The School of Greatness - “Vulnerability Is Scary As F*** But So Worth It” - You Can Heal Through Creativity | IN-Q

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Today, Lewis Howes reconnects with his long-time friend and renowned poet, Adam "In-Q". In-Q discusses his recently released Never Ending Now Poetry Journal, a collection of poems and prompts designed to guide readers through a journey of self-discovery, healing, and creativity. Lewis and In-Q delve into the power of poetry as a transformative tool, touching on how writing has helped In-Q process emotions and trauma while finding peace and purpose. They explore themes like self-love, vulnerability, and creativity as In-Q shares poems about love, loss, and personal growth. Adam passionately advocates for the power of vulnerability and empathy through storytelling, believing it to be the key to transforming our collective future. Get ready to be inspired by his insights on how creative expression can be a profound force for healing and connection in today’s world.Buy The Never Ending Now Poetry Journal for yourself and a friend!Listen to In-Q’s album, The Never Ending Now!In this episode you will learnHow creativity can be a powerful tool for healing and personal transformation.The importance of writing prompts and journaling in uncovering and processing emotions.Ways to approach love and vulnerability in relationships, both with oneself and others.How to navigate challenges and conflicts in relationships by understanding non-negotiables.Why embracing authenticity and leading with love can lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful life.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1618For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Eckhart Tolle – https://link.chtbl.com/1463-podRhonda Byrne – https://link.chtbl.com/1525-podJohn Maxwell – https://link.chtbl.com/1501-pod

Emotion is energy in motion, so it has to move. And if it doesn't move, it gets trapped inside of us. You have to purge and pray. Wow. To be willing to be vulnerable from a place of strength, it's scary as f***, and it is always worth it. Please welcome to the stage, from Santa Monica, California, NQ! NQ is a beast.

You have to be willing not to be liked in order to be loved. Ooh. People think that peace is a destination. Peace is a process. There's stages of peace. There's layers that you have to keep uncovering within yourself.

Don't try to make something great. Make something true. It will automatically be great. Wow. I think hurt people hurt people and I was really hurt. I think we tend to love other people how we love ourselves. I was pretty violent to myself. Oh man, now you're gonna make me cry. Don't make me cry, bro. If you could only share one poem with the world that the world needs to hear what would that be well welcome back everyone to the school of greatness very excited about our guest we have my good friend adam in queue in the house good to see you brother thank you for having me man welcome to the

the basement of greatness in my home studio. Very excited that you're here. I've known you for, I think, 10 years. It's crazy. I remember Alexandra was like, how did you first meet in Q? And I was like, I couldn't remember if it was a boat or in a mountain. But I'm pretty sure it was at a mountain. Summit Series at a mountain.

I can't remember if it was Tahoe or something like this. But you were performing. And I remember saying, this is one of the greatest live performers I've ever seen in my life. And it's still true today, 10 years later. And ever since then, I was just like, dude, we need to connect.

I need to watch you more. You've spoken at Summit of Greatness, I don't know, five times. You probably had the most standing ovations of any person that's ever been at my event. And I just really appreciate your genuine heart and your authenticity. So you're obviously you're extremely talented, but there's so much more about you. And I'm excited that you're here. And I saw a prompt that you gave online recently. You give people writing prompts with your poetry.

And you've got this journal out called the Never Ending Now Poetry Journal, which I want to talk about in a minute. But you put this prompt out that said, write a poem to your past self, telling them something they needed to hear at the time from your perspective now. I'm curious if you could go to your future self and give yourself a line, a poem,

a message to something you needed to hear now from the future, what would that be for you? First of all, thank you for all your kind words. The feeling is more than mutual. I think the first thing that comes to my mind and heart is I would maybe do a poem about not giving up but giving in and being willing to surrender to the surprise of life more than needing to show up and control everything all the time. That would be your message to your current self.

Yeah. It's something I'm still processing in real time. I'm in the transition phase of that. And, you know, there can be bumps in the transition phase, but I'm definitely on the path. It would probably help me to speed it up. And that future self could reflect that back on myself now, or I could reflect it to my future self. And it would probably have a similar result, which is one of the reasons that I created the journal in the first place. Can I also ask you if you have anything that you would want to tell your current self from your future self? I like asking these questions to other people so I don't have to answer them. But I would probably say, I guess it depends on the age, but if I'm like 40 years away from now, I would probably say keep loving bigger, keep your heart open, but create boundaries for the little Lewis inside of you so he feels safe.

But don't stop your generosity towards humanity and the world, even if people betray you or take advantage of you, or if that's your interpretation of their actions keep your heart open but make sure you take care of little lewis first so he doesn't feel betrayed and i would say be willing to continue to go for it because i feel like i've gone for it a lot in my life i've just gone for life like i'm up for the adventure i'm up for taking the risk for taking the shot even if i make a mistake or fail so i would say if you want to truly continue to live at a beautiful level you've got to keep going for it like don't stop because you feel like you've got something like keep giving keep creating keep serving and keep going

for it that's probably what i'd say i love that yeah i think it's an amazing message and i feel like you're leading by example for yourself and for other people on the podcast and in other ways i'm curious you've been doing poetry for a long time. How do you feel, but I also know you've suffered emotionally in different areas of life, relationships, family, friends, different challenges. Yeah. How do you feel journaling, writing, expressing your words or your thoughts on paper has allowed you to heal? And is there any research backing the power of

journaling or writing poetry to help us transform our emotions and feel better and heal? I'm definitely not the person to discuss research with. That is not my strength or department of interest even. But I have personal research just from my life experience. I think creating and sharing my art has brought me more clarity, more peace, more presence, more compassion, more self-awareness. And it's made me feel connected to others in a way that nothing else has. I would say emotion is energy in motion so it has to move and if it doesn't move it gets trapped inside of us and it can become disease you know disease or you take it out on somebody in traffic for no reason. Right.

So you have to find ways to move the energy and to share the stories that are trapped in your mind and in your heart and your body. And there's many modalities to do that. You do breath work. You can, you know, do yoga. You can go to boxing even and have an intention behind your practice. You can, I don't know meditate go to therapy there's plenty of avenues but one that is uh underused is creativity you can create and move the energy and you can alchemize those things that are trapped inside of you so that

they transform into something else and you can feel energetically lighter and more free. What is the poem that you've written, whether it be recently or in the beginning of your creative process, that is giving you the most healing personally? Like when you wrote it, you felt you were healing. Every time you read it or perform it, feel like you're healing what is that poem well i have two immediate answers that come to mind the first one is a poem about my father not being around and ultimately finding forgiveness but i think that that's too easy of an answer. And the real answer is going to sound

cliche, but it's everyone. And then the next one, the one that hasn't been written, because it's the most current and in real time to my life. And whatever it is that I choose to create around is something that I need to express. It's a breadcrumb trail that I am following. I'm the first person in my audience. So I'm not thinking what other people want to hear. I'm paying attention in my daily life to when I get moved, when I get inspired, when I get pissed off, and I pluck it out of reality, and I put it down on paper. And then if I go back to that beginning place, the rest of the poem will almost write itself if I pluck it out of reality and I put it down on paper. And then if I go back to that beginning place, the rest of the poem will almost write itself if I give it enough time and space.

Interesting. So every single one is a healing process. And it's one of the reasons I like to facilitate for other people to do the same thing, because if they choose something moving and meaningful, it can be surprisingly healing. Yes. You have another quote or poem that you put online that says, how do we talk about the problems without feeding them? If we ignore them, we most likely keep repeating them. If we explore them, we run the risk of reinforcing them. So, so how then do we get down to the source of them? So if we talk about our problems or write about them or create about them, are we feeding the problem or are we solving the problem by processing them? How do we not recreate old traumas or memories or wounds by sharing stories over and over again

that we're trying to heal from? That is a great question. What you have to do is you have to hold two truths in the same space at the same time. Give me an example personally. Holding on and letting go. When I wrote the piece about my father, it was a piece about my anger and ultimately forgiveness and gratitude, but I wasn't able to actualize it until many, many years later. It took me a long time to catch up with the peace. So the peace was almost like a prayer. You have to purge and pray simultaneously.

And if you do, I promise you, you will wind up feeling like a different person on the other side and then when you share it with somebody and you're unconditionally loved and seen to really like see and be seen to be willing to be open to be willing to be vulnerable from a place of strength it's scary as and it is always worth it wow so when did you write this poem about your dad i think i was in my mid-20s really yeah so like 20 years ago something like that something like that 45 yeah yeah so when you wrote it um how long did it take for you to fully feel at peace with the relationship you had with him or lack of relationship you had with him how how long did it take for you to fully feel at peace with the relationship you had with him or lack of relationship you had with him?

How long did it take you to be like, I'm at peace with this. I forgive. I'm at peace. Well, I think people think that peace is a destination or like a product. Peace is a process. There's stages of peace. There's layers that you have to keep uncovering within yourself.

So right now I can say, I am as fully at peace as I have ever been. I can't say that I'm fully at peace. But one thing that I know about my life is every single thing that has ever happened to me, whether I understood it or not in real time or in retrospect has become a part of the quilt of who I am I don't like to compare circumstances I don't like to compare pain but I've had a lot of pain in my

life and everything that caused me pain is a part of my identity now so if i reject that thing i'm rejecting a part of who i am wow yeah and so you have to accept it in order to integrate it in order to alchemize it in order to move on with it what's the most painful thing that you've had to overcome emotionally or internally that maybe it took you a long time to overcome, or maybe it just was a really painful thing to overcome and you really wish didn't happen in the moment. And maybe you still don't wish, but you know, you wouldn't be the identity you are and the man you are without that pain? I think there's a lot of them that come to mind.

I'm not going to share some of them because I'm not ready to put them on display yet. But I go into a lot of those stories in the album and ultimately in the journal. in the album and ultimately in the journal you know when i created the never ending now album i wasn't sure whether or not i wanted anybody to hear it i know remember you know i was there because you were one of the few people that i sent it to yeah and was willing to trust because of your integrity because of our friendship and because i love you yeah and i know you've been through real things yeah and so i was like okay but it's scary putting it out there a hundred percent yeah i'm taking my own medicine right you know so i was like all right let me i finished this thing this work of art that was like a reflection of my path to self-love and love with a partner through poetry and this conversation that was very intimate that i had with my wife yeah um

and then i was like i don't it open for people to criticize it to judge it to validate it to compliment it it didn't really matter what their response was i didn't want to externalize my self-worth that way because it was so close to my heart and then i was like all right i'm gonna send it to like five people and i sent it to five people uh including you and uh mike posner who's a great friend and mike was the first person that got back to me and my criteria for sending it out was okay if one person hears the album and hits me back and says, Hey, this was moving and meaningful to me.

Like this landed. Then I would put it out. But if everybody was like, yeah, this is good. I really like it. I think you should. Then I wasn't going to do it.

And so Mike hit me back right away. And he was like, literally he goes, if you don't was like, literally, he goes, if you don't put this album out, he said, I'll pry it out of your cold, dead hands. And then I sent it to you guys and you listened to it and had a similar but different response. Then I was like, all right, let me lead by example,

even though it's hard and scary. Why is it so hard for most people to put out something that is their art or their expression, but also has sadness, pain, loss, embarrassment tied to it in some way? Why is that so challenging for anyone, let alone artists? Because they're scared to be rejected for truly showing us who they are. But the thing is, like, if I get rejected, if I put this project out and people don't respond to it or worse, they really don't like it. Then at least I know they don't like something that's really me. I mean, I know that the art is separate from me. It's not really me, but it is as close as tracing paper could come when I made

it. And so I'm like, all right, if they don't like it, at least I know I showed up. Rather than up rather than making something that's perfect, that everybody's going to love. And then they say, wow, I love this thing and I love you, but I don't even feel it because I was never there. Yeah. It wasn't fully authentic. It wasn't fully you. Yeah. Interesting.

How do you do that? Like, for example, I was thinking about many things that you have shared over the years driving over here and the courage that it took to do that well what was and is your process i think a lot of it was when i started opening up about vulnerable things to individuals to friends to family and then kind of publicly you know my expression to the world in different ways i think i was so depressed you know i this this line from like jim carrey comes to me where it's like depression is like you needing deep rest from the character you've been playing something like that it's like you are depressed because you need deep rest from the character

you've been playing it's like you've been wearing some mask, you've been putting on some identity that's not truly you. Maybe parts of you are out there, but not all of you. And so a lot of me was out there, but there were other parts of me that were afraid if you or anyone actually knew who I was, what I'd been through, what had happened to me, would anyone like me or love me? And that was the ultimate fear. If people truly knew, they would never like me. And then I would be alone. And then I would die alone and suffer for the rest of my life. That's kind of the fear

that I had. And so I think I just felt like I'd rather be alone and know a like me than everyone know, you know, just parts of me and not all of me. And I think it got to that point when I hit 30 that I realized there were parts of me that people weren't aware of. And I wasn't willing to face them myself, let alone share them with other people. And that just wasn't the life I wanted to live anymore. Now it was scary to, on the other end, cause I didn't want to live alone and I didn't want to have people not like me or love me or accept me. But I think that's the risk probably every artist has to take to put their expression out there that you may not be liked or understood or loved. You may be criticized or hated or whatever might be taken advantage of for who you truly

are. And I think that's the biggest fear. or hated or whatever might be you know taken advantage of for who you truly are and i think that's the biggest fear but i'd rather feel free and have no friends than be a prisoner and have everyone like me i very much relate to that i have a line that says you have to be willing not to be liked in order to be loved otherwise it's your representative they're thinking of. It's like that disguise thing that you're talking about, that character that you're playing, and you're doing it for good reasons. Survival, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. If you felt unsafe in your life,

that's where the character came from exactly but the thing is it's exhausting to walk around with all that armor draining what was that what's that poem called that you were just i think it's called bird song you know i never really like named my my pieces until i actually put them out can you share that one can you perform that one do you share that one? Can you perform that one? Do you have that one? Yeah, I actually do. The birds aren't singing to win a Grammy. They're not trying to go platinum through their marketing or planning. They're just jamming.

I listen without even understanding. The truth without agenda is authentically astounding. It makes me think of cheetahs. They don't run for our approval. They don't judge their spots or contemplate laser hair removal. It makes me think of wolves. They don't howl for validation. They don't have to get the perfect pic to post on their vacation. It makes me think of eagles. They're not soaring to impress me. Although once I saw a dolphin backflip over a jet ski, my point is neither one of them would sell me shit on etsy and i doubt a porcupine would ever try to come off sexy humans are the only animals pretending to be something

that they're not wow why are we ashamed of what we've got we should strut chest out head up let's be proud of ourselves for once isn't it exhausting sticking out your butt and sucking in your gut and for what it's a waste of energy i'm giving up in this moment i'm enough in this moment you're enough in this moment we're enough i'm dismantling my image we are perfect in our flaws birds don't care whether we listen they don't wait for our applause i have built a lovely prison but i live behind the wall so if love is my religion i'll escape when freedom calls you have to be willing not to be liked in order to be loved otherwise it's your representative they're thinking of. But to truly be yourself, you have to let go of what was.

The past is like a prison. It's an echo repeating just because, cause, cause. We are many people in our lives, so I'm not one to judge. But if they love one part of you you it's limited to what that does I want your whole soul I have no goal show me the unseen stuff don't invite me over only after you have cleaned up perfect makes me want to kick my feet up no one's living in a catalog ikea dreamed up have you ever seen a lion chase a hundred zebras have you ever seen a turtle hide

inside a shell a caterpillar doesn't know that she'll become a butterfly so if you go to heaven are you still aware of hell wow when did you write that one i don't remember is it like a few years ago or is this like a decade ago i mean no it's like a few years ago it's more recent yeah i was on the phone with a friend of mine and uh the birds were just like really loud. And during the conversation, I said something about the birds aren't singing to win a Grammy. And then I thought, you know what? I like that. That's a good line.

Pause the conversation. I wrote it down and then started to build on it later. Of all the poems that you've written and performed, how many of them talk about love? I think all of them in some form or fashion, but I think some of them are self-love, some of them are romantic love, some of them are love of God,

some of them are love of humanity, nature, all of it. What would you say, how long have you been doing poetry would you say like officially you know that's part of your thing not just like i did it when i was like seven a little bit here and there but like what was the year where you're like oh i'm doing this consistently do you remember i mean i think i'm past 30 years 30 years yeah it's like one of the longest at least internal relationships of my life you know my my relationship with rhythm and rhyme yeah what do you feel like has been the biggest lesson around self-love in the last 30 years of writing and performing poetry that you've discovered and had to learn?

Well, it's something that I try to teach other people. Like when I facilitate for the poetry workshops in person and why we created this journal in partnership with Passion Planner to scale those workshops without me having to be there, I automatically take away anybody's blocks by saying, don't try to make something great. Make something true. And if you make something true, it will automatically be great. And I'm telling people stuff that I need to relearn over and over and over again,

because if I sit down and I say, I'm gonna make something great, I'm just getting in my own way. I'm turning my back on the muse. I have to be willing to just take the ride. Some of the best poems for me are poems where I'm surprised at where they go really yeah because i don't like get overly strategic before i start writing i just start in some sort of a spark and then see what what fire it turns into so it might be okay i

heard the birds sing and you thought of this idea you know maybe you're on the phone with a music person you're like oh they're not singing to win a grammy and you're like okay where could i take this in other areas of life is that kind of how it starts or yeah okay the birds are this the wolves this the bears the this you know it's like let's keep the analogies going and then yeah it's like basically you're you're building um railroad tracks and you're the railroad tracks and you're the train and you're the conductor and you're the beginning middle and end the destination wherever you wind up um and you're also none of those things because you're the the observer wow um so it's a spiritual practice creativity And you're also none of those things because you're the observer. Wow.

So it's a spiritual practice, creativity. You have this other, do you call them poems when you put something online? Like an Instagram post? Is that like a short poem or is that like a phrase within a poem usually? Well, yes. It's usually a phrase within a much larger poem, which to be quite honest very annoying to me you know i want of course please follow me on instagram but it's like i always feel like it's a truncated version of what the art is and that's why i'm excited to put out actual like finished pieces that people can experience on their own time. So it's a great window into my work, but

I'm not sure. Snippets. It's not the full thing. You have this, you know, poem within a poem, I guess you call it, about love that you shared recently that said, love is not a guarantee. It will come and it will leave. It relies on your belief, so it will bring you to your knees. It relies on your belief, so it will bring you to your knees. Love is weak. Love is lost. Love is grief. Love is loss.

Love is risk. Love is real. But love is worth the pain we feel. Where did that come from? Let me say the next line. Yes. And I won't let the fear of losing you limit how I'm loving you. Oh, my gosh can you share that whole poem yeah yeah let me actually give you the behind the context give me the context so i was doing this collaboration piece and it was like a marketing team and a brand that were involved in this project.

I don't want to go into the specifics because it really doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. But they had liked this particular poem that had already been written and it ends, save the day with love. save the day with love so we're on this like planning call about the piece of art collaborative project that we're doing and one of the guys goes hey is there any way we can change the final word because he goes love is a bit soft and he goes i want to end on something that has more like strength and pizzazz and And I was like, no. Because it's not your poem. First of all, no, respectfully.

Second of all, I don't look at love as soft. I said, I look at love as hard. And he goes, oh, okay. And then the conversation ended and I up, and I wrote this piece. Love is not soft. Love is hard. Love is not smooth. Love is scarred. Love is not perfect. Love is flawed. Love is not quiet. Love is loud is loud love is not pride love is proud

but love is not certain love is doubt and love is not leaving love is turning around love is learning to fight for the middle ground. Love is not gentle. Love is rough. Love is not fragile. Love is tough. Love is not thinking that love is enough. So I choose to love you harder from the moment I wake up. Love is a revolutionary act.

Love is an attack. Love is not abstract. Love is a fact. Love is saying yes when I want to say no. Love is saying stay when I want to say go. Love is staying high even when I get low. Love is going with the flow, holding on and letting go. Because love is not easy.

Love is complex. Love is not right or wrong. Love is context. Love is not black or white. Love is progress because love is not a product. Love is a process, yes? Love is a process, yes? So in the simple moments, when the chaos fades away,

in the silence of the evening or the empty of my day, I remember what it feels like to give my heart away and think how lucky I have been to get to love someone this way and how lucky we still are to get to love someone this way. It's a miracle to be alive. That's why I have to say love is not a guarantee. It will come and it will leave. It relies on my belief. So it will bring me to my knees. Love is weak. Love is lost. Love is grief. Love is lost. Love is risk. Love is real. But love is worth the pain I feel. And I won't let the fear of losing you limit how I'm loving you. I'm going to love you harder. It's a privilege to be hugging you. I'm going to love you harder more than ever before. I'm at peace with knowing love is war.

That's what we're fighting for. So love harder. First yourself, then your family, your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors in your community. Then try to love a stranger. Try to tap into your empathy. Imagine that you've known them and protected them since infancy. Now try to love the people that you don't love at all. Even people you don't like, they probably need it most of all.

And if you can't love them big, see if you can love them small. See if you can hold compassion for the assholes that they are. And they are. But love is not soft, love is hard, love is scarred, love is flawed, love is loud, love is proud, love is doubt. And since love is most important when we do not know how, I will choose to love you harder in the never ending now. Wow. Oh, yeah.

Now, I love this poem, but how do you love someone who's hurt you and continues to hurt you over and over again? How do you choose to love, love accept and forgive someone who's done horrible things to you you're a great conversationalist and a great interviewer because that's a really really strong question and i have to search myself for the answer i think i can't answer that for anybody else how How have you learned to, I mean, through this,

the album that you put out, I mean, there's a lot of vulnerable, you know, things in there that you talk about and you share about. And I know personal stuff about you. I don't want to say it for you if you want to or not, it's fine.

But how have you dealt with loving people who are the closest to you who have hurt you? And how do you do it even if they don't want to change their behaviors? And even if they keep doing things that continue to hurt you, knowing or unknowingly, how do you choose to love them personally? One day at a time, one moment at at a time knowing that the love is bigger than whatever the conflict is or the misunderstanding is and continuing to show up over and over again zooming out when you get too close to the television and all you see is the pixels, you got to zoom out and get the full picture. And you also have to acknowledge and recognize and remind yourself that you don't know everything.

There's plenty of things that I thought were true at times in my life that I look back on and I'm like, man, what truth was I living? Like, that's not true to me anymore. And that's progress. That's growth. That's evolution. So I don't like regret anything that I've done. But there are things that I would do differently. And I'm sure there are things now that I don't understand or ways that I'll change in the future. And I'm sure there are things now that I don't understand or ways that I'll change in the future. So just remembering that I don't know everything. And maybe there's some new information here for me to discover rather than to come into it with my idea of what it is and then miss what it actually is. miss what it actually is i think both of me and you are on a have a similar journey that we're on which is i don't know get a personal here but we're both on a journey of wanting to become parents one day yeah but we're both not parents yet um

what do you think type of love will happen when we become fathers oh man now you're gonna make Yeah. But we're both not parents yet. What do you think type of love will happen when we become fathers? Oh, man. Now you're going to make me cry. Don't make me cry, bro. I'm about to get emotional thinking about it. But what do you think? You know, you've written about love.

You've experienced it. But I don't think we've fully experienced it. Yeah. I think we've scratched the surface of what we think love truly is what do you think will happen when we become fathers in that first you know few moments what type of love will there be that you think we'll experience i think it's going to be an explosion of love like the big bang the other night i was uh fast asleep i was like dreaming about something or other tony soprano we've been watching sopranos again it's a brilliant show it's funny because this is a complete separate thing but like when i first watched the sopranos i was like 19

now i'm watching the sopranos i'm tony soprano's age it's crazy man you know it's a completely different show so anyway my wife had never seen it so i'm like you know mid-dream and there's this like explosion outside of our window it was something having to do with a power line and nothing happened that was crazy but it was a loud bang and sparks right outside the window and we didn't know what it was gunshot you know i had no idea you're coming out of your dream and before i could even think i had dove on top of her literally and i was just covering her you know i know that i'm still the star of my own show but i would give up my role for my wife wow in a second wow and i imagine that it would be exponential you know once you have a kid so it's almost like and i don't want to like get overly like spiritual but i feel like

you would finally know like god's love you know because there is a level of like unconditional that is beyond like a mental framing you know, no matter how much that kid messes up, like you're just gonna love them. And you'd probably give it all up for them in a second. Of course. Yeah, any part of it, I mean, you know? And how do you still create boundaries within that? Yeah, exactly.

You love unconditionally, but also, okay, you can't cross this boundary, yeah. Yeah, what about you? Like, what do you think when you okay, you can't cross this boundary. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? Like, what do you think when you... Let me answer that in a second. Yeah. But have you written a poem for your child? You know, I wrote a poem about parenthood.

And whenever I do it, everybody's like automatically assumes throughout the whole entire poem that i'm like a parent of like five kids you know because how does he know so much and i was just using my intuition and imagination but have you written a poem about your child no that is coming i'm gonna do that now but it but i not going to write it from the standpoint of showing it to anybody or making it great. Of course. I'm going to do what I said earlier. And I'm feeling the resonance of you saying that because it is something that we want to create. So I should probably be creating around that creation.

I don't expect you to ever share, maybe you share the poem publicly in the future if you feel like it or not. But if you were to write a poem about your child that is coming, what would, do you think would an unedited first line be that maybe you use, maybe you wouldn't use? What would be like off the top of your mind that you think would be a line? And this may be not the thing you use in the future,

but what's on your heart right now? Thank you. I love you. You're welcome. Welcome. you're welcome welcome that's not like a moana song you're welcome you watch that movie yeah it's a great movie yeah martha loves that movie yeah she is moana

yeah she is like that's her like disney character so that's who she identifies as nice everybody has like a yeah and i'm maui you like we've taken the test there's like a disney quiz that you could be like what character are you of every disney movie and she is moana and i'm maui which you guys are destined it's crazy it's really crazy of all the movies uh what would you be what would your character be that you resonate with the most maybe you haven't seen all the disney movies but wow i don't know there's not one that give me some options i mean i don't beauty and the beast there's aladdin there's uh i don't know i don't know what other movies there are but i mean it's funny i've written like for disney television done 50 songs for them yeah yeah yeah not for their uh tv movies but tv shows and i i literally can't lion king aladdin i mean yeah i did this he was there

yeah i'll be that i'll be that little crab you could be the monkey in lion king sounds good who's got the wisdom sounds good you got the wisdom and you're like yeah yeah it's kind of rhyming in poetry yeah the crab is rhyming i don't know i actually it's something to explore i mean it's interesting that you guys i said to you upstairs i mean you're you're truly best friends which is what you need for a lifelong walk yeah um or at least it's what i need so i can recognize it when i see it in other people yeah man i felt like i needed peace and i feel like i don't feel like best friends are angry at each other a lot like you

know matt is my best friend i've known over 20 years, we don't really argue with each other, get angry. Maybe we have, like, disagreements, but we're not angry at each other or, like, screw you. That's maybe happened, like, a couple times for, like, an hour. And we're like, oh, my bad. You know, I didn't mean to hurt you. You know, it wasn't intentional. But I think if you're getting into an intimate relationship with someone and you're every week fighting, that doesn't seem like a best friend. That seems like a friend that you don't want to

understand or choose to accept and vice versa if they're fighting with you and it maybe doesn't mean you you like the things they're doing but for whatever reason why do you think in intimate relationships we struggle creating harmony and peace with the person we're choosing not me and you but in the past I have. And I have too. And we see this with a lot of people. Why do you think we choose intimate partners that we want to be best friends with, but then we end up fighting with all the time and not seeing eye to eye?

Why do you think that is in love and relationships? It's a combination of things, in my opinion. One is I think we're learning about ourselves through these relationships. And a part of what we're learning is what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable. And the things that are non-negotiable are things that have to be in harmony. You're never going to have perfect harmony with any partner, any friendship, any business relationship. But you have to have harmony over the things that are non-negotiable. Otherwise, you will wind up fighting over those things in various disguises forever and i think what happens is when we're lonely or when we really want to have a life partner

we try to fit a square peg into a round hole we don't fully acknowledge the things that are non-negotiable for us and we don't fully acknowledge who we're actually with to truly see the person in front of you not who you want them to be to truly see um i always say that like relationships are like an archaeological dig and you don't want to use a jackhammer you know you want to use a brush just slowly brush away the relationship and keep showing up and getting to know each other over and over again you can't have a crash course in intimacy you can't know all of who someone is in six months you ever see people who are like newly in love and they're not even in love with each other. They just have this like projection thought bubble that's in between the two of them.

They're perfect. Yeah. They're perfect. Yeah. And it's just the chemicals that they're in love with. Yeah. The feeling of love. Right.

And then what happens is, is the person doesn't live up to your unspoken expectations. Yes. And the fantasies. And you resent them. and you fight them be what i want you to be so that i don't have to be lonely anymore you know it's like if you actually knew who you were and you were willing to let go and by you i mean me because i had to learn this over and over again broken record repeating the same mistakes dancing to the music that I didn't even like because it was the patterns if you were able to do that then you would actually go like huh

I don't think this is right for me we have some things that are non-negotiable that's okay can we negotiate what's non-negotiable if we can't then i love you and i'm gonna move in another direction because i love myself more and i love the future partnership more when i first met andreana on our first date uh at the end of the date she asked me she goes so how old are you and i was like i'm 39 she was what what's that what was she at that time gosh she was 25 which by the way there was no way i didn't know how old she was when we went on our first date and uh because we met online and i was like there's no way because i had my own list and i was like i'm not seriously dating anybody that's not blah blah blah right i'm not blah blah blah i'm not blah blah blah i am blah blah these are the ideas that i had for my

partnership but i was at least mature enough to show up and see what was there. And she was too. So anyway, she goes, you're 39. You don't have any kids? I go, no. She goes, okay. You've never been married? I go, no. She goes, okay.

What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? Yeah. And the thing is, she had every right to ask it every right because i knew why she was asking but the truth is i had been asking myself the same thing and i was uncomfortable answering because i wasn't sure if i was not settling to settle down or i was actually getting in the way of having real intimacy. Interesting. And so I go, I don't want to answer that.

And then it got hella awkward and the date ended soon afterwards. And I think both of us thought we were never going to see each other. And then luckily we got a second date and six years later, here we are. Wow. So what made you so uncomfortable to answer that question or what was the answer inside of you that you didn't want to share? Well, now all these years later, she was the reason that she asked. She was the answer. There was nothing wrong with me. I was waiting for having that true ride or die because how i grew up and i think you you might be able to relate but i won't put words in your mouth trust for me is non-negotiable trust for me is everything because i didn't grow up feeling trust in many ways and i'm not pointing any fingers i'm grateful for everything i have so much love

for my childhood and who i am sitting here with you now which took all of it yeah but like i can't be in a real partnership unless i can look at my partner and be like I got you and you have me and we're across the room and you know I hadn't found that yeah and I had been trying to fight with past relationships to turn them into that and and now in retrospect I want to apologize to all of them and thank them because they were helping me figure out who I was and what was non-negotiable so that I could get to that person that I truly have that type of partnership with. Did you feel like you were that person for yourself? Did you trust yourself fully? No. And I think that there were even times where I used the other person as my excuse to not look within interesting

so i was almost like you ever like uh i don't know like choose somebody unavailable because you are unavailable of course and then blame them for being unavailable the longer you get into it you're like okay why aren't you more available for me yeah i'm sure i was the same way for them yeah yeah oh but then maybe somebody comes to you and says wow like i'm available and you're like i'm not attracted to them for some reason you know what's interesting as you're saying this like if someone is emotionally available they would never choose someone who's unavailable exactly they they would see it and it's like that doesn't work for me like they have to be equally

available for me to want to be willing to explore this. Because if someone's saying I'm available emotionally, but I'm choosing someone wounded who doesn't open up and who's got all these secrets inside and doesn't want to look me in my eyes and connect with me intimately, then you're wounded still because you're trying to fix someone yes and that's hard to take responsibility for it's much easier for us to blame other people to find excuses and when we do that we get farther away from the truth and we have to uncover more layers so that we can get down to taking responsibility for ourselves and our choices you talked about truth a few minutes ago about how the more wisdom and

experience in years you have the more you realize some things are true that you thought weren't true and that are untrue that now are true like you you learn new lessons what do you think is the most true thing that you 100 know to be true here we are yeah i know that uh-huh here we are right here right now and i'm grateful that we are. What was the biggest thing that you thought was true for most of your life that you realized was not true? And it was, no, no, no, go ahead. It was just something that was like, oh, I've held onto this belief that this thing was true. And then later in life you realize, oh, maybe that was just a wounded part of me or just I wasn't educated enough or I didn't have the experience or the

wisdom or I learned it from the wrong person. Was there anything like that? I think hurt people hurt people. And I was really hurt. And I think I hurt a lot of people. And I hurt myself a lot. I think we tend to love other people how we love ourselves. I was pretty violent to myself in my behavior, in my thought process. I was telling a friend relatively recently, I used to have images of killing myself in my mind over and over again like at random times throughout the day and it wasn't even like i was gonna do it i would just have like a flash image of like just not existing anymore wow and going out in in a violent way how am i supposed to be able to love somebody in a healthy way if that's what i'm doing to myself i wrote this uh poem it has one line though that i'll share um and it says uh

it says being angry at god is like yelling at yourself in the mirror because no matter what you say god will be waiting for you when you are done oh my gosh say that one more time being angry at god is like yelling at yourself in the mirror because no matter what you say god will be waiting for you when you are done wow so that's what i was doing yelling at myself in the mirror all the time and then going out into the world and finding the evidence for what i was choosing and unchoosing to believe yes you know so is there anything for you that you feel like you've had to unlearn that was so true at that time that that now you have a different perspective on i mean the thing that i thought was true for most of my life was i'm worthless so i had to unlearn that because it is not true. And I believed it so much to be true, probably like you in certain ways.

I'm worthless, you know, and no one will love me was kind of the truth. The lie I was telling myself. And I think it was like you said before, it was exhausting and draining. It was just, yeah, it sucked the life out of me. And I think when I finally learned how to let that go and step into a different truth,

it felt freeing. It felt like peace, harmony for the first time. felt like peace, harmony for the first time. And I think life is a, for me, life is a consistent journey of repetition. And if not, if I'm not repeatedly showing up, contributing to myself with these types of positive truths, these types of reps, then I could easily slide back if I have a few bad days of just like negative reps. And so it's just a consistent, like you said, the truth, you know, is here we are. And so if here we are, this is the moment to have a rep and I can choose a rep that serves and supports a positive belief or a negative belief that holds me back. And so I just try to reflect

as many moments throughout the day that I have more positive reps. You know, that I have a, I'm speaking in kind of sports lingo, but repetitions that I really show up the best I could in every scenario to support the truth that I want. I think that was beautifully said. Yeah. You're in the gratitude gym. Oh, yeah. And you got to keep lifting. Every day.

Yeah. If I don't use it I'm gonna lose it. That's totally true. And I'm gonna go right back into what I knew for 30 years. Yeah.

Because the worthlessness gym is always open. It's always open man. 24-7. Yeah. And it's so easy to be in that gym. Yeah. So easy. But it's interesting. man 24 7 yeah and it's so easy to be in that gym yeah so easy but it's

interesting there's a lot of false reward there well it's it's fast it's familiar you know it's quick yeah it's you know you you think short timeline long timeline medium term timeline you know it's the shortest timeline around just taking a hit of uh i don't deserve anything you know i'm worthless ah i'm a victim and you just get to wrap yourself up in that and that that definitely is probably like my uh most familiar state really yeah i mean i think i've worked my way out of it now over many years of doing my own reps and having different modalities uh to help me along the way to have incremental and accumulative presence um but i can't let that go it's not like i can just go well i won the game so i don't have to play anymore no it's a it's a never-ending game and what an amazing thing it is that I get to play.

Do you think it's possible for an artist to actually live a beautiful, loving life or do most artists just struggle in the suffer of like, I'm a artist, so I have to suffer and feel pain so I can express my art from a painful place. I just want to say one thing before I forget. And then I'll answer that. I just want to say one thing before I forget and then I'll answer that I just want to acknowledge you I want to honor you because I feel like that place of worthlessness that you have and continue to work through has brought a lot of value to the world thanks brother appreciate it man I mean I

thank you no I mean that yeah thank you know to me as a friend but to many other people because you've been willing to invite us into your heart and into your experience and into your process i appreciate it so it's the school of greatness it's the school of self-worth absolutely man yeah positive identity yeah yeah um to answer the other question i think that many times people who go through intense pain or trauma, it kind of wakes them up a little bit early and simultaneously puts them to sleep. Interesting. It's like both things are happening, right? But it shakes their reality and it becomes a catalyst for them to create.

But then sometimes they think that they need that pain to continue to create. And so they just like go on these self-destructive streaks, one, because it's what they're used to, and two, because they feel like, well, that's my fuel. And what I would used to and two because they feel like well that's my fuel and what i would say to those people or anybody listening to this is what got you here won't get you there you know it's great that you're here but if you want to get somewhere else you might need to find a different fuel source and there's plenty of things that you can use as fuel. You know, pain, you're always going to have the memory of it. You're always going to have your imagination. You're always going to witness and see pain in the world that you can use to create from, to transmute it into something else.

need to live a life of suffering you know in order to have something to talk about you know or write about or act about or sing about um and you deserve to be happy too and you can share that as well that's beautiful yeah when you've written you know so many poems over 30 years how many do you think you've written that you've shared with people either on stage or in a book or in a journal or you know how many think you've written that you've shared hundreds oh i think i'm i'm past a thousand easy wow yeah how do you continue to some people when they accomplish a certain level of success, they have more confidence, but others they say, oh, I don't know if I can keep repeating this over and over again. how do you continue to have a, you know, a level mind and heart when you're creating and not think my best work is behind me? Um, and can I recreate this or how do you, how do you navigate that? Well, you can't recreate anything you have to create. Don't try to repeat your past success just be open you know see what's here

pay attention you know the last poem that i wrote uh is like a children's book and i don't have kids you know so maybe there's there's something like there you know that that is beneath the surface but the reason that i wrote it is i had a corporate gig in mexico and um we were you know we had a flight leaving after the gig and we had a little bit of window of time so we decided to go whale watching and uh we're like out there first of all i had done it before but i had never like paid attention to the process and you like see these whales and then all of a sudden like all these boats like go chase where the whales are and it was like aggressive man i didn't i didn't like it yeah so we told the guy like hey let's just like move away from these other boats because it felt like all of a

sudden it wasn't the ocean it was like an aquarium or something i didn't want to be a part of the problem so we go kind of like deeper out in the ocean and he gets this uh like machine out technology where like he puts this like cord way down there in in the deep yeah and then it's attached to a speaker and you could hear the whale songs and it was so beautiful wow listening to them in real time so it's like an amp it's like a microphone for whales exactly and you hear the speaker in the boat exactly interesting and let me tell you that's pretty cool there's a lot going on down there a lot and they're not just saying i'm here i'm here i'm here they're saying some stuff you could just wow you can feel it right as you're listening and uh so as i left i'm on the plane going back and i just had

this thought of like um you know sometimes i like whales like to go human watching like i so i so i started like writing this poem about these whales that would sneak out of the ocean in the middle of the night and like go human while they sneak into our houses while we're asleep and start looking through our stuff and blah blah blah like if i had thought do i want to write a poem next what is my poem going to be and i want to make this you know incredible thing that's going to change the world i wouldn't have just like been like ah this is like an interesting idea and then i finished it and i was like this is really cool maybe this could be a children's book oh that's cool and so i think you just have

to like keep trusting your internal compass and uh move in the direction of your true north absolutely uh speaking of true north a lot of people don't know what theirs is. And they struggle trying to figure out their purpose, their path, their passion, their self-worth, if they have any, how much they have. They try to understand their insecurities, their pains, the people that are closest to them that have hurt them. They try to understand all these things. I know I'm one of those people.

You created a journal called The Never Ending Now Poetry Journal. And it's got a lot of different prompts. It's got poems and then prompts for people to go through their own process of self-discovery. Why is this such an interesting project for you? And how can it support and serve people in figuring out their true north? Well, people don't often use creativity as that modality for better mental and emotional health or stress release because they leave it to professionals and we become adults we find things that we're good at find things we get

paid for find things that we get validated for and we stop being a student creativity is about play no matter what you're exploring so this is an opportunity to explore the stories inside of you you do not have to be a poet to get the poetry journal and to take the journey of healing uh you just have to be a person that's willing to risk and try something that you would never normally try as a way to become more present and peaceful in your life and there's a conceptual through line to this journal that takes people through growth and fear and sadness and ultimately it leaves them an empowerment infinite possibility because i always want to leave my audience where I want to leave

myself, which is in a place of hope. And so people can either read your poems or listen to the poems and then they follow through with a prompt. Is that correct? Yeah. So the album is 40 minutes and it's like an audio movie. You're just supposed to like take a long walk or a drive and listen to it the whole thing one experience yeah and then the journal helps you go deeper and you can buy the journal and take that journey without listening to the album you can listen to the album without taking the journey of the journal but they're both accompanying pieces of art that can help you have an experience that's separate but connected. Yeah. And you talk about how this journal flows. First, the experience. So you read or you listen to the poetry, the art. Then you create using the prompts based on what you read or listened to.

And then you say activate it, which has moved the poem from your page into your life via sharing performance, memor memorization or visualization why is that an important element for people to alchemize their thoughts or pain into peace and hope so the journal is basically like a culmination of the 25 years of poetry workshops that i've done and one of the many things that I learned along those very strange poetry workshops over the years from starting out in libraries and juvenile facilities and upward bound and junior highs and high schools to then the biggest corporations around is that people are people and people actually want to express themselves.

They're dying to express themselves and they're dying to see and be seen, but they don't feel like they have a safe container to do it. So I would just basically say, hey, I'm going to start off by saying something vulnerable. I'm going to share a poem because if I'm asking you to be vulnerable and I'm not doing it first, it's almost irresponsible. And then I give people prompts and I say, what is it that this can make you reflect on in your own life that you wouldn't normally share about after 15 minutes at a dinner party with some random person. Like choose the thing that's a layer deeper because if you do, the poem starts to flow.

And then I give people time to write and then they come back and then I get people on stage and they share the poems, sometimes for the first time ever, standing on stage doing any form of art and we hold the container of everybody being supportive, loving, caring, passionate, compassionate, and celebrating that person for the strength that it takes to share with a room full of strangers and to be courageous and to over-exaggerate that support. So everybody's like standing on a chair and yelling and screaming and the person feels like a rock star. And then everybody pairs off

because you're not going to get everybody on stage. But as long as everyone has an opportunity to read it to at least one person and to be witnessed, what happens is you get the poem outside of you, the story that's trapped inside of you, outside of you, so it's separate and you can see it. And then you share it with somebody and that person accepts you and there is a feeling

of alchemy that happens where you then move into your life and you're like, you know what? I feel a little more here. Yeah. I can handle things a little better yeah i mean look there's no magic pill i'm not selling anything to anybody but this has been my experience wow man yeah you've been working on this for about a year and a half yeah i mean the the album was like a year and a half a year ago when i heard it i think right the rough like the first rough raw cut but it's evolved since then not really you know what happened bro is i you tried to produce it you're like that doesn't feel real i paid a dude a bunch of money to master it and

you're like nah you know and it's not real i was like it was like the better it got the worse it got interesting so i just said let me just like said, what is the least amount you can possibly do and then do a little bit less? And that's what I went with. That's what you went with. Yeah. It still has like the conversation with your wife and everything like that. Wow.

That's pretty cool. It's pretty, it's very authentic. It's very raw, very real. It's kind of like you get to see in queue like in his kitchen having a conversation with your wife about life yeah kind of like that a little bit well there's parts of that i had taken this medicine journey basically and um i was in this very deep conversation with andreana in our car and halfway through the conversation she was like uh i think i want to record this she just like took out her phone and started recording yes and we were talking about all these frozen ages

and the experience of the journey and what it brought up for me and we were so deep in the convo that it just didn't change how I was talking. It wasn't like I was thinking anyone was ever gonna hear this. I was just talking to my best friend, to my ride or die. And I was sharing things that I never would have chosen to share had I been thinking other people would have been watching later.

And then afterwards, I listened to it a couple of days uh after she sent it to me and and i thought huh this kind of connects to this other project that i've been doing with this incredible pianist from uh italy isabella turso shout out to isabella um and i thought what if I just kind of like put this as the through line? And then the album started to make sense. Pretty cool, man. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to listen to it again.

I want people to get the journal, the Never Ending Now Poetry Journal. I don't care if you're, you know, making a ton of money and you feel super successful and happy. There's something in your life that you got to process still. And I don't care if you're stuck and struggling and, you know, life is really not going your way. This is the perfect journal to help you find your North Star with whatever you need to hear or realize in your life right now.

And I'm assuming this would be a journal that you can reflect on for years to come as well. So I don't think I've ever seen a journal like this that has a raw personal experience from someone else, poetry from their life experience that you can take in and feel like, oh, someone else is opening up and being vulnerable in their diary, essentially. Now, let me have these prompts from, in my opinion, the top spoken word artist in the world who's done 25 years of poetry workshops. Now let me go through the poetry prompts for my own self-reflection and healing journey and awareness journey, and then sit on it and look back at it later and

reflect on it. And then maybe share it with a friend, one of these prompts, maybe not, you know, maybe perform it, maybe not, but these prompts maybe not you know maybe perform it maybe not but at least you have it for yourself so i want people to get the uh the journal the never ending now poetry journal by inq where can they get the journal and uh is there like a qr code in here for the music also where they can or the album i mean yeah so they can go and they can just click and listen to it it'll open up right on online to, to listen to the album. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It'll open up to Spotify or Apple. I think it takes to a kind of like a landing page on my website and then they can buy the journal at passion planner. Um, it'll be on Amazon and you know, uh, you can get it on my website at ion-q.com as well there you go man how else can

we be of service to you with this project or your life you've done it man you know what i was thinking though on the drive over too is um if we do another thing at school of greatness like the summit of greatness i want to do a workshop for everybody. That'd be fun. Like, even if it's like a bit of a shorter one, I would want to do the exact thing that I described with the thousand, 1,500 people that are there. Sure. Because I think it would be a really, really great way to bond everybody moving into the

rest of the summit. That's interesting. Yeah. How long would that take let's figure it out we have to figure that out negotiate it yeah we have to figure that out yeah no i think uh it'll it'll take i don't know usually it's a short workshop how long is that i think i could do it in an hour okay yeah we'll see we'll talk about that as we enter we're doing it in la this year that's what i heard the shrine auditorium it's so awesome dude yeah it's like a 6 000 person arena i've performed there you have yeah is it incredible

it's awesome wow okay we're gonna go see it tomorrow actually take a look at it it's a beautiful theater it is beautiful right yeah and i'm so proud that you continue to to grow the way you do man you know you gotta go for it you know you gotta go for it you gotta go for it because what else are you gonna do we're here not go for it exactly if it fails then okay maybe you don't go for the same way you go for something else but if something's in your heart i feel like you gotta give it a shot you gotta go for it so um yeah man this has been uh this has been really cool i'm curious you know the world i can i just think back to my own childhood of like the sadness and suffering that I experienced in different scenarios. I also had a lot of happy

moments and joyful moments. So it's not like my, my life is miserable, but I think we remember a lot of the painful ones when they're that pain more than the joyful ones, for whatever reason, they just like stand out maybe for survival or whatever it might be but i as an adult and i remember when i was a freshman in college was when 9-11 happened and i remember like oh there's like real stuff happening in the world outside of my world yeah right it was like okay friends are making fun of me, or not friends, but like school kids are making fun of me. I feel neglected. I feel alone. I feel sad.

I feel stupid. It was like my world growing up of sadness, right? But then when I hit 18, 9-11 hit, and I remember being like, oh, there's real in the world. Yes, sir. Beyond my world. Like my world is nothing compared to what people go through, right? Bombs and wars and killing and rape and all these different things. And I remember at 18 being like, oh, there's a world out there that is suffering. And it seems like since that moment, 9-11,

you know, every year, every two years, there's more suffering in big ways. Obviously a lot of small suffering, but big suffering. And, you know, the last four years, there's a lot of suffering in multiple different ways. And I assume it's just going to keep happening in the world. Unfortunately, it's just kind of where we're at. And I choose to have hope and put love in my heart and try to impact the world around me. Yeah. But, you. But I can't stop every war and every argument and every bad thing that happens in the world. In your mind, to close, what is the poem that the world needs to hear?

Because there is so much pain and suffering. There is a lot happening right now. And I'm assuming there will be more that happens at the end of this year. What do you think if you could only share one poem with the world that the world needs to hear? What would that be to close us out? Well, that was a lot what you just shared. And I appreciate you sharing it because this project is very personal, but there's a lot of real universal things going on.

I don't know how to fix those things either. You know, a lot of my work, not on this particular project, but in general, is social. It is political. it is about humanity and um and yet it goes back to that kind of like thing you shared about problems is sometimes i've wondered am i just like creating more friction for more fire? So the only thing that I do know is that like we're all storytellers and stories that we tell ourselves and other people become our lives. So change your story, change your life. And if you change your life, you change the world. So I'll do this piece and it's called I'm Proud of You because

it starts inside out I don't need to know you to be proud of you I'm proud of you for all you've done and all you do because you're trying to become a better version of you and I'm proud of you. I hope this poem will empower you. I hope that you'll remember it the next time someone's doubting you.

I hope that you'll remember it the next time someone's doubting you. I hope that you'll remember it the next time them is you. And you're doubting yourself because you have nothing else to do. Pull the voice inside aside. You're on their side. Look them in the eyes and say, who are you to talk to you that way? You wouldn't let another person talk to you that way. So what makes you think just because it's you, it's okay? You probably never talk to another person that way.

You'd either walk away or defend yourself if you stayed. But since you're the other person in this particular case and you can't leave yourself, you have to learn to hold space. So say I'm proud of you, even if it feels like it's pretend. Try talking to yourself like you're your own best friend. Try talking to yourself like the relationship could end and the words you choose have consequence. Don't take yourself for granted just because you're always there.

Celebrate yourself for always being there, always being here. Compliment the mere. Let's be clear. Self-help is self-care. Are you aware that your awareness and your ego are completely different things? Are you scared of the dichotomy constructing everything? Are you prepared to share the inner space without defining things? Are you attached to the illusion and the lullaby it sings?

Are you distracted by the story even if it isn't true? Because if you are, you're not alone. It happens to me too. And still, I'm proud to be proud of you. Woof. proud of you. Woof! Yeah, you. The infinite you. The non-specific you.

The specifically terrific you. The universal you. The perfectly imperfect you. Look at you, you eternal you. The perfectly imperfect you. Look at you, you eternal you. You raced against at least a hundred million sperm before becoming you and you and you. The one and only life we'll make. We have some nerve to walk around like we're some sort of mistake. We deserve to walk around like we're designed to take up space, like we're aligned from the core inside the earth to outer space. We are all miracles without a molecule to waste.

You're a physical expression of fate, and I relate. You're a mystical expression of fate and I relate. You're a musical, magical, beautiful, powerful, individual. That's why I'm extra proud of you even when you get cynical. Remember that when times are tough. Close your eyes and hear my voice. Close your eyes and hear my voice. You're a million times enough. Close your eyes and hear your voice until it's something you can trust. You're a million times enough. You're a million times enough.

You're a million times enough. You're a million times. You are the sum of all of your experiences. You are the sum of none of your experiences. You're only you because they doubted you. You're alive. And I they doubted you. You're alive. And I'm proud of you. Wow. Powerful, man.

I've got a final question for you. I've asked you your definition of greatness the last time you're on here. So I'll have people, we'll link that up so people can go see that. I've asked you your definition of greatness the last time you're on here. So I'll have people, we'll link that up so people can go see that. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Adam, for using your gift. I think a lot of people have talents and gifts that they are afraid to share and use. And you continue to use them for the betterment of the world.

So I appreciate you. I acknowledge you for just, you know, the man you continue to become over the last decade of knowing you and how you keep stepping into the greater version of you and how i just love how you've learned to accept yourself more fully as well in every season of life so i acknowledge you for that man it's beautiful to watch. Thank you, bro. And I think you become a better artist the more you love yourself. So I'm grateful for you,

grateful for your friendship. And I'm grateful for this piece of art that we can have access to and use for our own life. And I hope everyone gets this and listens to the album because it's powerful. Very powerful.

Thank you, bro. I love you, man. Love you too, man. This question just came to me. I've asked you a question before called the three truths. You may not remember it. But I'm going to ask it in a different way. So I'd like you to imagine, hypothetically, you get to live as long as you want.

And you get to continue to live the life that you want to live. And all your dreams come true. You have the children, the family, the art the art the career all of it friends keep going all of it yeah it all comes the financial abundance all of it right it all comes uh and you write a million poems or however many you want to write you do all the projects you want to do and you get to live to be a hundred and something but it's the last day and you've lived a beautiful life. And for whatever reason, you got to take all of your work with you, all of your poetry. We don't have access to written form, video form, book form. It's gone. AI form,

whatever it is, we don't have access to your talent or gifts anymore. Your poetry, your words. talent or gifts anymore, your poetry, your words. But on the last day, you get to leave behind three truths, but only your kids would get to have access to them. Three lessons. And on that last day, what would you share with your kids? Those three truths or three lessons. It could be moments from a poem. It could just be random off the top of your mind right now. Well, the only thing that's coming to me is the joke. It's like, thank you.

I love you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Welcome. You know, like that. But that's the joke. Yeah, yeah. You're not your worst day that's probably one um two uh

uh the most important thing is how you've loved and the memories that you've made and then i don't know if this is like the one and I don't know if those other two are the ones either, but the thing that just came to me is like, you know, the real value of a person is how they treat people that can't like help them on their legend journey, you know? So just treat people how you want to be treated

not for any other reason than that like just do your best to meet everybody in the middle and uh try to be compassionate and kind yeah yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate you, brother. Love you, man. Love you, bro. Thanks, man. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description

for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode

in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.