Know Thyself - E156 - Joe Hudson: How to Embrace the Emotions You Resist & Find Lasting Freedom

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

Executive coach Joe Hudson unpacks the inner mechanics of human behavior, and how we can rewire our lives from the inside out. From learning how to feel our feelings to understanding the “three brains” that shape our experiences, Joe offers powerful frameworks for cultivating clarity, authenticity, and freedom. Joe reveals how triggers become opportunities for healing, why vulnerability is a superpower in leadership, and what it really takes to shift out of ego and into presence. BonCharge Red light therapy:Go to https://BonCharge.com/KnowThyself and use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% Try Pique Life tea and save 20% for life & get a free frother:https://www.piquelife.com/KnowThyselfAndrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list___________0:00 Intro 1:30 Subtractive Development: More Results with Less4:08 Working with the 3 Brains that Dictate Our Lives7:08 How to Make Real Progress in Life10:50 Having the Courage to Feel the Feelings13:20 Raising Kids Who Are Comfortable Expressing Themselves19:30 Healing Triggers Somatically 24:26 What Emotional Clarity Feels Like29:03 The Golden Algorithm: Intelligent Design in Our Emotions 38:38 How the Voice in Your Head Runs Your Life45:49 Ad: Boncharge Redlight Therapy47:27 Nonduality & Spiritual Growing Pains53:09 Best Way to Gain Emotional Awareness59:53 Relating to the Ego in a Healthy Way1:10:23 Ad: PiqueLife1:11:24 High Performers Listen to their Intuition1:13:03 How His Coaching Process Works1:15:25 What Defensiveness Reveals About Us1:18:29 People Pleasing: An Instant Reframe 1:22:25 Power of Apologies & Forgiveness1:29:32 The View Framework1:33:56 Expressing Real Vulnerability 1:44:07 Qualities of a Powerful Leader 1:56:36 Will AI Change How We Relate to Ourselves?2:06:15 Analyzing the People & Companies Building AI2:13:52 Experiment for Implementing This All Into Your Life2:14:55 Conclusion___________Episode Resources: Sign up for a complimentary transformation guide: https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/Art of Accomplishment PodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6MjoHFfLmNgo0Msais7IJ2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtofAccomplishmenthttps://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Amazon presents Laura versus fruit flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo.

chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the everyday with Amazon. If I ask you right now to do an experiment, try to stop feeling every emotion that you're having. Some muscles, if not all of your muscles, had to constrict. And if you did that for an extended period of time, we would call that stress. The avoidance of emotion drives a huge amount of our How many choices did you make not to feel like a failure? How many choices did you make to chase happiness? How many choices did you make to avoid discomfort?

The emotions that we don't want to feel, we invite in the exact way we're trying not to feel them. But that's actually a really intelligent design, because then it keeps on giving us a chance to see ourselves as whole again. We have three brains. And if you want transformation in your life, you need to address all three. And so what that means in a practical level is something to the effect of

there's a lot of ways to work with the voice in the way work with the voice in the head. There is a time and a place as you do the work where the repetitive negative self-talk goes away. Yet when we have it, we say, oh, we need that to be productive. Like, I would just sit on the couch and drink beer if it wasn't for that internal abuse. But it frees up so much energy not to have it. Hey, everyone, welcome back to know thyself. Our guest today is a renowned business executive coach and facilitator of people returning into wholeness within themselves, applying neuroscience and philosophy and incredible practices

that I'm looking forward to diving and exploring with the man, the myth of legend himself, Joe Hudson. Good to be here. Thanks for being here. Yeah, pleasure. Pleasure to have you. I want to start with a couple of frameworks

that I've heard you speak to that I think will set the stage for our conversation today. Cool. Subtractive development and this idea that so much of the illusion of like growing in life is the accumulation of more and more ideas, more material things.

So I would love for you to speak to this positioning, this kind of internal orientation of development and growth actually coming from subtracting. I've never put in those terms before, but I appreciate them. What I would say is that there is a, you know, there's a Zen tradition that says if a hand is always like this,

or if a hand is always like this, both are cripple. And what I see in our society, idea is there's a lot of this, which is what do I do? How do I get there? What's the next step for me to take? But there's not a lot of receiving. And so to me, there's places where trying is really useful. And there's places where trying is really not useful. And so it's really learning how to be able to do both. So what I notice is typically if I say subtracting is a great thing, then people will say, oh, so adding is a bad thing. And if you look at like spiritual traditions,

that they do that all the time, where it's like there's a good way, and then all of a sudden there has to be a bad way. And for me, it's just about the flexibility and knowing when to use and what to use to get to a place of knowing that there's no place to get to. That's what I'd say. Yeah, the way you just verbalize that makes me feel like

the subtractive kind of mentality around this if we are internally whole and we can experience itself beyond the identification with our neuroses and thoughts and emotions, then we're in a way in a lot of these endeavors and a lot of the practices and retreats and things that you lead are helping people return back to what is their innate state.

Would you agree with that? Or is it more of a rebuilding? That's a great one. Yeah, for years, that's the way I looked at it, was it was like a remembering or a, or getting back to. And now I would say it's neither because my experience is that it is always there in everybody.

So there's not even a returning to. There's just a recognition of. And I think even the returning to is a little bit more force than is efficient. What's like the elevator pitch for the deeper retreat work that you do in your one-on-one coaching previously, how would you explain that to somebody of your framework of working with people? Which I know is a big question.

Yeah, I have a lot of frameworks because people are in different places. So to me, the really important thing is to follow the person that I'm across from. So that's where the wisdom is. The wisdom isn't here. The wisdom is in them. And even if I have been down the path myself

and with hundreds of thousands now of other people. There's no way that I know their next best step better than they know their best step. So I would describe it differently to different people depending on where they are in the path. So I have different frameworks that I would describe for people. But the one that is most general is we have three brains, basically. I mean, we have one brain, but we have three brains. And one is the human prefrontal cortex thought.

That's one part of a brain. We'll call that the intellect. And then we have the heart, which is the mammalian emotional part of the brain. And then we have the nervous system, which is far more of like the reptilian brain. We call that the gut. So we have those three brains. And if you want transformation in your life, you need to address all three to get it consistently. And so what that means in a practical level is something to the effect of, we've all been in that position where we've said,

oh, you know, I know that I shouldn't eat that, but I'm, meeting that, which means you've intellectually got it, but your heart and your nervous system haven't gotten it. Or I know that I shouldn't treat my friends like that, but I'm still treating my friends like that, which means your head's got it and your heart and your gut doesn't have it. And so if you're going to really have transformation, it needs to be addressed in all three areas. And if that happens, then the change is just really natural.

And the brain is very much the part of it that is, how do I get it? how do I add? How do I understand more? But the heart is far more and the gut and the gut is and the nervous system is far more about receiving. And so since we're very head-oriented society generally that oftentimes the receiving stuff and the heart and the gut work, the nervous system work is going to be more transformative more quickly. But none of them are bad and they're all necessary. I don't want to make the duality out of it. For sure. Yeah, but there there tends to be this over-identification with the mind, especially more Western. And I'm curious because a lot of people relate to knowledge based off of the education system

that we were raised in often that conflate regurgitating information as knowing something versus the somatic experience of integrating in your body and that actually being knowing. Yes. And it's like the difference of what somebody says they believe versus what they act in accordance to their values. That's actually more what they actually believe because they're living in a with that, right? So where do you think we go wrong in conflating knowledge and wisdom, knowledge that lives in the body that we live as versus the ones that we can, you know,

information we can regurgitate? As a society or as a person? Both. Yeah. As a society, I think our education system is really based on the idea that if you get an idea that your life is going to change. So even most spirituality, there's maybe one or two practices, but there's a lot of talking, you know, and so it's like meditation, great practice, love it, did it for decade, still do it, wonderful. And that's one experiment you can try. There's infinitely other, more experiments you can try. And so a lot of the way that it's been passed down is through talking, through intellect. And then hopefully there's a transmission with a state in which the person is speaking from has an effect as well. But if you teach experientially, instead of teach intellectually,

I think that as a modality works a lot better. So like if you look at any of our courses, there's podcasts in which I'm talking. And then there is all the hours and hours of experiential learning where you're running experiments with other people. So instead of saying, wonder is this thing that really helps you see through your fear. This is a great way to experience wonder. Let's do that and see what happens to your fear. Let's actually do the thing instead of talk about it. And the reason that I ran into that is because I had massive authority issues as a kid.

Like Matt, I had an alcoholic father, so it was, the authority shouldn't be trusted. So when I dug into all the things I was interested around spirituality or neuroscience or there wasn't neuroscience back then. psychology and philosophy, I just was like, I can't trust that. So I started designing experiments so that I could see if it was real or not real for me. And so to me, that was the why I was so why I was able to make the progress that I was able to make was that just dumb luck of, I'm going to try that on. How do I see if that's actually true?

How do I do that in my life to see if it works? And so that's the way that I teach it to. And so I think on a societal level, I think that's generally where we go wrong. On a personal level, I think what happens is, oh, if I actually have to feel the thing that I just saw, then I'm going to open up this massive bundle of stuff that I don't know, that's a Pandora's box.

We're just going to put that aside. And the way that the brain fools us, the mind fools us about emotions is we think, if I really let my self get sad, I'm going to be sad forever. If I really let myself be scared, I'm going to be incapable. If I really let myself get angry, then I'm going to destroy the things I love. And what happens is actually not that.

You really let yourself get sad, you feel better. I had a good cry. I felt great. Or if you really allow yourself to feel fear, you become much more capable because you're not constantly trying to not feel fear, not feel anxiety. And anger, if you don't do it at somebody, if you're not hurting somebody, you're trying to control somebody with your anger, the same thing happens. you feel far more,

we don't get angry at anything that we don't care about deeply. And so all you're doing is clarifying your love by moving your anger. Yeah, it's interesting how our continual resistance to those unwanted emotions perpetuate them for lifetimes in many cases, you know? And like, I love how you speak directly to this

in the sort of golden algorithm. And so I would like to just unpack this a bit more because it makes so much sense when articulated in the way that you're saying to it. And yet so many of us find in our lives that there are these subtle anxieties, fears, resistance to an internal dialogue or emotion, we let that fear be like a dull pain

of unconsciousness permeate throughout life. And so how do we directly break through that? There's so many ways. But a great perspective shift is imagine so whether I say I don't want to feel scared I want to heal my anxiety I want to get through my anxiety all that is a rejection of the anxiety so instead of that narrative which is a very forceful pushing narrative like what is the receptive narrative so to speak and and so if you think about each of these parts of yourself is just um aspects of yourself that weren't

loved or they're looking for love or that's a much oh that anxiety that's like that's a call for love how do I how do I love that anxiety even there might be stages I might have to get pissed I might have to do a whole bunch of other things I may need to draw a boundary but what's actually required for me to love that anxiety is that completely changes when my daughter was a three or four years old she was scared of monsters under her bed and there's like a week or so of her being scared

and one day I walked in I said do you know what monsters really want and she's like what it's like they really want hugs they're like really looking for hugs and that was the last day that she complained about monsters under her bed and that's basically what I do for a living now.

That's so good. Yeah. Those internal what we perceive as monsters that just need a hug. They just want attention and to be attended to. Yeah, they didn't get attended to as kids typically. And so they're just keep on throwing a fit till we love them. Would you say that the vast majority of the,

suppress emotions where consciously or subconsciously experiencing life are derived from that zero to eight age range in the theta brain development? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, especially on the emotional level. Yeah, that's why I like such a proponent. So when we were raising our kids, my wife, she, she was like, let's do this. And I was like, no. And she's like, no. And she's like, know we would have these things about how to raise kids like right from like the early but like even how we were going to birth I was like no and she'd be like and she knew my brain she was like okay i'll get the data I'll show you and she did and but I was resistant and somewhere around when the our oldest was two years old I was just like okay I'm just doing whatever you say and so

I said I you're better at this than I am I'm going to do whatever you tell me to do with the kid I'm going to do I'm going to give it my best and then after three months. If it doesn't feel good, I'm going to say something, but I'm going to give that first three months. And one of the things she came with was this thing called hand-in-hand parenting, which was really allowing your children to have their full emotional expression. Still draw gentle boundaries with them, but have that full emotional expression. And I recommend it highly, and it is definitely one of the most profound spiritual practices of my life was raising my children in that methodology. And it's also a huge part.

part of why my girls right now are so amazing is because they were told that every aspect of you is okay. And so there was almost no punishment, very little shame. And if there was ever those things, there was just immediate, I'm sorry, that's not how I want to treat you. And they came out wonderful because they just never learned. Well, I'm sure we weren't perfect. I can tell you lots of ways we weren't perfect.

weren't perfect, but they basically didn't learn that some, that they weren't okay. Because when you're telling a kid, stop getting angry, you're saying, you're not okay. Like, that part of you is not okay. Don't be scared. That part of you. Don't get so excited. That part of you's not okay. And it's zero to eight years old.

That's all you are. The intellect doesn't even, like, compute your sense of self isn't even online yet. So you're just being told you're not okay. You're not okay. You're not okay. And so you end up as an adult going, I feel like I need to prove my value. I need to, I don't feel like I'm okay. There's this thing that I, if I, whenever I go there, it's like an abyss.

I'm going to fall through. All that stuff comes, I think, directly from that experience. How did you navigate allowing that fullness of experience, but also like having boundaries within society and like, I guess other people's experience if you're going out or like, I'm just curious. I got a couple good stories about that one. To give some context, right now, if I'm in an airplane, And a kid starts crying, a baby starts crying.

I can stand up, look back in the airplane, and I can tell you exactly who wasn't allowed to cry as a kid. And so the question is, how did I do that? I had to learn how to have my full emotional experience because if their temper tantrum was triggering me, it was because I couldn't allow that in myself. If their fear was triggering me is because I couldn't allow that in myself. So as I learned how to allow it for them,

I had to learn how to allow it for myself. So there was a great, the great softening of parenting, and I just softened through that, that period. And so that's how it worked. But there was some awkward moments, you know. I imagine. There was a Whole Foods experience with my eldest where she wanted something out of the shelf,

and I was like, yeah, we're not going to have that thing on the shelf, and she just starts throwing a fit. And I'm making sure she doesn't destroy anything, but I'm like container, we're on the floor of Whole Foods, and she's just, like, going. And we lived in a town that is, was more hippie then, a little less hippie now. And this old hippie lady,

are you okay? And definitely, like, not happy with me parenting and just, like, was judgmental. And my daughter was maybe, like, three years old. And she's like, I'm just having my emotions. And then she went right back into it. It was like this, like, she popped out of it for just a second to let her know

and then went back in it. So it just was the great softening of what it was for me. It was just constantly seen. If I allow my daughter, now both daughters, to connect with themselves and to connect with their emotional experience

and move through whatever that is, they just come back to being sweethearts. And I find the exact same thing with adults. Yeah, it changes how we look at adults too, because you share that story of like in the airplane of looking around and seeing who has difficult accepting their own range of them. emotions and like zooming in on the individual for all of us introspectively seeing what we judge and are

getting triggered by externally is revealing in many ways where we're not okay with various emotions and so yeah that's that's just like a really important highlight too of what you said and and something to dive deeper into about how we can continue to reveal where we're still stuck yeah absolutely every every place that we're triggered to me is There's a couple. There's so many ways to reveal it. That's a great one. But yeah, any place that I is if I'm triggered by or judging somebody else, there's a direct experience of an emotion you're not allowing that you're not okay with. So there's no way I can judge you without clamping down an emotion in my own system. And so, and if I feel that thing, the judgment

goes away. So if you like a great, just an experiment to run is every time you judge somebody for a week, stop in the middle of and say, what am I trying not to feel right now and feel it and notice what happens to your judgment? Like that would be, don't, like, I can say it. It means nothing.

Go do that for a week and it means everything. How much of the dissolving of that is the continual awareness of what it happens? Like in terms of, let's say, zero is complete unconscious of triggers, 100% is no longer being triggered by these things. does like how much of being aware and the awareness of that trigger dissolves it and and what else do you think is needed to actually resolve it

you're limiting awareness there so if I don't limit awareness I'll say that's all that's necessary for almost any kind of internal transformation is just your awareness a pure awareness yeah maybe more more I was referring to I guess conscious attention versus the totality of awareness but I hear what she mean. No, yeah, conscious, like, if I'm consciously attending to something without a story,

that'll pretty much take care of all of it eventually. Yeah, as soon as I add the story, then everything gets slowed down. Right? Because if I'm consciously attending to, like, my judgment, I'm going to notice my body's constricting. I'm going to notice that there's an emotion. If I unconstrict my body,

I'm going to feel an emotional state. So I think that, yeah, it's just when the, attention has a drive or the attention has something that's trying to get to or some story that is involved that it becomes less effective. It still can be very effective. Yeah. I guess I'm interested in how the awareness drives deeper into the somatic experience with these avoidance cycles. As you gain awareness, how does one go deeper? And maybe you have an example of this, but like going deeper into the somatic experience of feeling those feelings and making space for that on an internal level,

what does that look like? So the best way to think about it is this, if I ask you right now to do an experiment, try to stop feeling every emotion that you're having. Some muscles, if not all of your muscles, had to constrict to do that. And if you did that for an extended period of time, we would call that stress. We would call that tension, right? So it's just the opposite of that. Full allowance.

And everything that comes with it. So if you somatically felt what happened to your body, or if you're listening to this and you like pause and like try to stop all emotional experience, you'll feel the direction that you go. It'll be like a tightening and a backing away kind of thing. And then if the exact opposite of that experience is emotionally allowing. And so there's a fluidity that comes with it.

There's like a, you're less clawing into trying to have an experience. There's less chasing states. There's smoother decision making. There's a whole bunch of things that go along with that because the avoidance of emotion it drives a huge amount of our behavior. Like if you think about how many emotions, how many, how many choices did you make not to feel like a failure? How many choices did you make to feel like to be loved?

How many choices did you make to chase happiness? How many choices did you make to avoid? discomfort. How many times are you like getting on YouTube to avoid discomfort? Like millions of choices are made as an avoidance of an emotion. It seems like you're also describing a great opportunity and how to live our life and how we view these triggers because we could live life unconsciously and continually calcifying these triggers further and further or using the experience of when they arise to be just a another opportunity to experience more freedom in our life. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing.

It's like, so one of the pitfalls that happens here is that people say, okay, Joe, I can love all my emotions and that, like, if I love my fear, then I'll get rid of my fear. It's like, yeah, but if you're trying to get rid of your fear, you're not loving your fear, so it's not going to work. Right? So there's this thing that happens where, yes, if you actually fully love and accept the thing, it changes and it becomes very fluid and you find pleasure and joy and so much stuff. I have a phrase that's joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome. And so there's just so much joy with it.

But at the same time, if you're using it to chase joy, if you're using it to get over it, then you're not actually loving the thing. It's just another way in which you're resisting it. you mentioned a couple things uh one like all the things that come as a byproduct naturally of of allowing these like the experience of these and then the returning to the state of joy as like all everything else is welcome at the dinner table so to speak yeah yeah what do you see as the most distinct changes uh and what like happens in our surroundings and how we make decisions when we move with emotional fluidity yeah in relationships and business yeah there's just so many, is the most important ones.

Let me just go through the ones that I can think about because there's so many of them. So your decision making gets clarified. Oftentimes, if we're stuck in a decision, that's actually fear that's stagnant, and we're just basically saying, I don't want to feel this way, and I don't want to feel this way,

and I can't make sure that I don't feel either of these ways, so I'm indecisive. Or your decision-making clarifies because the decisions actually get made in the emotional center of the brain, meaning if I took the emotional center of your brain out, your IQ would stay the same, but it would take you, like, hours to decide, like, where to have lunch or long time to decide what color pen to use. And so, so the clarity of decision-making

is a tremendous thing that happens. The authenticity has becomes a natural expression, meaning most of the time we're not authentic. It's because we don't want to feel something, right? If you, if I said to you, hey, take your biggest fear. Let's assume for a second, your biggest fear is to be homeless. Like, okay, you're going to be homeless. You're like, I don't want to be homeless. Okay, now imagine you're homeless and you're happier than you've ever been and you're more at peace than you've ever been. And there's just like so much love and joy in your life. It's something that you, so much you couldn't even recognize it today. All of a sudden, being homeless isn't so scary anymore. And so that's the, that's the, so it clarifies your decision making because we make it

emotional decisions, we're just using logic to try to figure out how we're going to feel. But if you're not scared of feeling a certain way, then decision making becomes really clear. Relationships become far smoother because most of the time, if I'm in a fight with you in a relationship, is because I don't want to feel shame, or I don't want to feel like a bad person, or I don't want to feel out of control, or I don't want to feel helpless. But if I'm cool with doing those things, then I can accept you. I don't need to change you for who, you know, change you to be something else. I might not want to be with you.

Like I might, you know, this isn't my kind of relationship. And I've definitely be drawing boundaries. But I'm not, I'm not trying to change you. I'm not trying to make you into something different, which is really great for relationships. Those are some basic examples. Business is just amazing. When you see a leader lean into an emotion that they haven't been able to lean into before, like a whole solution set opens up to them that they couldn't see before because

if they saw it they might have to feel some way so they won't do it it makes sense that there's probably not a single area of life that this wouldn't affect right it's like a kink in a hoe is where the flow is just not it's not allowed it's full capacity and you speak to the distinction of dirty energy versus clean energy and I'm just like what is the energetic state in your mental vitality and physical vibrance like what do you feel like comes as a when when there is isn't as many kinks in the hose in terms of your own experience. Yeah. So every one is a little bit, like every emotion is a little bit different.

So if you take the emotional, let's say, conduit, call it anger, right? And you kink it this way, it's nice jewelry. If you kink it another way, it's, no, I'm not angry. If you kink it another way, it's you son of a ba-b-b-b-pah-bub-pah-bh. unkinked it's kind of like Gandhi or Martin Luther King it's it's it's clear boundaries it's no I'm not going to accept this but I'm not going to close my heart either it's I'm going to allow all that care I'm also going to have the full boundary and so so that's anger but it's the same with fear you can't get one way it's anxiety you can't get it as another way it's like overexcitement there's a whole so the

way that it gets kinked is is different for and therefore has different results but generally anger when felt fully is clarity and determination and fear when when felt fully is like a aliveness or excitement uh exuberance for life and sadness is like a deep love like you know we even feel that sometimes when we're sad, we're like, am I crying because I'm sad? I'm crying because I'm so in love. It's like, ah. Yeah. And so it's like you can, that's, those are the.

It's so ironic and paradoxical how, because I've experienced this too, like after a big heartbreak where there's immense sadness, but in the fullness of experiencing it, there's actually bliss in a weird way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the way you're speaking to this feels like it's kind of rewiring how we think about emotions completely because I feel like many of us and me and my past have thought of like emotions as like a like from zero to 100 like grief fear sadness all that stuff's at the bottom and like the goal is to transcend higher higher higher into love and bliss and joy and all of that

yeah force overpower that book yeah yeah yeah yeah David Hawkins yeah yeah but you're speaking to like each sort of emotional experience on a bandwidth where we can come into right relationship and they all serve a purpose and like the example of Gandhi like the what would have you to be perceived as negative emotions actually in right relationship are used in service to something. So that's a big rewiring. Yeah. And they're also just amazing signals too. Like, oh, I'm fucking frustrated that. Oh, there's a boundary I'm not drawing. What's the boundary I need to draw? There's my truth that I'm not saying. What's the truth that I'm not saying? Like they're amazing signals. Each one of what we call

negative emotions are just like an amazing signal. And when we don't resist them, they there's one way to look at it, like, if we don't resist a certain emotion, it becomes a different emotion. I find that less effective of a story than if I fully love and allow for an emotion, then the motion transforms, but they're the same emotion. I find that story just is more useful. Yeah, it feels like in the appreciation of how all these emotions serve a purpose, like the resistance to them would drop immensely. Immensely. And that's how you actually get to the place where I'm not loving the fear to get rid of the fear. I actually really like this fear. Like, oh, it's telling me something. I need that signal. You know, you'll hang out with people, like often in sessions when

I'm coaching somebody, I'll say, okay, if I could push this button, I'll take away all that anxiety. Do you want to go on there? Like, no. Okay, what is that? What is that thing that you, what is the gift of the anxiety that you're, that you see, that you know that there's something inherent in you that knows that you want that what is that thing and then if you can get in touch of that then the anxiety can be welcomed do you feel like there's an incredible intelligent design and how all these emotions work uh like when somebody has an experience uh just any pick any emotion yeah de jour yeah um whatever if we have a certain amount of grief attached to a prior event like uh i think we just spoke to it but in the appreciation of how that there's actually

an intelligent design there, that protector part or whatever it might be serves a purpose. And I know as you've worked with thousands of people at this point, I'm sure you've, through pattern recognition, seeing how there is like an intelligent design throughout all this. Yeah, so this goes back to the golden algorithm. So if I tell that full story,

it's something to the effect of the emotions that we don't want to feel, we invite in the exact way we're trying not to feel them. that's the first part of the story. And I'll go into that in a second. The second part of the story is, if there's an emotion we don't want to feel, we keep on recreating experiences to feel that emotion so that we can heal.

And once we fully welcome and invite that emotional experience, then we don't recreate the pattern. So all those patterns in your life are created in that avoidance as a way to keep on bringing them up so that you can feel them. So that's how I put together. So let's do one at a time. I was in my 20s.

I was emotionally abandoned by the alcoholic dad and the Al-Anon mom. So I didn't want to feel that abandonment. So I would have girlfriend or friend after girlfriend or friend where they would just keep on abandoning me. I would, if I didn't attract it, I could create it. You know, and so what was I doing?

I don't want to feel abandoned. Therefore, if I start to feel abandoned, then I'm going to either do one of two things. For me, I did one of two things. One is fine, which of course makes you want to abandon me. Or the other one is I get needy. Yeah. Which of course makes you want to abandon me.

Self-affilling prophecies. Exactly. So every time we're trying not to feel an emotion, the way we avoid it, the way we try not to feel, we are inviting the experience back into ourselves. And so that's the golden algorithm. But that's actually a really intelligent design. because then it keeps on giving us a chance

to feel the emotion, to love the emotion, to love that part of ourselves, to become, to see ourselves as whole again. And so great, I had to, for whatever it took for me, it took hundreds of times being abandoned by different people until I could say, oh, I can feel this abandonment. I couldn't as a kid because it would have been destroyed me. Like, oh, I do not have parents who care for me?

What the hell? What am I going to do? I couldn't do that as a kid, but I can do it as an adult. And so all of a sudden I can say, oh, that abandonment, that monster, I can just hug that monster. I can love that thing that never got loved as a kid. I can love it now. And then when I did, oh, I can't wait to feel abandoned again. You want to spend time with me abandonment any time.

Come on, let's do this thing. All of a sudden, I didn't have to repeat the pattern. I feel like so many of us have the thought that like through the lens of victimhood were at fault for a lot of the things that have happened and you're shifting in how you're explaining this into responsibility like it's not it's not your fault however all the things happen but whatever patterns are playing out in our external life that we keep seeing that we don't have the reason we don't consciously understand quite why they keep showing up you're inviting, oh, it's, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way.

It's like, it's revealing something to you in the external world of your internal state being. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And there's this saying that at the beginning of the path, you think other people are responsible. In the middle of the path, you think you're responsible. At the end of the path, there's no responsibility. And the way that the Tibetans talk about the same thing is, and this is where it gets really challenging to words get challenging. here but they say mind as wide as the sky and flower as fine or action is fine as barley flour so what what I think they're meaning there is that I can see the brilliance truth in every

perspective but there's only one action I can take and when there's when you see the world that way which is like this is my truth in this moment this is all I can do this is what I'm called to do and I can see the right and wrong of every perspective, then there's no responsibility. There's a responsibility like, I'm going to do the thing that I'm called to do because I can't do otherwise, because I know it's going to hurt if I do otherwise.

But there's not responsibility. Like, I have to be a certain way. I have to take ownership to get to the place to that all goes away. There's just flow. It makes me think about how our past conditioning is always coloring our first. perception through life in ways we're not privy to fully. Never will be.

Yeah. It's such a pain of the ass, but also perfectly designed, right? Yeah. For our own evolution. Yeah, totally is. And it gets fun when you realize that because then it's like, okay, another thing, another opportunity for growth. And a non-personleness to it.

Like, I'm not responsible for the whole thing. And that's the interesting thing, right? So there's a stage in the path. This is also kind of what's cool about the design. And there's a stage of the path where it's really important to feel like I'm responsible. I have a choice. I have agency. That's a really important thing to feel and to know.

Because without that agency, there's just certain things you're not going to do. And then there's a time where letting that go where you say, oh, I can't even control my own thoughts. Like whatever. Most humans have 50,000 thoughts a day, according to the Mayo Clinic. and none of them chose what those thoughts were going to be. They weren't just like, I'm going to, this is all my thoughts today. That didn't happen.

And so I'm not even, I can't even control my thoughts, let alone the actions that move from my thoughts. It's all a gift. How could I be responsible if I can't even control my own thing? I can't even stop thinking for fucking 10 minutes. Excuse my language. You know, and so then you can say, oh, there's a gift. And in that gift, in the non-responsibility, there's a relaxation. and there's a receiving and acceptance.

And both of those two stages are really important. So it's not one's better than the other. It's just like where that person is at that moment, what's the realization they need for their next step. Yeah. Yeah, that shift, I think, helps us drop us taking our life so personally. Like when you do sit quietly and you see this continual flow of thoughts that are happening unbeknownst to you,

it's like, okay, It brings into questions around agency and free will and whatnot, which is maybe a topic for another time. But I do want to speak to this voice in the head. Yeah. Because it's running the show in so many different ways we're not aware to. And we live in this matrix of mind. We're largely 95 plus percent essentially the same thoughts throughout our life

in different textures, but we're in the same kind of quality. So how do you relate to working with and relating to the voice in the head? Yeah. That's a large part of our work, especially the in-person stuff. So there's lots of things to, the first one is that most humans listen to their negative self, their negative repetitive self-talk. I'm going to call voice in the head. There's going to be thoughts that occur. But there is a time and a place in the, like, as you do the work where the repetitive negative self-talk goes away.

And maybe it's in chunks, but it can and does go away. And so that constant internal negative self-talk is always lying. There's maybe a more exact way to say it. I think the more effective way to say it is it's always lying. But the more exact way to say it is that it's never perfectly true, meaning there's a lie to everything that it says. And it's also horribly ineffective. Meaning if you, if there's 50,000 thoughts and let's say 40,000 of them are repetitive, negative self-talk.

Now imagine externalizing that. You're doing your life and you have a boss and your boss is just sitting there. You fucked that up. That wasn't good. This isn't good. Why did you do this? That whatever the editing that's going on. You would be a horrible employee.

Yet when we have it, we say, oh, we need that to be productive. We need that to be, like, I would just sit on the couch and drink beer if it wasn't for that internal abuse. But it's incredibly, it frees up so much energy not to have it. However, just like any other aspect of yourself, if you hate it, resist it, try to push it away. If anything gets more profound, more stronger, it doesn't go away. And so there's a lot of ways to work with the voice in the head. one of the most of I think at some point

I think I had to collect about 15 effective tools for working with the voice in the head but one of my favorites is not to try to stop it but to change the way you react to it so typically what happens is most people listen to that negative self-talk the way that you would

a devotee to a politician would do. Politicians like wow they're bad and they're bad and this is good and they're like yeah that's bad Totally guys that we're going to do. Yeah, uh-huh.

Similarly, that's how most people are with the voice in their head. The voice in the head is like, you're bad. And they're like, uh-huh. It's like a dictator inside of you that won't shut up. Yeah, that you totally believe, as it turns out. And so that's one way to react to. Some people react to the negative self-talk, first in belief and then in resistance, which is, you should lose weight.

Yeah, I should lose weight. Okay, I'm going to. Who's saying that, by the way? Yeah, that's another. Yeah. And so, but then it's like, hey, like, I'm going to become passive aggressive with the voice in my head. I'm going to just, no, you can't make me. So there's, those are kind of the experiences that people have with this self-talk.

You could have a totally different experience. Every time it talks to you, you could break out in musicals. You could, every time it talks to you, you could say, I love you. You could go, you could say, shut up. Like, there's a thousand responses that you could have. it initially. You could undermine it. You could actually try to support it. You could, you could, there's a thousand. Start experimenting with those gives a tremendous amount of insight into what the voice in the head is actually up to. So instead of saying, okay, I'm going to do all these things

to undermine or get rid of it, it's just like, just experiment. Just play. Okay, today I'm going to laugh every time you talk. And tomorrow I'm going to say, I see how scared you are. I'm right here with you. And then the next time you just say no, like play and then see what what you learn about yourself and this negative self-talk. That's an incredibly effective way to work with with the voice in the head. I want to get your perspective on how when relating to this inner critic,

which by the way, it could also be a lot of positive inflationary things, right, which is, I've heard you speak to how they're both ego, whether it's defense. inflationary or inflationary. Yeah, yeah, totally. And we can dive into that. But there's the various different ways we could react differently, respond differently to the voice,

which might undermine it playful, like, changes how we relate to it and the power it has over us. I think many of us have the experience of this, like, fractured sense of being in our head. Like, there's a voice in our head. There's our dialogue with that voice in our head. And it's like in so many ways sapping our own life in our experience of life.

And in my personal experience, what's, I guess, given me the most freedom from that voice is how close they identified I am with it. And I want to get your perspective on this. There's the analogy of like being in traffic and it sucks and you're in bumper to bumper traffic, but you're going to the airport.

You get in the plane, you take off, you look back down to the traffic, and all of a sudden it's kind of beautiful. Right, right, right, yeah, yeah. And the only thing that changed was our, the distance from it. Yeah. And so when you...

It's great. Yeah, when you examine what really creates the most freedom, do you feel that it's actually creating distance from you and your identification with them? Not that they're not there, but how loud they are in your awareness. Definitely helpful. It's definitely helpful to notice that it's not you. Yeah, it's also really helpful to notice that it's talking to itself, that it's not talking to you.

That's a really useful one. you're not doing a good job means it's not doing a good job it's like a phenomenon happening in itself like it's projecting onto it it's projecting itself onto you so this one's a mind bender but like think about the five things that negative self-talk you haven't done enough i've done more than you what are you talking about you don't even exist technically exactly exactly right Or, you know, you're too judgmental. Really? You haven't, you know, you're not productive enough.

Like most of the things it says is it's more true about it than it is about you. It gets weird when it's physical, but there's actually a way to look at it that way, but that would take too long. But generally, that's the, that's another really useful thing is to see that it's projecting onto you. Just like the people who installed it were doing. just, you know, your parents or your teachers or whoever installed that negative self-talk unconsciously they were projecting onto you. Hey, everyone, a quick share. If you have been listening for a while, you know that I'm all about stacking healthy habits.

One tool that I've loved over the years is red light therapy. For the past few years, I've started my mornings often with meditation and a few days per week with red light. It's helped make a noticeable difference in my energy and sleep. There are over 4,000 peer-reviewed studies showing benefits for cellular healing, boosting collagen, supporting testosterone, and a lot more. If you're curious about trying it, bond charge is a solid choice. They're a partner, I love them.

Their red light devices have the lowest EMF levels on the market. They have no flicker, combined both near-infrared and red light, two different spectrums of the wavelength, into one lightweight device. device. They ship worldwide and have an easy return policy and also an array of other science-backed wellness products worth checking out. If you want to give them a try, you can go to bondcharge.com slash know-thyself and use code know-thyself to save 15%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E dot com slash know-thyself and use code know-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-Self to save 15%. You can always go to our website as well at know-liselfpodcast.com to find all of our partner deals. Bon charge products are all HSA and FSA eligible, giving you tax-free savings

up up to 40%. I hope you enjoy it back to the episode. What has been your experience with non-duality? I know did you study with Adjashanti for some time? I spent, I spent 12 years chasing it and probably 10 years mostly meditating. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I saw a tweet that you kind of talked about, like you had like 10 steps of your journey with non-duality and. Oh, yeah. I remember that. in terms of discovering the unchanging ground of our being in that awareness, how does marinating in that space help us relate to our thoughts and were the potential pitfalls of overly identifying perhaps with that being absolute truth in a sense?

I'm curious your thoughts on that. Yeah, so I can just tell you my experience of it. Super useful. So I think they call like my experience. of awakening was, I think they called it like Cloud Walker or Fog Walker or something like that, where it happened. I didn't particularly notice it. I've been working for years to get it, but at some point was like, oh, just another elevated state, whatever. That's not what I'm after. And so I had this experience and I was just, just another elevated space. And it took me a while

to recognize that like the voice in the head had completely changed that the editor was gone. And then I identified as that. There's another backwater that happens that I was very lucky not to have it not happen to me. And it's just because of the way my journey went, which was a lot of people have that experience in that they think they're done, which is just hell on earth to think you're done. And so I was lucky enough that the moment that the recognition came immediately. And part of the reason I think I didn't recognize it, immediately the thought came, oh, and this never ends. This shift, like this shifting, this evolution, it just never ends.

And so that's one place that I see people get stuck. They think they've, like, gotten there, which is, like, and now evolution has stopped because of your meditation practice. And then so the other one that's equally as funny is now, like, I am the awakened guy. I you know instead of that just being one more step and you know I'm the walking guy I'm the talking guy I'm the you know I can have

hypothetical thought at 16 years old guy you know now I'm the awake guy because it's just it's in our nature this isn't it's not special it's not spiritual it's just like it's just growing up if we if we don't get stunted because of trauma it's

just part of how we as humans mature. And so, but we, then there, and I got stuck there for a bit thinking I was the awakened guy. And, and a lot of the emotional work came in because what I noticed was, yeah, there's a lot of peace, but where the hell was the joy? Where was the love? And that's when I noticed that a lot of my experience in defining myself in that way and going to the great peaceful abyss was to.

to avoid emotional experiences. Just, what's going on there? And there was an early stage of that in meditation. I think it was maybe like four years in where I realized, oh, wait, I'm just managing myself. This isn't meditation. This is just management. What?

What? And so there were, but then there was this, after what people would call awakening, then there was this realization that this was also a form of avoidance. And it was just emotional avoidance. And so that's when that journey really started to kick in in a big way. Did you find it actually more difficult to connect with your emotions after that?

Yes. You did. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. So I started to do the emotional work before that moment. And then when that moment left, then I was just like, yes, that's an emotion. You know, it is.

And I actually had to like. Emotion there is. Exactly. You're doing your way through. Totally. And so there is this, this, what happened inside of my system was I would, for whatever reason, had the inherent intelligence to really, like, amplify any emotional signal that I could get.

And that's what I actually had to do. And I had a, like a very short-lived teacher at the time whose name escapes me. And he basically made a little. living with Tibetan monks teaching them their emotional experience because they're, and he called it, he's like, oh, yeah, I drag monks back into hell. That's how he described it. That's hilarious. That's a good Instagram bio. And so, and so they're, and I get to work with some people who are in that same place. There's a couple of folks who have been working with us some years, came very, very in that

non-dual place. But the heart wasn't, wasn't open, and now their heart's just wide open. And the heart can't really identify the way the brain can. So you can have that nice big head awakening and still have quite a bit of identification, even though you have access to this really big, spacious, peaceful place. You don't, you're not, you don't have access to the joy and to the, and to the like ungodly amount of love that courses through us. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.

Ooh. Then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setter. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. I feel like there's parts of that that just really resonate with me

in my journey the past 10 years, like exploring meditation, experiencing a lot of peace. And I still feel like there is room for growth in terms of my emotional bandwidth. Yeah. Like if we imagine 88 keys on a piano, like many of us have like one or two keys. in there, like Middle Sea and like Iran. So if you were like coaching me through the lens of your own experience going through that,

you know, 10 years of meditation and non-duality, what is the best way to like drag the monk back into hell? Because again, we can have this awakened state of consciousness and awareness of that ungrounding, unchanging ground of our being and how much peace and beauty there is. there and impartiality of that. But then like you're speaking to, it kind of makes it harder to pick up on, it makes it harder to take any neuroses seriously because you see the illusory nature of it. That's right. Yeah. So what would I, what would you do? Well, the first thing I would tell you is your emotional journey is going to be easier because of it once you get over the first time.

If you want the quickest way to do it, have two girls. That'll get you. You know, there's a teacher that I had for a while. His name was Stephen Harrison and just by books. And he said, show me an awakening guy having a road trip with two young kids in the backseat. And I'll show you a human. So, so, you know, allowing yourself the intimacy, though like the full intimacy of humanity, I think really is a great way to, to like see the parts of yourself that are that are emotionally not invited you know find yourself

on the plane with somebody with some kid crying but any I think emotional intimacy and relationship is like a really great place for it and delving into all the places that are uncomfortable there just the same way you delved in through your meditation practice into all the uncomfortable parts of your consciousness do the same thing but just do it in relationship is usually like a is a very effective way to go. And so that would include something like business, because business is a whole bunch of relationships. And oftentimes, what I notice is there's this, I think it was Eckartoll.

But there's this, you know, endless question. I think Eckartel talked about this, but there's this endless question is like, right, if I'm awakened, I should be able to live on top of a disco and be happy. happy. But because I'm awakened, I'm not going to live on top of a disco. Like, I don't, I don't want to, like, why would I invite that into my life? Occasionally live on top of a disco, you know, go into the places where it's uncomfortable in humanity, whether that's like living on top of a disco or going to a Dodgers game or, you know, there's a Tibetan teacher I was learning about and he would

you know I think maybe he wasn't maybe a Bhutan but he would you know six months in caves meditating away and then he'd come to America with his students and they'd all go to like soccer matches where all that like they'd all get in fights and they would like you know

so like allow yourself that intimacy with your own humanity or with other people's humanity and recognize that all of it is in you there's just no way you can't have all of that in you yeah that makes sense yeah That's a useful way to do it.

And then once it starts going, once you actually, okay, I know there's some emotion in there. I'm gonna really amplify it. I'm gonna pretend, I remember those days. Once you do that three or four times and you see the benefit, you're just like, yeah, I can do that all that. I'm there.

You felt like you were able to get to the bottom of certain suppressed emotions after that journey where you wanted to dive back in to your emotional experience? I'm constantly doing. Yeah, I don't know if there's a bottom, But yeah, there's just, it's a constant. Yeah. Yeah, there's like, and it's always like that agency,

all blessing, agency, all blessing. There's this back and forth to it. You know, it's, oh, I'm learning this new form of humility, which is that it's not me. It's all moving through me. Oh, I'm learning this new form of humility, which is I'm the, I think it's the Jewish tradition. they talk about humility is taking your God-given place in the world.

It's like, oh, I'm actually, my humility is now asking me to expand and become more permeable, not become smaller, not disappear. Oh, wait, now there's this new form of disappearing. And so there's always like a back-and-forth nature to what I notice in the emotional world is there's always a more subtle form of back-and-forth. It's like that dance between waking up and growing up and both of those. And would you agree that they're both a necessity and yet fall short and in of themselves without the other?

I'd say neither's a necessity. You can do whatever you like. And so, and you can live one without the other. It's just not as rewarding or fulfilling. Yeah. There's definitely, like, dear friends who really live in one and don't live in the other, and that's okay with me.

It seems to be okay with them. I just don't think it's just not as fulfilling. It's interesting because we might proclaim that I want to strive for enlightenment, failing to recognize the I as the barrier into that state. Yeah. Was for me for years. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And the greatest thing about that eye statement is that every way you look at it, it can disappear. You know, there was this Irish mystic woo-wee. I think is when I can't remember so many names but he said oh you can try to crack your ego you could try to destroy your ego go ahead and burn it with a thousand surrenders the only problem is it never existed that's like wow that's so there's freedom and then there's also freedom in okay let go of your ego there's also like a you know they're like almost any way you look at it because it's illusionary and it's nature almost any way you look at it can show you some aspect of

freedom if you look at it I know you work with so many, like, world leading business execs and both in your own journey, leading your own team and hence supporting other with their own, how do you relate to your own ego and support others relating to their ego in a healthy way? Yeah, there's so many good things. You mentioned this a little bit. So the first part about ego that I find is really important for what's really important for me to understand was, that I always thought ego was, I'm important. But ego is just as much I'm not important. So if you want to really get a full taste of your ego,

like have somebody give you a really big compliment. And everything in you that resists that compliment, I would call that ego. Because the way I define ego now is just more of your self-definition. And so, and as it turns out, you can't really do work in the world without some self-definition and or it's impossible to not have some self-definition. But again, it's about the flexibility.

Can I be defined and can I not be defined? Can I do both? Can I walk into a meeting and this is completely unacceptable? We're not dealing with this. This is like, uh-uh. And can I walk into a meeting and whatever is going to happen here is cool? Do I have that flexibility the way that if you've ever, have you ever done a Guenka 10-day retreat?

Yeah. So you'll hear the story of his teacher walking and just yelling at people who are meditating and then walk out and be like, oh, did you hear how hard I gave it to him and like laughing about it? Can you allow yourself to take on those roles when they're necessary for the freedom of others? That I feel is a really great way. And that's very true as the CEO. And so even more true of a CEO who's running a very big or important kind of business, meaning important meaning having a large effect on the world to be able to say oh here I can take on

this structure of forceful here I can take on this structure of gentle and supportive and I can do those things when it's necessary for the for the mission that I believe in that notion that there's ego on both sides like I've in the past and to some degree it still shows up have trouble like receiving gracious compliments or you know people come up they see me like from that listen to this podcast and share all these nice things and uh habitually there's been like kind of a turning away from it and like um down playing it and i think finding the the way to relate to it instead of like if i'm receiving it from the heart it's different than receiving it from the head yeah um but i've also i feel like part of that was coming from the place of being trained to see

anything as potentially inflationary or praise that it's building ego and so it's bad and so you don't want it but you're kind of flipping it on its head. I would say pushing it away builds ego. Taking it as true also builds ego. So there's another, there's a third way which isn't, oh, that's true.

It's true, I am incredibly wise and intelligent and oh, it's true, I am wise and intelligent. And oh, yeah, I can actually see my wisdom and intelligence. So I would say it like this. Somebody comes up to me and they're like, hey, Joe, you're a complete asshole. Yes. Yeah, I can absolutely see. I can give you 10 ways that I've been an asshole today in traffic.

Yes, true. Hey, Joe, you're absolutely wise. Yes, I can give you 10 ways in which I'm absolutely wise. that's freedom that that's where the ego isn't isn't ruling you if somebody comes up to you and says some great things

about how cool and great and wise and handsome you are handsome doesn't happen so much just out of throw that one in there thank you what does it feel like to to receive that I suppose and like

putting that into practice like that that understanding that you just shared putting that into practice what is graciously receiving that look like without inflationary? It's a full body sport. How much can I be permeable

and feel all, everything that does to me? It's like, it's like pinging, it's like a pinball, I've become a pinball. It's like, bong, bing, bing, bing, and I'm better at some of them because I've had them more often. Like the handsome one is definitely one

that would be more, you know, to me. The wise one is like, it's like easier. And what I notice is that the more I own it, the less there's a chance that I'm going to be dangerous around it. So, or narcissistic around it. So one of the things when I'm working with really powerful CEOs, not so powerful CEOs, is can you fully own that power? Most of them can't. Oh, I'm not the most important person. No, other people is the whole company.

Like, that's most of what is said. And if they can actually own the fact that when they spit at the top, it's a waterfall at the bottom, when they see that the entire organization is a reflection of their consciousness, that's how much power they have. Yep, power is illusionary. Yep, power is only if people think you have power. Yep, all that stuff is true. But when they can actually feel and allow that in, yes, I am powerful, then they are far less dangerous as a CEO than somebody who's not owning that. their power. Now there's people who are what we call owning their power like megalomaniacs.

They're also very dangerous, but they're not actually owning it either. I guarantee you, they're not allowing themselves to feel the power that they have. It's interesting to see that that relationship between suppression and distortion. That's a great way to put it. Great spiritual leaders. In those circles in spiritual communities, sexuality, for example, is an area of topic that maybe is more suppressed, not talked about. And it's fascinating that in certain cults in spiritual circles, there's weird sexual stuff that happens and you find out the leaders doing all this crazy stuff.

And that's like one example of an extreme thing, you know, and there's many different verticals and ways that could show up. It's fascinating. Yeah, there's a, you know, there's those films about the Nixium cult. There's like two or three films about the Nixium cult. And one of them, yeah, I had a friend who was actually in it, which was like a fascinating story in itself.

And she was, I have to say, I have to talk about the story for a second. She was, I love this. She wanted to create something afterwards and maybe she did for a while called conscious culting. So she was, you know, she was there and they were like,

hey, do you think we're in a cult? She's like, yeah, we're totally in a cult. What are you talking about? This is like, yeah, yeah. Look how cool this is. We're in a cult. Like these are all the benefits of the cult. And when I was speaking to her,

I was like, yeah, you weren't in the cult because being in a cult requires you to actually give over your. And she actually made them write a like a contract with her. Like she's like, I'll join. And then they asked her at some point, you know, do you want to get branded? She's like, no. Like she's just amazing woman. But she was like, there's all these benefits of culting, as she would call it. And it was a really cool lesson.

But we were talking about Keith and I saw the movies. And there's this great moment where he. He's like sitting around with his harem. In that part of the movie, you don't know it's his harem. And he's saying, I don't get it. Why is it that people all want to listen to me and think I'm like, that's it? That's the disowned power. That's the disowned narcissism that allowed that whole thing to happen.

That's what, when I saw that, I was like, oh, that's. And the other thing about that is that it is a two-way relationship, like all relationships. like all relationships, meaning I remember when I, it was like tried to happen in my world at the very beginning when I was starting teaching. And it's like, oh, people want you to be in that position. They want to hand over a certain amount of responsibility so they don't have to think about so they don't have to stress. Like there's a desire to put you in that position.

And there's even more, there's a desire of certain people to be your caretaker slash like I have power because of proximity thing. it's really, it's really, it's really, it's like a, it's a dynamic. It's not a, and CEOs are in the same dynamic. I'm important because I have proximity to the CEO. It's really important for me to keep the CEO happy. I can't do that because of the CEO. CEO said I can't do, like all that, it's all in there.

And to the untrained eye, a swath of people agreeing in putting somebody on a pedestal and makes them look righteous and as if they're living, in a holy place or to be followed and listened to. But that's in many cases not a great indicator of actually somebody who's living with integrity, more in right relationship. So it's interesting. And that's why I, to the best of my ability, cultivate relationships and friendships where we continually challenge each other and call each other forward and be mirrors actively

for each other. Best gift. Without trying to have all my friends be psychiatrist for you. other because that can go too far on that side too you know you got to play but but there's in my deep relationships and friendships all of that is kind of inherent in our connection which I think is essential yeah yeah yeah the most essential thing in my marriage as well was that the commitment to growth can't be each other's psychologists that's like horrible and eventually and slowly you can actually be there for each other in that way a bit but

but absolutely two people who are willing to grow together and change and transform and focus on their own transformation not each other's those are successful marriages this episode is brought to you by FedEx these days the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch the real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Sometimes I get asked what kind of tea my guests and I are drinking on the show

or what I like in general and I can't recommend peak life enough. Their priority is wild harvested from ancient tea trees fermented and loaded with living gut healthy probiotics and prebiotics. It's amazing for digestion and energy and your skin. There's no bags, no steeping, just pure tea that dissolves instantly in hot or cold water. Every badge is triple toxin screen, so you know you're getting the cleanest tea possible. Right now, our community is getting 20% off for life and a free rechargeable frother and glass speaker when you grab their puerrubule, which is this tea right here that I've been drinking,

and you get a 90-day money-back guarantee. So there's no risk if you want to try it out. out peaklife.com slash know-thyself is where you find it or at our partners page at know-thyself podcast.com. I hope you enjoy back to the show. You spoke to the three forms of intelligence. Yeah, yeah. What do you think is a pitfall in terms of ignoring our body intelligence, especially for high performers? 11,000 bits of information in your body in a second. Like it's with 12 or 15 in your brain. So that's the,

that's the ratio of loss. Yeah, whether it's a business high performer or a, I mean, I'm working with brilliant AI researchers and it's amazing how effective the ones are that listen to their body. Do you support people like we're finding

that intuitive capacity? Do you describe the body intelligence as intuition? I can. Yeah, if it's useful. sometimes I'll describe it as what does your gut say one of the things we'll do is in introductions with people is we'll have them introduce themselves from their head

their heart and their gut just so they can actually feel the difference of those intelligences and what comes out and always different things come out and so obviously it's all one system but to be able to make that distinction and act from those places I think is incredibly useful

and oftentimes what, like, you'll see people who are professional athletes are really good athletes at something, and all you have to do when they're, how do I do X, Y, and Z? I was like, how did you do that in basketball? Oh, this way? Oh, cool. Can you do that in your love relationship? Oh, you mean it's that easy?

It's just an amazing hack to have people understand their body in that way. But one of the ways is to describe it as intuition. How do you build trust with those hunches and that intuitive capacity? I don't. That's the real trick is to not build trust with them. It's to take them as experiments. So I'm coaching with somebody and I'm just, I'm like sonar. So I'm interested in their wisdom and where they want to go and I'm pinging stuff off. Now I have pattern recognition and I've seen a lot of people go through a lot of things and I've gone through it myself. So when you watch me sometimes it looks a little bit like magic when I'm coaching or just people on YouTube because I can,

Oh, so what's happening in your gut right now? And oh, how did you know that? You know, that kind of thing. But it's, it's, um, what's actually happening is I am very impartial. Internally, I'm very impartial. I'm following them. I want them to go where they want to go. And all I'm doing is kind of pinging things and then seeing what comes back to me.

And so it's, I don't believe the hunches, but I throw them out because it's, it's the way that, like, it's test, you know. sounding the depths, if you will. I've seen you work one-on-one with people, and it's a thing that I recognize in great coaches where somebody comes to you with a problem or a perceived element in their life, and then it quickly diverts into an area they were not expecting.

Right, yeah. But you have, through pattern recognition, through listening to your own internal hunches, ask a question that directs it into an area that is actually more at the source, root of what the questioner is as really asking and wants to dissolve and move through. Is that more of a conscious process? Do you, those questions come to you consciously?

No. Yeah, no, no, no. It's when I'm done a coaching session, I usually don't know how it went particularly. You know, I'll do debriefs with people I care about or students who've been with me for a long time just to have a idea of how the whole thing just went. So I'm in this place where my brain is operating on its own, and I'm paying most of my attention as in my body. It's not, I don't even, I can't, it's very hard for me to even remember what happened. When working with individuals, I'm assuming if they're coming to you, there's obviously an agreed upon level of wanting to resolve what they're bringing

to you. I'm sure there's times where these frightened parts of ourselves, they feel defensive, over. Oh, yeah. What do you think? Yeah, right? Because that uniquely reveals our own agreeance and admittance to that thing. Yes, that's right. So I'd love for you to share your thoughts on when relating through communication with others, what is our own defensiveness, however it shows up revealing about what we believe to be true about herself? Yeah, I mean, usually we're defensive about the things that we don't want to accept about ourselves. And usually we're defensive because there's an emotion we don't want to feel. So you have two things you can explore, either one will probably will reveal the other eventually.

So that's, I think that answers your question. I feel like there's potentially a secondary question in that, but I can't, I can't place it. If we zoom in on an individual, they have a conversation with their spouse, and they say something that they immediately feel defensive over. Yeah. We spoke to it earlier in terms of the golden algorithm, really, and like, the, what we resist persists in many different ways.

Is there anything else you want to remind people of when they experience defensiveness? Mostly on the other side, I want to, if you're with your spouse and they're defensive and you want to help them get to the bottom of it, first of all, it's not your job, so don't. But the other thing is to look at them and say, there's nothing in me that wants you to be defensive

or thinks you need to be defensive right now, and then whatever is underneath it will be revealed very, very quickly, typically. even if it's anger. What do you mean? I'm not defensive. Oh, that's the part of you that you don't want to feel right now.

I can welcome that because I can welcome that myself. Do you see it as the process of maturity and maturation to experience the feeling of defensiveness and be like, oh, okay, there's... Because normally it's like defensive and then it's control, fight,

on the external world, because you're in defensive mode. Like, you don't realize it, right? For some people, our patterns are probably more like that. Some people, they get defensive and they do this. Quiet, shut down, passive aggression. Yeah. Or freeze, passive aggression.

Or let me take care of you. Let me, like, you know, that's another one that people will do as well. That's a really important one. Yeah. So all of those they'll do for the same reason. Yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared of looking at a part of myself. I'm scared that there's something here that is bad about me.

So I'm going to either fight or I'm going to freeze or I'm going to fly into you and try to make myself feel good by making you change. By taking care of you, making you change. Whatever. Tomato. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so fascinating how there's innumerable subconscious perceived inadequacies that we have that lead to all these behavioral compensations like people pleasing that you're speaking to and how we label them as noble, you know, in a sense, in a way to avoid actually dealing with the underlying issue,

when you support people with that people pleasing, what comes up? Typically, that's a relatively easy one to work with people because once they see that what they're actually doing is disempowering them, then their sense of self can't handle it. Because their sense of self, is I'm helping people.

I'm a helper. And when they realize, oh, by helping that person, you're telling them that they can't do it. You're taking care of them so that they can't learn to take care of themselves.

You're giving them fish instead of teaching them how to fish. You're basically saying, you're not capable. I've got this. Right? You're making them small. You're making them into a victim.

When they see that, when that clicks, it's really hard to maintain the behavior without noticing that actually what's happening is you're scared and you're trying to you're trying to manage your reality

instead of feel your fear. Yeah, it comes to mind a couple of friends who have dealt with this experience of being nice, like the nice guy versus somebody who's genuinely kind and they have that part of them. There is always this experience of people,

whether it's in relationship, a girl and a guy or within friend groups where there's the nice guy who's always trying to cater to people's emotions and there's something inherently inauthentic in how we experience that and might not verbalize it. Yeah.

but also creates a barrier for intimacy. Yeah, all of it is, ultimately all of it is a fear of love. You might have to go through many steps to get there, but all of it is, like, take anything random, like jealousy. Jealousy is, I want you to love me, don't love me. Right? I really want you, but I'm going to actually kind of abuse you with my jealousy to make sure that I'm keeping you away, right?

People pleasing is the same thing. Like, I want your love. I want you, I want us to have this intimacy, but I'm going to have to take care of you. And so so much of this, like there's a way of looking at all of it, which is a pushing and pulling a way of love. Because we can't actually recognize deeply on a head, heart, and gut level that we deserve love.

Because we were taught at some age that we had to be a particular way to get love. Yeah, it said that fear, anger, and jealousy are, poisons that we drink and expect the other person to die. Say it again. Like fear, anger, jealousy. These are like, these are poisons we drink and expect the other person to die. Yeah. Yeah, that's the other one I think is really important to speak to is that we talked about

how you can do anger at somebody. You can do fear at somebody too, right? There's a way of doing fears to make you hold my fear for me. Oh my gosh, I'm really scared that you're going to like do bad on this podcast. And so are you being careful with the podcast? podcast, it's like, I'm asking you to hold that for me. Or, you know, I'm scared. It's like, actually, am I projecting?

Like, what am I doing there? There's this thing where we often are asking someone else to hold our emotions that when we don't want to, and that also kills the intimacy and the relationship. Yeah, it seems like whatever grievances we have yet to, like, forgive or move through, we're maintaining our sense of righteousness by continuing to experience that pain over that. And so when you think about forgiveness and how many of us have the illusion

that it's actually a lot about the other person instead of an internal experience, what are your thoughts? Yeah. Well, apologies and forgiveness are just like massive freedom machines. They're really cool. So most people unfortunately apologize with shame

and they forgive from obligation. And so if I apologize with shame, then it doesn't actually do much. If it does anything and mostly it does this, it guarantees I'll repeat the behavior. I'm really sorry that I talked poorly about you. When someone does that, I get scared because I'm like, you're going to talk poorly about me again.

But if somebody's like, hey, I talked poorly about you and that's just not how I want to be with you and I apologize for that, I'm like, oh, that person is that that action is going to help change their behavior, much less likely to happen. And then it's the same thing with an apology. I'm sorry with forgiveness. If it's like, if I'm forgiving you, right,

because I feel any kind of obligation to forgive you, there's no benefit in it for me. And there's no forgiveness in myself for my part in it. And so there's a way in which if it's not obligation, if it's actually a heartbreak, then there's not only forgiveness for you, there's forgiveness in yourself. And that's really the,

it's just actually a natural part of the transformation cycle. So there's a moment where you recognize, oh, I never had to, this whole time, I didn't have to feel abandoned. That was unnecessary. I was making that whole thing happen. That was what? And there's, after that moment,

there's usually grief that needs to, there's heartbreak. And you talked about, this a little bit and and the way I think about this is that every time you allow your heart to break it increases your capacity to love and so naturally in your transformation process grief is there your heartbreak is there because that's going that's going to be the thing that increases your capacity to love to allow love in and so that apology and that forgiveness it's like there's a heartbreak in it particularly in the forgiveness that allows that transformation the same way that there's the heartbreak

and oh, I didn't have to be a liar for all these years. I didn't have to be abandoned for all these years. I didn't have to be hard. I didn't have to be defensive. None of it was necessary. That grief, that heartbreak is like the next step in the transformational process. And if you're forgiving out of obligation instead of from that heartbreak, then you miss that whole step in the transformation process.

So important. I love how you broke that down. It feels like so many of us at different points in our life where resentment and pain is sort the badge of honor. And then when we go to forgive or give an apology, of course, it would be nice if the other person can receive it and let go of that as well. But the expectation and attachment to that actually happening, I feel like robs us of the authentic experience of letting go internally.

And then whatever happens and that dynamic happens. Yeah. And also robs you of the experience of the heartbreak and helplessness of not being seen. there's a huge amount of healing yeah you know i like today we were i was in doing the master our master class which is this online thing and there was three different people who showed up with i want my mom to like see apologize see me know what has happened and there's just no way and in all three situations there's a confrontation of like yeah that's probably never going to happen

and the grief and the healing that came out of just, yeah, that's never going to happen. So there's another thing that's happening, which is we're wanting that so that we can avoid our own heartbreak. And then when that full heartbreak moves for those people, like their capacity to love their moms as is so much greater. I've had a couple experiences where I've supported or worked with friends, whether it's in my men's group or just other relationships, where they had something like that. with one of their parents, like their dad, for example, and they were dealing with addiction and struggle, and they were trying everything that they could do to get them to accept and realize what they were doing.

And then they fully collapsed the energy within themselves, and the next day they went to remission or something. It's crazy how entangled those energies are. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so this is actually a really cool phenomenon that I think very few people talk about. So, yeah, so if you're in a marriage, say, and let's say we're married and you're worried about money.

The chances of me worrying about money are not so great. You stop worrying about money. I'm going to start worrying about money. Like there's a way in which humans, if one person's holding that emotional experience, then the other people don't have to hold that emotional experience. And there's like an emotional experience hot potato that typically happens. And the most profound one of these is the shame hot potato,

which is I don't feel good about myself. you did this thing. And then you don't feel good about yourself. And you're like, yeah, I don't want to hold that. You did it. And then you're just like trying not. Everyone's passing the shame back and forth, trying not to feel it. And but it happens in all sorts of emotional, like, relationships that we have.

And you can check it out in a business meeting or like a in your men's group. If you have, let's say, somebody in the men's group who's just always doubting and, I don't know, I don't think it's ever going to get better. And you take, say, I don't. I'm just going to take on that energy. For this men's group, yeah, this is never going to work. I think it's never. You'll notice their next share will be so much more positive than any other share that they've ever had.

It happens in business. How many businesses have I been in where there's this one person who's holding this particular energy like this isn't going to work? Or we need to have marketing instead of tech investment or whatever it is. And finally, we're getting rid of that person. And then somebody else just takes it on. you're like, what just happened? Because it's an amazing phenomenon. When you really explore that phenomenon, it's amazing because it also points to the

depersonization and the awakening because you're like, wait, well, who am I then? Like, I'm just holding this thing that anybody else will hold if I stop holding it. Like, what's happening to like, who's me if it's not even the emotions or the thoughts? Yeah. That's powerful. It's so fun working with relationships. when you recognize the mirror that they are for each other. Yeah.

Yeah. And in some of our stuff that we do that's in person, that we don't, you know, we don't advertise or anything, we'll literally use that tool in a group to help with people seeing through them, seen through themselves. So like we'll ask, okay, here are the seven emotions that you're typically holding in your patterns. We're going to ask other people to hold them and see what, see what's left of you. It's a really cool experience.

Oh. Yeah. It takes a lot and a lot of trust. It's like, don't try that somewhere. But yeah, it's like you have to really build a long legacy. What's the view framework that you have in terms of communication, relationships? The way that we introduce people to the work is something we called the connection course. And that's where we teach the view framework.

And where it came from was, so after the awakening, I was met this guy. His name was Case and kind of an ass, but also amazing. And he could have these conversations with people, much like the coaching you would see, where people would just within an hour, their whole world would be different. And he had cancer, and he couldn't get the treatment he wanted where he lived in Europe. And so he came and lived with us. And so we got to experience him all the time doing this work, both with others, with ourselves. And I remember literally you would have...

we would be doing the work with each other in our living room, and the eight-year-old you'd hear like stay up listening. And then everyone's following should be like, God, just stop resisting. It was awesome. So when he passed, he had cancer, but he passed of a heart attack. I was like, whatever that was,

I want to know about that. So I was able to just travel the world at that time and find people who could do this kind of work. work and um like most notably byron katie could do it pretty well and and um and so i was just like what are they all have in common what are they all doing that's the same because the methodologies would be really different and that's where the framework came up which was view it's like oh this is a way to deeply connect with ourselves and others and and so what i noticed about all of them is that they were vulnerable in their questions they were they were they would ask questions that were

scary that were, oh my gosh, am I asking that question? That's not an okay question to ask. And they were being vulnerable in their own experience. They were allowing the full emotional experience to occur. They were impartial, meaning they weren't trying to get somebody somewhere. They were okay with wherever the person got. They were following more than they were trying to lead. There was empathy, meaning they were with the person. They weren't in the person. They weren't lost in the story. They weren't lost in the emotional experience, but they were with them in it,

and they were full of wonder. And I was like, oh, okay, well, what if I, like, live life like that? And all of a sudden, better connection, better relationships. Conflict was something that became productive instead of something that became, that was destructive. I found out that I could raise money better. I could sell better. I could be married better.

I could raise kids better. And so that's what I'm not. what it is. It's just basically how do you be with somebody in a vulnerable, impartial, empathetic, and full of wonder way? So it's like I'm not knowing something about you as far as wonder goes. I'm wondering, right? So I could know something about you like, you know, you're been a big meditator and you're awesome. But that doesn't actually let me be with you as a human, you know. So, oh, well, what is, what's important to you? How do I, how do you want to relate with me? that actually allows for a deeper level of connection.

And so that's the whole thing. That was where that framework came from. And it just was a really productive way of being with people and incredibly rewarding. But it turns out that when you connect with people, that's what we actually most want. And so, you know, it makes you better at anything you're doing with humans. And it's far more rewarding, too. And so that's where the framework came from and where it is now. And there's a lot of asking questions in it too.

But it doesn't require you can be in view with yourself. Like think about meditating for a minute and you're like, oh, I'm vulnerable with myself. I'm impartial about where I'm going to go. I am empathetic with myself and I'm just full of wonder. Like that's a really productive sit as compared to, okay, clear my mind. Wait, I'm going to clear my mind again. Wait, oh, you fucked up. Okay, clear my mind again, right?

early meditation but yeah less a lot less productive yeah it just seems like the more fruitful orientation towards life in general yeah it's particularly when it comes to vulnerability I think a lot of us conflate displays of authenticity and vulnerability like they've gotten good PR agents you know right and so it's like it but the but real vulnerability is where we when we actually truly feel vulnerable in the experience of that. Yeah. How has your, and it changes, right? Like vulnerable for me used to be, I had an alcoholic dad. Now it's like, that's not vulnerable. You know, so the experience of vulnerability changes because what the vulnerability is doing is I'm going to be vulnerable about something,

which is me saying, oh, I'm offering this stuff for reflection. And if I do that 10 times, and 10 times people come back and they're like, no, you don't need to be ashamed of it. Because most of the stuff we feel vulnerable about, we feel like there's a little bit of shame in. And no, you don't need to be ashamed about that. All of a sudden, that shame goes away. And so then it's the next thing I'm vulnerable about. It's the next level of shame that I'm going to allow you to see in me. Through doing this work, do you think it's possible to arrive at the state where there's actually nothing in your experience you feel vulnerable expressing and sharing?

Do you think you can arrive there? I don't think so. Really? Yeah. I mean, it gets weird. It definitely gets weird. Awesome. It gets weird because it starts to be coming outside of the bounds of language a little bit.

Yeah. But that doesn't mean that there's not action that you're going to take that's going to feel vulnerable. There is a natural insecurity to life. Like, there's no such thing as a secure life. And so when you're on that line, there's always going to be some feeling. of, oh, this is scary, but it's true. But when it gets outside of the bounds of language, then it gets just weird because you can't really particularly describe it.

But generally, I haven't seen anybody who doesn't have some version of that vulnerability. In theory, both in theory and in practice, why wouldn't it be feasible that if somebody has the capacity to embrace the fullness of their humanity, that there would be, I guess, no, experience of vulnerability and sharing that experience with other people. Does that make sense? I do, yeah. So think about the most expansive state you've ever been at in a meditation.

Like, do you feel the vulnerability in that? I suppose I do in terms of it's, like in what you mentioned, the insecurity of it. Yeah. Like in a sense, there's something inherently dangerous living on the edge of life and death in your experience of, you know. Yeah. Yeah, the, I noticed the bigger that we're asked to become, so to speak, the more we're identifying with everything,

the more our somatic experience is one with everything. Every step of that so far that I've ever experienced comes to the level of vulnerability. Are you open to sharing what in your own personal life is an experience of vulnerability now, where you're finding deeper permission to be human, where you struggle to? I can attempt. I can attempt.

So for me, there was a, like, a clear time where my narcissistic tendency was that if I felt like I was going to be hurt, I would put myself slightly above. And we had a, I don't know, I can't remember how many years ago it was. but it, my wife and I, our marriage went, and then brought that to a head. And in that moment, I recognized how much pain I had caused myself and others in that just simple, oh, I'm just putting myself slightly above people as a form of protection

and all the emotion that I was trying to avoid in that little move. And in that recognition came this understanding of, of oh it's not me like the humility of it's all moving through me I'm not special and and and and and and became somewhat attached to that like oh this is like it's really important for me not to get a big head or to but then there's this been recognition recently that what's actually wanting to to happen is not to abandon that,

but to also integrate that with, oh, this is me. This is me. This is very personal. This isn't happening through everybody. Because what I'm noticing is that there's a, in a, there's a tradition about like there's two forms of fear. One form of fear is I'm going to die. And one form of fear is I'm being asked to walk into a bigger room

or I'm asked to do something bigger. And every time I do that, there's like, a biggerness that creates a it's very hard to describe but it creates like a permeability it's like as i allow myself to walk into a bigger space fill a bigger room like there like there's less of me per square inch so to speak so there's a disappearing but it's a different kind of disappearing but it's a it doesn't happen without actually being like actually under acknowledging who like that it's me here, that it's not just all moving through me. And the perfect example of this that really helped me click in and understand what was happening

was I was sitting across from a guy at a hot springs. He was telling me the story about this one moment where he was helping somebody at a DMV. He was a lawyer, and somebody at a DMV was doing this thing, and he said this thing, and it changed their life about their dream and interpreted their dream and changed their life. And he just started crying and gratitude. that he could be there doing that. And I was like, oh, I am not crying in gratitude, and I'm doing that 20 times a day.

There's moments where it touches me, but he had to take it personally. He had to say, oh, I did that to be able to be touched like that. The way that I can say, if I think about raising my daughters, I can immediately go to that place of like, and that was me. I know that was me.

It wasn't fucking moving through me. It was moving through me. But it wasn't moving through me. It was me. And I can feel that. And so my edge right now is the vulnerability of actually allowing that in the work that I'm doing in the world to actually see, oh, wow. I get 10 emails a day from people these days. Well, it was like one a day.

And now it's like it's multiple on different channels. And people, you've changed my life. This has been good. And yes, absolutely. it's not me, it's what's moving through me. But there's another thing, it's like, oh, like to allow that to actually break my heart. That's a vulnerable stance because it's asking me to get to a bigger, allowing it to be bigger, the movement to see it in a bigger way.

So that would be a place that's definitely on my vulnerable edge. That's incredible. I think so many creatives and leaders can relate to that experience too. like when we feel like life is asking for us and how it's presenting to us is serving more in a different way at a bigger scale and in a slightly different context than one-on-one sessions. I'm so grateful to have you in at this period of your life.

I feel like you're right now at this impetus in your own career where it's like it's widening in a deep way in terms of scale and like social media and all these things. And with that comes like all the energy that comes back at you with it. Yeah.

Right. I notice that a lot of people as they as that audience grows and there's more and more people as energy that the easiest thing is to defend the easiest thing is to like armor up so you don't have to deal with it. But like I can't closing down like that would be how I would like drop all of this work because I can't do this work if I close down like that. But to open up to that much of it is like, who it feels like I'm at times. It feels like I'm. At times it feels like I. I'm riding a motorcycle really fast without a helmet. You know. Vulnerable. Yeah, it's very vulnerable. What would the most wise version of you ask if it was to formulate a question around, like helping you kind of embrace that heartbreak at scale in a sense?

Is there something that comes to mind? Yeah, that's not how it works in my system now. It's once I see that it's being asked for, then it's just a watching of its unfold. That's what I find to be most effective and most efficient. You know, it's like trying to pull a butterfly out of the cocoon. It's like, oh, by the time I know it, and by the time I can say it, it's done. Yeah, that awareness of it.

That awareness. It's done. Like, all I have to do is, like, sit back and wait. Yeah, which is the most efficient approach I find, too. It wasn't the most efficient approach earlier, but it's, if now it is. And then occasionally processing it, you know,

talking to somebody about it, stuff like that. It's interesting as different creators, whoever's listening to this podcast in some way when we're asked is kind of stretched beyond what we thought at one point would be a lot already. Yeah. To continue to scale and like that there's just more,

there's more to life, there's more to serve, there's more to love and bigger challenge, more adventure. It's service and it's also like, woo, you know, it's like all that. It's a trip. Exactly, totally.

It totally is. Yeah, you're like, oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard you mention that, like, a lot of the frameworks we've even explored in this conversation are sort of like temporary scaffolding and how you also work with a lot of execs and teams bringing in unconditional love into a sales. environment or a work environment, which is so counterintuitive to how we think of that. Yeah, yeah.

I'm just curious for you to talk a bit of that process, like what that actually looks like and the importance of it. Yeah, so this is a little mental experiment you can run with yourself, which is, you're stuck on an island and there's all the food and everything you would need on that island, and you're stuck on that island with 12 people. It just turns out that these 12 people are saints And they can love you unconditionally And they do, they choose to love you unconditionally

Am I Jesus? No, you're just you're just you're just you as you Just also 12 other stages around me 12 other people just unconditionally loving you Okay And then you're stuck on that island for like a decade How do you walk out And you don't have to answer it

You can just imagine yourself walking out of that Right? That's, that is a version of ourselves that I think all of us want to be. And that's how you get to that version of yourself. And that's what you can do in a company. And it doesn't mean you don't draw boundaries because it's, there is no icon of love that didn't draw boundaries, a great mother or Martin Luther King Gandhi, whatever, Mother Teresa,

all of them drew boundaries as part of being loving. So it's not that. It's just like, oh, right, if that kind of way that we can be with each other, it creates really productive, effective human beings. It's what we want. It's like what draws us. It's what we're trying to find and so much of what we do.

So if you can create an environment like that, it's really productive, really amazing, really lovely, whether it's a family or a, and it's of course, starts with you being able to unconditionally love yourself or being lucky in finding an environment where there's a lot of people who do that. I'm very interested and fascinated by the stories of love that is fierce and like some of those examples that you gave of individuals like Mother Teresa.

Not that she didn't have her own faults. All of us, yeah. There's a great documentary about her that came out that I watched. And we think of loving people as like, oh, they're very peaceful, maybe just not taking as much action in the world per se for the individual. that are called and find themselves in roles of leadership and managing and responsible for 10, 100, thousands of people, whether it being in a business enterprise

or their family relationships or whatever it is. It's, yeah, I just find those stories very, very inspiring, and when people embody that sense of love in action through fierceness. And so when you think of, like, truly powerful leaders that can, like, on the macro scale, shift the paradigm of human consciousness and how that ripples out into impacts of people in poverty

or slavery or are in charge of teams that will change the way we work with the world, which I know with a lot of the AI companies, that's very much of the case. What in your eyes is a truly, makes up for a truly powerful leader in those qualities that we don't talk about enough? Yeah.

So the first thing I want to do is just, Check the premise for a minute. So, you know, I was talking to somebody about a choice that AI could make. And so somebody, there's all these AI labs and one AI lab might be able to make a choice and say, our goal is that interacting with our AI makes you a better person and that we're not doing anything

besides that. And we were talking in this group, and one of the people in the group said, yeah but they'll lose because somebody's going to make AI that's addictive. We can debate that. I think AI is probably one of the few technologies where you could actually do something that's more compelling, a product that's more compelling because it actually is life-enhancing

because of some things. But what that is pointing to is that the relationship with that is a two-way relationship. It's not AI, it's not the builders of AI. It's also the people who are choosing what products of AI they use, it is also the clicks. The biggest democracy, the most efficient democracy that we've ever had is the marketplace. In fact, that what you buy, they will build. The leaders of companies don't, part of what their job is, is to guess what you will buy. And if they're successful at it, then they make money. So it's a relationship. And I think it's really important that people

see that, whether it's a dictatorship or whether it's a guru or whether there's a relationship in it. So one of the things that makes a really great leader is that they actually see that it's a relationship. And they also see that they have this power in the dynamic that other people don't have. And being able to feel both, to be able to feel the connection and to be able to feel the power and actually own those things, I think makes somebody a really great leader. There's a book called The Trillion Dollar Coach, which is the guy who was, I think, behind Facebook and Apple, a whole bunch of things. And Lead with Love was his thing.

And he was successful. I'm successful. The companies he worked with are successful, the companies I work with are successful. It works. It just works. Other things work, too. You can lead with greed, and those things can also work. But they usually have a much shorter lifespan.

and you don't have the fulfillment that you would have otherwise. So that's another thing. I think what I notice is that everybody wants to leave a positive legacy. So where humans get confused is how to do that and how they disagree with that. Nobody thinks they're the bad guy. Nobody is like, oh, I'm the bad guy here. Maybe there's like a psychopath here like it does, but, you know. Hitler thought he was doing God's work.

Say it again. Hitler thought he was doing God's work. Exactly, yeah. So we, and no matter what side of the aisle you're on, clearly there's people who think that's good for the world. And so the confusion isn't, oh, I want to do good for the world. That's something that is inherent in us. It's how we do it or how scared we are when we do it

or what emotions we're avoiding when we do it. That's actually more key. And so showing, like a not showing but when a CEO sees that the way I say this is God is an esatist meaning we think that there's this thing of like I have to suffer so for the good of others but as it turns out usually the thing that's best for you is also the thing that's best for other people and so if you can find the thing that's best for you that is also best for other people it's usually the most fulfilling thing and if you find that

thing and you act from that alignment, then that becomes very fulfilling, very satisfying for folks. Yeah, I could think of so many examples of, you know, when we move from obligation in life, whether it's at a party or a meeting or it's like when we're showing up somewhere because we feel like we should and we're shitting all over ourselves and others. Right. It, yeah, it drains the authentic experience of actually being there. Yeah, well, the thing is I can't actually hold in my heart obligation and or responsibility and love.

So like right now, think of something that you love deeply in the world, maybe somebody in your men's group or something like that, and then just feel that in your system and then now take responsibility for them or do obligation. like you can just immediately that love just gets drained out. And so that's really the teaching is that you're actually construed. These are other ways you constrict yourself from loving people. And I would, I think a leader of a company who feels that deep sense of love is going to do better work for the world than the one who feels a deep sense of obligation

or who are deeply defended because they're being attacked all the time. And that's the other place that I see that people are in relationship with these companies or with these politicians. If I was attacking you 24 hours a day, how do you think you would start changing? And you see it. You see the Elon Musk's of the world, like one of his first 60 minutes interviews around SpaceX. He starts crying because he thinks of astronauts who aren't appreciative of him. And now it's like all attack. And you see this with like creators and artists.

And they get in the public eye and then they get attacked and they just harden. And like, how did they make that kind of switch? We as a society attacked them for like decades. What did you expect them to do? Become nicer? Like, how does it? You know, so that, I think that's, again, that relationship is really important. And, and, you know, what I notice is that we take, we look at the leaders and just like,

what you hate in the leaders that you hate is the things. you hate in yourself. What is triggered for you and the leader is the thing that you don't accept in yourself, just like we were talking about before. And taking that responsibility leads you to freedom. And it also helps them be better people, even if you're one in a million or a billion. It also seems like when we move in the direction of our sincere love for something, it's what actually enables our capacity to endure with all the BS that comes along the way. You know, even from something simple like I'm deepening piano right now in my learning around piano right now it's like and if I had that obligatory energy towards it would it would be I would be dragging myself to it every day but because

there is the actual love and enjoyment of it it's like I can endure the the pains of ignorance around different things in music theory for the greater pursuit and benefit of of you know of integrating those things one day and letting those things so also enjoy the ignorance yeah yeah Yeah, it's frustrating at times, but there's definitely many enjoyable pockets. Yeah, I mean, on the frustration front, just as an example, you know, I have a woman named Sarah who's been working with me for a long time. And she's like, we love Sarah. One day, when a time our family was thinking about, you know, moving, we're like, we can't move, Sarah. You know, we'd lose Sarah.

She's like that kind of important to us. And one day I came in. and just frustrated. I was like, oh, I love your frustration. I was like, huh? She goes, yeah, whenever you're frustrated, it means that there's something not working, and then we're going to find out what that is,

and we're going to get to the other side of it. I'm like, yeah, you're right. And like, she literally, it was the first person in a business environment who had loved my frustration. I loved other people's frustration, but to get that in back, I was like, oh, it was so good. Yeah, what a gift. Yeah.

And you can give that to yourself too, because there's like, oh, right, that means there's some tension here that's creative and it means that something's going to pop out of that. And it's really cool. It also shows you that you care, you play about the thing. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

So how could that not be enjoyable? Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You've been, like, I feel like AI is just becoming so ubiquitous in so many of the, you know, the tools in our experience of daily life more and more. And it can be quite frightening at the speed and how exponential it is.

I'm curious because you have this whole background and people listen to this conversation, they kind of get your vibe and like how deep you are. And also insight of what's coming in this avalanche of super intelligent AGI. What do you think is going to change in how we relate to what intelligence is and how emotional clarity and intelligence is going to how we're going to relate to that and prioritize it. I don't know. I can't, I don't, I'm not good at prediction, especially with this. I don't think anybody can predict this, whatever this is happening.

Like that's, but what I can say with certainty is there's a massive opportunity for us. And it's going to determine how we approach it. So you get divorced, you get have a kid, you get married, you lose a job, you go bankrupt. These are major moments of transformation, excuse me, moments of transition. Things are going to trans, like, wha, and those are usually the places where people make the most transformation. Like, if I'm in a class and somebody's like, I just got a divorce,

I'm like, I know they're going to like, whew. It's also where people deteriorate very quickly. Oh, you know, the steel factories went away in Pittsburgh in the 70s and a whole bunch of people just went to alcoholism. Some people transformed their lives and had much better lives. But those moments of transition are the like the ripest opportunity for transformation. We are about to go through one of the biggest transitions that I think humans have ever seen, like equivalent to fire, equivalent to the Industrial Revolution, if not more or agriculture.

And it's going to be the quickest one. So it's going to be the most disruptive to our consciousness. it's going to move faster than our consciousness probably is used to moving. And so the sense of self, the sense of what you do, the emotional waves that are going to come with it, that's a massive opportunity for us to transform as a person as a society. You know, there aren't really bad times. There's just us being bad in times. There's a great quote by that by St. Augustine of Hippo or something, but basically we are the times.

If we are good, the times are good. And so we have that opportunity in front of us to transform ourselves and or society in this really profoundly beautiful way. And or we have the capacity to go into a very dark place personally and or as a society. it really just depends on how we approach it. Do we approach it with embracing the intensity, or do we try to avoid the intensity? Do we click on the products that make us better people, or do we click on the products and make us worse people? Do we treat ourselves with unconditional love and gentleness and determination, or do we feel oppressed and lack courage in the face of the unknown? And that's really the choice we have.

And that's the only thing I can say for certainty is that that transition is coming and we have that choice. If you had to, if you had to make a guess in terms of how we shift about our thoughts around what intelligence is or really what it means to be human because we're seeing super intelligent be able to do pretty much anything a human can do better by the day, you know, in terms of even creativity. And it's like every week it seems like there's a new AI model or video model that's like so realistic. and there's not a single industry, it's not going to revolutionize. Where does that place us as humans? Yeah, knowledge work is dead. Skill work is dead.

Wisdom work is what's left. Wisdom is basically the ability to make great decisions. That would be one way to describe wisdom. Emotional clarity would be another way to describe wisdom. So we can ask a mom. what to do, but we have to make the choice to do it. We can sit in the discomfort and the friction, or we can not sit, or we can avoid.

All those are questions that a computer will not answer for us, and our wisdom will. And so the people who can answer those questions are the people who are going to succeed. And because just like today, there's a great lawyer, so amazing lawyer, but he's just really a, hard to work with and nobody wants to work with that person. But we're going to work with him because he's a great lawyer and he makes us a lot.

Oh, no, computer can do you? You're gone. It's like, do people want to work with you? Do people want to be with you? Do you make decisions that are decisions based on fear? Are you making decisions based on aliveness? These are the things that are going to make a different. And so it's going to be our wisdom that puts us ahead soon as my guess.

It makes me think about the shift of how we value power and the individuals that we perceive hold power in the realms of skills and knowledge. Yeah. Versus all the lawyers and other individuals in various different other fields, for example, in that example you gave. That our understanding of their value in the world in the marketplace is going to be shifted. and the individuals who have wisdom and emotional clarity like you're speaking to, it feels like, oh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the sages are going to be the sages. And I know it's kind of a more mystical term,

but those individuals that have that, um, deep sense of nois and ability to be with things and the things that aren't your, the things that are irreplaceable in a sense that a computer can't do. Connection. Yeah. Yeah. I hope, I know that Sages have been thinking this for a while, too. So, you know, we'll see what happens. But what I notice also is that even now today, you know, we have this idea of a businessman, businesswoman, that we get from movie screens and lawyers that we get from television shows.

But when you actually meet many of them in person, there are some that are scared and narcissistic. But there's actually quite a few that are quite wise and really thought. and really hard open people. And so they're already in those positions. Some of them are already in those positions. And so that's a, that's a, it's a fascinating thing. And so I do feel like that's probably the trend is that way. And just to make it maybe more practical for the people who are thinking about it.

Right now, if I went to a society in the Amazon rainforest, and one of the people at the top of that, society would be the shaman. And potentially, let's just assume for a second, because in a lot of societies this is the truth and they're schizophrenic. So the schizophrenic person is kind of in the top of that society and say that there's somebody who's like cutting down trees doing lumber futures, bottom of the society. Now, I go to New York City and the top of the society is the lumber future guy's making

millions of dollars and the bottom is the schizophrenic sitting on this, you know, living on the street. That's how quick it goes. That's how much things can change in one society to another society when our story shifts. And our story right now has been knowledge and skills are scarce, can't be commoditized entirely and therefore we can pay less for them and therefore there's power and the skills and the knowledge. But now it's just, five cents an hour or five cents a you know minute and an electricity of a computer chip it seems like what is so vulnerable about the position we find ourselves in humanity is because of the scale and speed at which this is happening yeah and like you spoke to perhaps none other than the

discovery of fire um it can't really be compared to anything else because it because of how fast and how big it's happening there is something it can be compared to that i've been thinking about recently which is uh awakening yeah like that just shifts everything you know when we're working with people in our courses sometimes you know they go through a shift and they're like i went to the grocery store i have no idea what the hell to buy i don't like i don't even know how to shop anymore what the is happening like you know call up jo like what yeah that's like a very common thing you know or zen sickness or whatever. The shift is so quick and it's the only other place that I see this kind of rapid change. And we're able to handle that with a little love, gentleness, and guidance.

It seems like you mentioned with any crisis in that example you gave, where there's a big disillusionment, it could either go into a deeper integrated awareness and awakening or the schizophrenic route in a sense. Yeah, or yeah, just like atrophied, watch news, all. day, hate the world place. I am a victim place. Yeah. That seems like the options. Yeah.

See what happens. Yeah. In sight of the great opportunity that we have and realizing that many individuals who are making decisions at scale are quite traumatized in themselves, like when you see that the models are being trained with a consciousness in which is training them, and how that informs the parameters. Consciousness of the creators and the creation. Yeah.

So what do you see the spectrum of these different companies that you're working with and what we need to be mindful of and where maybe there's hope? So like we said before, there's nothing but good intention, I see. And there's blind spots, just like all of humanity, both in the people building and the people who are voting with their clicks.

So it's like it's, yeah, both of those things are happening. Generally, I just, I notice like almost everybody I work with, I have biased because they're choosing to work with me, right? It must be great people. Their sweethearts is what I notice. There's a lot of sweetness. And, I mean, I wouldn't say, like, you know, most highly tech people are not, like, deeply emotionally aware. That's not usually, but some of them sure are, and some of them are amazingly

so. So there's, you know, there's, there's, the only thing that I would say is different inside an AI lab and outside an AI lab is the like level of intelligence, but the, and maybe also more tendency to be on like a neurological spectrum, but, but generally, it's like it's the same, it's the same insider out where like it's all a reflection so when I say the consciousness of the creators and the creation

yeah they're doing it but we're all doing it like this is not a we as a society are creating AI we're birthing AI it's not just these people over here it is a relationship we as a people are going be careful be careful

which is influencing them we as a people are saying oh my God, doom is coming, which is influencing them. What I don't see a lot of is treating the people who are building AI the way that we treated our World War II fighters, or the way that you would treat your future wife while she's giving birth. Be careful. You know, oh, my God, this guy's going to destroy my life. This kid is going to stake over everything.

I don't know if we should give birth. Like, you're not doing that. you're there supporting, loving, hey, how do you breathe? Let's be in our body together. I love you, dear. I don't see that happening for the people who are building AI. And then they can be blamed, but, you know, like most of us just won't actually look at ourselves and say, oh, we were part of creating this.

Yeah, I think it's a bit freeing to see how it's already the cats out of the bag in a sense where it's an inevitability. And it's like it gives us the opportunity of wherever we see an opportunity for growth. Are we going to be, are we going to stand by and watch? Are we going to actively be the change you wish to see in the world? Yeah. Yeah. Or, yeah.

Yeah. And so that, that to me is the, wow, wouldn't it be great to, you know, walk into an AI lab and there's like a whole bunch of people there loving them and demonstration, you know. I would be, like, I wonder how. about how different the creation may be if they felt like, oh, the whole world is, like, loving and supporting us, or, like, even, like, you know, the 10,000 people in front of our office are loving and supporting us. Like, how much different would the creation be?

It seems like with any creation, there's a spectrum. There's a variance of different types, obviously, in different models, for example. And I could imagine how there's going to be, and there are incredibly helpful models for healing our emotional, you know, experience. There will be used, many that are perfectly designed for cultivating propaganda in the world. Like all of humanity will be represented in the LLMs, yep. Which is so exciting and incredibly frightening. Yeah, yeah. Because we know what that looks like.

It's a big spectrum. Yeah, yeah. And that, yes, and so that's the, right, this is another expression of how it's us again. It's a, we are the creator creating this thing. And we're, yeah, I don't, yeah, it'll be its own ecosystem with its own predators and prey and everything like that. What I notice about humanity generally is that we prefer health to disease and we prefer wholeness to separation and we prefer

connection to addiction so if you think about that rat experiment mammals in general but the rat experiment you know where they put a rat in a cage and they all become addicted and they're all like pumping the cocaine or the heroin thing but then they put the rat into like the rat park where there's other rats and there's play

and they can have sex and they like hang out with each other and like very few of them become addicted or none of them in some cases become addicted. We as mammals will choose that. So if somebody can create AI that provides that, I believe the majority of us will choose it. And the ones who don't will, it'll be like a fentanyl, meaning that that part of the society will... Atrophy, yeah? Very quickly.

Yeah. we'll see what happens it's definitely an exciting time to be alive what is that curse that Chinese curse may your children live in eventful times but yeah I'm excited by it

I like it I'm grateful individuals like yourself are supporting and having input with you know whispering great things into the leaders that shaped the destiny of humanity in many ways I'm I'm grateful that they are choosing to be in it with me yeah for sure yeah What an eventful conversation.

Awesome. What a pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much. Yeah, this is so many great clarifications also in appreciation for nuance throughout that I really love that you brought into the dialogue. And I think very incredible frameworks and reminders for us all. Is there anything in the hindsight of this whole conversation that you feel like would be good to touch on before we close out that we haven't?

feels a lot for you so we talked a little bit about like the accumulating more or the undoing but I wanted to give to tie us back to the beginning in the end um for the people who are leaving

just do the if you want to experience what I'm talking about do this little experiment which is um just like when you're done with the podcast lie down sit down and see what it is just to receive life. Just like, and we can do it in this moment of, oh, yeah, we can just, oh, I'm just going

to absolutely receive everything that's available to me right now. And that gift is always there. All it requires is for us to receive, which is not a doing. It isn't, it is, it's not particularly an undoing either. It's just an allowing. And I think that that is such a powerful thing that so many of us miss and it's available to us all the time. I have deep appreciation for the simplicity of that as well.

I think throughout all the podcast conversations and different ideas and frameworks are notions around accepting our humanity and awakening get pretty complex oftentimes. And yeah, I just appreciate the simplicity of that. And there's a great invitation to close that on. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Thank you, man.

Pleasure. And for anyone who wants to dive more into Joe's work, we'll link down where you can stay connected with him. Any other things you want to point people towards resources? The best is to get involved in our newsletter, then you can do the free coaching and the free workshops and get in touch with everything we're doing and then see if the courses are right for you.

Sweet. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you, man. Pleasure to connect with you. Thanks. And everybody, appreciate you for turning into this episode of the Know They Self podcast. Until next week, I'll see you and be well.