, it's like, look, they're giving away at least seven days of their life. We actually encourage people to take the two days after to themselves. So that means nine days plus travel on both ends. And so like life circumstances where people have signed up and they go, ah, you know, this date isn't really going to work. We recognize that that's a reality for many people. So we're pretty generous in saying, okay, can we find you a later date that works for you? And because of that, there's often, you know, like openings that come up in the process. On the website, it'll stay sold out. And what we encourage is people that want to do it, you contact our office.

Starting point is 01:06:01 You know, you sign up for the first available date you can do. That gets you into the system. And then you let us know other dates that you might be available. And if for people that have a little bit of flexibility, it's often pretty easy to move them into an earlier date. So it's not necessarily about who you know,

Starting point is 01:06:16 because we don't want to unfairly, you know, apply that. Of course. But, you know, we do. recognize that sometimes it's like, you know, we want to support people in right timing. We have the process, so I oversee the process in the U.S. and Canada. So we have a California site that we own that operates almost every usable week of the year. You know, we're not doing some holidays. We have a site in Connecticut that we're kind of an anchor tenant in, and we run 16 or so a year there.

Starting point is 01:06:42 And then our Canada site that we're growing into. So a lot of Americans go to Canada. And then there are global partners, too. So if somebody was really saying, like, I got to get in this month and we weren't able to support them, you know, I can also call, you know, the process is done in English and Australia, you know, the UK and now in South Africa, which is one of our newest centers. And so we like to share with our global affiliates too. So, you know, my experience is kind of the universe provides a little bit and we are able to get people in in a timing that works for them. One of the things that I teach and coach is just being persistent. And so the intake person, and I forget her name, was awesome. Should we mention her on there? I don't know which one it is, but they're all awesome.

Starting point is 01:07:27 Okay. She was awesome. I can't think of her name, but thank you because I know you're going to watch this. You were incredible. And as part of my coaching, I just said, be in touch with people. I think I was calling her and emailing her every single day. And just top of mind, and I was lucky to get in, and it came at the right time. And I think that, I mean, I think there, we do value that.

Starting point is 01:07:46 We do value people saying, hey, I'm still available for the state. Yeah. You know, things like that. And, you know, some people, it's like we have a wait list for courses. And, you know, if you're really interested in going, continuing to let us know, because sometimes we move through the wait list, you know, and the first person doesn't answer, the second person doesn't answer. The third person is the one that gets the spot.

Starting point is 01:08:09 Right. All right. So it's seven days, broken up into really four main. topics, I guess, that you would say through those days. So just walk us through kind of what happens on those days. And there's some very interesting, I guess, titles of these topics. We're talking about stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four. Well, we have something that, you know, is associated with kind of everything we've been talking about, the negative love syndrome and the quadronity, that we call the cycle of transformation. So it's both how we work through patterns,

Starting point is 01:08:41 and it kind of indicates the flow of the week. So, you know, the first thing is awareness, you know, awareness of your patterns, awareness of who you are, awareness of kind of where you're trying to go. And, you know, I think this goes back to what we were talking about with kind of intellect in particular. A lot of self-aware people wonder, why am I so stuck? And it's because they take their awareness and then they try and think their way through everything. And what they do is end up with a number of confounding strategies on how to live their life that aren't actually giving them what they want.

Starting point is 01:09:14 And so, you know, awareness is the first part that, you know, usually I would say begins before people even, you know, come to the process because people that lack awareness don't tend to go do personal development work. But then it's enhanced in that pre-work and it's a big part of the kind of first day of the process. We also get into expressive work. And I think this is the piece that for a lot of people is missing. They don't know what to do with their awareness.

Starting point is 01:09:40 But when we're talking about awareness of what's not working, often we need to move into an emotional state of expression. And so that might be expression about the anger or frustration of these patterns that aren't working in your life. It might be about the sadness of their impact. But it's usually going into kind of expression of the emotions that are somewhat taboo for people. You know, if you weren't allowed to be angry in your household, you know, it might be time to get angry about the way that has impacted your life. right if you weren't allowed to feel sad like what what does it unlock for you when you're allowed to experience and feel that sadness and so we move people into a number of expressive experiences about saying no to the patterns all towards saying yes to their life now in that it is a lot of the

Starting point is 01:10:31 focus is on mom and dad and and again or the parents that raised you and so the third major piece of the process is exploring compassion and forgiveness And we actually begin with compassion and forgiveness to mother and father, but it's actually with the kind of ultimate goal of finding your own self-compassion and self-forgiveness. We do some really, I think, incredible work in that domain. You know, there's a lot of good work out there around compassion right now, and self-compassion has certainly taken hold as an area of focus for a lot of people, but many people don't know how to do it. Like, they know the word and what it means, but they don't actually understand it and applications. and we bring people into some extraordinarily deep experiences of compassion and forgiveness for mother, father, self, and others may enter that space as well.

Starting point is 01:11:23 I don't want to give anything away, but this is out there publicly, but one of the exercises for me that was massively helpful was to write a letter as if you were a parent to their parents. And I've never once ever thought about what that would look like. and they said if you don't even know what your grandparents were like, make it up. And I just found that just eye-opening earth-shattering to me because you always wonder, well, how'd your, you know, you get your parents from, you get your parents from your parents. Well, where did they get?

Starting point is 01:11:52 They're patterns from as well. And it really helped me forgive a lot of the things that my parents, both my mom and my dad, had influenced me in a negative way through my life. Yeah, I mean, for me personally, like one of the most meaningful parts of the process, and I might get a little emotional talking about this. So I, my parents actually last weekend was their 60th anniversary. And so, you know, I'm blessed with parents that were present and together.

Starting point is 01:12:25 I'm the youngest of three. I had some challenges with them, of course, growing up. But your dad was in the military. My dad had been in the military as well. You know, he's from Pittsburgh, hardworking. kind of blue collar background exactly what you'd expect. Like, you know, his father worked in the still mills. His mom worked at the Westinghouse factory.

Starting point is 01:12:47 So I've been instilled with this kind of work ethic, which is both an attribute and a pattern. You know, my father lost his dad when he was a young man. And so I know no one from my father's family, essentially. I knew his sister a little bit. And my father, as a kid, he didn't talk about his father. There's actually a funny story where there was this photo up on the wall that I thought was my grandfather for many, many years. And this is even, you know, after I did the process, my wife and I are at my dad's house, my mom and dad's house. And my wife looks at this picture and she goes, when was that picture taken of your dad?

Starting point is 01:13:25 And he goes, it's not my dad. We go, what? He goes, yeah, you know, that's actually my uncle Denny. You know, your mom thought it was my dad. And so she put it up there as my dad, and I just haven't bothered to tell anyone that it's not him, right? And I say this because it like indicates how little I knew about my own family. And so, you know, this kind of piece of the process that you're talking about is an element where you actually go back in and you kind of visit your parent as the child that they were. And you get curious about it.

Starting point is 01:13:58 And you may know some things you may not. In my instance, with my dad, I didn't know much. And I remember having this experience. And I remember fighting it at first. Like, you know, like, you want me to make something up. Right. And my teacher is like, absolutely. Like, what harm's it going to do?

Starting point is 01:14:12 It's not about accuracy. It's about opening to the possibility. And so, you know, I did this piece and it's, and we give some space for it. Right. It's a, it's a piece that starts in an afternoon and people end their day in this exploration of their parents' childhood and how it created their patterns. I mean, it's just like, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and I got this kind of information from my dad.

Starting point is 01:14:38 I felt closer to him. That's what I recognize. I felt closer to him. I recognize it may not be true. What it opened up for me is this experience where I came home. I knew how to ask my dad about it, you know, for the first time, you know, and I don't think he was ever like trying not to talk about it. It's just his own point of pain.

Starting point is 01:14:58 You know, he was 12 years old. He lost his dad. And it enabled me to kind of speak to him and ask him questions. And he was more forthcoming than he'd ever been. I actually got him on videotape for a while talking about his dad. And then a couple of years later, you know, we invited him on a trip back to Pittsburgh, back to his neighborhood and, you know, drove through. And I got so much more of the rich history.

Starting point is 01:15:20 And even though I never had the fortune of knowing either of his parents, either of my grandparents on that side, you know, like that opened up the possibility. And so, you know, we sometimes say about the process, like, it can be, you know, it at times is a lubricant. And at other times it's an adhesive, like meaning it can help you put some pieces back together and hold tightly. Yeah. I can open up new possibility. And that idea of exploring compassion through the lens of my parents' childhoods, like, opened up so deeply, not just the compassion, but then it actually gave me a connection to my own family that I never had.

Starting point is 01:15:59 And so I'm, like, I'm so grateful for that experience. You're listening to Part 1 of my awesome interview with Matt Branigan, the CEO of the Hoffman Institute, a nonprofit that has helped over 150,000 people heal mentally and live better, healthier lives. It's been around for over 60 years. This episode is devoted to our mental health, to stop our suffering and to find an amazing institution that will change your life forever, just like it changed mine. Be sure to tune in next week to my awesome interview. with Matt. When I went to Hoffman, I wasn't sleeping. I was depressed and I was carrying all of it

Starting point is 01:16:33 alone. I'm sharing all of this with you for one reason. My goal with this episode is simple. If you are struggling, if you are carrying pain, you've never put down, if you've been telling everyone around you that you're fine when you're not. If you feel like shit for a long period of time, I want you to know that help exists and that seeking it is one of the strongest and best things you'll ever do.

In Search Of Excellence - Matt Brannigan: Why Success Still Feels Empty | E194

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