Sense of Soul - Never Enoughitis

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast, Robert Althuis joined us. He is the founder of The Whisperer, a mindfulness organization that provides coaching, strategies, tools, and techniques to help private clients and businesses find their why so they can become a force of good in the world.  He shared his journey towards healing in hopes that his story will remind others no matter how messy your past is, your future doesn’t have to be.  Find out how he went from once a Fortune 100 corporate executive and successful real estate and private equity entrepreneur to being an artist, photographer, avid yogi and the author of the book Never Enoughitis. https://www.neverenoughitis.com Don’t for get to check out www.mysenseofsoul.com! 

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Robert Elkhouse, founder of The Whisper, a mindfulness organization that provides coaching strategies, tools, and techniques to help private clients and businesses find their way so that they can become a force of good in the world. He's with us today to share his journey towards healing in hopes that his story will remind others no matter how messy your past is, your future doesn't have to be. We can't wait to find out how he went from being once a Fortune 100 corporate executive and successful real estate and private equity entrepreneur to becoming a father, an artist,

a photographer, an avid yogi, and the author of his new book, Never Enough Itis. Welcome, Robert. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. So tell us, Robert, what were you like as a child oh I grew up in Holland it's in my book actually I had a you know idyllic childhood actually I mean I grew up in privilege and in a beautiful little town just outside sleeper town outside Amsterdam it was it was safe you know I had a lot of freedom I was always a little bit of a rebel though you know I never quite liked anybody pegging me in a box.

And so I rebelled against it quite a bit. I went to university in Amsterdam, but I dropped out when I was 21. And I went to Australia to sell yachts and travel around. And then I went to the States. I bought a motorbike and I drove from the west to the east coast. And I had this epiphany to be a tennis pro. So that's what I did the next four years. I was a competitive tennis player in my team. So it wasn't like completely plugged out of air, but yeah, I started chasing my dreams and that didn't quite go where I wanted it to go. So about 25, I got into business.

I landed in Atlanta just before the Olympics actually. And I've been in the United States since. I've never been back to Holland other than to just visit my friends and my mom still lives there. But yeah, and I went on this American dream, right? So I went full bore on it and I had a great career in real estate. I put myself in night school. I ended up getting into Columbia Business School. I guess not all the miracles leave the world yet. And then from there, I went into corporate America. I joined GE Capital. And GE was still a company that people wanted to work for.

It's lost its luster a little bit. But I had a great career. I was very competitive. I out-hustled, out-worked, out out dueled anybody in my path. And I was just relentless, but very successful, you know, in the worldly sense. So my career took off, I made a lot of money at GE. And then in 2008, when the financial crisis hit, I had the opportunity, well, we had to shut down the business that I was part of, because the regulators came in, and we were doing a lot of cowboy stuff.

And then I bought out a little piece of GE and that's how I got into business for myself in 2009. I was building airports around the world at the time. I was a real estate infrastructure developer. Airports needed to be built too. I built up a big business in Latin America with private equity funds and pension funds and all that kind of fancy stuff. Made a lot of money, but also started seeing the underbelly of big business. And I got caught up in it big time, slowly but surely, you know, became a narcissistic asshole in that system. So that's where I ended up. I sold the business in 2015. By the way, I didn't know at the time I was an asshole. You didn't know that you were an asshole at the time? No, at the time I thought I was just, you know, the successful guy, right? I had this fantastic LinkedIn profile.

I made oodles of money. I was the man. I was the guy. So you saw that. You were like, that's all good. Oh, yeah. I was completely identified with that. I was completely identified with my status, my money, my prestige, you know, and I

watered down my integrity in so many different ways, including, you know, I wasn't a faithful husband anymore, you know, in many different ways. And, you know, we paid a price for this ultimately. And when I sold my business in 2015, I was in my early 40s, I think it was 43, 44. And I had all this money. And I had this beautiful ocean front home. I had a, you know, a trophy wife, I don't want to call her that way, because she's much more than that. She's a phenomenal woman. But, you know, it was this beautiful wife, the kids, the cars, the toys, the exotic vacation, I had everything. And I was completely empty on the inside. I, you know, what the fuck do I do now like where do I go because I'm still not happy I'm still not fulfilled but I have everything I won the game

you know I mean I played it with a vengeance and why am I not happy why am I not fulfilled why is everybody else happy with this stuff like I couldn't you know and I had this really cognitive dissonance about it which you know in know, in hindsight, that was a spiritual awakening, right? At the time, I didn't know what that meant. But that kind of pushed me on the spiritual path. Like I started reading books and going to retreats and workshops because I wanted to figure out like what's wrong with me. And, you know, what else is out there? And that became a four or five year journey with lots of ups and downs.

And, you know, the universe gave me many painful lessons as well. I had the natural disaster wipe out one of my businesses and I found myself in a divorce and in bankruptcy court. I didn't ultimately go for bankruptcy, but I was teetering on that edge for almost two years. So, you know, when Irene is stripped away, when you're just bare naked leg on the street you know you have to find another way to live life but I'm very blessed actually all these things that happened as painful as it sounds yeah I can relate I remember how devastated and the pain I felt when my husband kicked me out and took my kids for me when I was in my addiction and to this day I still truly from my heart am grateful that he did that. Because when I was stripped, like you said, and had nothing, it catapulted me into, well, I had a choice.

I could either continue just going down into that dark gutter or I could catapult my ass into changing. And I chose change. Absolutely. And there's some universal wisdoms or laws in there too, right? Like everything always happens for us. Right. So that's the first thing, you know, even when the most painful things happen to us, you know, the first thing we can remind ourselves, you know, this is always happening for you're never knocked off your path.

You're always nudged on your path. This is just, you know, one of these things that this intelligence that runs through this universe. And we're going to have the experiences that we need. And I needed this experience. I needed to experience both the peak. I needed to experience what it was to be caught up in the matrix and to be in business and to be in the underbelly of business and see all that ugliness and violate my own integrity. And I needed to experience what it was to lose it all. It wasn't pleasant, but I see the beauty in it now. I see the, you know, the perfection in it.

Although, you know, when you're in the middle of it, I totally recognize it can be hopeless. It's twice as happening to me. And you get a victim mentality, like, you know, why me? Why me? And of course, that's the first things we need to snap out of because, you know, we're always 100% accountable for our life. Every, every single piece of it, every piece that shows up in our life, we have to own. If we don't own it, we have no power. Right. So it's interesting. You said twice, you violated your integrity. In my experience, I didn't even know I was violating my integrity because I had never taken the time to get to know myself and to have any sort of self-love or integrity to begin with. I don't know that I was ever even taught

what integrity meant. So do you feel like integrity is something that you had and then you violated? When we talk about integrity, we're talking about being whole. And that is, that comes from the Latin word, right? Integer. I'm going to say this in the masculine experience because I'm obviously a man. And I believe that a deep-rooted need and an essence of the masculinity is to be in integrity. We want to be just and wise and courageous and strong.

And we want to bring that into the world. And that's being in integrity. Now, when we're out of integrity, we start leaking energy, we literally start leaking energy, and life force just leaves our life. And the way that shows up is that we get depressed, we get down, we get irritated, we get all those different things. Now, there's two things about men. Now, men express their anger outwards. This is why there's such a domestic abuse issue in this world, because, you know, men, you know, their violence, their anger that comes out outwards, right? We hurt the people that are closest to us that we love, and then we self-destruct. I mean, and that's obviously in my case, you can see all the markers on that.

I was never violent, but, you know, I did self-destruct. The other thing that happens when we leak energy is that we start numbing ourselves. And this is everywhere in my life during that period. I mean, I was drinking, you know, and I called it business socializing, but you know, I was drinking two bottles of wine. I was popping sleeping pills. I was popping tranquilizers. I was using recreational drugs. I was using everything under the sun. And there's so many things that the way we numb, right? It could be video games, can be binge watching, it could be sex, porn, having affairs, all these things that basically take us out of this feeling that we

don't want to feel. And the thing is, we have this emotional guidance system. We have these feelings because there's something we're off. We're not aligned. We're not in integrity. We're not integrity with ourself, with our soul, with our our soul wants to express and that shows up in these feelings that we don't want to feel so you know it's it's very clear you know we have this beautiful body intelligence that helps us that tells us every time we have a pit in our stomach we should just stop right and say okay what is my body trying to tell me because there's something not in alignment either i'm thinking i'm not thinking in alignment could be a limited belief just stop, right? And say, okay, what is my body trying to tell me? Because there's something not in alignment. I'm not thinking in alignment. It could be a limited belief that's coming through.

It could be something that I'm doing and something that I'm speaking or not speaking, any of those things. And in those ways, I was completely out of integrity. I was not living my truth at all. I mean, and I was, you know, fudging in business. I wasn't necessarily corrupt, but I was involved in deals that I knew there was corruption somewhere at some level. I knew there was fraud. I knew there were different things. And I justified it because with our mind, we justify everything. I justified it. Well, you know, I'm not doing it personally. I'm not seeing it. I don't really know about it, but I knew it was there. I was in Latin America, for crying out loud, doing $100 million deals with governments. There's all kinds of money sloshing around. But, you know, I just chose to look the other way because I was so hellbent on,

you know, being rich and famous and recognized and validated by this business prowess that I had. So in many different ways i was going to take it out of integrity obviously you know my wedding vows um you know i justified it because i just blamed her for all sorts of things and i justified it in my in my head but you know on the other hand i had the emotional overhang from it because it never felt good it felt horrible you know hiding stuff you know not living in integrity is the worst way to live well let me ask you do you think that it's possible to have been living the life that you were living before as in like the material stuff and being

kind and still having integrity and still having the same practices that you have today? 100%. 100%. This universe is abundant. We can have everything we want. We can create anything we want. It's just a mental program to say that either money is bad or it has to be made in a certain way. All of those are just restrictions of your mind. That has nothing to do with universal laws. It has nothing to do with what we could create. You can be fabulously wealthy and be an incredibly good person in this world and do it in integrity, live your life in integrity, and emanate that energy because it's just energy. It's just magnetic resonance. You just attract it and bring that into your life. you don't have to do it in the way that we traditionally see many people do it right so is the shift maybe like before you

were seeking everything outside of you and as men do men have a hard time not just dealing with their emotions outside of themselves but also satisfaction and success and all these things they're looking outside of themselves so it's that shift that now you can still have all that but now you're not seeking anything outside of you yeah so the irony is it's all within right abundance is not in what you have in your bank account right abundance is what you feel that you emanate that. That's your energy. I can tell you, I had at one point millions of dollars in my bank account and I never felt poor. I never, you know, and that sounds, you know, for people that haven't had that experience, it's like, that's crazy. How can that rich person or how can that person that has everything material wise, how can they be

unhappy? How can they commit suicide? For instance, like people don't understand. That's just just impossible i would be so happy if i had all those things but it comes from within if you don't feel abundant within you can have a billion dollars and still still not feel it if you don't have love within for yourself you know you're never really going to be in a true love relationship with anybody else because if you don't really love yourself you can you can only receive what you can give if your cup is not overflowing whether it's abundance whether it's love whether it's health right it all starts with your own cup and that's really our job here is you know to fill our own cup only then can we actually give anything to the world or to anybody else that sounds like success to me that is success yeah and it's available to everybody

by the way this isn't like some woo-woo stuff that only a few people can like you know accomplish no no this is our true self this is we just have to strip away all the societal programming all those cultural beliefs our upbringing the religious dogma all this shit that's covering us up right that's holding us back from expressing our authentic self all of that we just need to strip away you call it maya in a vayada vedanta philosophy the yogi tradition but you know it has many different names and many different uh traditions but we carry all this nonsense with us right because it's really what it is they're just stories and we have about ourselves. And then we get caught in these stories. But you know, once we can distance

ourselves from this story and say, well, how do I really want to express myself into this world? What do I want to create? What do I want to be? Then you can do that in a minute, in a moment. You know, it doesn't take 10 years, because today, right now, right now is the only moment. So today, the moment you make that decision you change and of course in the material world things will have to follow in a little bit of a timeline because you know it's a dense material world but you know we really created the quantum field which what Einstein talked about beyond light and space and time that's really where it's all created and we're energetic beings so that's how we create you know I was thinking about how a lot of times people ask me how I'm so vulnerable and how I can talk about

my past so openly because there were some very dark areas and a lot of the things that I did that I'm not proud of but today I can talk about it without shame and I can actually look back at many of those years and say you know what I had fun mean, I did have a lot of fun back then when I was doing a lot of things that didn't align. Not like there are times that I'll admit it. I was having fun. I was living in Vegas. I was living the life, but it's not who I am today. How important do you think authenticity and vulnerability is? And how did you let go of that shame? Well, it's crucial, right? Because, you know, whenever we're not authentic,

not expressing that, we're in essence out of integrity with ourselves. So we're always going to have resistance in that way if we're not showing up in that way. We have this expression in Dutch, it's called you can't kick in an open door. And vulnerability works like that, right? Once you let your guard down, you know, you can't kick in an open door and vulnerability works like that, right? Once you let your guard down, you know, you're actually invincible because, you know, it's

exposed, you know, what are they going to do? Are they going to poke at it? Well, it's already exposed. It's already disclosed. And so I didn't notice I, you know, one of the things I needed to do was learn to open my heart. And that really didn't happen until I got divorced. Even though I was the one that prompted for the divorce, you know, I was struggling with

it and I got some therapeutic help and I was in therapy for a couple months. And I really, I had all these feelings. And once that genie came out of the bottle, I was like, oh my God, I've been suppressing all these feelings because I just didn't want to feel because, you know, tough men don't feel, businessmen don't feel. We don't want to feel we're just thinking and going. And, you know, I had to pause and say, Oh, my God, you know, and I started looking at the world and this compassion came up and this love came out. And I was like, what is this? And what do I do with this? It's still today. I mean, a lot of people, you know, I talked about a lot of things that people are like,

well, you know, where have you been? You know, I talk about a lot of things that people are like, well, you know, where have you been? You know, where did you go? Right. And I'm like, well, you know, it's hard to look at this world. It's hard to look at the wars and the violence and the injustices and inequalities and just shrug your shoulders. Because, you know, if you look at it as we're all one, we're hurting ourselves, it becomes a different world. So vulnerability is your question. I think it's key. You know, shame is one of those societal things. You know, we always have to content with shame because it's so hardwired in comes from our early childhood, you know, we were told not to do certain things or be ashamed of something. I think we just monitor it. And we just say, you know, why am I feeling this? What is here to be ashamed about? And usually when you peel it back a little

bit, it's like it just dissipates because you're like you know this is just me I don't have anything to be ashamed about so if you were to describe yourself years ago just a few words and then today describe to our listeners what your soul looks like well I think I already said it it was a narcissistic asshole so but mostly I was I was lost in the matrix you know I think I already said it. It was a narcissistic asshole. But mostly I was lost in the matrix. You know, I think I was a lost soul in the matrix. If I quantify myself, I don't like using these words, but you know, now I'm an awakened soul in the matrix because we still live in this world, right?

We still, this world doesn't change because we awaken or we somehow find our true purpose. To be spiritual is actually to be in the world, but not be owned by the world. And that's a big difference. We can play in this matrix. We're not here to save the world. We don't have to wake up and change the whole world. We need to change our world. And when we do that, and we change that from within, then the world around us changes. So I don't have any grandiose ideas that, you know, I'm here to change the world and, you know, all this stuff. I mean, I hope I can

help as many people with my story and my experience and maybe open a door for them. Every person has some medicine to share, right? And my medicine is my story and my background and what I was able to do when I found myself at the bottom of that pit. And that's my medicine. And it's good for some people. And for other people, it's like, you know, that I don't need your medicine. And you know, there's other teachers for that. I believe when we wake up to ourselves, and we allow that to come out, we find that we all have been blessed with these gifts and superpowers and talents. And we all have, We all in some way have something unique to contribute to this world. I mean, nobody's here by accident. Nobody is born by accident. Where did they born?

Nobody had any of the circumstances in their life by accident. I mean, all these things are here to just guide us on our way to share our gifts and talents. And when we are in alignment with that, we're going to be successful automatically because we're passionate about it. You know, it's something that comes natural to us. You know, we're not living out somebody's stories. We didn't become a lawyer because our father told us that that was a good career, but we hate it. Suicide rates among lawyers is some of the highest in the country. You know, we're not pursuing these things in life because we think that that's what the world expects us to do. We're now bringing our gifts and our talents and our superpowers into

the world because these are the things that are calling us. They pull us rather than us pushing ourselves. And now things, when things come in alignment, things start to be easier. And you know, your intuition starts coming through and your intuition talks quite loud. And women are, tend to be much more in tune with their intuition because they're much more in tune with their body and this is one of the, you know, men their head the citadel the masculine is in the head right and the fortress of the feminine is in the heart and so this is one of the call that you know when i work with men is i try to bring them into their heart because we have the same intuitive capacity you know we have the same ability to listen to our body same ability

to tap into love and compassion you know men especially tend to be so mentally oriented they get lost in their head lost in their stories mandy and i both have attracted many people with narcissism in our life because we are that polar opposite you you know, they say that dance between like a codependent and a narcissistic personality or the empath and someone who is narcissistic. But I've also ran into when I've worked with the empaths and researching them, that sometimes an empath will adopt some of those personalities. Do you have any experience with that? Well, I feel a lot. I don't identify with being an empath. I think everybody's an empath, to be honest. I think some people have their skills and sensitivities better developed than

others, but everybody is wired to be an empath, right? Everybody feels a lot. Just most people are so dulled off and they're so in their stories that, you know, they don't even recognize the feelings that are coming through or that it's intuition but generally speaking i think the more interesting question is a little bit question to you is like why do you think you're attracting a narcissist if you're an empath because if you're if you're truly a an empath right and you stay true to your feeling i find it really surprising that you would allow that energy in and it would be repulsive to you. I've done a lot of work on this for years in therapy as well, you know, because it was more for me. I was like that codependent, but I have an impact.

I believe that we attract people who we mirror too. So even more, this is a very complex, you know, thing to be able to grasp. So if I am attracted to somebody or I am with somebody who mirrors myself, right? What the fuck is that? Right? If I'm a person who is always wanting to help change because that's what, that's basically what a codependent is. It's control. I'm going to be with you and hoping that I will change you in some way. It's that yin and yang thing too. But they say that they do like this dance.

I got one on you. Oh, but now I got one on you. Oh, I figured out your brain. Oh, no, you didn't. And so they're dancing back and forth the relationship is just so fascinating to me was your wife an empath or a codependent do you know no no not at all really I do super mom right and she's a fantastic person but she's not very spiritual That's not her thing. And so when I embarked on this path, you know, we, our paths really just split because it was just so far off the beaten path for her. It was just, it was really, really difficult to connect or even reconnect at that point. I was no longer

the husband that she married, you know, she married a freshly minted Ivy league MBA or that was starting to kick off his corporate career. And, you know, suddenly I was this man interested in spirituality and reading Krishnamurti and going to workshops and retreats that she was like, where the F are you going? I remember this one time I gave her a book that I love, which is the surrender experiment by Michael Singer. You know, I had just read it and it was like riveting to me. I gave it to her and I said, would you please read this for me? I just want you to get a flavor of this. This is so good. And it was on our nightstand for like two months or something. And she gave it back to me. She said, you know what? I tried the first

30 pages and I just can't read this. This is just drivel to me. I literally, I looked at her like, oh my God, like we're just in different worlds. We're just like, because to me, it was the best book ever. It was just riveting page to page. I devoured it. She couldn't get through it. And so it became a chism in how we look at life and it still is. But you know, we had a very amicable divorce. She's a great friend now. She's very happy with another man and he's a great guy. And we have a fantastic, you know, co-parenting relationship. Uh, we're super flexible with, with our kids and with the arrangements and super helpful for each other. I mean, I, I'm a fan at her house over the weekend. So like we, you know, we have a great relationship. And when we got divorced, I told her, you know,

I wasn't the best husband in the world. And I can't change that because I can't go back in time and undo the things that I've done, but I can be a world-class ex-husband. And I said, that's my commitment to you that, you know, I'm going to be the best damn ex-husband this world has ever seen. And, you know, I feel that that's how we get redemption in life, right? We acknowledge our mistakes, our missteps. We can't change them, but we can show up in a different way. You know, that's been my commitment to her. And, you know, we have a wonderful relationship. You know, we're not all

supposed to stay together forever. I know that's a nice Disney story. Sometimes that works out and that's great. Beautiful. I love love stories. I'm a hopeless romantic. I love hearing that people are, you know, crazy happy for 40 years. You know, fantastic. You know, I'll be the first one to congratulate them.

But I also think that there's times in our lives that we meet people and we have a certain experience with her, three beautiful kids. And then we needed to each go on our own path. our divorce helped her tremendously as well made her much more independent made her much stronger in her own right and so in many different ways she will ever tell you that you know it was a blessing in a way you know it changed her as a person as well on her path yeah you know shanna and i started doing a lot of research on just religion and history.

We both kind of came to the conclusion that we felt like marriage was just another worldly condition. It was invented. The more different types of people you surround yourself with, the more you're going to learn and the more different experiences you're going to have. Narcissist, that word is being thrown out there all over the Internet. And people are always trying to label their spouse or label someone with that word is being thrown out there all over the internet. And people are always trying to label their spouse or label someone with that word. I think that you bring a lot of hope to that word because there's a lot out there that says that narcissists cannot be healed. That it is the one personality type that is hopeless. There is not help for them. They cannot change. Yeah. I don't live in that

world. I live in a world where everybody can change. I agree. Everything can change. You know, we're energy. Energy can change. You know, we are not our beliefs. We are not our thoughts. Those things can change too. We can, you know, there's so many different people that I've met that has such miraculous transformations in their life, all walks of life, right? So this story that we're fixed, I just categorically disagree with it. We're not fixed at all. The dynamic relationship between an empath and a narcissist is that, you know, then supposedly a narcissist has no empathy.

So they seek empathy and so the return of that is that the empath sees that they don't have empathy and so they yearn to fix them and give them and show them empathy in some way but the thing is is that doesn't it say a lot for a narcissist that they actually would be attracted to someone who's an empath because they actually do want to understand empathy. So like their energy is attracting each other because of, you know, one lacking it and wanting it. I just, I find that interesting.

I think a true narcissist in his highest narcissistic state doesn't even know what empathy is so what you're what you're saying is like what they're recognizing this empath like i see that but i want that in me maybe it could be but there could be so many more different things and you know relationships are very complex right we're complex beings i mean we're complex human beings and the only thing I would tell you, or I don't want to tell you anything, but I would suggest, right,

is like, don't get too hung up on words. Because in the spiritual world, I don't even like the word, using the word spiritual too much, because everything is spiritual these days. And everything at some level is spiritual. But when you say I'm an empath, now you've boxed yourself. you're much more than an empath you're a radiant you're an individual expression of god you know you're you're a piece of consciousness that has having a human experience and whenever

we put a label on it we're now we're starting to limit what we are like when you say you're an empath you're limiting yourself you're much more. Like when you say you're an empath, you're limiting yourself. You're much more than an empath. Who cares about being an empath? You're just highly sensitive. You're in tune with your intuition. I agree. I follow a vegetarian diet.

But when people ask me, are you vegetarian? I said, no, because I don't want to be boxed in because maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and I want to have a piece of steak. And I'm going to have a piece of steak because if that's what my body calls, I'm going to go out and have a piece of steak. I resist any, any labels because I don't want to be labeled. I don't want to be labeled by anybody. And you know what, today I'm this and tomorrow, if I wake up and I want to do something different, then, and that's in the way we dress and the way we speak and what we do. I mean, we can change careers.

We can change, you know, our partners. Obviously, we have to do it in a conscious and sensitive way if that's what we're calling to do. But, you know, let's not get caught up in these things that all supposedly are fixed because the world wants to fix it, fits us in boxes so it can place us somewhere and we fit better in the Facebook algorithm. Everybody wants to box us in. And I've resisted anything that boxes you. It always bothered me that you could be 20 years into recovery and you go into these meetings and they still expect you to introduce yourself as, hi, I'm Mandy. I'm an alcoholic. No, I'm not. Why am I going to give that word such power? Why am I going to identify myself that way?

That's not who I am anymore of course in the back of my mind I always have to be very conscious to my decisions and my choices but no hi I'm Mandy I'm recovered we do me and Shanna talk a lot about how we give words and our vocabulary such power such especially those labels So I appreciate you talking about that. We have to jump into your book. Tell me about the title of your book and how did you come up with that title? I love it. Well, the book actually started in therapy because my therapist wanted me to journal, to express my feelings and put it on paper. And I started journaling, but I was a little haphazard at it. And I asked I said can I make it a book so it's a project because I'm much more likely to do a project

than journaling and she said I just want you to write whatever you do so that's really where the first chapter came from and then I was like well if I'm going to write a book you know I want to write a good book so then I started calling some publishers and and miraculously I got a lot of interest from that early writing that I did they They said, well, you know, what made it interesting to them is that there's not a lot of alpha males that write about this stuff. They get a hundred of these manuscripts from women, but they don't usually get it from men that expose their feelings and what they went through and their journey on this path. The book was actually originally called Overcoming Me, because that's what I called it, right?

I was trying to overcome me. And then when I was writing about it, I used this word never enough. I is quite a bit because I think it's one of the diseases we have in this world where we're just constantly seeking more on the outside to fill this hole in the inside. So we want more money, more house, more cars, more experiences, more drugs. In some instances, it doesn't matter what it is, but we're always seeking more because we think that more is going to fill us up. We have more shoes and more clothes and better vacations, you know, I'm going to be happy. So we're always seeking, we're on this carousel and we get these little dopamine hits, you know, these little sugar rushes when we accomplish one

thing, but it's always a short lasting. And then we're back on the track. You know, we get a promotion at work or we accomplish something and then we want to have, we want to have our boss's job. We get a pay raise. And three months later, he's like, well, I want to make a little bit more money, you know? And so it never ends. Right. And this is really what I call never enough. It's this disease that we're just always searching. We're always hunting and it's, it's exhausting and exhaust us. And we look at the state of our health. And, you know, if you talk about women, I mean, eating disorders, adrenal fatigue, thyroid disorders, all these things is because women have now also jumped into this masculine world, this masculine way of chasing and doing, and, you know, they're exhausting themselves. They're absolutely running their

body into the ground. They're not built for this masculine world that we have, which, you know, this is a man made world. The last 2500 years, the feminine has been suppressed, right? And in every which way, because men are afraid of that feminine power. And so suppress that in every which way they could and shape this world in a way that fits a male masculine essence much better than a feminine essence. But now, you know, in this, I'm not a big, I'm very big on feminine empowerment. I'm not big on the feminist movement, because it's moved. It's moved the feminine into this role of, you know, now we have to be equal

in the sense that we're doing the same. And it doesn't work that way. It doesn't mean that women can't be wildly successful, and they can way. It, and it doesn't mean that women can't be wildly successful, and they can have thriving businesses, and they can do anything they want to do, they can run a country, I prefer they would run the country, actually. But you know, they don't function well, the way that they're asked to do everything right now. Now, men have other issues, because, you know, we're always competing. and we compete ourselves to death you know we we literally are always hunting for more for more for more we're never satisfied and we're not in touch with our heart or our body or intuition it's not necessarily always good for us

we always feel that we have to accomplish more and so we have enormous amount of stress we have enormous amount of heart attacks we have you, and all these kind of male dominated diseases, which all come from this very unhealthy lifestyle that we collectively live here in the West. You know, it's a hot topic right now, male and feminine energy and balancing the two. Yeah. I think it's part of this awakening that's happening right now is people are realizing, you know, you don't have to have one or the other. It's finding that balance.

Well, we all have both, right? Yeah. So we are all made of, you know, we all have both. Men tend to be more embodied masculine energy, but they definitely have feminine energy within them as well. And women tend to be more embodied feminine energy and have a little less masculine energy but they can tap into that energy when they want to go into the world and you doing an action and you know and they can be every which way um you know act as masculine but

if you're dominant feminine energy like most women are if you're predominantly your masculine energy now you're out of balance you're out of. And that's going to reflect itself in your body. Similarly, that, you know, when men are too much in their feminine energy, you know, it's going to reflect in their body and their health and their mental health as well. Yeah. So how did you get into yoga? Like, was that like a recommendation? I was I had been doing yoga for a little bit and I got injured uh in CrossFit and then I needed to do something that was a little less rigorous on my body and so I was doing more yoga and then I was like you know yoga in the west here is really just gymnastics right and I was like well there's

this whole worldly philosophy behind yoga and I was just really interested in that. So then I did a yoga teacher certification course with a guy called Fred Bush here in Miami. And I really wanted to deepen into the practice behind yoga, because yoga is not the gymnastics that we're looking at. It's actually philosophy behind it. And that's really what I was interested in. And I still practice some yoga. I don't usually go to studios, although sometimes I still do. But I practice here at home. I do a lot of the exercises and the philosophy is still with me because there's a lot of beautiful things in the in the yogi traditions. An artist. I'm so curious about that. I make epoxy resin art, abstract art, some of them on my Instagram, actually, that I put on there.

You know, I do some photography, I started playing guitar. And these are all things that, you know, it's very important to get out of the left hemisphere of your brain, especially when you're, you know, have such a masculine dominated mind, like I've always had. And I've always been very creative. I've always loved these things. I just never expressed myself in that way so I picked it up I saw some paintings about a year and a half ago and I was like you know I want to make that so I enrolled in a workshop in Atlanta and I learned how to mix these epoxies and work with them and then I started working I love that that's awesome I feel like we kind of unlock that creativity when we go through this journey. And when we learn how to decipher, you know, ego from soul, it's just kind of part of what happens. I'm so much more present now for my youngest child. If you could give your children a small piece of advice, what would be the first thing that you would say to them after your experience?

Find your passion. You know, our educational system is designed to produce cyborgs that roll into college and then roll into this matrix society in some kind of corporate environment. That's really what it's set up for. That's it was designed for really during the industrial revolution yeah we don't teach creativity as much we don't you know not every kid is going to have the same interest people have like the natural gifts and talents and superpowers they come out very early they're the interest of your kids right and we should be cultivating that this is why the montessori

school program i think is a little bit more uh you know, adapts to that more, you know, interest of the kids and cultivate those. Because guess what, if you're meant to be in a creative profession, you know, why am I dulling your brain with 10 years of math that you're never going to use? Now, if you want to be an engineer, and that's your highest calling, for all means, you should take double the classes, right? And so, you know, we should cater more to what these passions are and kind of see what emerges and expose them. And we have lost a lot of physical education in our classes, which I think is a pity, because I think those things bring out creativity in kids that we need to stimulate, especially creativity, because everything in the way is a creative endeavor.

Even a lawyer needs creativity and he needs to be creative in the law. I took woodshop and I was pissed. I was pissed that I was put in woodshop. I was like, tell my parents, get me out now. But you know what? I still have the thing I created and loved it. And so I agree. I don't know what's going have the thing I created and loved it and so I agree I I don't know what what's

going on with schools like they're taking out you know different ways to be creative different ways to use like just basic skills you know like can we please have a class to learn how to change you know your oil or something or at least know where the oil goes and you know there's there's other parts to it too so we've lost vocational schools, right? And so there used to be even even 4050 years ago, if you're, you know, let's say a guy and you were more inclined to work with your hands, then you went to mechanic school, you went to electrical engineering school or electrical school, you went to plumbing, you went to carpenter. And we we are starving for those people in this labor yeah starving

craftsmen right and there's so there's so many people that are pushed into this college track i know which which is not where their highest not for everybody no it's not where their joy is it's not what they want to do and we're craving people to go to vocational schools but we look very much down on it you know we've he's just a plumber you know the amount of ingenuity and creativity and craftsmanship you need and they make good money they make fantastic money because there's so few of them right and it's hard to get a good one so I think we have this really cocked up view on you know what's valuable in this world and and, you know, our biggest and best brains go to Wall Street now. And that's a that's a damn shame. I mean, Elon Musk talks about this all the time, we need that engineering talent to go into manufacturing and design. And you know,

we have so many different things that we can design to advance humanity. And, you know, us sloshing around capital the way we do, you you know it's not the best use of that brain power and it probably doesn't make all these people happy but we glorify rich so you know people go where they make the most money so find your passion is the number one thing i tell my kids find your passion that's your job find your passion after this shift has happened to you makes you think it's not still happening we We never stopped being a student, right? Yes. It's a forever journey.

I think there's this misconception that people that go through this awakening or this shift or whatever you want to call it, don't have some really bad fucking days. And we do. And we can really get into ego again, real fast. So what are some things that you do to bring awareness to when you're in soul and when you're in ego and what kind of practices do you put in place to make sure and hold yourself accountable? Right. Yeah. That's a beautiful question. And that's absolutely true, by the way. I mean, I still have it. I mean, now I'm birthing the whisper. So I got all kinds of resistance in,

in like creating that and creating the website and it's the text, right? And so, you know, all the time I'm confronted with this. Now I do have some tools and, you know, I avail myself to them. So, you know, I have a meditation practice, but it's probably not as good as it should be. It kind of goes through waves, through cycles, right? Sometimes I'm really committed

and sometimes I kind of fall off the wagon a little bit. I'm getting more and more into breath of fall off the wagon a little bit. I'm getting more and more into breath work. I think that's incredibly powerful. My fellow Dutch countryman, Wim Hof, is like an icon and it's incredible. I've always worked out a lot, but I work out a lot more consciously now. I listen to my body, what it needs and what it doesn't need. I never get injured anymore because of it. You know, I have days that I only have 80%. So I give 100% of my 80%. I used to always go 100%. And then I would, you know, obviously run my body into the ground.

I think when we, you know, when we start listening to our body, right? Because that's our emotional guidance system. You know, whenever something is off in your body and you feel it immediately, it's a pit in your stomach. It's some feeling that you have. And you allow yourself to feel that feeling. There's always a form of unintelligence going on in you which means that you are having a belief that's not true and you know it shifts you also into your symptomatic nervous system which means it's fight and flight you're in fear now right and

when you're there you're not you don't have access actually to a higher consciousness. You don't have access to intuition, inspiration, synchronicities, and all these other beautiful things that come in. So as soon as that happens, as soon as you feel that activating, it's really listening to your body is like, stop, right? Just stop. Don't keep going. Just stop and say, okay, hey, what is this trying to tell me what am i thinking right now if that thought is triggering this emotion in my body then i know it's not true i know it's not true so what evidence do i have that is not true and these are usually limiting beliefs that pop up right somehow you know and limiting beliefs come in the form of fear and doubt and self-worry and procrastination all these things and so we can ask ourselves you know why why am i feeling this why what's going on here

and when we when we introspect like that and we pause usually you know the answers will start coming through we can use breath to relax ourselves even more so it takes some really deep belly breaths you know like 20 or 30 deep belly breaths and just really kind of stabilize. And what we're doing is actually we're shifting back into the parasympathetic nervous system, where we can access that higher consciousness. And now it kind of settles down. And now we can think more clearly. And we can, like see what's guiding us, because there's always something guiding us. And these guided things are like feelings, we have ideas that come up, synchronicities. Hey, I should call that person.

You ever called a person and they were like, hey, I was waiting for your call. I needed to talk to you. So we have access to all of that. If we get a little bit more conscious, a little bit more deliberate about how we access this technology, this beautiful technology and wisdom that we have within us. There's other things that I enjoy. I mean, I'm a big believer in hot baths at night and self-care and just really winding down.

I am not a huge fan of, I mean, I stopped drinking alcohol. The least numb we can be, the more we will feel this body and the more we'll be in tune with this inner wisdom that comes through. So when we drink alcohol, we smoke cigarettes, we drink a lot of caffeine, you know, we have unhealthy foods, a lot of fats and sugars, you know, we're numbing our body. And so it's a little bit harder to feel your body. And I'm now in a state of my life where I really want to feel this intelligence, I want to work with it. And so

I don't want to numb it in any way. And finally, I think there's a huge benefit to doing things you enjoy. And whether that's dance, or for me, it's making an art painting, or it's listening to music, or going for a walk with your dog or, you know, or, you know, having a casual dinner with your loved one or making love, it doesn't matter what it is. But we should try to do more things that we truly really enjoy and enjoy the moment like not go through it in a rush but really take it in and and like wow man i'm really enjoying it even if it's just a half hour or or whatever it is and you know i think we do too little of that because we're so busy doing stuff right well leave that laundry alone for a little bit listen to some music or you know sit down and have a chat

with your loved one or do something that you truly enjoy so you can you can cultivate these feelings of bliss and happiness because it's all living inside you you just have to waken it up you know you have to keep it alive and stir it up so it can give rise to the service you can feel it i saw that we have like the same favorite word on your website. I'm fuck with a ball. Yeah, I even have t-shirts of it. Yeah, it's one of my favorite words. Yeah, I love it. It was one of my most favorite words because, I mean, my whole life, I've even taken on both sicknesses. and so just learning how to energetically protect myself put boundaries down in my life

and free myself from the conditions of the world all those things made me feel literally unfuckable and i say it all the time i love that word i didn't have a an empath class that i teach that is called beuckwithable beautiful because I love it so much but yeah what does that word mean to you it means many things but what it really reminds me is that it's all within me nothing anybody can say or do can hurt me unless I allow it to hurt me now that doesn't that doesn't mean that I don't experience heartbreak or that I don't have emotions. Of course. I mean, I've had, you know, debilitating heartbreak in my life.

I also know I'll get over it. And I know that, you know, something else, something bigger and better and more beautiful is in my future because otherwise it wouldn't have broken up. So I kind of underpin this unfathomability with some of what I call universal truths, right? We live in this vibrational reality. So, you know, what I vibrate comes back, it's magnetic, nothing ever happens. You know, everything is always happening for me. I remind that when something shitty happens, you know, it's always happening for me. What good can I see in this? What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? And when we start asking ourselves those right questions, we get the right answers. In the same situation, when you ask yourself, you know, a kind of loop questions, right? Why? Why? Why? Well, you know, sometimes there isn't a why. Sometimes it just happens, right? And we're not really supposed to know why there's a intelligence that uh in my view

runs this entire universe the whole universe is created by this infinite intelligence creator god source spirit whatever you want to call it and it's an all-knowing intelligence and our limited human brain is just not it doesn't have the capacity to understand everything we're not going to understand everything that happens in understand everything we're not going to understand everything that happens in our life we're not going to be able to rationalize everything that happens in our life but we can't accept it and we can just say this must be for my good because otherwise it wouldn't happen there's something good in this you know and some gifts come and wrapped in sand paper so you know they're not all pretty but maybe the biggest lessons right are wrapped in sandpaper. So, you know, they're not all pretty, but maybe the biggest

lessons, right, are wrapped in sandpaper. The toughest things in your life that you overcame, the most difficult challenges you had, alcoholism, you know, things in your life that you had to overcome. Those are the ones that you look back at now, it's like, oh my God, this is amazing. I overcame this. I survived this. And so when we find ourselves, you know, if you want to be unfuckwithable and we don't feel it in the moment, look at your own life. Look at all the stuff that you already overcame. Look at all the challenges and all the tribulations and all the heartbreak and all the things that in the moment at the time you thought your life was ending. And you're still here.

You came through it and you became bigger. You expanded eventually. The object of everything is to expand. So when we contract, when something shitty happens, when our heart is broken, when something like we contract and then your job is, okay, how can I expand? How can I like grow beyond? Because when we expand, we overgrow it. We basically just rise

above it and I still go through this all the time I mean I have shit happened in my life you know I get upset and I you know but it has a lesser and lesser impact on me because I'm a little bit more unfuckable than I was yesterday and now it's time for break that shit down. My number one thing is you can always change. And change takes a second. Nobody is fixed. You are not fixed. You are not destined to live the life you live today.

You can recreate anything. Everything is just energy. Find the tools. Find the medicine, I call it. Find the teachers that can recreate anything. Everything is just energy. Find the tools, find the medicine, I call it. Find the teachers that can help you because we are our own guru. We are our own healer. We are our own teacher. We are all our own guru. We have all the answers within us. I promise you, because we're all the individual expression of God, we have God's intelligence within us. And because we're this individual expression of God, we can be anything we want to be. We can create anything we want to do. It's all that power is within us, but be your own guru. But you know, sometimes you need some

medicine. Sometimes you need some help, someone that opens up a door, gives you a book or gives you a retreat, or it gives you an insight so So you can find it within yourself, because it's all within you. Everything is within you. You know, you just avail yourself to all the resources in the world. Find those coaches and teachers that you can help you in this moment. But don't make them gurus. Don't look up to them like, you know, they're so special. No, they're just here on your journey to give you a little bit of medicine.

And then you move on. And I think you should look at everybody in the world that way so yeah read all the books you can look you know all the spirituality classes all the podcasts that you can listen to that can glean wisdom but be your own healer be your own guru own it and you will find the answers well and you want want to know what, that's what I love about you is you own it. That to me was, was very captivating and attractive about your book is you own it. You owned every ounce of your story. You can feel it through your words and you own your past and you own your faults, but you also own who you are today and you own that medicine and you own the practices. And so to our listeners, I would suggest picking up this book. It's raw. People know I like raw. It's just very detailed about your life and I appreciated it. So thank you so much for coming

on Sense of Soul today and for breaking that shit down. No, thank you so much. I think you have a nice words about my book. I really appreciate it. Yeah. That's like putting a little baby in the world. And obviously it was very private, but I think it needed to be for it to be meaningful to people. I had to overcome a little bit of shyness there to, to put some of that stuff out there, but I, you know, I'm happy with how it came out and I appreciate you enjoyed it. Yeah, no, I felt it. Where can everybody find your book? Yeah, it's on Amazon. I believe it's on Barnes and Noble and various other outlets as well. You know, it gets published like that, but it's on Amazon, Never Enough Itis. Yeah. I mean, I hope people enjoy it and it can help them a little bit, maybe open a door for them.

The third chapter is actually a lot about my self-realization and my path. And I share a lot of resources and books and things that you know help me and practices that help me so I hope it's meaningful for for people that do you know decide to pick up a copy and you know I appreciate it if they do you want to shout out your social medias and any other workshops anything you got going on I'm on Facebook and Instagram at the Zen Whisperer so you can find me there and I'm at neverenoughitis.com. Now in a couple of weeks, I think about a month or so, I'll have the Whisperer website up and all my coaching offerings and things like that. We're redesigning that and we're kind of working on that.

So right now it's kind of focused on the book, neverenoughitis.com. You can sign up there as well. You get, I think a few chapters of a primer that I wrote about Zen mastery. We're building a digital course that's going to come out. I've got a whole documentary about Never Enough Ida as a little 15 minute trailer that we're working on. So we've got various different things coming out. And then, you know, once my website is up, I'll be more available for coaching.

That's awesome. Just been such a pleasure. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. So Robert Alhouse. Thank you. All right. So Robert Alhouse.

Alhouse. Alhouse. That's hard for my tongue. Don't call me outhouse, please. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.