Know Thyself - E190 - Joe Hudson: Why The Emotions You Avoid Are Running Your Life (How To Break Free)

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Joe Hudson returns to explore a deeper layer of the inner work, and why peace alone is not the full picture of being human. We unpack the distinction between awakening in the mind and awakening in the heart, and how many people use meditation and awareness as a way to find calm, while still avoiding the emotional depth that brings real connection, intimacy, and joy. Joe shares how positive emotions can actually feel more threatening than negative ones, and why the capacity to feel love is directly tied to our willingness to feel everything else.In this conversation, we walk through Joe’s personal journey from early childhood patterns of shame, emotional suppression, and disconnection into years of seeking awakening through meditation. He shares how peace became accessible, but something was still missing until he began to open emotionally and develop the capacity to feel fully. This episode is an invitation to move beyond detachment and into a more complete experience of being human, where joy, intimacy, and love emerge through welcoming every part of ourselves.MUDWTR - Up to 43% off sitewide (and a free frother!)https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself[Code: KNOWTHYSELF]The Way App - Know Thyself listeners get 30 free sessions with Henry ShukmanJust go to http://thewayapp.com/knowthyself to get begin your journey.Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list___________00:00 Intro01:17 Peace vs. Joy: Two Different Awakenings06:42 Joe's Story: Rebellion, Wounds, and the Stories We Make11:34 The Meditation Obsession and the Awakening That Changed Everything20:00 From Peace to Fully Human: The Heart Journey Begins27:24 When Peace Becomes Bypassing: The Call to Feel28:27 Ad: Mud/Wtr29:46 The Smoke Signals of Emotional Suppression38:23 Overthinking, Fear, and the Emotions Behind Every Decision43:39 Commitment, the Self-Reliant Pattern, and Relationship Dynamics49:38 Ad: The Way App50:58 The Chasing and Being Chased Dynamic in Love1:00:35 Joy Is the Matriarch — and Anger Is a Child Too1:03:18 Turning Toward the World as the Real Path of Growth1:10:33 What Are We Really Searching For?1:14:02 Living Your Calling: Purpose, Surrender, and Doing What You Love1:25:03 AI, Societal Transformation, and the Edge of Wisdom1:31:25 Vagal Authority and the Emotional Order of Operations1:40:46 Joe Coaches André Live: Perfectionism, Self-Reliance, and Vulnerability1:55:26 Dropping the Identity of Being Spiritual1:59:11 We All Want to Be Seen___________Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/joehudson_aoa/https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/abouthttps://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

Positive emotions are actually scarier for people to feel than the negative ones for more than like two seconds. You have a quote, peace is not joy. They're completely different animals. Peace comes with the head awakening. Joy comes more in the heart. Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won't come into a house that her children aren't welcome. So how do you welcome your anger and your fear and your sadness so that you can welcome love? My dad was a great father for the first 10 years, but then alcohol got him. And he was just wildly abusive verbally. And there was no way out.

I could say, find out you win. And he would say, see, I told you you were weak. So love is abuse. My needs are less important than other people's needs. And there's just something inherently wrong with me. Meditation is porn for perfectionists. It was just me trying to be imperfect. I was at peace, but I realized that peace was great.

But it wasn't the complete picture. And I wanted to actually be fully human. Is there anything that you pick up with me? There's a lot of things that I could say. I could give you 20 examples. So the more I could allow my heart to break, the more my capacity to love grew. But then what happens when someone's actually across from you

and loving you just as you are? We all want to be so seen. Joe Hudson, welcome back. Hey, good to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course, man. It's my pleasure. I always love any time I see you pop up on my feed

or my schedule, my calendar. It's a big joy. I loved our last conversation. the ones that followed after, and I'm so excited for this one. People have seen you online with founding the art of accomplishment, know that you are the executive coach for some of the world's biggest leaders.

And I think that becomes possible when one's able to effectively lead themselves. And where I wanna start today is a lot of people are familiar with the conversations we've had on the waking up journey. And we talked about a bit how on last time, They're not, it's not the same thing as growing up and the emotional work. Yeah.

And you have a quote, which is peace is not joy. They're completely different animals. Yeah. And I want to start there and lay the foundation on how they're two different things, complementary, but not equal. Yeah. So could you elaborate on that? Yeah, I think there's a couple ways to try to describe it.

The first one is I think peace comes with the head awakening, right? Which is, I would describe it as understanding, like, what you're, you are essentially, understanding, you know, what you are beyond the things that come and go, like emotions or thoughts or identities or, you know, father, son, all that stuff. Like, what are you essentially? And it also comes with this thing of being able to see through your thoughts. Like your thoughts come and go and you're just like, oh, I see how that's true, but I also see how it's not true.

your thoughts don't become personal anymore. The joy comes more in the heart awakening, which is the capacity to welcome and enjoy all of your emotional experiences. So 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 how do you welcome your anger and your fear and your sadness so that you can welcome the harder things to welcome, which is like ecstasy and joy and excitement and exuberance and and love and and we think that those

things are really easy to feel but they're actually i find people have a very hard time we'll do these retreats and we'll have a chance for people to really go into their anger and they'll get angry for like 40 50 minutes just and they you know maybe hadn't gotten angry for years but they'll do it and then we're like okay now we're going to do some pleasure and everyone like five minutes later it's like okay well what are we doing next? Because to actually allow that feeling of deep joy, deep pleasure, it's, it's, it, like, it, the way to say it is that you, like, you can't, you don't really exist in it anymore.

Like the you starts to dissipate because it gets so big, it gets so expansive that it gets scary. And so you'll see people contract into fear when like a great amount of pleasure or love show up. And then what would be the gut awakening? For me, the gut awakening is a nervous system awakening. And so that is like the most difficult one to explain because it's just so hard. The way I would say it is your capacity to hang out in like just the simple pleasure of being alive.

Meaning that you're not in fight or flight very often unless something real is happening. there's like an experience of like the sensations moving through your body are just unbelievably pleasurable. And what that's basically doing is it's telling you you're safe when you actually are safe and you're not safe when you actually aren't safe. And most of us are walking around the world feeling unsafe even though we're perfectly safe. Oh my God, I got to do. And they're all linked. Like I make a separation between them. They're not really separate.

But, you know, for an example, you have a thought that's like, oh, my God. God, I got to make sure I call my mom. And that sends the gut into it. And then the emotionally is like, oh, I have to. And, you know, they're all, they all relate to one another. And they all affect one another. Yeah, I think for many of us that get into mindfulness or meditation, we primarily, and I think I did early on, like, identify awakening of loosening the identification with

thoughts as like, that's what awakening is. Right. come to find out later on that journey that there's still a feeling of freedom that's lacking within one's experience. It sounds like the gut awakening has to do with safety, nervous system regulation, the heart more with like feeling your feelings and the head more with the identification with thoughts or seeing the illusory nature of it. Is that right? And self. Yeah. And self. And there's like, I don't go into kundalini, but the gut awakening has a lot of like energetic kundalini stuff with it. But I don't, you know, it's very hard to talk.

about and so I just don't. I'm not an expert in that area. Yeah. And so peace is not joy to me feels like, okay, one could have had awakening. They can have a loosening identification of thoughts. Fundamentally, I know my sense of self is not at the whims of my thoughts and emotions. But I would actually like to zoom in on your own personal journey because you got kicked out of your family household when you were a freshman in high school. Yeah, yeah. You had a green mohawk. Yes. I need a picture of this. I need a big. I need a big. I need a picture of it. Yeah, my parents did not allow any of those pictures to exist. Yeah. Yeah. Like Knox gelatin was the trick. You had, you got Knox gelatin and then that's how you like kept the

Mohawk top. Yeah. Was it like big big or like a hand, hand big? I wanted it to be like a foot and something, but I never got there. Yeah. So I'm curious to zoom in a bit more on that rebellious spirit and the stories that you developed about yourself in the world at that time, which then led you on the head awakening journey, and then eventually down the heart awakening and gut awakening journey. Yeah. But I think that can, a lot of people will be able to relate as they hear it in your own personal journey.

So if you could just take me back of like the progression of those key developmental moments in your path and the stories that you feel like you really made about yourself during that time. Yeah. So the first story that I made that I hardly even understood that I made until relatively recently was, you know, the story of my needs are not important. That my job is to take care of my parents' needs instead of my parents' job was to take care of my needs. So my mom had this theory, for instance, of, like, you know,

I needed to be changed at a certain time so that I learned to poop at a certain time. that was convenient for her, just like as an example. So my needs were tertiary to every other need that there was out there. So that was something that I didn't really even understand until much later, but that was probably the first big lesson. And the second lesson that I learned was that love came with verbal abuse. My dad was a great father for the first 10 years, but then alcohol got him,

and he was just wildly abusive verbally at the table. So we could literally have, like, hour and a half yelling matches, and there was no way out. I could say, find out you win, and he would say, see, I told you you were weak. Like, it was just, there was no way, because he was just moving his, getting through his own emotional experience.

And so that's the second. And then in all of that was the lesson that, like, I'm wrong. So love is abuse. My needs are less important than other people's needs. And there's just something inherently wrong with me. And that's basically how I like popped out, you know, of high school and college. It was just like that. That was what was going on.

And so because I had learned that I proved it to myself all the time, I was constantly telling myself I should do these things that I wasn't doing. I had all sorts of bad habits. you know, definitely was avoiding life through alcohol, marijuana I wrestled with for a while, all just as some way to get away from myself because these emotions were coming. And luckily and unluckly at the same time, I had this experience where I was seven years old where I was crying. And my parents hated when I cried, which is not uncommon, you know. And so they would throw pity parties for me.

They'd be like, oh, that's so bad. Oh, poor you, I'm going to play the smallest violin, that kind of thing. And so they one day took pictures of me to make fun of me, and they actually put them in the photo album. And so when I was 21 or 22 years old, I came across that photo, and I was. I was like, oh, that's probably why I haven't cried in like 14 years. Like that, that's probably it.

And I need to learn how to cry. I do not know why that gift came, but I just knew that that was something I had to do. And so I started trying to cry and I couldn't do it. Like I literally spent years trying to cry and couldn't do it. At this time, I'm meeting my wife. My wife has, my wife is responsible for a lot. She's amazing. She basically said, we need to travel in a third world country together.

We need to do a 10-day silent retreat together, and we need to do therapy together if we're going to get married. We're going to do that, and then we'll decide if married. 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.

It just works. So I was like, okay, let's do it. Those are great things. Those are great things. For most people to do. Yeah. Just awesome. And to do them together was great.

So the therapy really started teaching me about the emotional piece. But the meditation retreat, what happened was I was at a standard, you know, Guanka Vapasana thing. And what was it, like day three? The first time you sit and you move the attention through your body, my body disappeared. I was filmed with the universe. It was amazing. It was eight seconds, and then I spent the next 10 years trying to get that back, which was like absolute hell. It was like a complete nightmare.

Could you zoom in and just a bit more on that experience? What was that really like for you? That was eight seconds? Those eight seconds? I don't know. It's their memory now, but it was just, it was like my physical structure disappeared is how it felt physically in the body and I could feel the universe and I was the universe. and I was the universe. There was a positive sensation ecstasy

that I had never felt before. And then I was just like, what's happening? How do I keep this? And then it went away. And then I was like, how do I get it? And so I spent 10 years making almost no money, doing almost like the very minimum amount of work to be able to dedicate my entire life

to finding whatever that thing was. So reading all sorts of meditation teachers and doing all sorts of things like the Hoffman process or different therapies, I just like everything that I could possibly find to do, I did. And that was great in the fact that it taught me a tremendous amount of tools to like, now that when we do courses,

I get to incorporate the understanding, from all these unique tools. It was also lucky in the fact that I had a huge authority issue because my dad was who he was, I just couldn't trust authority. So anything that anybody said, I was like, bullshit prove it. And so I started developing experiments to, okay, he said that, or she said that, I'm going to try that. I'm going to see what that.

Is that really true? Okay, you can say joy is a matriarch of a family of emotions, blah, blah, blah. I don't give a shit. So I'm going to actually like see what. It's like to feel that anger, feel the sadness, feel the joy. I'm going to do all that for a week, and I'm going to see, does my life change? So I wouldn't take anybody's words as gospel. I would say, what's the experiment I could run, which was, I think, the biggest benefit.

And so I just started running these experiments everywhere that I could find. And I really spent seven years, like, in a room meditating most of the time. That was, like, most of my experience. And it was like, you know, it's like meditation is porn for perfectionists. You know what I mean? It's like it was just me trying to be fucking perfect. That's really what it was. And that finally like started dwindling away.

Pretty soon I wasn't trying to manage my experience anymore. Not pretty soon, like four years in. I wasn't trying to manage my experience. I wasn't trying to get there anymore or I was trying to get there less. This question arose in me like, what am I essential? that question was 10 times a day just jumped right into my consciousness. I was obsessed with it. And I just, well, at the time it was called, what am I?

But for me now, it's what am I essentially. And it just like, and so that was where I was, I was just completely there doing that thing, worrying about money and married with a wife who's like, what are you doing? Like, what's going on? She did not understand the journey at the time. she had her own journey too.

And so we had very different ways. And she was definitely more on the heart journey and I was more on the head journey. And she used to make fun of me. You know, it was, she'll hate this story, but I love the story. She had nicknames for all the gurus that I would read. Like, you know, Stephen Harrison was somebody I really loved.

She called him Bean Boring. And Papa G was Punjab Potatoes. And she had a nickname for everybody. And she'd say things like, tell me about your spiritual process because I'm tired and I need to go to sleep. Like that would be the thing. So it wasn't a lot of support and it was all in fun, but she also was doing her own way of,

she was doing her own way, which became really important later on. And so eventually I'm at a different meditation retreat. I'm going to the bathroom, which is oddly often in Zen Buddhist parables and Taoist parables of like having an experience. And I had lots of big experiences at this point. And I was Pianna and I had this experience.

And it just was like, I asked what am I? And the answer disappeared. I don't know exactly how I explain it. But the first thought was, I am that. And the second thought was this never ends. And I got really lucky with that second thought. Because I know a lot of folks who have had that awakening experience and they think it's an end.

They think it's like, okay, I'm done. and then they identify as like this awake person, which is its own weird ego trip. And so that didn't happen to me. And I think that that didn't happen to me because I struggled so hard to get to that point. So I was lucky. So I had that experience,

but for very, very short period of time, maybe less than a year, I kind of identified as somebody who was awake and had that awakening experience. But what happened in that moment, which is the peace part of your question, is I could just access peace at any time.

Like, there was this vast oneness. There was nothing that was personal. There was nothing to be upset with. If I did get upset, if I did get constricted,

I could just remember and it was lovely. But it was also not whole. It was also not joyful. It was like, I could be at peace, but I couldn't be intimate. I could be at peace,

but I was still being, whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was still being, like thrown around by my shadow. I was at peace, but I was still putting myself above people. And so that, so, so, and then about that same time, I became a venture capitalist and I started getting involved in the world. And what I realized, the first thing I realized there was, oh, business is awesome because you

can like pretend you're a piece on a pillow, but like when you're a, company is losing 10 million. You just lost $10 million investment or $20 million investment. Like that's real, you know, or like you're in a board meeting and things aren't going right. That's real. Like, how are you going to attend to that? How are you going to be with that?

Like, I'm all at peace. Are you going to do something about it? Can you do both? Can you be at peace and do something about it? And so when I was doing that work, one of the things that I learned was a lot of the tools that I had come across were really good for business. So as an example, if I want to raise money from you and I know how to connect with you and you and I have a conversation where we grow as people, there's a higher likelihood that you're going to invest in the project. If I'm talking to an

employee or I'm talking to a CEO I was invested in and I understood how to create an intimacy, I understood how to ask a great question, I understood how to be deeply and connected with myself and them, then things would happen better. You know, like the conversation you were having better, there'd be less animosity, that we'd have less of a fight. As a matter of fact, this whole business that I'm in right now started because somebody was pitching me. And we just had this really nice conversation.

Then he started pitching me. I said, all I know is that my entire body constricted when you started pitching me. So whatever that is, it's like something's not right. And then he went, you know, it's true. I'm like doing this because I have to. It's not actually what I want to be doing. And the next thing I know, he invited me to a conference where I spoke. Next day I know he has me in front of like a camera.

Next thing I know people are asking me to coach them. Like literally, that's how this whole thing happened because I, was just being with all the things that I had learned how to be. So at that point, I realized that peace was great, but it wasn't the complete picture, and I wanted to actually be like human, fully human. And I think that the piece was almost a way to avoid pain avoidance. And so, and I stopped having any interest whatsoever in perfection.

So with that, this guy came into my life named Case, and Case was a weird human being. I love him, but he was no easy character. But he had this capacity to have a conversation with people and their lives would change. And he also had the capacity to sell. If he believed in a product, he could sell easily or raise money easily, like just unbelievable.

It's just crazy how he could do it. So he became a friend and he got cancer. And so he lived with us because he wanted alternative treatment that you could only get in California. And so he lived with us and I got to watch him do his work. And I was already starting to coach people at this time. And so and that started like the deep relational work, which I had already done a lot of work with the heart. I had already done a lot of emotional work. At this point, I'd learned how to cry by literally going and faking crying out in the woods.

And I started learning about the emotions, but with him there was a lot of relational stuff. And that's when I started really allowing like that deep level of intimacy, love, and connection in, that's when a whole bunch of stuff started changing for me as far as the emotional. All of a sudden, when I started feeling more emotions, my decision making got clear. When I started feeling more emotions, the stuck kind of like low-levely, that can happen even in peace went away. When I started feeling my emotions, I stopped feeling better than people.

When I started feeling my emotions, I was quick to be able to be intimate with folks. And so all this stuff happened. But biggest thing is that just my capacity to love grew and grew and grew, the more I could allow my heart to break, the more my capacity to love grew. And so I just started to like do that And part of that recognition was that I had to learn how to love myself,

which is where I started to have to confront, deeply have to confront, this idea that I'm bad, right? And that love came with abuse. And so what I started noticing was like every single emotion that I wasn't allowed to feel had a behavior pattern that was involved in it, and when I felt the emotion of the behavior pattern went away. So I was emotionally abandoned. I had this emotional abandonment come up.

I might think, like, oh, you might emotionally abandon me. I would do one of two things. I would do, fuck you anyway. Or I'd do like, oh, please. Both which make you emotionally more likely to emotionally abandon. But when I could love that feeling of abandonment, when I could welcome that, then neither of those two actions happened. And then you were less likely to abandon me.

And the pattern would start to fall apart. So all of that started to happen. And my capacity to love myself, to not believe the shame, to work through my shame, just started. It started to all unravel. And that's when joy showed up. And then after joy showed up, interestingly, that's when the I'm bad thing fell apart. Then the inherent goodness showed up, like the recognition. And it's an interesting thing, right?

like you have dedicated your life to doing this work in the world. It's great work. It's wonderful. And yet most people in your position, I can't speak for you, but most people in your position would be focused on the things that they didn't do or what was wrong. Or, you know, they wouldn't actually have trust that, oh, I'm doing this because, like, I have great intentions for the world and I actually really deeply care. They won't admit that to themselves.

They won't admit to themselves. that thousands of people watch this thing and their lives are changed because of it and they're having that impact on the world and letting that break their heart open. And that journey, which is beyond the journey of joy, is this journey of, oh, I can't be grateful for things that I can't acknowledge are true.

And so can I fully allow, oh, the people in my business want me to think they're doing a good job. Can I fully let that in? The people on the YouTube channel are telling me that their lives are changed because they watched this simple video that I made. Can I like let that break my heart? And that journey, break my heart open, cry, but break my heart open, that journey in itself is you have to start acknowledging your inherent goodness in that. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Oh, tag season is the worst. a hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms, but I've got TELUS online security. It helps

protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Yeah, like that humility being not just acknowledging your own insignificance or nothingness but owning your significance and how big your impact actually has the capacity

I resonate with that and what you shared. You can't be grateful for something that you can't acknowledge and the other piece I think it's from the Jewish tradition I think and it says humility is taking your God given place

in the world which I really love because it actually expresses both right because humility is one of those things where if I say I'm humble then I'm arrogant if I say I'm arrogant then I'm humble so it's like it's one of these weird things that it's it's not what you think it is it's there's a great saying that says it's not thinking less of yourself it's thinking of yourself less which points in the general direction but I feel like it's also there's an acknowledgement of who you are with the marriage of the acknowledgement that it was all kind of luck

You know, like it's moving through me. It's not really about me. But I also have to acknowledge that I'm here doing this thing. It's a crazy. Yeah. That's a mindblower. I appreciate you took up the space to really kind of walk us through the arc of your journey because I think it's speaking into those different points are really important.

You mentioned enlightenment is like porn for perfectionists. Yeah. Awakening, yeah. Yeah. And I think that what can start out for so many of us. us is just like a seeking for solace, a seeking for some sort of comfort from this voice in our head that's running tyranny in our lives can quickly become bypassing, dealing with stuff that is quieter in your experience, but still there.

Yeah, yeah. It's still keeping you constructed in some degree. Yeah. So I really want to hone in on that. What speaks out from your story, which if you just finish is like when you've realized you hadn't cried in 14 years. Yeah. And then you went off into the mountains and faked it until you made it, essentially.

That's what I did, every week, yeah. So you would just go on a hike, go find a soul? So I lived in L.A. at the time, and I would go up to Angel's Crest, and then I would, like, walk on this trail that nobody walked on. And then I'd walk off the trail for a couple miles. And then I would pretend I was in an acting class where I had to cry. That's what I did. I was so ashamed of any tears. And then finally, like real tears burst through.

And I cried for like four days straight. It was awesome. I felt so much better. It was just like, just that whole thing moved through me. It was amazing. And that made it easier for me to cry. It didn't make it,

then I had access. And it was another, I'd say another like five years until crying just could spontaneously erupt. Yeah. What's up, everyone? One thing that reliably brings me a sense of joy is having a warm,

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For people that are listening right now that feel to some degree they're holding back something, there's tension in their body, their psyche, that they could release, whether it's through crying or expressing of certain emotions outside of pretending you're in an acting class and then it becoming real. I guess, and I'm just curious even my own personal life, like take the lens on me. I feel like I resonate with a lot of parts of what you said for your journey.

Finding this inherent piece, lack of identification with thoughts can be with most things without strong reaction. But at times I still find myself being constricted and being able to feel the fullness of experience where I feel joy, I feel peace, I can feel slight sadness,

but they're like more, I would say, contained within what I feel like is the fullness of my possible spectrum of experience. If that makes sense. So like, what do you, what kind of advice you got there? Besides, which I think you said last time was like, have a couple kids, get into a relationship, those triggers will inevitably bring that out, right? The biggest unlock for that, for in that position is vulnerability. And it's kind of, it's a little bit harder in your situation than it would be if you hadn't done all that work.

So, and then in some ways it's easier. So there's kind of both. Because once the emotion starts happening, you don't take them as seriously because they're not personal. And so you can have these big emotions and you can be like, that was awesome instead of, what's wrong with me? why did I get so sad? So that's the benefit of it. But the easiest thing is to be vulnerable. And so one of my teachers who's now passed,

his name I can't remember, but I spent like a couple weeks with him. And he often worked with monks who'd been meditating for like years. And when he would teach them this thing that you're talking about, he would tell them, it's like, we're going to drag you back

into hell again. Just so you know, we're dragging you back into hell again. And I went through that very, very similar experience where I was like, oh, I don't need to go there. I can be here. I can be up in this piece. I don't need to, I don't need to like go into the depths of that shit anymore. And so I'm not going to do it. And then it became more and more hidden from me. And so I literally had to slow way, way, way down and go, okay, something, there's a constriction there. What's actually happening and like slowly pick it apart, even amplify it sometimes, so that I could start to actually get a taste for it and do it. The number one thing, though, that helped me was just the act of vulnerability over and over and over and over again. And by vulnerability, I mean saying the thing that's true

for you despite the consequences. Saying like, oh, I'm a little scared there, or I'm, or I don't want that or I love you or whatever the truth is, it's like a little bit scary, that's the, that's like the trick. And it's very relational because the, the, the, I hate to call it this, but like the avoidance that can come with that like level of peace, what you're avoiding is the pain of relationships earlier in your life. And so being able to be vulnerable and open yourself up. up to that pain again is the healing process.

And so it is, it is, it's getting deeply vulnerable. And that's the, that's the biggest trick. Yeah, which vulnerability and authenticity, they've both gotten good PR agents. Recently. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, recently. Horrible in the 50s.

They weren't doing good. They've turned their brand around. Yeah. Which is, which is interesting because there's the appearance of vulnerability. And then there's the thing that actually feels vulnerable. Correct. Right. Oh, correct.

Yeah. That's, I mean, that's, like, so for instance, I just talked about my dad being an alcoholic. That was vulnerable for at some point in my life. That is not at all vulnerable, right? Uh-huh. Right. And so vulnerability, sometimes part of vulnerability is like saying something vulnerable that nobody's going to think is vulnerable, right?

You know, or, but yeah, it is, it has to make you pucker. That's how you know it's vulnerable because you go, right? Because one, there's a form of fear that's like, oh, I'm stepping into a bigger room. I'm going to, I'm being asked to take up a bigger space. That could be I love you. That could be getting on stage and talking in front of 500 people. That could be taking a new role.

And there's like a, that's, and that tells you, oh, there's an act of vulnerability here. There's like that pucker that comes with it. And so that's, I think, one of the things that, like, lets you know you're being vulnerable is that, that, oh my God, am I going to, am I going to say the thing? Hmm. And I've heard you speak to, like, the ways to be able to magnify it and get clear.

Like, what are the smoke signal, so to speak, of emotional suppression and how it, like, what are the key signs that whether or not we're aware of it, we are suppressing, you know, emotions to some degree in your experience? Yeah. So different emotions have different signals. but I can tell you easy ones. Like so, for instance, if you're highly rational, if you're like one of those people like,

I'm highly rational, I can say to you, you also think you're better than people who aren't, which means you think you're better than people. And if I can tell that, then I'm using my rationality to tell that you are emotionally suppressed as well. Meaning... Judgment, essentially.

Basically. If you judge somebody, if every moment you're judging somebody, you are suppressing your... emotions. You have to. Like you can just, if you judge somebody, you can just say, if I couldn't judge them, what would I have to feel? And there will be an emotion like right there waiting for you. If I couldn't judge them, what would I have to feel? If I just couldn't. Not that I'm not supposed, not that I shouldn't. But if I just couldn't judge them, what would I have to feel?

So if somebody finds themselves having the tendency to judge others, which slightly puts them above others, what would be an example of something they're avoiding feeling in that moment? I mean, the best way is to just do find it for yourself like can can you find anything that you judge anybody for yeah yeah yeah so give me something that you judge someone for any anything small big doesn't matter yeah um virtue signaling great that's a great one that's an awesome one easy one to judge so if you couldn't judge somebody for virtue virtue signaling what would you have to feel what i have to feel you're just not capable of it not capable of judging them they're virtue signaling and You just couldn't.

Probably shame. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, that's exactly. And that's how it goes. So, for instance, one of the things I used to judge people for was like just those inane conversations, you know, 20 minutes of like how fast you went to the grocery store or whatever, what you bought.

And I recognize, I was like, oh, what would I have to feel? and it was just this deep grief because in my childhood, keeping it superficial was part of the way to avoid. And so I, there's like three weeks where I would just like seek out superficial conversations and I'd just be there, I'd be the weird guy there weeping while people are like talking about like what dress they bought

at like Bloomingdale or whatever. And because I was like, oh, there's the gold for me. That's like I can, I can, if I can seek that out and then I can feel that emotion and so that's exactly how I did it. Every time I found a judgment or I found something that I got triggered by

or I was like, okay, there's something there I couldn't feel and then I would just re-enact that over and over again until that trigger wasn't there in me anymore. So I would like go out and find virtue signaling and then like feel into that shame. Like I would like go to a nice protest rally where everybody's virtue signaling

and I would just sit in it. That's what those are the sum. Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything. That's why their system lets you take payments. Track sales, handle inventory, manage staff, send invoices, and keep up with finances all in one place. Fly through orders with zero mistakes. Get the data you need and keep everything working together.

So you're ready for whatever's next. Learn more about their customizable plans at squareup.com. For the things that I do. Yeah. No, that's great. That's great. Yeah. When, okay, so another one would be, what, overthinking?

I've heard you and I saw one of your tweets, how overthinking is usually stemmed in some sort of emotional suppression to some. Yeah, so, and that one's pretty typically fear. So basically if someone's trying to make a decision and they're overthinking the decision, actually I have a really great parable I just wrote about this for my next, for the book I'm doing. So maybe I can remember it. Which one is it? I might actually have it.

Oh, no, you don't, because I just wrote it this week. Oh, okay. I just wrote it this weekend. Let me, I'll try it the parable. Let me tell you the variable. Okay, so this woman has lived this really good life. She's in her 50s. Her kids are grown and she's got this big decision she needs to make and she's wrestling with it.

She's thinking about it and she can't, so she goes to the guru on the hill. Most of my parables don't have gurus, but this one did. And she goes to the guru and she explains. She explains. She's like, I'm thinking that I should stay with my husband and I should stay doing my business. That's a successful business and I should stay as a upright community member. But there's a part of me that wants to go to the convent and just dedicate my life to God. And I don't know what I should do. Should I, you know, stay with my life or stay in the convent. Should I, because on one hand, like, my husband's great and he loves me, but on the other hand, I love my time with God. On one hand, I have money. I can contribute to. the community. On the other hand, I know I can have a generous life even without money. On one hand, you know, I've built my whole life around this, but on the other hand, every time I've ever done anything new, it's always kind of paid off. So, and the guru interrupts and says, just decide the same way you decided to come here and ask me the question.

And she's like, you put, off you go. So she goes home, she's a little confused about it. She's her. A couple months later, she's still in the way. the question, she's like, that guru, I don't know, I'm going to go back and see the guru. So she goes back to see the guru. She waits in line again. She finally gets up in front of the guru, guru looks and says, how's that decision thing coming? She goes, what's not going well at all, actually? You know, I just don't know if I should live with my husband and continue the life or if I should if I should go to the convent. He goes, oh, I know what you should do. She's like, you don't, you can't know what I should do. You're not omnipotent.

He's like, sure, I know what you should do. You should sit here and ask me a question. And she's like, what? And then he calls the next person, dismisses her. She goes off just pissed this time. Last time she's like super pissed. And she goes home and she's like, screw that guru, whatever. But a couple months later, the business is suffering.

The patient husband isn't so patient anymore. She's still thinking about, like, what am I going to do? And so she's like, well, there must be something. guru, he just keeps on going in my head, so she goes back and sees the guru. And she comes up and immediately the guru sees her face and it's like, oh, it's still not going well, I see. And she's like, no, it's not going well. And he said, well, let me just ask you how, you know, I've pointed out at two different ways now. I'm going to try to point it at as a third. So let me just ask you a question. What are you scared about in staying with your husband? I'm scared that I might be miserable because

I'm missing this massive opportunity. And what are you scared about if you go to the convent? I'm scared I might be miserable because I'm going to miss my husband. And he says, well, then you can't lose because you're miserable right now. You're not going to lose anything. And she starts chuckling. She gets it. She turns around. And as she's walking out, one of the devotees of the guru looks and says, so you know what you're going to do? And she goes, absolutely not. But I'm sure that it will reveal itself when it's supposed to and walks out. And that is the overthinking thing. The overthinking is that you are trying to avoid a certain emotion. And instead, because we make whatever, 100 choices every day, and we never think about them. But when we start thinking about them, we're scared and we're

scared of a result that might happen, particularly an emotional result that might happen. If I leave my husband I might be miserable if I leave my if I don't go to the combat I might be miserable if I tell my boss the truth I might get fired and I'm going to feel like a failure if I don't tell my boss's truth I'm going to feel like I'm inadequate and that I'm not doing my job and so we're just trying to avoid an emotion and then so we're thinking thinking thinking trying to make sure that we're going to feel the thing that we want to feel and when you invite and welcome all your emotions all of a sudden it doesn't really matter. You don't, like, I can't think of the last time that I machinated on a decision.

Like, I, like, just, I can't, I don't think I can, it hasn't happened in a year. Just like, I'm just, I'm just the way I would make a choice of coming here. I would make a choice of doing this with the business or saying this to a person. This is, this is super powerful, man, because I think, so the overthinking and like the binary decisions are both kind of coming in here like when we get into that place of black or white thinking like there is a right decision and I feel so conflicted which is the right one yeah I was talking to a friend over the past few weeks who's been seeing this woman who he has a deep affinity for there's real love there and it's really struggling in this like yes or no is she the one is she not the one should I pursue it further should I

step away and so in that case because I think a lot of people relating right now, could look at a career choice, a relationship, somebody they just started dating, and they feel like they're stuck in this binary. Yeah. With that parable, kind of goes hand in hand. So what question, I guess, could they ask themselves to see what emotion they're avoiding? Yeah. So let me, let me pull back on a couple things so that we get a good. First thing is anything, if you're trying to make a decision, that's a sign of fear. If you're in black and white, binary thinking, that's a sign of fear. If you think there's a false end, like, I have to make the decision, or I'm going to lose her, or if I stay married to her, if I get married to her,

oh my God, I'm stuck forever. There's like a false end. So just on that level to see that that's not binary, to actually intellectually go, actually, I could stay with her, I could stay with her like this. I could say these are the boundaries of our relationship. There's actually a thousand things that you could do there. And you can say, I don't have to make it. decision. I can actually just say, I'm scared about this and this and this, what's going to happen, and just take the next most obvious step. And I could see through that false end that I've created for myself. You know, even the Tibetans see through their death, even the stoics see through their death so that they can become not scared of death. So can you see through your false end.

So intellectually, all that stuff can be done. And if you see any of those things, then you can know fear is at least part of the equation of what you're not. But let's just talk about your friend as an example. Your friend is an example. If I, like, probability of about 75% I can tell you his story. His story is in his childhood, love came with some sort of way of being dominated. It doesn't mean dominated like, but it was like somebody always on them, somebody. And so guilt-tripping them, some, somebody who's like not letting them.

be themselves. Maybe it's through guilt, maybe it's through physical punishment, but there's something like that going on. And they are scared of being in a relationship, they're going to lose themselves in the relationship. They're going to merge in the relationship, and they're not going to be able to be who they want to be, say the things that they want to say. They're going to be some bent version of themselves to stay in this relationship. That's the fear. Sevent percent chance that that's the fear that is actually underneath that person. Commitment phobic and in love relationships. So now backing up to get to your question.

If he's sitting there and he's like, I'm scared of being in a relationship, the vulnerable thing to do is to say, I notice I really want to be with you, I notice I really love you, I notice I'm really scared of committing, I noticed that I am avoiding the intimacy that committing and then just say, why? What makes me scared to commit? Which is weird because those relationships and I've now helped hundreds of people with this thing,

that's the conversation that's never really had. This is why I'm scared, because everybody's taking it so personally, you don't love me. You know, like it's two people. Let's say this is the woman, this is the guy. I can tell you with a lot of certain, that this is their relationship.

She chases a little bit, and he's kind of... Yeah. Right? And so if this is what's occurring, if he can stand upright, or if she can stand upright, there's actually room. But this is what happened in his childhood that made him... This is the only way he could maintain his sense of self. And so if he stands upright and goes vulnerable, this is the position of vulnerability.

I'm upright in myself. I'm going to say my truth, even if it's scary. I'm going to move to that vulnerability, then there's a chance that they can actually really connect. But they're not even fucking connecting like this anyways. So that's the way. So it's actually announcing the thing that you're scared of. Like take double-clicking or triple-clicking down into the thing.

So take it a step further, because if you go from this to hear and you name it, and you can actually have a conscious conversation where you're not just projecting and it can be met in communication, but you still feel emotionally conflicted because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, a decision needs to be made.

Like commitment one way or the other needs to come to fruition. You want to respect their time. How does one, if they're seeking clarity of like, we're still having this conversation, but I still don't know which direction to go in. What would you say in that scenario? Like just more time?

I would say, if I was coaching the person, And what I would say is what would be required for you to commit, what would be required for you to happily walk away. And then I would say, if you were 100% fully yourself with that person, like the experiment I'd say is go be 100% fully yourself with that person and see what happens. You might want to leave. You might want to stay.

She might want to leave. She might want to stay. But I can guarantee you that you're not being 100% fully yourself with that person. Hey guys, you might recall that I had a guest on last month, the Zen master and meditation teacher, Henry Shookman. Together we spoke about the path of awakening, the Zen tradition, and how transformative a meditation practice can truly be. There are so many different paths and various meditation lineages one could take up, but the most important kind of meditation is the one that you actually do and are consistent with. And so I'm excited to share that Henry's app, the way, are offering 30 free sessions to all of you. It's the only app with a single long-term path of meditation training that grows your practice step by step,

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I hope you enjoy. Happy meditating. It's so fascinating how we have all these subconscious stories also of what a potential relationship or decision will mean for us. the death of a self to a certain degree, going from a boy to a man, a prince to a king. I think this is a big thing. I know I speak to a lot of my women friends who feel like there's all these guys out there

that have commitment issues. That there is this spaciousness and lack of urgency a lot of times as a man, especially in the culture we live, to just kind of keep kicking the can down the road, can kind of have kids whenever women, there is that biological clock. There's a bit more pressure you could say

for many. Yeah. And there's a lot of this. A lot of this. A lot of people working that issue out. Yeah. Yeah. And, right.

And the question is like, which one of these, if you're a woman or a man, are you doing? Because either one just sucks. You know, chasing love sucks. Being chased sucks. Being upright in your own love, like that's the work. for the woman or the man. It's like, can you be upright in your own love? And so to me, it's,

we could work on the relationship issue all day and it could get nowhere, but you figure out how to be upright in your own love. So for just as much as this guy's love being dominated, this person's love was chasing. Right? And so their job is to learn how to remove chasing as part of love, and their job is to remove dominance as part of love and just be in love.

Yeah. But it is a thing that's happening in our society right now. It's an amazing thing to watch it. And I think what people forget is that there are lots and lots of people who are getting married at 27. You know, so there's also that. And it's weird how we in this world, like, have a hard time seeing it. And I think oftentimes the men who are being chased are the ones who are self-reliant. They're like, I have my life. I have a good thing going. I've made my own business. I've, like, I have this really nice life.

They're the ones being chased, but they're also the ones that learn self-reliance. And the self-reliance pattern, I love this pattern, personal favorite. The self-reliance pattern goes as following. And when I say this, like half the audience will be like, shit, that's me. So self-reliance means. when you were young, you learned that your job was to take care of your parent and that your parent wasn't particularly going to be able to take care of you. And so that means that you have a hard time being able to express your needs.

You have a hard time being able to express what you want. You have a hard time expressing when you're hurt because when you were a kid, you're not going to get your hurt met. You're not going to get your wants met and you're not going to get your needs met. So you learn to just shove all that down. you're obviously very capable of making a good life for yourself. And then typically there's some authority issues that come along with it. You need to be not because the authority wasn't to be trusted, shouldn't have been trusted

because your job was to take care of them. That's not right. And so you don't trust authority typically. And so there's some authority issues and that your job is to make other people happy. So if you think of all that, why on earth would you want to be in a reality? relationship, right? Because my job is going to make them happy. I'm still going to have to take care of everything for myself. And I'm not going to be able to express my needs or wants. So none of that shit's going to get met. And now I just have somebody else that I have to take care of.

That's the self-reliant pattern that's on the other side of the needy pattern. Typically. And I think like that's a way to break down. What needs to be felt for that person is the helplessness of, I actually can't do it all myself. That's a huge thing to be felt. And then to feel whatever needs to be felt when expressing a want, when expressing a need, when expressing hurt. And when I watch people go from that self-reliant pattern to a pattern where they have tons of support and love in their life

in such a short period of time by just saying on the regular basis, this is what I want, this is where I hurt, these are my needs and so for Lyme people they typically like needs I have water, food and shelter and it's like yeah but like are you going to be

happy without communication and sex and love and those are also needs to thrive not the needs to survive but the needs to thrive we have them and so that will totally change that pattern because they're going to have to feel all the stuff they have to feel to say those things

to like fully own your wants and your needs, which can be terrifying to admit and announce. Yeah, it requires a lot of vulnerability. Yeah. That's right. Well, anything you would say on the women's side, her, and of course, this is an overgeneralization. There can be many different textures of this, but there is this unrequited feeling

of the chasing, of feeling like they're waiting. Yeah, yeah. How to stand up right is, I think, the goal on both sides, right? So the thing that both of them are doing, that's really important, and then we'll go into the women, is they're both doing this. So the man, the self-reliant man, is actually saying, I want to be loved, I want to be nurtured, I want to be cared for, but I can't trust you to do it.

And you're not competent enough, and I'm going to take care of you. And so there's this position going on. Love me, get away from me. The same thing is happening with the needy position, which is, I want you, I want you, I want you, but I'm needy. So, like, why the fuck would you want me back? So there's this happening. Both of those two things are occurring.

And it's the same, in some ways, it's the same. pattern, not the self-reliant pattern, but it is the pattern of I'm actually pushing love away because I'm scared I'm going to merge. Right. So if you talk to any of those women who are constantly in the chase and not getting it, and you ask them like, what happened in your last relationship? They are like, I totally abandoned myself and I just like dedicated to this guy and then the guy left me and, right, that they totally abandoned, they totally went into the merge

and they don't want to merge again. So the way they do that is to get unavailable men, and so they're repeating the pattern. And so, again, the feeling for them is often, how do I feel that abandonment? How do I feel that loss? How do I let the heartbreak of, not the heartbreak of, oh, poor me,

but like the actual heartbreak of I am going to, be abandoned. I don't care if you get married to the greatest guy on earth. He's going to abandon you from time to time. He's not going to be everything you want. That's going to happen. You're both going to be human. Shit's going to go down. Can you allow yourself fully the grief that somebody wasn't there for you the way that you wanted them to be there for you and really deeply feel that grief? And if you can, and some other things like a woman who's even men do this too, right? They do the chasing thing. What do you have to feel to not chase? I want to chase. No, I'm not going to send that text message. What do I have to feel? What's the thing that I have to feel? And I'm not going

to be taken care of as often another one. Like, oh, I have to feel like, oh, I'm in this on my own. This is all me. I have to do this all myself. And to feel that, not that that's true, but you have to feel that experience. And so if they can feel those emotions, then they will be in that upright position. They'll stop doing the same pattern. But they're both equally responsible. Like it's a nice idea that it's like the man who's responsible. But if you're chasing unavailable men, like, that's not a them issue. Yeah.

That's a you issue. And equal pain on both sides. No one's better or worse. Yeah. Taking that responsibility for what your piece is and what the fundamental feelings were avoiding and how that's externalizing as a behavior that we, could point to as the problem. You know, it's like, oh, they're avoidant, and that's the issue.

Right. Rather than the part that we have to play in the process of what we're avoiding feeling, it's just a good observation. And there's a nuance there, which is interesting. So what some people will do is they'll take that information and they'll say, I'm not going to tell you about your avoidance issues because I have to figure out my shit first. A horrible decision.

Just as horrible. this is all because of your avoidance issue. Horrible decision. What I notice is that in our relationship, you're avoidant and I'm chasing and all I know is that feels like shit. I'm wondering how that feels to you

and I wonder like what's the world you want to create with me. That's the real conversation. But what we do is we think is my fault or their fault. Hooey. It's like, all it is is like you are in a dynamic together.

Do you want to heal the dynamic? together or do you want to go and heal the dynamic separately? Or do you just want to repeat the same pattern until you're 80? Also an option. Yeah. Could you repeat the quote of the Joy is the Matriarch? Yeah, Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house that her children aren't welcome.

The children being all the other emotions. All the other emotions. The shame, the fear of the guilt. Exactly. All of it. the sadness, the grief, the anger. Yeah. Anger's a big one.

So many people don't feel their anger. What do people usually masquerade their anger with? It depends societally, you know, a lot of its passive aggression. Yeah. So repressed anger looks like passive aggression, depression, the feeling of stuck, procrastination, disappointment, guilt, those are all forms of repressed anger. Yeah, even sometimes sadness.

A great story is my daughter. My daughter was like about nine or ten years old. She's in the bathroom. She's crying. I go in and I'm like hanging out with her. I was like, you're crying, but you look angry. She goes, I am. I'm like, how often when you're sad, are you angry?

She's like, about half the time. I was like, why? I was not expecting an answer. She goes, because when I get angry at my sister, she's bigger than me and she just bops me on the head. But if I get sad, she does what I want. Man, if that isn't a perfect explanation to so many dynamics that are going on, subtle manipulations. Yeah. So all that is repressed to anger.

And there's so much vitality in anger. there's so much determination and ambition, just all stuck in repressed anger, all these beautiful aspects of humanity. And it's easy to demoni it too, but that is also the way we've learned to cope to get our needs met. Correct. Yeah, that's right.

All of this is just the things that we had to do as kids to get our needs met. Yeah, and just to be clear, because I know some people have some issues here, when I'm saying getting angry, I don't mean getting angry at somebody. Like, move your anger, but don't do it in a way

that destroys things or hurts people. Actually, all of your emotions aren't really, they're not best to be done at. I would recommend not doing them at people. You can be sad at somebody. Like you can cry to get them to change what they're doing. You can be scared at somebody. I'm really worried about you.

You know, you can be angry at somebody. God damn it, why don't you? All of that is meant to control somebody else. All of that is abuse. It's all emotional abuse. When you were speaking about that relationship dynamic, I just think of how when that pattern is repeated so many times,

we're like in this position where we continually think there's an external circumstance that once it's fulfilled, we will be. And I just think of like... Never. Yeah, and what do you say? Humility is taking your God-given place on the planet?

Yeah, exactly. So like I think about the natural world and what has its own God-given place, the flowers that bloom and that naturally attract the bees. I think that we're fundamentally most attracted to wholeness and not pretense being what you actually are. And I think that also changes the relationship dynamic

just to tie a bow on that is like when you realize and you see this dynamic that's playing out of chasing and being chased, for example, and then you kind of feel your feelings and then you being yourself, that dynamic, the magnetic pulsion kind of back and forth, I feel like dissolves, and then you can,

actually get what's meant for you in a lot of ways. Absolutely. And we're attracted to the exact thing that can provide it. Right? Like, I was attracted to the exact woman who could, you know, fit my puzzle piece of dysfunction. Our disfunctions came together like that so we could learn our lessons. And I have not met a couple that's been together for more than five months where that's

not the case. Now whether they're willing to do it or not is a huge thing. And when I get asked that advice, like, do I commit, do I not commit? It's like, can you grow together? If you can't, then good luck. Yeah. Then have a life of non-growth and see how that goes. But, yeah.

To me, it changes the whole conception of like awakening and growth being like the turning away from the world, right? The go live in the Himalayan caves by taking space. You can really observe yourself and all this stuff. What I love so much about your work and also the embodiment of actually having a wife and children where you've, I've like met one of your daughters. Yeah. I can tell you have embodiment and you practice what you preach. And that's evident in the children you've raised.

Yeah. It's really beautiful. She just agreed to do a podcast with me. Oh, amazing. Yeah, so we just shot a podcast. So I'm really excited about it. She totally admonishes me right in the middle of the podcast, too. It's awesome.

So good. So good. But like for a lot of the men that maybe have that self-reliant tendency, okay, there's the death of self that needs to occur to realize that growth actually likely is going to come most by turning into the world, whether it's business, whether it's relationships, but we can view all these different aspects of life as continual opportunities to deepen connection with self and other, which we were formerly under the presumption of like to move away from that stuff. I think you mentioned something in the last podcast of like, I can live on top of a

disco when you're awakened and when you're enlightened, but you don't want to. Right, yeah. But being able to and going and meeting those different, you know, challenging at time circumstances, like racing kids often will give you the experience of. Yeah, that was one of my favorite quotes from Stephen Harrison. Show me in a enlightened person. Give me an enlightened person. I'll put them in the back of the car with two yelling kids, and we'll see how enlightened

they are in four hours. I've always loved that. I always love that saying. Yeah. So any extra thoughts there? you have on turning towards the world and by embracing the fullness of experience, like that being actually where you're going to find the most growth? So I would say that there's like a breath in and a breath out. So I'm really grateful that I

spent a lot of time meditating. So I think both of the, like, and even today, I sat by myself in the woods for three days meditating and writing. That was my internal space. And so I do think both are really awesome to have. But what I can tell you is it's really easy to pretend you're at peace in the world on a meditation pillow and it's not in the real life. So real life, to me, is where I get to see everything that isn't working. Right? My kids, you know, trigger me. You know, the other day, my friend has a Tesla that drives, you know, drives itself. And I don't like driving. And I was like, ooh, you know.

But buying a Tesla these days, you know, my wife and daughter are just like, no, you can't buy a Tesla. And like ensues this like 20 minute like shitstorm on me, you know. And I think my wife was like, if you get a Tesla, I get two monkeys and a cow. and like it was like this whole thing. And and the fact that I can laugh through all of that and like that brings us closer together. And to me that's that means I've done something significant. To get that experience of like big oneness and expansion that like is now background for me, I would argue.

Not argue. I would say that expansion. that feeling of expansive and oneness, it is just background, is so insignificant compared to my capacity to be with my daughter when she's crying. Like, that's far more, like, that I can, when she needs something, she knows that she can call me up and I cannot belittle her. I cannot take care of her. I don't disempower her, but I can care for her, and she wants to come to me.

like that is so much more rewarding than anything. And it doesn't come from not feeling bad stuff. I mean, that's the weird part. I was, when I started this teaching, I went and visited a friend who's a retired teacher. His name was Adia Shantae. And I was like, he's like, what are you doing? And I said, you know, generally we're just helping people,

you know, learn to love all of their emotions. and he's like just a straight awakening teacher. I don't know if you know who he is. Yeah, of course. Just straight awakening teacher. Yeah, I love his book, End of Your World. Yeah, he was very important in my life. And he's like, oh, that's great.

I think that's a really important thing. And I was like, really, I'm surprised that you would think so. And he's like, you know, 90% of the questions that I get are, how do I feel more of blank or how do I feel less of blank? And there's a way in which like almost all of that meditation journey is trying to feel a certain way, which is what it was for me. I just want that feeling of expansion. And it's amazing when instead of the answer doesn't lie in, oh, I'm now only feeling that way, the expansion lies in. I get to feel all these ways and they're all wonderful. That is just a

far more fulfilling life. What does it come back to? I know you have this unique combination of both being a non-dual practitioner for so many years and then doing this deep emotional work. So you get to see the patterns of what's the origination, what's underneath the surface of what people proclaim they want and what they say they need are and all these things. They're seeking something, which they might say is X, Y, and Z fill in the blank. Yeah. But there's so many of these sayings of like, what you're looking for is the place you're looking from, the seeker is the sought.

Yeah. The analogy of the lighthouse of, you know, looking for. its own light, realizing that it's the source of its own illumination. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think we're fundamentally looking for? So I don't think we're looking for one thing. I think we're looking for many things.

And I think all of those phrases of the seeker is that which is being sought all those things. I think that's, those are all pointers to there's nothing wrong with you. Some version of some pointer of there's nothing wrong with you. that there's no there's only the awareness of self there's not the self-improvement is the way that I think about that so I think one of the things is that we all want to have a deep intimate relationship with who we actually are I think we all want love I think we all want to feel like we're of service be a value it's not values a kind of a hard one it doesn't mean like I've worked I've been a value but it's like I am contributing I think all of a

want all of those things. So I don't think it's just one thing. What I do see is that the one that seems to unlock, the loved one seems to unlock. So I used to think that the only way to get to the head awakening was seeing through sense of self through silence. That's what I thought. I now have seen people have head awakenings, seen through sense of self lots of ways. Like seeing through sense of self because a group dynamic, seeing through sense of of self and emotional work. I've seen lots of ways for that sense of self disintegrate. I think one point I counted like seven or eight

different ways that it can happen. But that part of it is the knowing of knowing, knowing thyself. It's like actually knowing yourself. I think the love is more in the heart awakening part. And we all want that as well. We all want to separate. what we were trained came with love and just get like the love.

Right. Because love came with abuse or criticism. And so we just, that's what we think love is. And so we're scared of it and we want it at the same time. And that, if people have those two things, everything else seems to become unimportant because there's nothing left to defend or earn or prove anymore when those things are there. Which tells me that's, and then there's all that's left is I want to contribute.

Yeah, I'm curious your thoughts on how this like journey doesn't end. Yeah. You know, it's like you realize these things, then it's like, okay, you know, there's a lot of work that needs to be done and there's nothing that needs to be done. Yeah. But like asking what does the world fundamentally need and then just like living your life and service to that? It doesn't, that's not how it works for me. How does it work for you? The way it works for me is if I'm quiet and I listen, there's a call and I'm.

I do the thing that I'm called to do even when it's super fucking uncomfortable. Sometimes it's great. It's super comfortable, but sometimes it's very, very uncomfortable. And I feel like there's a masculine form of surrender, and there's a feminine form of surrender. The feminine form of surrender is what we know more. It's like allowing yourself to receive, it's gratitude. It's like that feeling of like, and these two things rely on each other to build. But it's like, oh, it's like the devotional.

surrendering. Then there's the masculine form of surrender, which is, there's a doing that needs done, and it's not my will, it's thy will be done. It's, right? It's, it's, I hear the thing that I'm supposed to do, and I follow that without question. That's, I would say, the masculine form of surrender, meaning it's the more young, less yang, kind of thing. And, and so the way it works for me is like deeply listening to that calling and doing it. And in that, like my want, my wants are actually a deep part of my evolution, meaning a little kid wants to learn how to walk. You can see it.

They have that deep want. I trust my wants the same way, that the wants that I have today are the things that will help me grow as a human being, are the things that I'm, are the places that I want to contribute. And that's gotten in, you know, I was just talking to Charlie about this. Charlie Hubert, Chrisma, and Command, both dear friend. Yeah, yeah, great, great human. I was just talking to him about this. I was telling him, you know, his audience is young men, and I'm like grinding is bullshit. It's just absolute bullshit. And I said, but that's coming from a guy who works from like 7.30 in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. I always put my phone down

for my daughter. I always have time for my family, have time for exercise, but I don't do anything that I wouldn't do for free. I'm not working to achieve anything. I'm just doing the thing that I'm deeply passionate about, which is the thing that helps me grow as a human being. And, you know, like this week, I had personal growth as a human being because I was doing that work. And hundreds of people have written to me and said, you changed my life this week. And so to me, I find that, you know, it's like a, it's not a question when you get to that place.

It's like you're more like a tree. The sun is there. I reach towards that sun. I know that that's what I'm supposed to do. I bear the fruit that I bear. People eat the fruit that they're eating, and I am just in alignment with that whole thing. And so at some point, even the idea of,

I'm contributing, starts to dissolve to I'm being nurtured and I'm nurturing. It's like one act. It's one movement. And if I can't, like I said earlier, I think I said this earlier, you can't be, you can't be grateful for what you can't admit. You cannot, if you cannot receive, if I can't let my heart be broken by those YouTube comments where people think their lives are changed, then my capacity to give is less. And it's that same principle. If I can't actually fully acknowledge it and let that in, then it's harder for me to actually continue to contribute.

What you just described in like the energy that you're coming from with a lot of the work that you're doing, I think is a message that needs to be heard so much right now because there's this pervasive manosphere message of the hustle and grind culture. And like, I don't know, maybe there's a developmental process in which that's something a lot of people need to grow through and find out the emptiness of it or that is just not as clean of a fuel source as the other one. Yeah. But we don't have much conscious enlightened leadership that are living the example of like doing what you're doing from the place and what you're doing it from. At least it's not as loud on social media.

Yeah, it's definitely not as loud. Yeah. Because it, you know, people like to do things that that agree with. with their shame, right? So in social media, you should do da-da-da-da. You're right. My brain says the same thing. I should do blah, blah, blah.

And so off they go. But there's a lot of examples. So there was a young woman who was Chinese-American who won this gold for skiing. And when she talks about it, she has a famous video on YouTube. I did a comment on it that I will release. Doom or something? Yeah, I think that's right. She's like, I don't know.

I just love to ski. I love to ski. I love to ski. There's the world's best golfer. He's like, I just love to practice. I just love to practice. They're not grinding. They're doing what they love.

And I don't care who you are. If you're going to grind and you're not doing something you love, that's the distinction. I do something I love so it's not grinding. If you're going to grind, you will burn out. If you're really good, you might get to retirement money. If you're normal, you're not going to get to retirement money. You might burn out. by being depressed for five years after you retire. You might burn out by like watching

playing video games and watching porn for the weekend or binge Netflix, but you're going to burn out. And if you don't want to burn out, then the only thing you can do is not grind. But that doesn't mean not work. It just means you're actually in alignment with what you want. And the way I think about this, especially with CEOs who, you know, a lot of them have that grind mentality that I work with. I'm like, okay, so you got one person who is, you know, willing to give it 20, 30, 40, 100% more effort, and they're going to ride this bike up a hill. And there's this other person who's going to ride the bike up the hill like a normal human being. However, this bike is going to have wobbly wheels and it's not going to have alignment and the chain's going to be like loose. And this person's going

have like a perfectly well-aligned, you know, 18-speed bike. Who are you betting on? And so the thing we're talking about is if you're in grind mode, you're not in alignment mode. It means you're doing something that you think you should do, not the thing that actually you're obsessed on. If you're doing the thing you're obsessed on, then you're not in grind mode because you're obsessed. This is what you want to be doing. And so most of the time, I assume that your reality is something like this, you care a lot about this work. This is a personal passion. When you start working with other people,

it surprises you how strong your work ethic is. That you're like, oh my gosh, I am, like, I thought this was just normal the way people work, but other people aren't like matching that same level of, but to you, it's not even, it's not grinding. It's just, no, I just do the thing that's necessary because this is the thing I want to see in the world. Yeah.

Yeah, this is something I'm glad we're touching on. The Taoist Maxim says that the master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone. I really love it because it just to me speaks exactly to this energy of effortless effort. Yeah, that's right. Non-action action action. And I think so many of us hear that and we yearn for it. We see that that it's possible and have yet to get clear on what that is for us. Yeah.

thoughts around discerning the things we say that we want that are actually fundamentally being driven by shoulds and somebody else's story that was indoctrinated in us to getting clear on what we actually love and like you said would do whether or not you were being paid for it yeah i think a lot of people have haven't discovered that yet yeah so there's two things that'll that that will happen naturally if you do not prevent it here's two ways to prevent it one is you don't explore Like, I'm just supposed to know that. No, you're not supposed to know it. You're supposed to explore.

It's not also one thing. If I didn't do this, there would be something else I would do just equally as passionate that would also serve people. That would also transform consciousness on the planet. It just would. I know that. There's 20 ways that I could do that. This is one of them. So it's not one particular thing.

The other, so one way you can prevent it is that you don't explore. And the second way that you can prevent it is. to go around going, what's my purpose? What's my purpose? Oh, that'll just kill you. That's just self-abuse. And purpose is found in the moment. It's not found in the future. So it's what do I want to be doing right now? What do I, like, what would, like, inspire me right now is where you're going to find your purpose. And it's the best way to explore. And so, you know, the way I did it was, I just said yes to everything. Anything, I just said yes to, until there was so much stuff that I could only say yes to some of the things.

And then whatever, and then all of a sudden I could say yes to less and less and less stuff. And the stuff I said yes to was perfectly that stuff. So that's, I just made myself available and said yes to everything. And I was lucky enough that I could do that. I didn't require much money and I just, I mean, I was doing like, metal working and I was, you know, helping in construction and I was doing international stock lending and I was doing large-scale loan. I just literally just said yes to everything. Any experience I could get my hands on. And then all of a sudden it just started narrowing and narrowing into

this. And so I think that that's, people think that they're going to think their way into it because they don't want to actually feel the helplessness of I don't know what it is. And part of, I was talking about that masculine form of surrender is like you have to be in the unknown. You know, it's not like I am surrendering to this eight point plan that's going to do exactly X, Y, and Z, and I'll be here in six years. That's just not how it works. And so the first thing that you have to learn to live your purpose is to live in the not known. And if you can't get that lesson right, you're never particularly going to find your purpose.

If you're constantly got to know it, got to know it, got to know it, got to know it, it's going to get in the way of your capacity to do the work that you're called to do. I think a lot of people feel the world is speeding up right now. Yeah, boy, yeah, we're in a phase. We are in a transformation. Yeah. Yeah.

No, and I know you obviously work with Open AI, a lot of these various companies who are, yeah, some of the biggest organizations that are that that are leading that rapid transformation yeah um and so you're you have eyes and ears in the rooms of or a lot of these decisions are being made a lot of people can feel this rapid transformation yeah it's hard to not feel at times like we're being left behind or that there's change or you know things we're missing out on you know and I think that is what it means to be human

and like wisdom versus knowledge and information like that distinction is going to be getting clearer and clear but I'm curious what are your observations about like what time we're in transforming in societally and how things feel like they're speeding up with our own individual process to not let it consume us and to like get clear in that process if that makes sense.

Yeah. We have like a number of transformations I think happening societally, you know, I'm a huge fan of, you know, I think of kind of the historical changes of America. So we're in two of those simultaneously. We're in the 50-year transition where the parties change who follows them. And we're also in the 80-year transition of where we recreate our institutions, right? So there's a great book on that. the fourth turning.

The fourth turning. Yeah. So, great. And there's, you can talk to like 10 geopoliticians who will talk about different versions of the fourth turning. But basically, so we're in the like all, and then we're in this AI transition that's all happening. So good news is, you know, when somebody comes into one of my courses and they are going through some hardcore life thing, you know, like divorce or new job or something like that. They are the ones that are most prepared to have the biggest change and biggest life transformation. They're most likely going to be one of those people because those things are what create transformation in us.

So the good news is as a society, we are perfectly poised to have like a massive positive and or negative transition. And we get to choose that and we get to choose that personally for ourselves. And I think that's the exciting piece to it. I think what happens as far as the economy and what I've seen there is that there's a couple things to say about it. Knowledge is going to become commoditized. So I need a PhD. Boop, got one. I need somebody who understands marketing.

Boop, got it. I need a coach. Boop. Got it. Right? So that's all going to. go away. So then what happens? If it's not, you know, when the physical work went away, you couldn't be artisan anymore, right? You had to be in the information game, bank teller,

something like that, some sort of human interaction piece. But you could still depend on your knowledge. But pretty soon you're not going to get that anymore. It's just going to be on the wisdom, just going to be on the human interaction side of things. And so what I see happening is teams you're going to become smaller and smaller with more capitalization put behind those teams. So it's going to look like the NBA. A lot more NBA and a lot less John Deere, you know, or farm workers. It's going to, especially when the robots come, which I think is easily inside of a decade. So you're going to just see a lot of capitalization going behind a small amount of people.

And the way that that team works together and the way that they understand themselves, their ability to lead, motivate, make great decisions, because the one thing you can't do is have the machine make the decision for you in all cases. And so it's going to be really based on wisdom and self-understanding is going to be the thing that creates the edge of being able to be successful in our world. And so I think that's what's also moving. Wisdom, just to be clear, wisdom isn't, I'm at peace. You know, wisdom is I know when to act and I know how to act in such a way that creates the result in myself and others that I want to see in the world.

Wisdom is going beyond the ambition of I can grow a billion dollar company or a 10 billion or 100 billion or a trillion dollar company. And it's I can build a trillion dollar company where people are happy, where families are healthy, where people want to come and work. want to contribute to their life, want to contribute to each other's lives. That is what's going to be required for you to be able to get those teams to move forward in that way. And then the other thing that I think is absolutely true is that the whole, the like if I go into almost any AI company and any computer program company, SaaS company, things are changing at lightning speed. Nobody knows everything that's going on.

Most companies look different every three months. It's like a massive transformation. And what I notice is emotional fluidity allows people the ability to transition quickly. If you can't grieve it, you're not going to be able to transition your identity. If you can't be excited, you're not going to be able to make the transition. So while we thought we were doing this, you just committed your life to this, but this no longer works now we have to do that that's an emotional transition if you cannot make the emotional transition you're just going to you're you know you'll be like the guys of the steel mills in the 1970s

they couldn't make the emotional transition and so you know they had a decade or two of of misery and so that's another piece that i think is really important what's vagal authority something that goes in nicely here yeah The best way I know how to describe vagal authority is an EMT walks into a site and there's blood and guts everywhere. They do not run over the person with blood and guts. They walk. And that's what it is. It's the nervous.

Like, I keep a not calm nervous system, and that helps everybody else keep a calm nervous system. That's what vagal authority is. That'll be one of those things that leaders. are going to need to have to give them the edge, right? Today, if they're really smart, they don't need to have that and they can still be successful. In the future,

their smartness will be commoditized. So what will matter is, can they walk into a situation and calm the situation down or excite the situation so that you get the best results? Those are the things computers aren't going to be able to do. Yeah.

Vagel authority is a really fun. It can get a little weird in controlling. Some people are like, okay, I'm going to, but that's actually, what's cool is that's not vagal authority. To go in and be like, is not bigel authority. I'm scared, but I'm not going to show it. I'm scared. I'm not going to show it.

And the fear can still be felt. It is literally like, I'm here. I experienced that with one guest who came on the podcast. So I could tell was like doing a bit of that posturing. Yeah. It's just like a little bit. It was humoring. Yeah.

But again, it's like that need to feel like you're going to posture yourself as the most secure one is actually stemming from a place of insecurity. Correct. Yeah, that's right. The one who's actually regulated is actually in training the space. Yeah. Which I think is important. As we experience a time where there's so much more growth and transition happening, it's like whether it's our family, our businesses, the environments and rooms that we step into, can we be regulated in ourself? so that we can actually be the most effective agents of change.

Without trying. Even the trying is a form of dysregulation. And it's okay to do it for a while, but just knowing that, like, oh, the fact that I have to try to do this is very different than if I actually see through the false fear. Yeah. Yeah, the verbosity and the posturing and the signaling of, oftentimes those who get the most attention are usually the loudest,

but the loudest should not be conflated with power. Yeah. I love this saying, just because you're opinionated doesn't mean you're right. Yeah. Yeah, it's a similar. It's a similar thing. Yeah, it's an interesting piece that it's,

there's something in us, especially in early stages where we very much want a bad guy. and nobody thinks they're the bad guy. Nobody's like, I'm the bad guy. Hitler really thought he was doing God's work. You can look at all of the dictators throughout history that have done what we would say is atrocities and they thought they were doing God's work oftentimes.

That's right. And so it's like we very much want a good guy and a bad guy so that we can be the good guy. And it's an amazing amount of freedom that you can say, oh, I'm like I am both the good guy and the bad guy, and then that being drawn and attracted to the lab person goes away. And we're also most able to affect change when we're no longer under the separative kind of presumption that there's a good and a bad, that creates conflict and tension inherently.

Right? Like if you were to have a conversation with Hitler in his moments of making a decision, and you were under the presumption that he's this horrible human who's about to do all these horrible things, you're not going to be able to communicate with him that actually meets him where he's at, which would actually potentially have some sort of influence. Exactly. Yeah, that's an interesting. Yeah, one of my principles is that I do not answer a question unless it's asked. And so I work with people who are doing things that other people think are bad. I get to see underneath the covers, so I get to see the story in the news is never the real story.

But I will not answer a question for them if they haven't asked it. Because that's their branch going to their son. Right? Like this is their job. Occasionally I'll say, hey, I see something is going completely off. Are you interested in hearing my opinion on that thing? But I'll still ask to see if it's even wanted. Is there an emotional order of operations?

meaning a lot of times we'll assert that we want to feel the joy, piss, bliss, peace. Yeah. Or the piss and the bliss. Yeah. But like there's a saying of like the roots that grow deep, allow the branches to go high. When we look at fear, guilt, shame, just kind of come full circle with the joy as the matriarch of family of emotions.

And for us to, I think you gave really valuable insights into what are the signals of where I am repressing or not exploring certain emotions. Yeah. But is there like, do you see that one emotion unlocks the other, how anger and fear and sadness lead to other things? Yeah. So broadly speaking, negative emotions first, positive emotions second, positive emotions are actually scarier for people to feel than the negative ones for more than like two seconds. So if you're a man in kind of modern upper middle class white society, it's usually sadness first, anger, second, fear third. If you are a woman, it's usually fear sadness first. I'm sorry, anger first, sadness, fear.

But it really just depends on your particular type. what I do notice is sadness and anger are usually the first ones, fear and then excitement, and then love, joy, or joy, love. Those two depends on the way that you are. So it's typically something like that. The other ones, the guilt, the shame, the judgment, a lot of those just start dissipating if you get the main ones, if you really get like the helplessness,

which is a version of fear, the fear, the anger, the sadness, grief, which is all of those things combined, a lot of the other ones just start just dissipating on their own. Do you have a lot of unspoken observation of where you feel suppression in a room? You mean, can I walk into a room and see what's, yeah, oh, yeah. If I allow myself to see it. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's, I mean, it's very not human to walk into a room. Full analysis. You don't do a full analysis. So I try to just walk into a room as a human. But yeah, I can, yes, I can watch a team. One of the things I'll do is I'll watch a team meeting. I'll spend an hour watching a team meeting.

And then I'll give an hour long feedback. This is what I see you doing. This is what I see you doing. This is what I see you doing. This is, these are the things that I see you're caught up in. I'll just absolutely lay it out. Yeah, that's definitely part of the work. Yeah, I think one of the stories

that somebody told about me enough times that I remember it, and it kind of gets people scared. I tell the story now to make sure that people I'm working with want to work with me. But I was as a multi-billion dollar market cap company, I'm sitting, and the CEO has invited me in. The CEO introduces me,

speaks for about seven minutes. and nobody's listening to them. And then he hands it over to me. I was like, oh, great. So I just want to go around the room and wonder why none of you were listening to the CEO will go that one by one. And then at the end, I want to ask the CEO

what made it that he spoke for seven minutes without being listened to. Like, how could that be okay? Okay, let's go. So, like, that's, like, it gets really intense in my work. Yeah. But, you know, in a business, one conversation that isn't had can cost tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. One firing that didn't happen in time can cost a lot of money.

One, you know, one conflict between marketing and tech can, you know, every one of those is like a moment of friction that can cost a huge amount of time and money and make people feel like they're not winning, which is. Yeah. Horrible. I'm sure because you get, you're doing more and more interviews and these media things. And a lot of your, the content that you guys are producing are you doing live coachings for people? Yeah. So people come to you with, you know, the desire to get insight onto something they have a blind spot around. Yeah. And they feel stuck.

Is there anything that you pick up with me that would be an observation? whether it's a question to ask myself or I know we've had limited time together but maybe in the last conversation or this one is there anything that you see is maybe an area for more room more room for love acceptance anything that comes up

I'm just curious if anything comes up yes great I think it takes me like yeah no it doesn't I didn't I'm trying to to figure out a way to give that feedback. There's a lot of things that I could say. How fucked up am I, bro? Not bad. So many things? Yeah, I mean, so many things on all of us. So it's definitely.

So what would I say? What I would say is vulnerability is going to serve you tremendously well. like sloppy vulnerability and there is and the things that I'm seeing one of the things that I'm seeing in that is like there's a bit of a perfectionist quality and the exactingness of that is actually a beautifully, wonderfully amazing thing

the exactingness of it meaning like the care and precision of that perfection is like awesome It's like just beautiful. And at the same time, there's a way in which it's, you're choosing control over love. And the vulnerability will allow you to see that people will love you even if it's messy. Yeah. That's spot on.

Yeah. What was it just an intuitive thing or was, could you point to an example where that became evident for you? I could give you 20 examples. Full transparency, I would love that. Okay. I didn't think that comes to mind. first thing if I just take today if I don't take the last time first thing hits me is the posture um physical body posture specifically meaning what like you have thought about your posture and you have

consciously tried to create yeah adjusted a posture so that that is the precise posture but it's actually i mean i'm just going to go i'm just going to go if you stop me if you want yeah okay i'm here for it. And so, which creates like a little bit of rigidity in the system, which means that you have a lot more, what I would call energetic sensitivity than you currently are accessing and probably because it would be incredibly overwhelming for you. So that should be a nice slow movement into it, which is great. But that rigidity, as it lets go into more love, your experience is going to be to feel a lot more than you currently feel. And I don't just mean other. people. It's just going to feel like, oh my God, I can feel the whole world. That's just how it's going to be in the system. And that can be like extremely overwhelming at times. And so taking that movement from rigidity out of it is going to be, is like just best done slowly. And then at some point it's just going to go, crack. And then call me because that's a whole other conversation. Joe, it's all going to shit. It doesn't go, it doesn't go like that. It's more of like, holy shit,

what is all this energy moving through my body? I don't know. that's usually that conversation happens. I get that phone call, I think, now, like, once every two weeks or something. Now, I made a podcast about it just so that I can be like, listen to the podcast. Okay. So that, I'd say that's one that's underneath it. And so that just a posture would be the first thing that I saw. I could talk about the ways that you interacted with the film stuff.

I can talk about the studio itself. And no criticism, no judgment, but that's, yeah, there's like 20 things that I could speak to. You look over at the camera more often than most hosts do to make sure everything's looking all right. Yeah, I can't help but be a little bit in producer mode while I'm filming. Yeah. Even if it's just checking framing and stuff like that. Exactly, yeah. Which some of it, of course, is just like natural podcast, maestro.

Part of it is perfectionism and, you know, pulls away from presence. Yeah. But okay, great. Yeah, yeah. And so probably in that, like, letting go of the perfectionist from moments to moments, one thing that will happen is you'll flip potentially over to non-perfectionism to the point where quality suffers. Don't do that.

Like, create the quality that you want to have because if you do that, then you'll be like, no, and you'll fly back into control more. So that's like one piece just to learn that there's actually some deep beauty in it and it has gotten you so much and you've created so many great things with it. So to love the perfectionism rather than to fight against it is going to be like a much smoother transition and quicker transition than it is to like make that something wrong that you have to fix. But really it's about the feelings underneath of like, oh yeah, I'm actually not in control.

is perfect. And I can't even describe what perfect is, meaning you could not actually specifically describe what perfect is. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And so that, with that will come a lot of emotions, which will be scary at first and then unbelievably beautiful. Okay, great.

Yeah, now I resonate with that for sure. Yeah. And is something I've had in my awareness, I think just also over the past couple, years more and like had a big few moments where it became like blurringly obvious to me and then like some residual you know some residue that's still material to be work with there yeah um was there you said there was there was a few others as well i'm just curious if you want to like let them rip yeah i'll see um uh uh um we talked about the uh we talked about the uh we talked about the

self-reliant pattern. Yeah. That's definitely in your system. Which means that on some level, there's a weird relationship that you have with, like, being taken care of and taking care of people at the same time. So I would say that there's the opportunity in front of you is, like, to have a life where you're deeply nurtured and cared for in a way that, usually when somebody's in this mode,

their fantasy of being nurtured is something that no adult can actually deliver. It was something that the parent was supposed to deliver. But the form of being nurtured that will be available to, there will be a person lover or business person who, like, when you see through this pattern, will show up and they will be dedicated to you in a way that you didn't think was possible,

where you could feel like, holy crap. Like, really this is, like, you'll come in frustrated and they'll say, oh, I see that you're really frustrated. And, like, I know that there's something important, what's going on. Instead of, you have to not be frustrated so that I can be blah, blah, blah, or whatever the thing is. And so I think there's, like, a deep form of nurturing that's available to you on the other side of that pattern.

That's great. Yeah. better than you better than the fantasy yeah yeah yeah so that's another one I would say the self-reliance thing perfectionism self-reliance yeah the other one that I see is your you is that there's some your ambition and your spirituality have not hit full alignment my ambition and my spirituality have not hit full alignment ah what like not owning bigness of like uh what do you mean by that meaning that like worldly ambition,

business ambition, and spiritual, yeah. Yeah, that's right. So it's probably limiting the growth of your company.

Like if I was to guess your company is plateaued a little bit and you're like, how do I get it to the next level? And it's not really a question of how do you get it to the next level? It's how do you feel so in alignment with it that it happens naturally?

And so there's, I would suggest potentially that there's like a somewhat lack of alignment, subtle, more subtle than most. between like that full ambition of like i want to fucking dominate the world ah and i am good and loving and like how how do those two things marry with one another hmm how do those two things marry with with one another more so i'm sure you've confronted this a lot in your own journey as you keep

growing and like i think we were talking a little bit before we actually started recording you know like as as you operate your own business and you really truly believe it's got meaningful work and it's important for people to receive and scaling it becomes a responsibility and a benevolent endeavor. Yeah. So that...

Like how to own that more, I guess. That sentence right there tells me just like how I work. That sentence right there tells me the constriction that's preventing it. Okay. So you called it a responsibility. I think of it, like my metaphor is like the tree.

The sun is there. I'm going to reach towards it. It's not a response. And so there's a responsibility and getting it to people rather than having it so people can Yeah, right those are the two things. Yeah, I think I was using the responsibility more that like it's actually there's a there's a there's a joy in responsibility as opposed to more obligation But but yeah, I hear you on that. Yeah, um sweet. So so that's the the the thing that I would say there is that if that self-reliance allows the nurturing, then the feeding, like the nourishment will grow the business. And I want to put like another point to it, which is we talked about the inherent goodness side,

and I was like, oh, when you feel like that inherent goodness is there, when you have that deep-seated, like, oh, I have, I am inherently good, that I have that trust in myself. that that thing that I'm doing, that the world might be like, really, you need a Tesla or whatever the hell it is, right? You're like, I know I'm inherently good, so I know that this desire is good in some way. Maybe it's misconstrued. Maybe there's something I need to learn from it. But I trust that this anger that is coming up for me is actually good or this frustration

about the film thing is actually good. Or, like, as those little moments of what you judge yourself for. and judging yourself is also a way not to feel feeling. As you judge yourself for it, less and less and less than that alignment happens in your business will. The ambition will grow. And it feels less like a responsibility. It feels less like being there for people

and it feels more like you're a kid with a lot of Legos. You're just like, can I kind of make it even bigger? This is so cool. That's how, that's the, the internal experience of it. Yeah. And a deep active devotion. You're not thinking about it in a personal way so much anymore.

There's just like a deep act of like this business is my devotion. Yeah. Yeah, those are all great things, man. Is there any question you would ask me either now or to sit with in hindsight of all of those reflections? The question I would have asked was a second ago when I said that last piece about it feels more like Legos and you went like this. your lower lip

and I would say what was the thought behind the lip it would be the question I would ask or the feeling behind the lip I honestly didn't clock it

would probably have to watch it back just a weird knack maybe but could be tied to something deeper but I actually think I chuckled at that like it's a cool thought you know

to be able to experience the world and the building of what you're passionate about as a fun, adventurous play Yeah. Yeah. So excitement maybe? Yeah, yeah. No, just like the joy of the play of building Legos in the world. Yeah. And that would be like that where I would say is that's where your juice is going to be. Yeah.

Meaning I'm going to do this thing. How do I enjoy it as much as possible? Whatever it is. Like that's probably where your juice is going to be. it's not going to be from calculating or strategizing as much as, like, how do I just have the most fun doing this podcast or the most fun shooting this commercial or the most fun? Yeah. That's probably where you're, like, where the expansion is going to come from. Yeah.

No, I've certainly slipped into the more, like, obligatory energy versus, I think Ellen Watts's quote is saying, like, the secret is to devote yourself entirely to your work and realize, instead of calling it work, realize it's play, you know, or something along those lines. So I think, yeah, that's, there's growth there. It's to be my, yeah. It'll grow your business too. Yeah, I could only imagine. Sweet, man.

Pleasure. Thanks for those reflections. Yeah, of course. Thanks for asking. Yeah, yeah. It's great. I appreciate the vulnerability. Yeah.

No, it's great. I get to have impromptu coaching sessions on my podcast, a little sneak that one in there. Not a coaching session, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, man, I mean, I deeply, I deeply want to and continue to strive to show up without pretense, show, like, not show vulnerability,

but actually be vulnerable in the moments that call for it. I think absolutely, both in business and in media, people resonate with that energy the most that they can see themselves in that. And over the past, five years, I've definitely made a lot of progress in that, but there's been, yeah, there's been many moments in the past where maybe that posturing or desire for perfectionism, even when you mentioned earlier and awakening or enlightenment is porn for perfectionism or perfectionists. Yeah.

Yeah, like I deeply resonate with that. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. And it's been helpful for me to examine the places in where my actions are being motivated by, in subtle ways, even the appearance of them versus just the natural expression of them. Yeah.

And I think I can see that through the arc of the podcast, the development of the studio, the maturation of myself. There's this arc towards just embracing the fullness of experience. And that's why I love talking to you so much because you really

help people with this. And it's been a big theme in your own personal journey, as you've vulnerability shared in the beginning. Yeah. And it's exciting for me now. I feel like there was a lot more resistance earlier on to face that because there was like, I don't know, maybe assumptions or fear of annihilation to some degree of feeling those things. Yeah.

But now I'm just excited to see what becomes available on the other side. And I'm not in relationship. I don't have kids. Part of me is also seeking out the thing that. the thing that ignites those the ability to feel that and increasingly I have been in just like movies or things that I watch or relate conversations

but I do live a pretty quiet quiet solitude up here in the mountains where I don't like I don't have to leave really much so we'll see what comes of it but yeah keep me informed yeah of course I will I mean you're going to get a call for me

at 3 a day one day Brother Joe. It has happened before. Yeah. Recently, we do this week-long course called Groundbreakers, which is not available to everybody. But yeah, we had a couple people go through that. Almost every time now someone goes through that

and I get that phone call of like, what do I do with all this energy? It's amazing, the transformation that can happen. Yeah. Yeah, I guess to wrap a bow on that, I think that the more I became aware of this, the more I also saw it around me. Like when I say maybe even judging virtue signaling, I'm aware of the parts of myself that have done that signaling, especially with spirituality, whether it's with language, wardrobe, business, whatever. Yeah. I heard somebody say there's this point of spirituality where you start wearing normal clothes again.

That reminds me of Adia, right? So, Adia always had like the short-collared Chinese shirt and the bald head. And last time, I think, I saw him, it was like longer curly hair on a unicycle flying a kite. No, it's good, man. I actually had this thing with my men's group. Actually, like two years ago, I was in Brazil. we're staying at this property that had this like vacant church on the land

and it's just one of those moments where you feel like an energy kind of comes over you I like went in the church alone I took off all my clothes and I just laid it on the ground and there was this there was this like really like intimacy with God that I can't put into words

and the more that I speak about it the further would take me away from it but it was like this thought that came to me was like I'm tired of being spiritual and it's really being tired of the part of me that would in any way

uphold the identity of being somebody who's spiritual. That's exhausting and it has been. Yeah. It also says that there's something that's not. You know? Like I haven't run across anything that isn't holy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like to have to uphold it assumes that it's not the nature. Totally. Yeah. So I think that was, yeah, that was one of the big first kind of cracks into that realization. That's a beautiful one.

Of even like so many of the behaviors that others and like I have done in the past in some way that we deeply know but would it maybe admit to ourselves are really a subtle yearning for love, like asking for love in some way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like, love me. Look, I'm good. I'm right. I'm holy. I'm got it together, whatever. And, you know, could do psychoanalysis of where that originated from and all the stuff. But also just to, like, breathe some love into that space and, and, you know. But then what happens when someone's actually across from you and loving you just as you are, doesn't need you to be any different? Yeah. We all want to be so seen.

The coolest thing is that I experience is like when I see you fully like that, it resolves my own desire to be seen. Because in that moment, I am seeing me. That's beautiful. Yeah, man. We all want to be seen. Yeah. Yeah, it's good to admit that to ourselves.

Who knew? I did not know where this podcast was going to go. But. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I feel that, man. And I feel very grateful to have people like yourself in my life who can see me, you know, and that are willing to be seen by me.

And, yeah, now it's just like a really, it hits home different energetically also and makes me also just want to make sure that people around me in my life are seeing their herd, their felt. and I think that just dissolves so much. Yeah. Cool. Thank you, bro. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know where to go from here.

Yeah, I think it's it. Yeah, that was it. We have hit the crescendo. Yeah, that's it. The climax has occurred. There's a tiny tear forming in my right eye, and we'll cut it here. Let's check the shot and make sure it was perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Looking good? All right, sick. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, man. Well, I appreciate you so much and just your heart and how much you care. Yeah. It shines through. Thanks.

And everybody who wants to stay connected with Joe and his work will leave links down where you can find him. Thank you. And that's it, man. Thank you. Let's hug it out. Yeah.