Noble Warrior with CK Lin: Recent Episodes
C.K. Lin
Noble Warrior is the podcast and learning community for people to inquire what it takes to be the greatest versions of themselves in modern times. Host CK Lin brings you the battle-tested tools, strategies and daily disciplines from some of the most authentic successful leaders and entrepreneurs.
Merhav’s story mirrors every high-achieving entrepreneur who wins big, then wonders, “Now what?” He shows how over-identifying with titles breeds emptiness, how unprocessed emotions sabotage flow, and why true mastery fuses disciplined skill with spiritual depth. His “Shield and Heart” creed and five-spoke excellence wheel offer a roadmap to mental fitness and sustainable peak performance: cultivate reflexive competence, process feelings quickly, balance life domains, and deliver compassionate truth. For leaders in transition, these insights illuminate a path from burnout and identity crisis to integrated purpose, resilient energy, and the kind of flow that powers long-term impact.
[00:01:00] First Taste of Glory – Merhav recalls reaching a world-title bout and reveals the dramatic moment that shattered his “undefeated” narrative.
[00:04:00] Champion in Three Months – Winning Israel’s karate title weeks after starting shows how fertile environments unlock latent potential fast.
[00:09:40] Spiritual Core of Combat – He reframes martial arts as a lifelong quest for soul-level excellence, not violence.
[00:11:50] Reflex Over Emotion – Inside the ring, performance flows when drills turn reactions into automatic, thought-free action.
[00:18:00] Cost of Suppressed Feelings – Temporary emotional shutdown fuels wins; long-term denial breeds trauma, burnout, and illness.
[00:22:20] Switching Off the Killer – The hardest skill is dropping warrior aggression and choosing compassion the moment a fight ends.
[00:35:28] “I Am Only Boxing” – He admits tying all self-worth to a single role and dreading life beyond it.
[00:38:30] Decade as ‘Nobody’ – Post-injury shame led him to toxic jobs, poor relationships, and self-neglect until he re-valued himself.
[00:44:49] Reclaiming Self-Respect – Realizing low self-definition invites disrespect, he reset boundaries and standards.
[01:02:07] Truth ≠ Brutality – “Truth without compassion is brutality”; feedback must lift, not crush, growing leaders.
[01:18:00] Heart-Led Warrior Shift – Key insight: lasting success demands integrating heart and spirit with drive and skill.
[01:19:15] Five-Spoke Excellence Wheel – Merhav’s new metric: balanced fitness, finance, family, faith, and fun keep life turning.
[01:23:03] Shield and Heart Creed – A noble warrior carries both fierce protection and deep compassion—strength plus sensitivity.
Go to NobleWarrior.com/196 to grab the action guide free and start your journey of being a noble warrior
In this powerful episode of the Noble Warrior Podcast, CK sits down with Angela Olea, founder of Assisted Living Locators, the nation's first senior care placement franchise with over 160 successful locations. Angela shares candid, practical insights for entrepreneurs navigating critical career transitions, uncovering how she made the bold leap from nurse to groundbreaking franchise innovator.
Discover the essential mindset shifts and strategic decisions that propelled Angela's rapid growth and resilience, even in moments of crisis. She reveals surprising lessons learned from scaling a business, working effectively with family, and maintaining standards across multiple locations. Angela also discusses how she leveraged intentional mentorship and networking—key practices that every transitioning entrepreneur must master.
[00:00:06] From Nurse to Franchise Innovator: How Angela Olea turned a critical need into a business with 160+ locations.
[00:03:55] Generational Wealth Secrets: The unexpected rule successful family businesses live by.
[00:07:16] Working with Family: Angela reveals the key boundaries that kept business and family life from colliding.
[00:20:15] The Moment of Certainty: Angela shares how she knew “without any question” it was time to leave nursing and become an entrepreneur.
[00:27:06] Accelerating Growth: Exactly how Angela persuaded top franchise CEOs to share their most guarded lessons.
[00:32:29] A Painful Lesson: Angela shares a costly mistake that reshaped her leadership philosophy—“trust but verify.”
[00:38:21] Lost and Found: The emotional story of how Angela personally rescued her client, Lila, from life-threatening danger.
[00:44:09] What Seniors Regret Most: Angela uncovers what elderly clients wish they’d done differently in life.
[00:50:34] Lightning Bolt Moments: Angela describes the unexpected meeting that inspired her new venture into influencer marketing.
[01:02:03] Staying Grounded in Uncertainty: Angela’s mantra for navigating through fear and doubt.
To unlock Angela’s powerful insights on pivoting with confidence, scaling boldly, and designing your ideal entrepreneurial life, get your action guide at noblewarrior.com/195
Ever wondered how psychedelics might fuel your next big business breakthrough? Join CK Lin and Dr. Manesh Girn—postdoctoral neuroscientist at UCSF and Instagram’s “Psychedelic Scientist”—to discover how LSD, psilocybin, and mindful priming can expand creative thinking, spark problem-solving, and unlock deeper transformation. From optimizing “set, setting, and setup” to balancing emotional healing with innovative vision, Manesh offers a cutting-edge look at how entrepreneurs can harness altered states—responsibly and productively. If you’re ready to break free from old patterns and ignite a more inspired, purposeful path, this conversation will show you exactly how.
Key Moments:
[00:00:39 – 00:01:12] “Psychedelic-Assisted Innovation—A Teaser”
[00:01:12 – 00:02:14] “Generating Novel Ideas vs. Same-Old Thinking”
[00:03:32 – 00:04:22] “Sorting the Wild Downloads”
[00:07:20 – 00:08:21] “Set, Setting, and Setup for Innovation”
[00:11:02 – 00:12:00] “LSD & Dopamine—A Focus Hack?”
[00:14:45 – 00:15:32] “First the Healing, Then the Revealing”
[00:15:32 – 00:16:51] “Designing a Real-World Experiment”
[00:21:20 – 00:22:14] “Qualitative Meets Quantitative”
[00:26:40 – 00:27:00] “Is Brain Imaging Worth It?”
[00:50:20 – 00:50:59] “Can You Prime for Business Insights?”
[01:00:40 – 01:02:05] “AI Meets Psychedelics”
[01:05:00 – 01:06:13] “Wrap-Up: Integrate for Real Impact”
Ready to put these insights into practice?
Grab your action guides and explore deeper show notes at https://noblewarrior.com/194.
Elevate your innovation journey and unlock real-world results with step-by-step frameworks, exercises, and resources curated just for you!
In this conversation, Jeff Gomez reveals transformative insights for entrepreneurs and creators who seek lasting intrinsic motivation, consistent flow states, and genuine mastery. He advocates capturing the essence of your mission beyond surface-level achievements, building resilient peer networks, and transitioning from mere inspiration to actionable mastery. Gomez's approach emphasizes overcoming limiting mental blocks like shame and trauma-based narratives through purposeful storytelling and deep listening. These methods foster intrinsic motivation and sustainable mental fitness, enabling you to play the infinite game in life and business—where true satisfaction and continuous growth become a natural part of your journey.
Time Stamps
- [00:05:00] Capturing Your Story's Pure Essence
- Jeff Gomez emphasizes the importance of distilling a story down to its core essence, ensuring authenticity across platforms. This clarity unlocks deeper intrinsic motivation and resonance.
- "Creators must capture the purity of their story to give audiences an authentic experience."
- [00:12:09] Balancing Depth and Commercial Success
- Jeff discusses navigating between sophisticated storytelling and commercial appeal, highlighting James Cameron's mastery of embedding deeper meaning within mainstream media. Balancing these aspects creates sustained motivation and deeper impact.
- "Cameron had a stunning understanding of deeper aspects of story and mythic elements."
- [00:26:00] Beyond Conflict: Networked Storytelling
- Jeff introduces the concept of networked storytelling, contrasting it with traditional conflict-driven narratives. This approach builds intrinsic motivation through collaboration and shared purpose rather than competition.
- "Their stories aren't about defeating villains but about navigating and contributing in a shared universe."
- [00:32:00] Breaking Free from Intergenerational Shame
- Jeff outlines how shifting narratives can empower individuals by overcoming ingrained shame. Building peer networks reinforces mental resilience and creates ongoing flow and mastery.
- "Free yourself from shame and reconnect with your purpose through your network."
- [00:35:00] The Power of Peer Networks
- Jeff highlights the importance of community support when overcoming negative emotions or self-doubt. Consistent peer interactions foster intrinsic motivation and sustained mastery.
- "When haunted by emotions, peers can counsel and remind you to persist."
- [00:56:44] From Inspiration to Action
- Jeff emphasizes the necessity of moving beyond inspirational stories to practical tools and mastery. Genuine mastery demands actionable steps beyond initial motivation.
- "You can't gift wisdom or mastery—it must be earned through consistent practice."
- [01:01:00] Achievement vs. Escapism in Storytelling
- Jeff addresses why authentic achievement narratives are essential for meaningful growth, even within escapist media. Pursuing challenging yet achievable goals enhances flow and mastery.
- "Our real pleasure comes from witnessing remarkable achievement, not just easy escapism."
- [01:07:00] Overcoming Trauma to Find Purpose
- Jeff shares how dismantling trauma-based narratives liberates personal agency. This mindset shift from past-driven reactions to purposeful action unlocks sustained flow and inner motivation.
- "Removing trauma-based narratives creates both purpose and freedom."
- [01:15:23] The Essential Question for Creators
- Jeff offers his critical question: "What are you trying to say?" Going beyond plot ensures your work aligns with intrinsic values, sustaining deeper motivation and clarity in action.
- "Know deeply what you're trying to say beyond plot, or you'll lose your audience."
- [01:19:18] Listening as the Ultimate Flow Tool
- Jeff concludes that deeply understanding and listening to others is key to infinite flow and continuous mastery. True listening resolves conflicts and sustains internal harmony.
- "If we deeply understand listening, we can reconcile and repair our global systems."
Connect with CK Lin
• Website: https://www.noblewarrior.com/193
• Instagram: @thecklin
In this deeply moving episode of Noble Warrior, host CK Lin talks with Tim Ringgold, a board-certified music therapist who’s experienced profound loss: five best friends, his father, his daughter, and his stepfather. Despite such overwhelming grief, Tim has emerged with powerful insights and proven strategies to help others navigate their own healing journeys.
Tim shares:
•How to Differentiate Grief from Love and why you can keep the love alive even after releasing the pain.
•Why “Time Heals All Wounds” Is a Myth and what truly moves grief toward resolution.
•The Unique Role of Music Therapy in reducing stress, boosting emotional resilience, and reconnecting to memories in a healthier way.
•Practical Tools & Frameworks you can start using today—journaling, storytelling, and community support.
•His Upcoming Retreats and how a safe, dedicated container can accelerate emotional recovery.
Whether you’re grieving a loved one or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers real comfort, practical tools, and a renewed sense of possibility. Share this episode with anyone who needs hope and direction in their healing process.
Learn More About Tim’s Work:
Heal My Grief Retreat
Chapters
- 00:00:00 – “Is Grief Inevitable? Tim’s Full ‘Grief Resume’”
- 00:02:30 – “Five Best Friends Murdered: The Trauma That Shaped Tim”
- 00:06:59 – “Losing a Child: Tim’s Breakthrough Framework for Healing”
- 00:13:18 – “Time Heals All Wounds? Here’s Why That’s a Myth”
- 00:15:00 – “STUG Explained: Sudden Temporary Upsurges of Grief”
- 00:22:58 – “Grief vs. Love: Can You Let Go of Pain But Keep the Love?”
- 00:31:00 – “Healthy vs. Unhealthy Coping: The Dangers of ‘Quick Fixes’”
- 00:37:39 – “Public Vulnerability: How Blogging Accelerated Tim’s Healing”
- 00:59:00 – “A Conversation with God: The ‘Ant on the Sidewalk’ Moment”
- 01:08:30 – “Permission to Be Angry at God: Dealing with Divine Disappointment”
- 01:14:40 – “From Prince to King: Finding a New Identity After Loss”
- 01:17:40 – “Supporting a Grieving Friend: Are You a ‘Doer’ or a ‘Beer’?”
- 01:24:26 – “Final Words + How to Join Tim’s Grief Retreats”
Connect with CK Lin
•Website: NobleWarrior.com (or your preferred link)
•Instagram: @CKLin (or your handle)
GriefSupport #MusicTherapy #HealingJourney #LossAndLove #MentalHealth #Podcast #NobleWarrior #TimRinggold
“Time doesn’t heal grief—it only buries it. If you want to heal, you have to feel.” – Tim Ringgold
Are you exhausted by constant achievement yet starved for genuine fulfillment? In this episode of Noble Warrior, we dive deep with hospice and palliative care expert Dr. Christin Ament, Executive Director at The Bardo, who guides the dying—and the living—into profound clarity and infinite purpose. Christin’s insights on embracing mortality will free your stuck energy, reignite meaningful connections, and help you transcend hollow success into authentic legacy. Stay tuned to learn how facing death can spark effortless flow and unlock the life you’ve been yearning to live.
Time Stamps
[00:00:00 – 00:02:00]: Understanding the Bardo—A Metaphor for Transitions
- What’s Covered: Christin explains the Bardo as the intermediate state between life and death, and how every moment is a “liminal space.”
[00:02:00 – 00:08:00]: Facing Death to Reclaim Meaning and Reverence
- What’s Covered: Christin discusses transforming fear of death into reverence and honoring life’s finite nature, drawing on her experience in ICU and hospice care.
[00:09:00 – 00:13:30]: Honest Conversations & The Value of Death Cafes
- What’s Covered: Christin describes Death Cafes as spaces for open, authentic dialogue around death among people of all ages and backgrounds.
[00:18:00 – 00:20:00]: Death as a Forcing Function for Purpose
- What’s Covered: The idea of writing one’s eulogy and recognizing life’s impermanence helps clarify what truly matters.
[00:22:00 – 00:24:00]: Legacy Beyond the Material
- What’s Covered: Christin reframes legacy not as a finite mark but as an ongoing connection to all of life.
[00:41:00 – 00:47:00]: Psychedelics & Expanding Consciousness
- What’s Covered: Christin discusses how psilocybin (theoretically) helps release fear, dissolve ego-driven narratives, and foster deep spiritual insight.
[00:54:00 – 01:00:00]: Ritual and Connection (Tea Ceremony)
- What’s Covered: Using tea ceremonies to help families communicate openly, dissolve tensions, and rebuild authentic connections.
[01:07:00 – 01:10:00]: Grief, Presence, and Authentic Support
- What’s Covered: Christin and CK discuss grieving gracefully, acknowledging painful emotions without avoidance.
For the short action guide, go to https://noblewarrior.com/191
Welcome to Noble Warrior, where we uncover the journeys of entrepreneurs and practitioners moving from finite games of achievement to infinite games of purpose. In this episode, Kathryn Ficarra, a former corporate VP turned leadership coach and author, shares how she redefined success by aligning her life with purpose. If you’re feeling stuck in a cycle of unfulfilling wins, this conversation will inspire you to awaken to your higher potential. Stay tuned—this one’s for anyone seeking transformation, clarity, and a deeper connection to their authentic self.
Time Stamps[00:00:00-00:02:00] Transition from Corporate to Purpose-Driven Work
Catherine discusses her successful corporate life and the internal misalignment that led her to leave it all behind.
[00:07:00-00:10:00] The Awakening Journey
How Catherine navigated five years of deep personal growth, exploring spiritual teachings and transformational retreats.
[00:16:00-00:18:00] The Role of Loneliness in Growth
Catherine reflects on the isolation of her journey and how she built a support system through retreats and coaching.
[00:28:00-00:30:00] Executive Presence as an Inside Job
Catherine’s unique framework for developing executive presence by addressing belief systems and personal growth.
[00:50:00-00:55:00] Harnessing Triggers for Transformation
The innovative use of affirmations to surface and resolve subconscious resistance.
Go to the full action guide, go to https://noblewarrior.com/190
Feeling stuck despite your success? Join us as we dive deep with Myles Katz, co-founder of the pioneering Synthesis Institute, who transformed his life from unfulfilled achievement to mastering infinite flow. Discover how to reignite your passion, realign your purpose, and unlock a life of effortless flow and authentic connection. Don't miss this eye-opening conversation that could change the trajectory of your life—watch till the end!
Time Stamps
[00:00:43] From Success to Existential Crisis
Myles shares how, despite achieving his dream of running a successful social enterprise in Kenya, he felt a deep existential depression.
[00:04:10] Understanding the Hollow Milestones
A discussion on why traditional markers of success can feel meaningless and the importance of finding deeper purpose.
[00:06:45] The Awakening: Discovering a New Path
Myles describes his transformative experience that shifted his perspective and ignited a new passion.
[00:15:05] Navigating Challenges and Embracing Change
Myles candidly discusses the rise and fall of the Synthesis Institute and the lessons learned.
[00:33:57] Founding Confluence Retreats: Aligning with Purpose
How Myles applied his lessons to create a sustainable, impactful venture that aligns with his deepest values.
[00:51:35] Integrating Authentic Connections and Wisdom
The importance of involving indigenous communities and respecting ancient wisdom in modern practices.
For the action guide, go to https://noblewarrior.com/189
Discover the wisdom of Terry Tillman, a transformational elder with decades of experience guiding people to live beyond the limits of traditional goal-setting. In this conversation, Terry shares profound insights into playing the "long game" of life—where transformation becomes a lifelong practice, not just a fleeting milestone. If you're seeking to cultivate a legacy of meaningful impact, embrace the power of infinite games, or understand how to align your daily actions with your deepest values, this podcast is for you. Dive in to learn how to integrate timeless principles into your journey of growth, fulfillment, and contribution. Don’t just set goals—set the course for a life that resonates far beyond your own.
Time Stamps:
[00:00:53] Terry's Journey from Workaholic to Joyful Living
- Terry describes his transformation from a fast-paced, achievement-driven lifestyle to a purpose-driven one focused on joy and service. A relatable struggle for high-achieving professionals seeking fulfillment.
[00:03:39] Mystical Experiences in LifeSpring Training
- Terry shares how unexpected mystical experiences, like reading minds and finding missing people, reshaped his worldview and led him to close six businesses. This captivating story highlights the power of transformational experiences.
[00:07:00] Answering the Call Despite Resistance
- Terry discusses the internal and external resistance he faced while pursuing his calling, resonating with those navigating significant life changes and seeking courage to follow their intuition.
[00:10:32] Faith in the Unknown
- Insights into how faith plays a crucial role in navigating major life transitions, helping individuals trust their path even when evidence isn’t clear.
[00:16:57] Terry’s Unconventional Interview with LifeSpring’s President
- A shocking and memorable story of how Terry’s life-changing job opportunity unfolded in the most unexpected and intuitive way.
[00:22:16] "Look Inside You" to Find Answers
- Terry explains the profound lesson of finding answers by looking inward rather than outward, a transformative perspective for personal growth seekers.
[00:27:38] Childhood Curiosity and Suppressed Mysticism
- Terry recounts how his early mystical inclinations were suppressed, paralleling the journey many clients might experience in rediscovering their authentic selves.
[00:30:05] Teaching Kids the Alpha State
- Terry outlines the importance of teaching kids techniques for optimal learning and karma awareness, offering unique perspectives on cultivating personal growth early in life.
[00:33:55] Healing from Paralysis
- An inspiring account of how Terry defied medical predictions to heal from paralysis, showcasing the power of mindset and unconventional approaches to healing.
[00:45:00] Redefining Success
- A critical discussion on how society's external measures of success often fail to provide fulfillment, encouraging clients to define success on their own terms.
[00:50:21] Detachment as Freedom
- Terry shares how losing his wealth taught him detachment and brought him true freedom, a valuable lesson for anyone chasing material success.
[01:01:23] The Ultimate Path: Spiritual Growth
- Terry emphasizes that all personal growth journeys lead to spiritual exploration, offering a guiding principle for those feeling stuck or incomplete.
[01:14:54] Trusting the Process
- A profound conversation on faith and trust as the foundation for navigating life’s uncertainties and challenges.
[01:17:29] Choosing Joy Repeatedly
- Terry explains how he consciously chooses happiness and joy, reinforcing the power of deliberate mindset shifts for sustained well-being.
[01:21:51] Sympathetic Vibration: The Energy of Thoughts
- A powerful metaphor about how energy and thoughts shape our reality, inspiring clients to consider how their mental patterns impact their lives.
For the full action guide, go to https://noblewarrior.com/188
Discover how low-dose psychedelics, combined with mindful practices like breathwork and mantra, can unlock profound insights and elevate your performance both personally and professionally. Dr. Bruce Damer shares his transformative journey from healing personal trauma to making groundbreaking scientific discoveries. If you're a coach, entrepreneur, or anyone eager to amplify your creativity and impact, this conversation is a must-listen. Tune in to learn how to catalyze innovation for humanity’s greatest challenges.
Time Stamps:
[00:01:16] – Healing Through Ayahuasca: Dr. Damer recounts how ayahuasca helped him overcome childhood trauma and dissociation, leading to personal transformation.
[00:13:00] – The "Note-Taker Mind": Introduction to Bruce's technique of observing and recording insights during psychedelic experiences without immediate analysis.
[00:19:45] – Low-Dose Psychedelic Approach: Discussion on why low-dose psychedelics enable high-resolution intake of experiences while maintaining the ability to recall and integrate insights.
[00:25:11] – Balancing Intention and Openness: How to set clear intentions for psychedelic journeys while remaining open to unexpected insights that emerge.
[00:37:45] – Psychedelics and Innovation: Exploration of how psychedelics can be catalysts for innovation and creative problem-solving in professional contexts.
[00:45:22] – The Fourth Wave of Psychedelic Research: Introducing a new paradigm focused on using psychedelics for intellectual and creative breakthroughs.
[01:03:00] – Morning Practices for Flow States: Bruce shares his daily routine combining breathwork and mantra to quiet the mind and enhance creativity.
[01:10:53] – Real-World Applications: A compelling story of an entrepreneur who, through psychedelic experiences, found innovative solutions to combat deforestation.
[01:24:21] – Microdosing and Embodiment: Insights into how microdosing psychedelics and incorporating somatic practices can enhance personal and professional development.
[01:14:40] – Preparing the Mind for Breakthroughs: The importance of healing personal wounds to unlock higher levels of creativity and innovation.
For the action guide, go to https://noblewarrior.com/187
Imagine harnessing the power of sound, dreams, and cutting-edge tools like AI to deepen your creativity, master your mindset, and connect with a higher consciousness.
David Sonnenschein, founder of IQsonics and a pioneer in integrating neuroscience, music, and spiritual practices, has spent decades exploring the profound connection between the mind, body, and spirit.
From brainwave studies on ayahuasca participants to developing transformative sound therapies, David combines deep scientific expertise with groundbreaking techniques to help you access the wisdom already within you.
For full show notes, go to https://www.noblewarrior.com/186
[3:00] The Power of Intentionality
- David explains the importance of setting clear intentions for plant medicine, creativity, and spiritual practices, drawing parallels to the effectiveness of coaching.
[10:15] Brainwaves and Consciousness
- Insights from David’s studies on ayahuasca participants, showing the similarities between altered states, meditation, and peak performance.
[20:45] Dreams as Tools for Transformation
- David shares his 50-year practice of dream journaling and how it’s a practical tool for creativity, problem-solving, and self-awareness.
[35:30] Tapping Into Non-Local Information
- A fascinating look at accessing insights beyond ordinary awareness through breathwork, silence, and intention.
[48:15] AI as a Spiritual Amplifier
- David discusses how tools like ChatGPT can enhance creativity, articulate subconscious thoughts, and visualize complex ideas.
[1:00:00] Sound as a Fifth-Dimensional Tool
- David introduces the concept of the "Sound Torus," using sound to access non-local consciousness and expand personal potential.
[1:12:45] Nurturing Ideas Like Seeds
- David’s poetic analogy about nurturing ideas resonates with creative and coaching practices, emphasizing care and patience.
[1:20:00] Collective Wisdom Through Community
- David explains the communal dreamwork process, which reflects shared human issues and facilitates collective healing.
Join us for an engaging and insightful episode of the Noble Warrior Podcast, where we dive deep into the world of direct response marketing with Eddy Pham, an innovator with three decades of experience. Hosted by CK Lin, this episode is a must-watch for successful overachievers seeking more fulfillment in their personal and professional lives.
Eddy Pham has been involved in hundreds of successful product launches, including household names like the Snuggie and the George Foreman Grill. In this episode, Eddy shares his unfiltered insights, revealing how he navigates the complexities of product development, speed to market, and the evolving landscape of direct response marketing.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
- The secrets behind Eddy's direct approach and how it garners respect and efficiency in the industry.
- How speed to market and data-driven decisions can make or break a product launch.
- The balance between product simplicity, defensibility, and market demand.
- How to leverage AI and new technologies to enhance marketing strategies.
- The importance of personal connection and affinity in product development.
- Ethical considerations in direct response marketing and its impact on consumerism.
- Eddy's current projects aimed at democratizing access to financial and medical services, including upswingpay.com and http://QmpleteRx.com
Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to infuse deeper purpose into your ventures, an investor aiming for impactful returns, or someone interested in the intersection of business and human consciousness, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice.
Tune in to discover how Eddy Pham blends business acumen with a heart-centered approach, creating meaningful impact and fulfillment in the process. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a master in the field!
Time Stamps:
Eddy's Direct Approach [00:01:00] - Eddy explains his no-filter communication style and how it saves time and garners respect in the industry.
Challenges in Direct Response Marketing [00:02:19] - Discussion on misconceptions about the simplicity and defensibility of successful direct response products.
Speed to Market [00:03:00] - Eddy emphasizes the importance of speed to market and adapting old technologies to new markets.
Industry Insight [00:05:22] - Eddy shares insights on the evolution of the direct response industry and the significance of data-driven decisions.
Infomercial History and Evolution [00:09:56] - CK and Eddy discuss the history of infomercials and their application in different product categories, including educational info products.
Key to Product Success [00:12:00] - Eddy explains the balance between product simplicity, defensibility, and market demand.
Mental Mastery Product Ideas [00:15:08] - Eddy provides ideas on how CK can create a mental health product using an app model with affirmations and binaural beats.
Subscription vs. One-Time Payment Models [00:17:17] - Discussion on why a one-time payment model might be more effective initially for building brand equity.
Personal Affinity in Product Development [00:24:03] - Eddy talks about the importance of personal connection and affinity when evaluating and developing products.
Criteria for Evaluating Ideas [00:25:32] - Eddy outlines his criteria for assessing product ideas, including personal interest, market need, and money-making potential.
Ethics and Consumerism [00:31:00] - CK and Eddy delve into the moral implications of direct response marketing and consumerism.
Balancing Spirituality and Business [00:28:20] - Eddy shares his views on balancing spiritual beliefs with business practices.
Future of Direct Response Marketing [00:53:03] - Eddy discusses the exciting possibilities of AI and other technologies in the future of direct response marketing.
Current Projects [01:09:33] - Eddy shares details about his current projects, including upswingpay.com and CompleteRx.com, aimed at democratizing access to financial and medical services.
Go to https://www.noblewarrior.com/185 for the show notes
Tune into this episode of the Noble Warrior Podcast as we explore the insights of Gordy Bal, a visionary leader and author of 'The New Millionaire’s Playbook.' Gordy, founder of CTR.com, discusses how merging business, finance, and human consciousness can create a sustainable and thriving world.
Learn how his expertise in digital marketing and Conscious Capital aids entrepreneurs and investors alike.
With a background in Psychology and neuroscience, Gordy reveals how integrating technology, spirituality, and business can transform our approach to success.
Highlights:
Early Success [00:02:29-00:04:39]: Gordie shares his early entrepreneurial ventures in high school using SEO and affiliate marketing, realizing the potential to make significant money online.
Cognitive Dissonance [00:04:52-00:07:30]: The 9/11 events led Gordie to question the narratives fed by the media, sparking his journey to understand global structures like government and war, and how these insights led to personal cognitive dissonance about his entrepreneurial activities.
Deeper Questions and Internal Conflict [00:07:30-00:10:35]: Gordie reflects on the deeper existential questions that arose when he realized the disconnect between his successful entrepreneur persona and his personal fulfillment.
Shift from External to Internal [00:10:35-00:13:00]: Transitioning from focusing on external success, Gordie began exploring internal aspects such as purpose, the nature of reality, and consciousness.
Importance of Consciousness [00:13:00-00:16:00]: Gordie emphasizes the importance of raising consciousness to affect global change and the collective human experience.
Connection to Nature [00:17:00-00:17:30]: He stresses the necessity of reconnecting with nature to address global issues effectively.
Engagement in the 'Matrix' [00:17:30-00:20:00]: Gordie uses the metaphor of the 'Matrix' to describe engaging knowingly in systems one understands, rather than being unconsciously driven by them.
Understanding and Interacting with the Matrix [00:28:10-00:30:00]: Gordie discusses how to observe and interact with societal systems critically and consciously, using the metaphor of re-engaging with professional sports as an example.
Manifestation and Science [00:20:00-00:22:35]: He explores the intersection of esoteric concepts like manifestation with scientific understanding, emphasizing a multidimensional approach to truth.
Venture Capital and Consciousness [00:41:00-00:45:00]: Gordie talks about his venture capital initiatives aimed at investing in companies that enhance human consciousness, like the Aura Ring.
Web 3.0 and Decentralization [00:45:00-00:49:00]: He expresses enthusiasm for Web 3.0 technologies and their potential to decentralize power and influence, offering a new model for societal structures.
Health Data and Financial Success [00:45:00-00:47:00]: Gordie shares his excitement about the convergence of health data and financial technologies that can prove "health is wealth," encouraging a new investment thesis.
Practical Advice on Consistency [00:50:00-00:52:00]: He offers practical advice on how to remain consistent with personal practices and not chase after too many new shiny objects.
Personal Transformation through Yoga [00:52:00-00:53:00]: Gordie shares a personal anecdote about how a 30-day yoga challenge significantly impacted his emotional health and general well-being.
For full show notes, go to https://www.noblewarrior.com/184
Welcome to Noble Warrior, where high achievers learn to find fulfillment. Join us as Ninawa Pai da Mata, leader of the Huni Kuin tribe and the Father of the Forest, shares transformative insights on joy and fulfillment.
Dive deep into the wisdom of the Huni Kuin to uncover the secrets to a joy-filled and purpose-driven life. Don't miss this enlightening episode packed with actionable advice on achieving inner peace and true satisfaction.
We talked about:
Origin of "Sol Alegria" [00:01:00-00:02:33]
Significance of Joy [00:02:33-00:04:25]
Advice on Cultivating Joy [00:05:44-00:07:49]
Cultural Shock [00:08:00-00:10:51]
Experience with Ayahuasca [00:12:15-00:14:18]
Spiritual Communication [00:14:49-00:18:57]
Insights on Illusion and Truth [00:19:00-00:26:37]
Maintaining Spiritual Cleanliness [00:26:45-00:32:23]
Educational and Spiritual Diets [00:33:00-00:38:09]
Perspectives on Death and Spirituality [00:39:00-00:44:18]
Global Impact of Huni Kuin Culture [00:44:52-00:51:14]
Addressing Misuse of Medicinal Practices [00:51:46-00:57:29]
For the full show notes, go to https://www.noblewarrior.com/183
Are you a successful entrepreneur or professional seeking deeper fulfillment and purpose in life? Join us in this riveting episode of Noble Warrior, where host CK Lin sits down with Andy Russell, a pioneering tech entrepreneur who has redefined his life’s mission from digital innovation to mental health advocacy and sound therapy.
Andy Russell, an internet advertising mogul, has incubated and invested in over 50 groundbreaking technology companies. In this deeply personal and insightful interview, Andy reveals his transformative journey from leveraging data and AI to influence global politics, to realizing the darker impacts of his work, and ultimately, dedicating his life to reducing human suffering through democratized access to sound medicine.
Detailed Highlights1. Introduction and Purpose * Timestamp: [00:01:34] Andy discusses his journey to finding purpose, particularly after realizing the impact of his work in digital technology on society. 1. Digital Technology and Suffering * Timestamp: [00:05:00] Andy talks about the evolution of digital technology and how it has led to both advancements and increased suffering, particularly in mental health. 1. Creating Digital Scream * Timestamp: [00:08:00] Andy explains how he developed methods to capture people's digital engagement to understand their fears and anxieties, which were then used in targeted political campaigns. 1. Political Campaigns and Digital Media * Timestamp: [00:17:58] Andy elaborates on how the algorithms he helped develop were used to influence political campaigns and the ethical dilemmas that arose from this. 1. AI and Future Risks * Timestamp: [00:28:00] Andy discusses the potential dangers of AI, especially in manipulating public opinion and behavior, highlighting the need for ethical considerations in AI development. 1. Personal Realization and Shift * Timestamp: [00:34:00] Andy talks about his personal realization of the harm caused by his work and his decision to shift towards using technology for healing and positive impact. 1. Sound Healing and Frequency * Timestamp: [00:40:00] Andy introduces the concept of sound healing, its benefits, and his efforts to digitize and democratize access to sound medicine through the Five Senses app. 1. Building the Five Senses App * Timestamp: [00:46:00] Andy describes the technical challenges and innovations involved in creating a high-fidelity digital sound healing experience, including spatial audio and biofeedback integration. 1. AI in Sound Healing * Timestamp: [00:55:00] Andy discusses the potential of AI to personalize sound healing experiences based on individual biofeedback data, optimizing for mental health and well-being. 1. Task Force Humanity and Community Building * Timestamp: [01:28:00] Andy shares the story of forming Task Force Humanity, a global community of high-achieving individuals (referred to as Jedi) collaborating to solve global problems during and after COVID-19. 1. Importance of Trust in Communities * Timestamp: [01:43:00] Andy emphasizes the critical importance of trust within the community, detailing how trust and reputation are maintained and valued among members. 1. Personal Health and Well-being * Timestamp: [01:53:00] Andy opens up about the toll his work took on his health and personal relationships, sharing lessons learned about the importance of self-care and maintaining balance. 1. Forgiveness and Moving Forward * Timestamp: [02:01:00] Andy talks about the power of forgiveness, both towards oneself and others, and its necessity for healing and progressing in today's polarized world. 1. Concluding Thoughts * Timestamp: [02:04:00] Andy offers final reflections on the importance of compassion, love, and community in overcoming the challenges faced by society today.
For more information and to listen to the episode, visit Noble Warrior Episode 182.
Are you a high achiever who feels unfulfilled despite your success? Join us on the Noble Warrior podcast as we delve deep into the journey of Ryan Allis, the former CEO of iContact, which sold for $196 million, and the visionary behind Hive and Magic Year.
In this episode, CK Lin interviews Ryan about his incredible transition from a successful tech entrepreneur to a global leader in personal transformation.
Discover how Ryan overcame personal struggles, including burnout and anxiety, to create a life filled with joy, purpose, and meaning. Learn actionable strategies on finding your true purpose, cultivating self-compassion, and breaking free from the cycle of achievement without fulfillment. Ryan shares his insights on leveraging biohacking, spiritual practices, and community building to achieve holistic well-being.
If you are a successful professional seeking deeper fulfillment and a more meaningful life, this episode is a must-listen.
Highlights
[00:01:39] - [00:02:47] The Inspiration Behind Ryan's Book: Ryan Allis discusses the inspiration behind his 500-page book, which is a compilation of 12 years of notes, tools, frameworks, and personal stories aimed at helping people create lives they love. This book serves as a guide to living that he wishes he had at 25.
[00:02:47] - [00:04:47] From Tech Success to Personal Transformation: Ryan shares his journey from being a tech entrepreneur to focusing on personal transformation, driven by the passing of his mother in 2012. This marked the beginning of a 12-year adventure to upgrade his own health, happiness, and purpose-driven life.
[00:09:00] - [00:10:00] Vulnerability and Sharing Personal Struggles: CK Lin commends Ryan for his vulnerability in sharing personal struggles in his book, including conscious drug addiction and the use of plant medicines. Ryan explains the importance of sharing personal stories to help others and how his wife Morgan’s influence has been pivotal in this process.
[00:14:00] - [00:16:00] Anxiety and Alternative Healing Methods: Ryan talks about his journey of dealing with anxiety through various methods, including plant medicines, and how he eventually found healthier alternatives like cold plunging, lifting weights, and sun exposure to reset his dopamine levels and alleviate anxiety.
[00:26:00] - [00:28:00] The Formula of Success: Ryan introduces his formula for success: Vision + Belief + Action + Consistency = Results. He emphasizes the importance of holding a clear vision, having a deep belief in its purpose, taking massive action consistently, and being open to divine guidance.
[00:33:00] - [00:35:00] Setting and Achieving Big Goals: Ryan explains his method for setting ambitious long-term goals and staying committed to them while being open to divine inspiration. He talks about the significance of his wristbands, which remind him of his major goals, such as selling a million books and building a global living community.
[00:46:00] - [00:49:00] Overcoming Doubts and Insecurities: Ryan shares tactical advice on how to overcome self-doubt and insecurity by taking consistent action towards a long-term vision, even if it takes 10 years. He stresses the importance of being committed to a vision and taking daily steps toward it.
[00:55:00] - [00:57:00] Daily Discipline and Routine: Ryan details his daily routine, which includes gym workouts, cold plunging, and focused work periods. He emphasizes the importance of having a structured routine to maintain productivity and mental well-being, highlighting how this has transformed his life.
[01:03:00] - [01:05:00] The Simplicity of Life and Financial Freedom: Ryan reflects on the value of living a simpler life and prioritizing time control over accumulating wealth. He shares his personal experience of reducing expenses and finding joy in simpler, more meaningful activities.
[01:16:00] - [01:18:00] The Importance of Travel and Exploration: Ryan encourages listeners to travel and explore the world to broaden their perspectives and find new inspiration. He discusses how traveling and experiencing different cultures can lead to personal growth and a deeper understanding of oneself.
[01:19:00] - [01:19:50] Invitation to Join the Magic Year Program: Ryan invites listeners to join his 12-month Magic Year program, designed for ambitious individuals looking to transform their lives in multiple areas, including health, wealth, relationships, and personal growth. He emphasizes the program's affordability and the value it offers.
For more information, visit https://www.noblewarrior.com/181
🚀 In today's episode, we have a very special guest, Peggy Liu, the chairperson of JUICE, an NGO pivotal in China's Green Revolution since 2007. Peggy is not only an environmental champion, recognized by Time Magazine as a Hero of the Environment and a winner of the prestigious Hillary's Step Award, but she is also a powerful energetic healer and the founder of Tornado Leadership.
🌟 If you are a successful entrepreneur or executive seeking deeper spiritual and emotional healing, this episode is for you. Peggy shares her journey from leading China's sustainability efforts to mastering energetic healing. Discover how she integrates spiritual practices with high-level business strategies to achieve holistic success.
💫 Tune in to learn about:
- The principles of Tornado Leadership and how it can transform your life and business.
- Practical steps for achieving energetic healing and alignment with your higher self.
- Insights into creating a life of your dreams by balancing the spiritual and material worlds.
- Peggy’s personal techniques for enhancing perceptivity, sensitivity, and emotional resilience.
Time Stamps
[00:01:09] - Creating the Life of Your Dreams: Peggy discusses the importance of imagining and feeling into the life you want as if it’s already there.
[00:02:00] - Peggy’s Framework: Tornado Leadership: Peggy introduces her methodology for creating future realities, called Tornado Leadership.
[00:05:00] - Creating from the Future: Peggy emphasizes storytelling and imagination in creating compelling realities.
[00:10:00] - Grasping and Suffering: Peggy explains the importance of knowing that all realities already exist and shifting into them without feeling lack.
[00:13:00] - Time and Reality: Peggy explains her concept of time as an infinite deck of moments and how changing your perspective can rewrite your past.
[00:23:00] - Sensitivity and Energy Practices: Peggy talks about practicing Qigong to build sensitivity to energy and the importance of posture in feeling energy.
[00:32:00] - Plant Medicine and Enhancing Sensitivity: Peggy emphasizes that everyone can feel energy and talks about the process of building up energy sensitivity.
[00:50:00] - Leadership and Collaboration: Peggy’s insights on leadership, using energy to enhance collaboration, and building resonance within teams.
[01:02:00] - Reality and Emotional Response: Emphasizes the importance of managing your emotional responses to create a better reality.
[01:10:00] - Asking for Alignment: Peggy shares a simple exercise of asking if every aspect of life is aligned with your highest self.
[01:23:00] - Working with the Energies of Places and Communities: Discusses her experiences working in China and Hawaii, and how she adapts her strategies accordingly.
[01:32:00] - Creating Conscious Communities: Talks about the role of energetic frequency and vision in establishing these communities.
[01:46:00] - Cultural Sensitivity and Social Change: Emphasizes the need for community-led resilience hubs and decentralized approaches.
[01:50:00] - Media and Narrative: Discusses the differences in media narratives in the US and China and their impact on public perception.
[02:00:00] - Closing Thoughts: Peggy encourages listeners to explore their energy, build resilience, and remember who they truly are.
🔍 Keywords: Energetic healing, Tornado Leadership, Peggy Liu, JUICE NGO, spiritual awakening, business success, emotional healing, environmental leadership, holistic success.
👉 For more information, visit: noblewarrior.com/180
Discover the transformative power of emotional and spiritual healing in this insightful episode of the Noble Warrior Podcast. Join C.K. Lin as he interviews Nichol Bradford, a tech investor, and co-founder of Transformative Tech, who shares her profound journey from loneliness to connection, and her mission to leverage technology for human flourishing. Learn how Nichol's unique insights can help you master your mind and body, enhance your leadership skills, and achieve a deeper sense of purpose and joy.
Key Topics Covered:
- The intersection of technology and human connection
- Overcoming loneliness and finding deeper connections
- Practical steps to integrate emotional awareness in your leadership
- The future of tech in enhancing psychological health
- How to use prudence over fear in navigating new technological landscapes
For deeper show notes, go to https://www.noblewarrior.com/179
John Gray is back for the 2nd time. He is the acclaimed author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Beyond Mars and Venus. With decades of wisdom and nine years of experience as a celibate monk under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, John Gray brings profound insights into spiritual development. He shares invaluable lessons on balancing masculine and feminine energies, achieving true spiritual growth, and nurturing deeper, more fulfilling relationships.
In this episode, you'll learn about practical spirituality, the importance of meditation, emotional healing techniques, and secrets to maintaining passionate, connected relationships. Whether you're a high-achiever feeling unfulfilled or simply looking to deepen your spiritual journey, this conversation with John Gray will provide you with the insights and tools you need.
Tune in now to discover how to align with your true self and achieve a harmonious balance in your personal and professional life. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to transform their life from the inside out.
Go to https://www.noblewarrior.com/178 for detailed show notes
Noble Warrior is where we explore the depths of consciousness and the transformative power of plant medicine. Today, we're diving into the profound world of Ayahuasca with a guide and visionary, Tony Moss. With over 30 years of experience as a ceremonial leader, musician, and spiritual mentor, Tony brings a wealth of wisdom and insight to our conversation.
Don't miss this episode with hilarious and thought-provoking comedian Neil Brennan. He tells all in this no-holds-barred conversation about his psychedelic journey, ego death, finding gratitude, and the dark side of spirituality. (Bonus: You'll laugh along the way!)
Meet Kfir Levy, the co-founder of Habitas Hotel Group. Kfir shares his belief in prioritizing happiness and why it is an important value to instill in not just his children, but people all over the world. He emphasizes that happiness is internal and a choice, and wishes he had learned these lessons at a younger age. Kafir's goal is to empower his children to understand the value and meaning of happiness, and he believes it would have made life even more enjoyable for him.
If you're seeking inspiration, if you're curious about reshaping your own path, or if you simply believe in the power of impact-driven businesses, this episode is a must-listen.
Link: https://ourhabitas.com/
Time Stamps
[00:01:02] The meaning of happiness.
[00:04:02] Happiness and Achievement.
[00:08:13] Pursuing happiness effortlessly.
[00:11:13] Taking Responsibility and Empowerment.
[00:14:18] Fulfillment and happiness.
[00:18:00] Pursuing personal happiness and purpose.
[00:21:13] The importance of happiness.
[00:26:36] Profound experience at Burning Man.
[00:29:13] Dancing and kissing at Burning Man.
[00:33:43] Effortless effort.
[00:36:39] Effortlessness and achieving mastery.
[00:41:31] Happy and successful individuals.
[00:44:41] Context and acknowledging privilege.
[00:48:06] Happiness and choice.
[00:52:23] Passion vs obsession
[00:55:14] Passion vs. obsession
[00:59:29] Relationships in the hospitality industry.
[01:03:00] Keeping a small network.
[01:07:49] Fuel for personal growth.
[01:10:23] Finite number of real relationships.
[01:13:43] Maintaining relationships without a target.
[01:16:56] Experience is luxury.
[01:22:50] Commitment to showing up.
[01:23:57] Trust in the experience.
[01:28:18] Hiring for values and purpose.
[01:32:59] Emotional salary and motivation.
[01:37:07] Putting emphasis on onboarding.
[01:39:05] Maintaining culture at scale.
[01:44:29] Taking it around the world.
[01:50:09] A life changed by opportunity.
[01:52:25] Creating jobs, changing lives.
[01:56:33] Building transformational spaces.
[01:58:39] Context behind creating a business.
[02:02:19] Sustainable and regenerative practices.
[02:07:23] Empathy for our planet.
[02:09:03] Emotional empathy and business frameworks.
In this episode of Noble Warrior, CK Lin interviews Brian Johnson, the founder and CEO of the Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. Brian has dedicated his life to synthesizing ancient wisdom and modern science to help people become the heroes of their lives. They discuss how Brian stays focused and avoids getting distracted by shiny objects and the latest trends. They also explore the idea that there are no perfect human beings and how we can embrace our imperfections. If you're interested in learning more, check out Brian's new book, Arite, Activate Your Heroic Potential.
Time Stamps
[00:03:06] Soul force formula.
[00:04:26] Activating soul force.
[00:08:01] Slowing down to prioritize.
[00:11:03] Death at the crossroads.
[00:15:01] Choosing the right mentor
[00:20:02] Anti-fragile confidence.
[00:22:02] Connecting through Toastmasters.
[00:25:24] Shame and self-improvement.
[00:30:05] Installing and deleting behaviors.
[00:33:03] Meeting through a website.
[00:37:42] How do you kill an idea quickly?
[00:40:00] Action drives creativity.
[00:45:16] Prioritizing sleep for optimal performance.
[00:48:20] Energy rituals and nutrition.
[00:52:30] Breathwork and anxiety relief.
[00:56:05] Searchability of ideas.
[01:01:56] Impactful stories of transformation.
[01:03:27] Connecting with the next generation.
[01:07:09] Trusting the process.
Links
https://www.heroic.us/book
Welcome to a transformative episode where we explore the power of deep listening and meaningful conversations.
Join Martin Devon, an entrepreneurial force dedicated to improving health outcomes through insightful data usage.
Discover the secrets of deep listening, uncover the source of your power, and break free from generational programming.
Explore the nature of profound conversations, understand the allure of podcasts, and dive into the world of personal transformation.
Get ready for an enlightening discussion that will expand your understanding of conversation's potential for growth.
We talked about:
- (0:39) The Superpower of Listening
- (3:22) Unlocking Deep Listening's Secret
- (14:07) Finding Transformational Courses
- (15:09) Uncovering Your Power Source
- (19:29) Moving Beyond the Past
- (25:00) Breaking Free from Generational Programming
- (31:56) Conversation as Value Exchange
- (38:26) The Nature of Deep Conversations
- (41:28) The Allure of Podcasts
- (47:36) Embracing the Spirit of Podcasting
- (52:58) Power of Long-Form Podcasts
- (67:43) Navigating Distinctions
- (75:16) Giving Useful Advice
- (79:24) Risk, Aliveness, and Correlation
- (92:37) The Internet as a Synchronicity Machine
- (104:41) Conversation as the Third Entity
- (117:38) Martin's Key Message
Ready to dive deep into the power of conversations? Join us for the video podcast, access the full show notes, and explore additional resources at
-> https://www.noblewarrior.com/173.
Unleash the transformative potential of meaningful dialogue today.
Get ready to be captivated by the mesmerizing storytelling prowess of Max Stossel, an award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker whose talents have earned him recognition as one of the best storytellers by Forbes. With his incredible one-man show, "Words That Move," consistently selling out theaters in New York City and captivating audiences around the world, Max's performances are nothing short of awe-inspiring. Prepare to embark on a mind-expanding journey as we dive into profound and hilarious narratives that have transcended cultural boundaries, with his work translated into fourteen languages and amassing over 20 million online views.
We talked about:
- (1:29) Discover the role of poets in modern society today
- (5:49) Unravel the concept of "simple complexity"
- (9:00) Learn how words can be used to evoke specific emotions
- (12:15) Explore Max's creative process
- (15:08) Compare Max's creative process with stand-up comedians
- (20:01) Witness the transformation of Max's character through poetry
- (26:38) Cultivate resilience while revealing personal truths
- (28:51) Navigate negative emotions during the creative process
- (32:13) Uncover CK's use of social media in his creative process
- (33:25) Understand why Max avoids using social media to test his material
- (37:08) Embrace the focus on "truth" over "value"
- (39:00) Experience Max's captivating poem on worth
- (44:56) Learn Max's method for remembering all his pieces
- (47:04) Discover how Max captures inspiration through note-taking
- (52:04) Gain insights into Jason Silva's creative process
- (55:00) Explore Max's ritual before starting the creative process
- (55:47) Uncover the correlation between self-love and creative ability
- (56:19) Cultivate devotion to creativity with Max's wisdom
- (58:54) Discover the singular question Max uses to follow intuition
- (63:17) Explore Max's perspective on psychedelics and their role in his life
- (67:27) Reflect on Max's relationship with the word "mastery"
- (70:43) Understand the impact of the social awakening movement on students and social media
- (73:18) Learn effective techniques for changing people's minds
- (81:04) Gain Max's insights on AI tools like ChatGPT and their impact on creative work
- (95:23) Embrace Max's heartfelt recommendation for your devotion to love.
For the full show notes, go to https://noblewarrior.com/172
Join me in my upcoming episode with Tom Chi, a visionary leader who has made significant contributions to the technology industry. Tom's involvement in successful projects like Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Search, and Google has been pivotal. His expertise in rapid prototyping and innovative thinking has revolutionized product development and propelled these companies to new heights. As the former head of product experience at Google X, Tom has been at the forefront of groundbreaking technologies such as Google Glass and self-driving cars. Currently, he is focused on deploying venture capital to catalyze a world where humanity has a positive impact on nature. Don't miss this enlightening conversation as we delve into topics like impact entrepreneurship, the pursuit of a career as a craft, and the danger of AI.
We talked about:
- (1:33) Life-Altering Near-Death Experience: Tom shares profound lessons learned.
- (3:23) Signs of Burnout: Discover the crucial symptoms to watch out for.
- (12:34) Spirituality for Secular Individuals: Tom's perspective on spiritual practices.
- (15:03) Measuring Effectiveness: Learn how to collect data for spiritual practices' impact.
- (19:10) Insights into Dying: Tom discusses physical sensations at the moment of death.
- (20:02) The Deep Connection: Exploring the rationalist's view of universal interconnectedness.
- (33:36) Overcoming Despair: Discover empowering actions to take during moments of despair.
- (35:55) Unveiling Dissatisfaction: Tom reveals the sources of discontentment.
- (36:39) Triumphs vs. Societal Expectations: Examining the impact of societal pressures.
- (38:07) Transforming Dissatisfaction: A step-by-step guide to changing your discontentment.
- (41:16) Cultivating Happiness: Strategies for building the skills of happiness.
- (47:39) Intrinsic vs. Mimetic Desires: Gaining insights into distinguishing between desires.
- (50:27) The Practice of Enlightenment: Explore the notion of enlightenment as an ongoing practice.
- (53:14) Embracing Quality Moments: Discover the importance of cherishing each moment.
- (54:09) A Life of Craft: Tom's goal of pursuing a life dedicated to craftsmanship.
- (57:37) Balancing Reach and Groundedness: A mountain climber metaphor for finding balance.
- (60:00) Returning to Flow: Techniques for getting back in the flow of practicing your craft.
- (75:25) Entrepreneurship as Transformation: Uncover the transformative power of entrepreneurship.
- (78:17) Common Mistake Entrepreneurs Make: Learn the number one mistake when starting a venture.
- (79:33) The 10-Second MBA: Key insights for aspiring entrepreneurs in just 10 seconds.
- (86:52) Humanity's Problem with Nature: Tom reveals the main issue between humanity and nature.
- (88:17) Investing in Solutions: Discover how Tom breaks down problems into investable industries.
- (89:01) Aton Ventures' Investment Thesis: Insights into the triad investment thesis.
- (91:42) Shifting Global Consciousness: Tom's approach to shifting consciousness on a global scale.
- (103:39) The Power of Goal-Setting: Understanding the impact of setting the right goals.
- (106:49) Unraveling Life's Purpose: Tom shares profound insights on finding purpose.
- (115:10) Tragedies vs. Triumphs: How tragedies shape individuals more than successes.
- (117:14) Urgency for Change: The importance of decisions impacting millions of years to come.
- (126:10) Investing for Nature: Tom's plea for more investors following the triad strategy.
- (131:57) Cognitive Impact of Ads: How advertisements affect our cognitive landscape.
- (136:45) Responsible AI Development: Taking back responsibility for the development of AI technologies.
- (138:10) Managing Ideas: Tom's approach to organizing and tracking multiple ideas.
- (144:06) Compost Late-Stage Capitalism: A new model of entrepreneurship for post-capitalist companies.
Click on the link for full show notes: https://noblewarrior.com/171
Today, we have the pleasure of hosting Anthony Flores, a Stanford Philosophy graduate and acclaimed copywriter.
What makes this conversation particularly thrilling is Anthony's remarkable achievement in the realm of brainwave and meditation records. He has surpassed renowned high performers like Tony Robbins and Jim Kwik, displaying brainwave patterns equivalent to those of a monk with 50,000 hours of meditation. It's no wonder he has earned the endearing title of "Gamma God."
Anthony's journey is a testament to the extraordinary potential of the human mind, even in the midst of a busy modern lifestyle.
However, his impact extends far beyond personal accomplishments. He is driven by a profound mission to create a community of conscious investors and entrepreneurs, utilizing technology and crypto investing to elevate global consciousness and drive positive change.
We talked about:
- (0:32) Unveiling the Secrets of the "Gamma God" Title
- (5:12) Exploring the Power of Neurofeedback Meditation
- (6:22) Nervous System Insights: How Neurofeedback Meditation Works
- (9:13) The Power of Sustained Higher Frequencies: Optimizing Performance and Unlocking Potential
- (13:28) The Mind-State Connection: Understanding How Our Thoughts Reflect Our State
- (15:18) Embracing Emotions: Differentiating Between Bypassing and Fully Feeling
- (19:26) Plant Medicine Insights: Shifting Content and Embracing the Felt Experience
- (22:24) Breaking Barriers: Anthony's Remarkable Brain Wave Achievement as a Householder
- (26:25) Cultivating Joy and Gratitude: The Foundation for an Elevated Baseline
- (28:02) Frequency and Opportunities: Exploring the Correlation Between Higher States and Manifestation
- (38:48) Driving the Super Car of Your Mind: Applying Higher Frequencies in Everyday Life
- (41:07) Breaking Through Boundaries: Anthony's Personal Journey to the Next Level of Brain Waves
- (45:35) Morning Rituals: Brain Wave Modulations for a Mindful Start to the Day
- (48:31) Gamma as a Manifestation Tool: Anthony's Insights and Techniques
- (58:18) Anchoring Higher Frequencies: How Anthony Sustains and Embodies the Elevated State
- (64:04) The Jedi Council Vision: Shifting Global Consciousness at Scale
- (68:39) Joyful Discipline: Thinking and Acting in Alignment with Your Highest Joy
For the full episode, go to https://noblewarrior.com/170
Welcome to the podcast! Our special guest today is Francoise Bourzat, an esteemed expert in consciousness medicine.
With a Master's degree in Somatic Psychology and years of experience, Francoise has apprenticed with shamans and healers in the US and Mexico.
Through her transformative work, including Sacred Mushrooms ceremonies with Mazatec healers, she has helped countless individuals discover the power of expanded states of consciousness.
Francoise also shares her wisdom through workshops, conferences, and her acclaimed book, "Consciousness Medicine."
Join us as we delve into the realms of consciousness and explore the transformative potential of sacred medicines with Francoise Bourzat.
We talked about:
- (00:56) Unveiling the Origin Story of "Conscious Medicine"
- (4:18) The Creative Process Behind "Conscious Medicine"
- (8:45) Why "Conscious Medicine" Resonates with People
- (13:55) Francoise's Personal Transformation in Writing the Book
- (20:04) Navigating the Path of Personal Practice and Self-Awareness
- (25:08) Choosing the Healer's Path: Francoise's Inspirations and Insights
- (28:02) Comparing MDMA, Mushrooms, and Ketamine: Francoise's Perspective
- (35:52) Francoise's Own MDMA Experience: Insights and Learnings
- (38:52) To Note or Not to Note: Perspectives on Taking Notes During Journeys
- (42:44) Indicators of a Good Journey: Francoise's Insights
- (47:20) The Transformative Spark: Francoise's Initial Inspiration for Exploring Psychedelics
- (50:34) Dispelling Misconceptions: Insights into Sacred Mushrooms
- (54:17) Discoveries After 2000 Journeys: The Importance of Sacred Mushroom Experiences
- (65:09) The Potential of Sacred Mushrooms: Individual and Societal Evolution
- (67:25) The Role of Courage in Psychedelic Explorations
- (69:52) How to Learn about the Wisdom of Sacred Mushrooms
- (75:02) Addressing Misconduct Allegations and Advancing the Field of Psychedelic Therapies
- (78:32) The Significance of Creating an Altar for Sacred Mushrooms
For the full show notes, go to https://noblewarrior.com/169
Introducing my next guest, Iskukua Biraci Yawanawa, the youngest chief of the New Hope Village, Aldeia Nova Esperança. Iskukua is not only a highly skilled singer and musician but also a renowned healer. Through his powerful healing ceremonies, he has touched the lives of over 30,000 individuals.
We talked about:
(8:07) Ayahuasca's Role in Spiritual Connection: Exploring the Power of the Plant
(16:39) Self-Care Practices: Nurturing the Body on the Spiritual Path
(19:35) Balancing Spirituality and Leadership: Insights from Iskukua Biraci Yawanawa
(24:56) Surrendering to Responsibilities: Finding Strength in Service
(28:46) Power and Stamina in Ceremony: Unveiling Iskukua's Spiritual Practice
(38:59) Beyond the Muka Diet: Insights from Yawanawa Spiritual Initiation
(44:05) Making Right Decisions: Guidance from Yawanawa Wisdom
(50:59) Cultivating Intuition: Iskukua's Approach to Harnessing Inner Guidance
(61:37) Exploring Yawanawa Wisdom and Culture: Baby Steps for Learning
(71:49) Decision-Making in the Village: Insights into Community Governance
(75:15) Conflict Resolution in the Village: Maintaining Harmony and Unity
(85:19) Chosen to Lead: Iskukua's Journey to Becoming Chief
(88:58) Servant Leadership: Iskukua's Perspective on Leadership and Service
(91:28) Embracing Change: Navigating Modern Technologies and Traditional Values
(97:08) Spiritual and Healing Journey: Iskukua's Message to Western Seekers
For the full show note, go to https://noblewarrior.com/168
Today, we're honored to host Wesly Feuquay, also known as "the guy people call when nothing else works." A Master Coach and a Trainer of Trainers, Wesly brings an unparalleled expertise in Spiritual Technology, Accelerated Evolution, and Emotional Release Systems. His extensive 15-year tenure as a faculty member of psychological science at Maricopa Colleges in Arizona allowed him to pioneer coursework in the Psychology of Consciousness and Mature Ego Development.
We talked about:
- (0:55) Therapy vs. The Rapid Rewire Method: Unveiling the Key Distinctions
- (3:40) The Role of a Coach in Mental Fitness: Why It's Critical for Leaders
- (8:22) Stages of Conscious Development: A Roadmap to Higher Self-awareness
- (12:52) The Possibility of Consciousness Regression and the Mountain Climbing Metaphor: Understanding Inner Challenges
- (35:12) Proliferation of Spiritual Technology: Why Isn't It More Widespread?
- (41:47) Tackling Low-Grade Negative Emotions: Effective Strategies for Leaders
- (43:14) The Unique Appeal of The Rapid Rewire Method: What Sets It Apart
- (47:22) Ideal Candidates: Who Benefits Most from The Rapid Rewire Method?
- (49:27) The Nature of Change: Understanding Stage Change vs. Permanent Transformation
- (53:30) The Path to Embodiment: Awakening, Growing, and Demonstrating Your Teachings
- (62:30) Visioneering and Technologies: Tools to Assist in the Process of Vision Development.
To listen to the full episode, go to: https://noblewarrior.com/167
My next guest, Vladimir Stojakovic, is a truly exceptional guest A seasoned practitioner of Spiritual Technology, he's reached the pinnacle as a "Trainer of Trainers" under Zivorad Mihajlovic Slavinski. An author of three influential books, Vladimir has delved deep into the realms of self-improvement, emotional healing, and spiritual enlightenment.
His profound knowledge has attracted the likes of Tony Robbins, and he's since worked with countless individuals worldwide, both professionals and those on their personal growth journey. His revolutionary "Satori Protocol" empowers people to experience and repeat spiritual enlightenment independently, an unprecedented advancement in spiritual development. Now based in Australia, he continues to share his wisdom through online seminars. Please join me in welcoming Vladimir Stojakovic.
We talked about:
- (2:22) Understanding Spiritual Technologies: A departure from traditional therapies
- (12:22) Spiritual Technologies vs. Psychoanalysis: The key distinctions
- (17:33) The Role of Consciousness in Spiritual Technologies: An essential perspective
- (22:37) The Ultimate Goal: Liberation through Spirituality
- (39:15) The Complementary Nature of Vipassanna and Spiritual Technologies
- (40:57) The Advantage of Inner Familiarity: Why it facilitates work with Spiritual Technologies
- (44:55) Breaking Free: Why stepping out of your comfort zone fuels spiritual progress
- (49:09) Seeking Growth: How to identify new spiritual opportunities
- (66:55) The Unconventional Benefit: How content consumption can spur spiritual development
- (70:08) The Importance of Uncovering for Spiritual Advancement
- (71:00) The Best Approach: Combining methods and the art of listening
- (76:19) Vladimir's Journey: The capabilities gained through 30,000 spiritual processes
- (84:00) The Enlightenment Experience: What happens when you reach it?
- (85:24) The Phases of Enlightenment: A comprehensive overview
- (94:13) Balancing Enlightenment and Skills of Release: Why both are essential for spiritual growth
- (95:27) Mountain Climbing Metaphor: CK's perspective on enlightenment and psychedelics
- (98:40) Choosing the Right Path: How to find the method that's best for you
- (101:59) Navigating the Dark Night of the Soul: Spiritual Technologies' approach
- (106:40) The Latest Innovations: Introducing the Integra Protocol and the Satori Protocol
- (116:14) Applying Spiritual Technologies: Innovative solutions to objective problems
- (118:14) Resolving Subjective Problems: Why don't people take action post-resolution?
Links:
https://vladimirstojakovic.com/
To listen to full episode, go
https://noblewarrior.com/166
My guest is Fred Joyal, a multi-talented author, speaker, entrepreneur, and business advisor. As the co-founder of the country's most successful dentist referral service, 1-800-DENTIST, Fred has an impressive background in marketing, standup and improv comedy, and even acting. His latest best-selling book, Superbold: from Under-confident to Charismatic in 90 days, has garnered acclaim from both Amazon and the Wall Street Journal. Join us as we explore Fred's diverse experiences - from defeating Sir Richard Branson in chess to being a question on Jeopardy - and learn valuable insights from this captivating and accomplished individual.
We talked about
- (2:36) Discover how boldness transformed Fred's life beyond wealth and success
- (5:47) Learn to build your boldness muscle for greater confidence
- (6:09) How standup comedy helped Fred develop boldness and courage
- (12:44) Turn life's minor irritations into growth opportunities
- (21:47) Use past silence as motivation to speak up today
- (25:38) Handling moments when you've said the wrong thing
- (28:28) Embrace failure as a purposeful part of practicing boldness
- (31:28) Managing self-judgment and staying focused
- (41:34) David Ogilvy's legendary mantra and its impact on Fred
- (44:43) Overcoming perfectionism: the trap for introverts and the unbold
- (46:50) The benefits of being "somewhat unprepared"
- (53:51) Fred's top technique for shaking nerves: harnessing physiology
- (56:55) The surprising truth about how often people think about you
- (64:29) Goal setting: finding the right dosage and intensity
- (68:23) Why Fred talks to wallflowers at gatherings
- (71:15) Handling encounters with admired individuals
- (72:27) The reason Fred avoids taking selfies with celebrities
- (76:26) Cultivating the belief in one's ability to figure things out
- (83:36) Embracing risk as the juice of life
- (88:40) Becoming bolder online to build your personal brand
Links
- https://geni.us/Superbold
- https://twitter.com/fredjoyal
- https://instagram.com/fredjoyal
- https://tiktok.com/fredjoyal
Full Episode (listen here!)
- https://noblewarrior.com/165
My guest today is Jack Liang. He co-founded GoldenDAO with Andrew Yang and is one of the leaders in the Stop Asian Hate movement, one of the largest anti-racism movements in the country. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jack faced discrimination and violence as a Chinese-American. However, instead of letting this adversity hold him back, Jack has used his unique background to spearhead this significant movement. As an entrepreneur, activist, and former corporate professional, Jack is the driving force behind the historic rally Stop Asian Hate, which united thousands of people in a stand against discrimination. Despite facing challenges and setbacks, Jack remains unwavering in his pursuit of justice and equality. His passion has taken him from the streets to boardrooms, and even into the digital space with the launch of GoldenDAO, the first social activism DAO. Get ready to be inspired by the unstoppable force that is Jack Liang.
We talked about
- (8:52) Discovering inner peace: How Young Pueblo introduced Jack to meditation
- (11:21) Mastering your state of mind: Learning from Tony Robbins to transform your physiological state
- (15:47) Unraveling the past: How childhood experiences shape our decisions today
- (18:21) Navigating your inner compass: Differentiating between your higher self and lower self
- (23:49) Problem-solving: Where do effective solutions come from?
- (24:51) Revolutionizing protests: Jack's modern approach to organizing rallies
- (26:33) Origins of a movement: The birth of the Stop Asian Hate rally
- (29:49) Rallying for change: The far-reaching impact of Jack's first protest
- (35:47) Uncovering the driving force: The source of Jack's unwavering motivation
- (46:37) A star-studded protest: The story behind Rihanna's surprise appearance at the Times Square rally
- (63:48) Navigating crisis: Strategies for achieving the best outcome during triggering events
- (71:12) Powerhouse partnership: How Jack and Andrew Yang joined forces in business
- (75:23) Reading the room: Developing a critical skill for entrepreneurial success
- (90:42) Creating spaces for healing: Jack's vision for fostering healing and growth
Links
My next guest is Pablos Holman, a world-renowned hacker, inventor, and technology futurist with a unique ability to distill complex technology into practical tools.
His past projects include building spaceships at Blue Origin with Jeff Bezos, working on an impact invention effort to eradicate malaria with Bill Gates, and founding Intellectual Ventures Lab for Nathan Myhrvold to support a wide range of invention projects, such as a brain surgery tool, a machine to suppress hurricanes, a nuclear reactor powered by nuclear waste, and a machine that can shoot mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers. With over 70 patents, Pablos is a true innovator.
Pablos is a sought-after speaker and has been invited to conferences around the world to share his expertise on innovation, invention, hacking, technology, and cybersecurity. He has spoken at prestigious events such as Stanford, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Microsoft CEO Summit, The FORTUNE CEO Summit, the CIA, Google Zeitgeist, and The Milken Global Conference. His TED Talks have amassed over 30 million views.
Currently, Pablos serves as the Managing Director at Deep Future, where he backs mad scientists, rogue inventors, crazy hackers, and maverick entrepreneurs in implementing science fiction, solving big problems, and helping our species become better ancestors.
Link: https://deepfuture.tech/
My guest is Tim Chang. He has over two decades of broad early-stage technology investment experience in Silicon Valley at Mayfield Fund, Norwest Venture Partners, and Gabriel Venture Partners and has been named to the Forbes Midas List and the AlwaysOn Power Players of top investors.
Tim has led early-stage investments in Iridigm, Playdom, ngmoco, Basis, AdChina, Moat, Classpass, Tonal Fitness, TRIPP, and Grove Collaborative creating more than $4B in total exit value.
Beyond just making successful investments, Tim is deeply committed to supporting startups and organizations that bring about greater consciousness, connection, and healing in the world. Tim serves on the non-profit boards of several organizations, including California Institute of Integral Studies, Reimagine Death, and Gray Area Arts. With his unique background and expertise, Tim will share his insights on how to create a world that's more conscious, connected, and healing through technology.
We talked about:
(0:41) Are you going through a midlife crisis? Find out how to turn it into a midlife chrysalis.
(8:41) Are you struggling to find your own story? Discover the power of storytelling and how to find yours.
(13:12) Do you want to unlock the power of your social network? Learn how to find your superpowers through play.
(25:13) Want to understand the underlying forces of companies and individuals? Hear Tim's mental model.
(27:46) Are you looking for transformation? Learn about the power of cohort-based learning.
(30:47) Do you want to surround yourself with a peer group that will help you achieve your goals? Discover Tim's criteria for choosing his peer group.
(37:16) Do you need help clarifying who you are? Find out Tim's counterintuitive approach.
(42:20) Are you interested in the intersection of AI and humanity? Hear Tim's perspective on the ultimate child of humanity.
(50:15) Are you interested in conscious business? Learn about the necessity of the Conscious MBA program.
My guest is Sky Cowans. Sky is a video creator who delves into the world of wellness, spirituality, and alternative lifestyles on her YouTube channel, Sky Life. (138K subs) Her curiosity leads her on a journey of discovery and she shares her findings through her documentary-style videos. Join us as we dive into Sky's story and learn about the valuable insights she has gained on her journey.
We talked about:
1:01 Life of a professional seeker
3:19 How Sky cultivates gratitude and positivity in the midst of challenges
10:06 The art and process of creating meaningful content
15:33 Reflecting on the unexpected turns and breakthroughs in Sky's journey
24:18 The intentionality and serendipity behind Sky's path as a video creator
26:08 What sets Sky's videos apart from others
30:45 The factors that influence Sky's video creation process
33:58 The key elements of a successful video for Sky
45:16 The unexpected personal transformations that come with being a professional seeker
47:08 Encouragement for those hesitant to embrace change
51:33 The value of learning from mistakes and growth in video creation
53:56 The evolution of Sky's content and personal growth as a creator
56:19 The connection and vulnerability in being the main subject of one's own art
58:45 The importance of authenticity in storytelling
62:19 Sky's connection and relationship with her audience
65:12 The meaning and significance of a "true fan"
67:34 The journey of building a dedicated fanbase
74:08 The distinctions between curating experiences and storytelling
76:51 The integration of transformative experiences into daily life
My guest is Pablo Vargas, the founder of the Mayan Warrior, a multimedia art vehicle that has been featured at Burning Man since 2012, and Ilumina, an interactive light and sound installation that made its debut at the festival in 2017. Outside of Burning Man, he has built a career in various industries, from e-payments to media to the visual and performing arts. He is the founder of Sr. Pago, one of the leading e-payment platforms in Latin America, and also the founder of EXA Radio and TV, a media outlet that targets the youth market. But it's not just his business acumen that sets Pablo apart. So, stay tuned as we discuss his journey, and the insights he has gained throughout his diverse and accomplished career.
(2:24) "Exploring the Mayan Warrior: Values and Symbolism"
(6:08) "Finding Vision through Peyote Ceremony"
(13:48) "Evolving the Mayan Warrior: The Journey So Far"
(18:05) "The Importance of Intention Setting in Theme Camps"
(19:15) "Defining the 'Warrior' Archetype"
(21:07) "Why Theme Camps are Transformative at Burning Man"
(25:46) "Lessons Learned as a Theme Camp Organizer"
(32:00) "Discovering Purpose: Defining and Living Your Purpose"
(42:58) "Advice for Midlife Entrepreneurs: A Message to My Younger Self"
(49:03) "Dreaming Big: What's Next for Me?"
(52:42) "Supporting Artists: Financial Tools for Entrepreneurs"
(57:12) "Making the Transition: From Corporate Roles to Purposeful Entrepreneurship"
(60:00) "My Definition of Success"
(62:57) "Healing as a Path to Wholeness"
(64:45) "Healing as a Means to Effortless Action"
(66:10) "Healing from the Trauma of Being Pushed Away from Passion"
(70:10) "The Modalities that Have Helped Me Heal"
(73:00) "Why Iboga Was Most Effective for Me"
(77:17) "Who Embodies Actualized Purpose Entrepreneurship and Artistry?"
(83:05) "Practices for Achieving Actualization"
Maria Sanchez Yatriki is the co-producer of Sacbe, a Burning Man theme camp and network of international artists and change-makers. Maria is a community steward and experiential producer with a passion for using her skills and experiences to bring people together and ignite positive change. With roots in rural Mexico and a background in TV and film production, Maria has founded several successful companies and has worked with a variety of brands and organizations. She is the founder of Inner Refuge, an experiential production company that specializes in bringing people together through ancestral knowledge, energy work, and practices that guide human consciousness towards realignment with the planet. In this episode, we'll hear about Maria's journey to becoming a leader in her community and her vision for creating permanent communities, curating sustainable networks, and collaborating on projects that are generative, creative, inclusive, and empathic.
Time Stamps:
(0:33) Discover the Meaning and Purpose of Sacbe
(3:18) Experience the Mashika Culture with Sacbe
(6:43) Find Out What Inspired the Creation of Sacbe
(11:43) Learn Why Building with Community is Key for Sacbe
(14:51) Discover the Tools Used to Build Community with Sacbe
(16:10) Learn about the Governance of Sacbe
(28:34) Find Out What Has Worked and What Hasn't in the Burning Man Container with Sacbe
(33:09)(50:01) Strike the Perfect Balance between Providing a Soft Landing and Being a Plug-and-Play
(34:40) Learn How Feminine Leadership Shapes the Culture of Sacbe
(39:06) Discover Effective Rituals for Bringing People Together in Burning Man
(42:03) Find the Right Balance Between Having Enough and Too Many Rituals
(55:12) Explore the Vision of Sacbe
(62:28) Hear Advice from Maria on Fundraising for Sacbe
(66:04) Learn How NFTs Can Help Theme Camps Raise Funds
(69:14) Discover How Sacbe Makes a Difference
(73:44) Find Out How Sacbe Responds to Critics of Burning Man's Carbon Practices
(76:29) Learn Effective Practices for Helping People Change Behaviors Beyond Burning Man
(78:51) Get Expert Advice on Starting or Joining Communities from Maria
(82:20) Find out About Planet BuyBack, a Crowdfunding Platform for Making a Positive Impact
This week, we have leadership strategist and transformational facilitator Jennifer Russell as our guest. Jennifer has co-led Camp Mystic for the past 12 years, a camp that brings together thought leaders, teachers, healers, entrepreneurs, artists, and performers who are dedicated to creating transformative experiences and culture. In the "Grand Playa," Jennifer is a successful entrepreneur and has worked on the executive teams of high-impact biotech startups. Alongside her business and life partner, Bryan Franklin, Jennifer is an executive coach, relationship coach, leadership strategist, and facilitator, committed to helping create impactful organizations, healthy relationships, and thriving cultures. Jennifer leads transformational and professional programs designed to liberate people from self-imposed limiting beliefs and helps evolve the way we lead and love in hopes of healing the divide and building bridges in our polarized world.
(0:32) The Purpose Behind Camp Mystic
(7:53) The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Burning Man
(8:47) How Burning Man Changed Jennifer's Life
(17:15) Convincing a Burning Man Skeptic
(29:17) The Rationale Behind Bringing More Conveniences to Burning Man
(32:21) The Importance of Documenting Camp Mystic's History
(39:14) The Impact of the Demanding and Contribution Matrix
(57:32) Leading with Your Highest Values as a Camp Lead
(64:30) Making Strike a Positive and Inspiring Experience
(66:22) Lessons for Aspiring Theme Camp Organizers
(68:10) Architecting Your Culture Documents for the Best Culture
(69:57) Specific Actions for Aspiring Theme Camp Organizers
(74:30) The Importance of Curating the Right People
(79:48) The Key Skill of Holding Multiple Perspectives in Dissolving Conflicts of Different Values
(90:10) Leadership Lessons from Being a Camp Lead
(93:30) Jennifer's Longterm Vision
(102:11) The Idea of "Never Having to Work Again"
(106:44)(114:36) Managing Energy and Time to Get All Your Projects Done
(113:52) CK's Secret Intention with All His Guests
(123:50) The Transformational Power of Stories
(129:15) One Lesson Jennifer Would Give to Her Younger Self
Our guest today is John Halcyon Styn, one of the cofounders of Pink Heart, a Burning Man theme camp. He is also a social media pioneer and author with over 20 years of experience in online storytelling through his "Hug Nation" YouTube channel and Facebook Live broadcasts. His stories have been viewed online over 40 million times and the homeless outreach organization "1st Saturdays." Currently, he is focused on daily Zoom Gratitude Circles and "The Pink Path," a coaching program that helps people live authentic and self-expressed lives. Let's dive into John's journey and learn about his insights on purpose and authenticity.
(0:49) The Surprising Origin Story of Pink Heart
(2:52) The Meaning Behind the Color Pink
(5:52) The Gift and Responsibility of Introducing New People to Burning Man
(8:55) The Unexpected Downsides of Being Bold
(12:05) How Self-Celebration Can Transform Your Life
(13:34) The Fine Line Between Self-Importance and Self-Celebration
(15:38) The Surprising Reason Why Service Makes Us Feel Better
(17:12) The Mantra that Can Revolutionize Your Volunteering Experience
(20:51) The Step-by-Step Guide to Turning Your Burning Man Idea into Reality
(23:51) Halcyon's Framework for Bringing Something New to Burning Man
(26:44) Halcyon's Personal Purpose and How He Lives It Every Day
(32:31) Balancing Deadlines and Positive Vibes while Running Pink Heart
(48:21) Finding the Sweet Spot Between Magic and Structure
(50:23) Halcyon's Controversial Opinion on Plug-and-Play Camps
(59:50) The Secret to Halcyon's Longevity in the Online Storytelling World
(63:05) Halcyon's Perspective on Transformational Experiences
(64:04) The Most Important Lessons Halcyon Has Learned After 24 Years
(69:09) Halcyon's Personal Story About Larry Harvey, Founder of Burning Man
(70:28) The Dangers of Attachment to Goals
(73:55) The Power of Group Gratitude Practice
(75:12) The Transformative Power of Community
(77:12)(107:58) The Advice Halcyon Would Give to His Younger Self on His Walkabout
(82:08) The True Gift of Being a Teacher
(90:19) The Secret to Halcyon's Creative Consistency After 1000 YouTube Clips
(98:07) The Transformative Stories That Have Stayed with Halcyon After 24 Years
(113:58) The Words of Encouragement Halcyon Has for Himself During Times of Faith Testing
My guest is Lee Merschon. He is the founder of Camp Epic, a theme camp at Burning Man.
Born in Israel in 1981, our guest had a tumultuous childhood, moving between countries and struggling with lying and theft. However, after realizing that the root of his problems was within himself, he began to make changes and eventually graduated with a degree in psychology from UC Davis. He discovered magic and experienced a major injury, but persevered and even went on a year-long journey through Central and South America, Europe, and Israel. He eventually met his wife in Berlin and started a business in Los Angeles, where he also discovered Burning Man and started a camp focused on hosting fluid projects and fostering creativity and connection. Our guest has faced many challenges and come out on the other side, making him a unique and inspiring individual.
We talked about
(0:22) The relationship between theme camp organizers
(4:16) The line between snarky and mean at Burning Man
(5:47) Why the founder of Camp Epic has returned for 10 years
(15:29) The relationship between statistics and miracles
(32:38)(47:17) Why every camp at Burning Man is a plug-and-play camp
(39:51) The evolution of the founder's leadership over the past 10 years
(53:19) How the problem of plug-and-play was solved at Camp Epic
(76:05) How Camp Epic governs and makes decisions
(82:19) How 'success' is measured as a camp
(83:54) Lessons for aspirational camp organizers
(90:56) Three ways Burning Man has affected the founder's life outside of the event
(100:35) The ripple effects seen from Camp Epic
(102:52) One idea to share with the audience
My guest is Samantha Coker, an entrepreneur, writer, and humanitarian. She was the project manager for Red Lightning, a theme camp at Burning Man, for 5 years, and is also the co-founder and CEO of Rich Nuts, a rapidly growing sprouted gourmet nut company that she hopes to expand internationally to bring healthy food and education to a wider audience. With a career that exists at the intersection of art, commerce, and social change, Samantha has a unique ability to balance the creative and pragmatic. She has a passion for diversity and has spent time living abroad, immersing herself in different cultures.
We talked about
+(6:05) Introduction to intentional or conscious camps
+(9:34) Evolution of Red Lightning's intentions
+(17:03) Definition and discussion of culture appropriation
+(21:48) Finding the right scope or ambition for Red Lightning
+(26:01) Decision-making processes in running Red Lightning
+(31:48) Key lessons learned from running Red Lightning
+(39:46) Identifying intrinsic motivators in people
+(44:23) Creative ways to fund theme camps
+(52:29) Why plug-and-play robs people of their burning man experience?
+(56:37) Tips for maintaining healthy romantic relationships at Burning Man
My next guest is Christopher Krywulak.
He is the founder of Playalchemist, a Burning Man theme camp. Christopher is no stranger to pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box. He started his first company in Saskatchewan at the young age of 18, with a mission to conduct business more humanely and create a self-managing environment that fosters creativity and personal growth. Since then, he has built several successful software businesses, including iQmetrix, Cova, Ready, and Shiftlab. Christopher is a true trailblazer and we can't wait to hear his unique perspective on entrepreneurship and personal growth.
We talked about:
(2:16) The meaning of synchronicity
(3:43) The prevalence of synchronicity at Burning Man
(7:23) Strategies for avoiding a life of quiet desperation
(23:08) The appeal of learning how to lucid dream
(28:01) Christopher's personal experiment with synchronicity
(33:31) Balancing surrender and intention-setting
(40:50) The interplay of order and chaos
(43:00) Christopher's purpose in life
(53:46) The importance of following inspiration from the higher realm
(57:28) Disentangling the mind and spirit
(57:28) The journey of bringing the concept of Camp Playalchemist to fruition
(95:04) The transformative power of parties
(98:24) Letting go of attachment to outcomes
(108:47) Striking a balance between challenge and comfort in a camp setting
(112:18) Handling camp members who don't adhere to guidelines
(116:06) Christopher's perspective on transformation
(120:56) Techniques for accelerating the transformation process
(126:01) Ways to get into flow
(139:44) Different frameworks for human development
(144:15) The underlying issue in our society
My next guest is Syd Gris. He is one of the longest-running fun creators in the Bay Area music and underground arts scene, Syd is known as a Renaissance man of the West Coast burner scene, and with good reason. Not only is he the co-founder (in 2003) of the legendary Opulent Temple collective (best known for their premiere sound stage at Burning Man), he is also the founder of Opel Productions, (2002) which has been consistently throwing club events and parties with purpose in San Francisco for 20 years.
He also is a child psychologist with a Doctorate in transpersonal psychology, an outspoken promoter on social issues.
We talked about:
(0:48) What is transformation?
(02:42) What is our eternal nature? How do we connect to it
(05:30) What did you learn from interviewing Jack Kornfield and Ram Dass?
(22:31) How do the stories we tell ourselves impact our life?
(24:10) How do you infuse your philosophy into Opulent Temple experiences?
(30:45) What do you hope to accomplish in sharing the various aspect of your own consciousness?
(34:49) How do you find the line between lecturing at others and curing the space?
(38:16) What do you say to the naysayers?
(42:04) What does it take to bring Opulent Temple to the playa?
(53:58) What is a notable low moment for Opulent Temple
(56:25) What are the top lessons from running Opulent Temple?
(58:32) How do you learn to surrender?
(61:23) What'd you say to the younger version of yourself 20 years ago?
(67:08) What do you do to ensure that people bring the right energy to build?
(71:18) What's one thing you wished you had known
(76:31) After 20 years, what are you excited about?
(81:15) The 4 recipes for a quiet desperate life
(82:11) Burning Man is a great opportunity to deepen your bonds
Links:
Spin article about Syd's role in sound at BM - https://www.spin.com/2015/09/syd-gris-burning-man-interview/
Interview about sound camp history and related topics on Burn.life - https://www.burn.life/blog/interview-with-syd-gris
Copy of a 2009 article that appeared in DJ Mag, an international publication on dance music and its culture, written by the Editor in Chief at the time-
https://www.opulenttemple.org/dj-mag-feature-on-opulent-temple/
My next guest is Steve Hermosillo. He leads a yearly pilgrimage of 60 revelers to Burning Man where their theme camp, I'm OK, You're OK Corral, erects a saloon that slings drinks, live music, guest DJs, and a bevy of shenanigans. It's their collective gift to the community and 2022's event marked the camp's 19th year bringing their camp to Black Rock City.
We talked about:
(2:29) (5:33) How do you describe Burning Man to others?
(16:32) What were some transformations you witnessed?
(18:52) What is the Man?
(25:19) How to design a camp that lasts?
(29:02) What's great real estate placement in Burning Man?
(32:32) Tell us the importance of cultivating relationships with your neighboring camps
(38:41) Tell us about your invitation process
(50:15) What rules do you have to ensure fairness in the camp?
(55:37) Why did you pick 60 as the optimal size for your camp?
(61:21) How do you give people the right jobs so they can grow and succeed?
My next guest is Salman Hatta. He is a transformational artist and coach who has found his way to personal freedom through a variety of spiritually awakening experiences.
After spending nearly 15 years in high powered banking and tech positions with an Ivy League MBA, he discovered that following his own heart led to more fulfillment than following achievement-based societal and familial expectations that were actually self-limiting.
He sees himself as a bridge between the mainstream and the spiritual. He weaves in between worlds with ease and grace. His joy comes from helping those who are deeply connected with their minds connect more with their hearts, as that is how he believes the world best gets to heal.
Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Ph.D. is the Director of Yoga Research for the Yoga Alliance and the Kundalini Research Institute,
Research Affiliate at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
He has conducted research on yoga and yoga therapy since 2001 and has been a practitioner/instructor of Kundalini Yoga since 1973. His research has evaluated yoga for insomnia, chronic stress, and anxiety-related disorders, and in workplace and public school settings. He works with the International Association of Yoga Therapists promoting yoga research as scientific director for the annual Symposium on Yoga Research and as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. He is medical editor of the Harvard Medical School Special Report Introduction to Yoga, and chief editor of the medical textbook The Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care.
We talked about:
(0:59) What trends happened in yoga in the last 50 years?
(4:21) The barriers for yoga to enter the mainstream
(6:38) Why do people enter yoga and why do people stay with yoga?
(9:38) Why people don't stay with their yoga practice?
(11:59) How did you stick with your discipline in the last 50 years?
(14:23) The limitations of modern medicine
(18:56) What's spirituality to you? How do you distinguish science and spirituality?
(25:11) How do you study mystical experiences?
(29:46) Have you seen any promising funding mechanisms to fund the spiritual aspects of yoa?
(33:33) How has being media savvy helped you with your research?
(40:49) How did you end up choosing your field of research?
(45:12) If you could design any experiments, how would you study altered states of consciousness through yoga?
(50:23) Is there a parallel between research about hallucinogens and research about yoga?
(52:29) Why is multi-discipline practice like yoga more beneficial than other single-discipline practices
(58:57) How do you find the yoga teacher, environment, and philosophy that best suits you?
(62:57) Why yoga is the better mind-body practice than others?
Leon VanderPol is an internationally-recognized leader, spirit-based teacher, and author in the field of transformational coaching and transformative living. He is the Founder of the Center for Transformational Coaching and his book, A Shift in Being: The Art and Practices of Deep Transformational Coaching, is selling in multiple languages, bringing his work to new audiences daily.
Leon has spent over two decades immersed in the dynamics of personal and inter-personal change. At the core of Leon’s teaching lies the transformation of human consciousness—what happens when we consistently begin to experience ourselves beyond our ego-based state of consciousness, as our essential Self and soul.
Today he works with people from around the world to explore the boundaries of their existence, grow into new paradigms of personal experience, and tap into their most authentic Self.
Link: To find out more, visit him at www.centerfortransformationalcoaching.com
We talked about:
(4:13) What is transformational work?
(10:10) How does impatience serve you?
(14:06) What's the difference between transactional coaching, developmental coaching, and transformational coaching?
(25:09) What happens when you receive transformational coaching?
(30:38) The one question you need to answer when you receive coaching
(37:52) What's the difference between a transformational coach and a therapist?
(48:12) How do you cultivate trust with your path?
(52:55) How to determine your optimal rhythm?
(72:27) How to scale a coaching business with trust?
(88:25) What matters in an enrollment conversation?
(93:00) Why he listens to his inner guru today?
(96:29) How do you rise above the noise in social media?
My next guest is Stephen Cope. He is a best-selling author and scholar who specializes in the relationship between the Eastern contemplative traditions and Western depth psychology. Among his seminal works in this area are: Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, The Wisdom of Yoga, and The Great Work of Your Life. His most recent work, The Dharma In Difficult Times, is the sequel to best-seller The Great Work of Your Life.
For almost thirty years, Stephen has been Scholar-in-Residence at the renowned Kripalu Center—the largest center for the study and practice of yoga in the Western world. Kripalu hosts almost 50,000 guests a year in its many yoga, meditation, and personal growth programs. It is located on a sprawling 200 acre estate in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In addition to his role as Scholar-in-Residence, Stephen is the founder and former director of the Kripalu Institute for Extraordinary Living—one of the world’s most influential research institutes examining the effects and mechanisms of yoga and meditation, with a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School, University of Connecticut, University of Pennsylvania, and many more.
My next guest is Rajesh Setty. He is often referred to as Silicon Valley's secret "spark plug" for startups, scale-ups (and shake-ups)
Being a Polymath, Rajesh is constantly in the middle of running experiments across a variety of seemingly unrelated areas of interest, but with the common goal of how to create a better world through the projects, he incubates as one of the founders or participates in some meaningful capacity to help the founders.
Together, the startups that Rajesh has co-founded are valued at $150+ million, and the ones where he serves as a mentor are valued at $700+ million. Finally, he has also taught 2000+ entrepreneurs as part of Founder Institute & beyond.
His latest startups are Audvisor and MentorCloud.
His latest books are "Six Foot World" and "Smart, but Stuck."
His latest courses are "The Right Hustle" and "Flourish by Design."
We talked about
(01:22) Rajesh's fearlessness of publishing
(11:53) Attach yourself to effort and detach yourself from results
(18:45) Relationship building and social media
(26:38) How Seinfeld provided him with infinite motivation to create
(30:26) Mental health is about stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
(33:18) Value creation is about giving meaningful gifts at scale with low incremental costs
(38:11) 3 kinds of value creation: Delta T, Delta B, and Delta E
(61:26) How a bicycle metaphor illustrates value creation for organizations
(65:16) How to stay calm even amidst triggering events
(69:22) How to manufacture goodness from misfortunes
(78:04) The art of making good asks
(78:11) The 3 time scale of relationships: long term, very long term, and lifetime
(101:04) Choose 3 things carefully: projects, conversations, and people
(102:56) How to ignore the critics on the internet
(104:27) Rajesh's hack for gaining capacities at scale
🔥 To activate, express, and amplify your purpose, go to: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Dave Ford. He is the Founder of the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network.
In 2021 the OPLN launched the Global Treaty Dialogues, a global virtual summit series engineered to build capacity and understanding around a Global Plastics Treaty. Participants include one hundred forty organizations from 34 countries across the vast plastic stakeholder spectrum.
We talked about:
(05:14) Why getting fired as a media executive was the best thing that happened to him
(12:14) How ayahuasca helped him find healing with his pains with past relationship and job
(26:07) How wildlife expedition helped him fall in love with nature
(47:33) Why plastic corporations want to solve the plastic crisis
(49:32) What are the best metrics to measure corporate efforts to solve environmental challenges
(55:06) How is he able to put different stakeholders of the plastic crisis in the same room
(58:44) How he found his niche? What is the core offer of the OPLN?
(63:30) What is his success metric of the OPLN?
(69:09) What's his advice to the younger Dave who is at the crossroads of quitting corporate and starting his first business
🔥 To activate, express, and amplify your purpose, go to: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Tej Dosa. He is a DTC copywriter, online entrepreneur, and spirituality-loving Twitter personality based out of Vancouver, Canada who lives to fulfill his personal motto for living a full life: "top of the world or bottom of the ocean, zero desire to live in the middle."
We talked about:
(01:23) When you're in flow, what's the experience of writing a newsletter?
(03:23) We are the artifacts we leave behind
(08:26) What's your creative process of writing your newsletter?
(11:02) Why Tej write every day as a daily discipline?
(14:04) What's Tej's life purpose?
(38:38) Why writing and sex are the same thing?
(41:47) The counterintuitive way Tej cultivates super fans
(45:14) The greatest gift you can give as a creator to your readers
(54:26) Tej's perspective on teaching
(71:10) What's joy? How he robbed himself of joy and how he overcame it.
(75:54) CK's journey of finding his expressions again
(84:40) Two main drivers: suffering and curiosity
(87:07) Yearning, attachment, and suffering
(96:37) The front-end and back-end of his content and giving people what they want and need
(101:03) Tej's meaning of life and the inside-out approach
(113:52) How to play the game of life
(123:27) How his heart was dead and how he reignited it with fire again
🔥 To activate, express, and amplify your purpose, go to: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Danny Miranda. He is a lover of life. He is a podcaster and tweeter whose mission is to make the world happier, healthier, and wiser. His previous guest appearances include Gary Vaynerchuk, Iman Gadzhi, Sahil Bloom, Tom Bilyeu, Chris Williamson, Kamal Ravikant, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Miss Excel Kat Norton, Ariel Helwani, Anthony Pompliano, James Altucher, Sam Parr, Greg McKeown, Kevin Kelly, Mike Maples, Sharon Salzberg, Dickie Bush, George Heaton, Rob Lipsett, Colin and Samir, Shaan Puri, Gay Hendricks, and many more incredible humans.
We talked about:
(03:41) Why meditation made him a better listener?
(16:12) Why Tim Ferriss & Joe Rogan are the top podcasters?
(17:10) The progress between Joe Rogan 100 to Joe Rogan 1000 as a podcaster
(18:44) What makes Danny's guests bare their souls to him?
(21:50) How Danny improves himself as an interviewer?
(24:21) The overlooked pitfall of being too critical to yourself
(31:55) The power of silence during interviews
(38:34) The power of the juxtaposition
(42:33) The ideal coach archetype
(43:35) The ideal podcast experience
(51:53) The power of questions to determine the quality of your life
(52:42) Why humans cannot refuse questions
(58:32) How to talk to people who have 10x the audience size than you
(66:50) The mindset of journaling and documenting now instead of later
(68:57) The importance of giving love to those you believe in
(74:44) CK's acknowledgment practice
(82:40) The powerful question to get deep without the small talks
(85:55) How to calibrate your vocabulary level for the widest reach?
(89:48) How CK maintains peace and calmness
To activate, express, and amplify your purpose, go to: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My guest is Brother Phap Linh, also known as Brother Spirit. He a zen Buddhist monk, musician and seeker. He began his monastic training with Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum Village in February 2008, and has since composed many of the community’s beloved chants.
Before ordaining he studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer. A co-founder of the Wake Up Movement for young people, today Brother Phap Linh is actively engaged in teaching applied mindfulness to climate activists, business leaders, artists, and scientists.
As a leading voice in the new generation of Buddhist monastics in the West, he is passionate about exploring how meditators and scientists can learn from each other and open new paths of healing and discovery. He has the conviction that a modern form of monasticism can play a crucial role in bringing about a more compassionate society as well as a much needed collective awakening to our interbeing with all life.
Time Stamps
-
03:59 From science to spirituality
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08:47 what makes Thích Nhất Hạnh infinite
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24:07 The decision to convert to the monastic life at Plum Village
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28:11 The impact he didn't know about his conversion
-
41:12 His criteria to choose his community
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43:22 What is Engaged Buddhism
-
52:00 What's his North Star
-
61:30 Strike a balance between tradition and adaptation
-
70:00 What makes Thích Nhất Hạnh a great teacher
-
85:12 Scaling transformation
-
92:46 Governance of an international monastic organization
-
100:48 Superpower of longterm practitioners
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107:14 Honing the mind and being present
-
110:31 The Chinese story about a guy and a horse
-
115:03 What's happiness
-
126:17 Contemplating death for serenity
-
129:06 What to do with environmental anxiety
-
132:04 How zen Buddhism builds human resilience when facing existential crisis
To support the Plum Village, go to https://plumvillage.org/donate
🔥 To find, refine, and operationalize your purpose with joy, go to: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
Mentored by respected kūpuna (elders), Ramsay is a practitioner and instructor of several Native Hawaiian practices: Hoʻoponopono (stress release and mediation), lomi haha (body alignment), and Kaihewalu Lua (Hawaiian combat/battle art).
Kumu Ramsay is recognized locally, nationally, and internationally for transformational leadership in sustainability, cultural, and place-based values integration into contemporary business models. Kumu Ramsay advocates team building, strategic partnerships, community brilliance, and creative thinking. He is a recognized cultural resource, sought after keynote speaker, lecturer, trainer, and facilitator. He is especially effective working with Hawai‘i’s industries where he integrates Native Hawaiian cultural values and principles into contemporary business
Time Stamps
03:27 the connectedness about unifying mind, body, and spirit
04:12 the Hawaiian practice of ho'ponopono
13:00 the differences between elders and wisdom teachers
22:09 concretize the 6th sense of space holders
23:55 when the student is ready, the teacher shows up; when the teacher is ready, the student shows up
26:47 the operationalization of spirit
35:37 how he dispenses wisdom
40:19 access universal wisdom
43:08 self-centered vs. being centered itself
54:20 inner harmony and outer harmony
68:19 I go where I am invited to engineer harmony
Links
https://www.ramsaytaum.com/
My next guest is Amir Ahmad Nasr. He is an exiled author, journalist and pro-democracy activist. His writings have been featured in the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, WSJ, NY Times. Today he helps leaders and entrepreneurs tell their own stories with more purpose, focus, prosperity, freedom and fulfillment. On the creative side, he is also the artist, singer-songwriter Drima Starlight working on his debut album.
Amir Ahmad Nasr and I talked about:
+ Pros/cons of building a personal brand
+ Transcending beyond the parent-child relationship
+ Being rooted in your soul's purpose
+ Accelerating soul-audience fit with technologies
+ Finding your soul print and awakening your true leadership voice
To learn more about him, go to
https://assertive.co/about/
Transition from burnt-out warrior to noble warrior in the pursuit of deep joy, purpose, and presence: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Dave Lakhani, one of the nation's most recognizable experts on applied persuasion, human influence, sales and marketing, and cults.
He is an award-winning author and speaker who has spoken to more than 2 million people in 126 countries around the world over the past decade. Dave is also an Entrepreneur whose companies have made the Inc. 500 list regularly. He is the founder of Boldapproach.com a business consulting firm and Co-Founder of GrowthFoundryDigital.com a growth-focused digital marketing agency. He is a proud veteran of the United States Army.
You can find out more about Dave here -> https://growthfoundrydigital.com/
Transition from burnt-out warrior to noble warrior in the pursuit of deep joy, purpose, and presence: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Josh Terry. He is a Writer, content creator, and investor focused on learning theory, self-development, mental models, and bitcoin.
He started Tiktok 2 years ago and in that time he has attracted 1.3M followers.
We talked about:
+His path from 0 to 1.3M
+Why Tiktok is the fastest way to find your brand voice
+Why Tiktok is a great platform for creatives
+Horizontal vs. Vertical method of learning
+How to use arbitrary limitations to find your niche
+How to cultivate disciplines of recovery for workaholics
+Knowing what he knows today, what's the #1 thing he'd tell other creatives on their path to 1.3M followers
Links
- Join Josh's community https://lifemasteryacademy.carrd.co/
- Check out Josh's Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@joshterryplays
Transition from burnt-out ego warrior to noble warrior in the pursuit of deep joy, purpose, and mental mastery: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
👇🏼 Take the Higher Self quiz bit.ly/HigherSelfQuiz
My guest is Roger Love, one of the world’s leading authorities on voice. No other vocal coach in history has been more commercially successful in both the speaking and singing fields.
Roger coached many iconic actors, entertainers, speakers, and authors: Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeff Bridges, Keira Knightley, Angelina Jolie, Steve Carrell, and Will Ferrell, The Beach Boys, John Mayer, Selena Gomez, Gwen Stefani, Eminem, Anthony Robbins, John Gray, Brendon Burchard and Suze Orman.
Roger has vocally produced more than 150 million-unit sales worldwide, written 3 top selling books, created multiple bestselling audio, video and online programs, and appeared as a regular in 4 major network TV shows.
His Academy Award winning film coaching credits include Walk The Line, Crazy Heart, and A Star Is Born.
We talked about:
+Word-based communication vs. sound-based communication
+Specific tactics to help cerebral speakers to deliver greater emotional impact
+What specific steps can monotone speakers take to be more captivating
+The 3 elements speakers can use to take charge of the room
+The steps great singers and speakers take to find their voice
+The importance of showcasing confidence as a professional
+How to engineer a specific emotional impact
Links
+$50 certificate for Roger's programs
My next guest is John Gray. He is the author of the most well-known and trusted relationship book of all time, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. USA Today listed his book as one of the top 10 most influential books of the last quarter-century. In hardcover, it was the #1 best-selling book of the 1990s. Dr. Gray’s books are translated into approximately 45 languages in more than 100 countries and continues to be a bestseller.
Dr. Gray has written over 20 books. His most recent book is Beyond Mars and Venus: Relationship Skills for Our Complex Modern World. His Mars/Venus book series has forever changed the way men and women view their relationships.
John helps men and women better understand and respect their differences in both personal and professional relationships. His approach combines specific communication techniques with healthy, nutritional choices that create the brain and body chemistry for lasting health, happiness, and romance.
His many books, blogs, and free online workshops at MarsVenus.com provide practical insights to improve relationships at all stages of life and love. An advocate of health and optimal brain function, he also provides natural solutions for overcoming depression, anxiety, and stress to support increased energy, libido, hormonal balance, and better sleep.
He has appeared repeatedly on Oprah, as well as on The Dr. Oz Show, TODAY, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, and others. He has been profiled in Time, Forbes, USA Today, and People. He was also the subject of a three-hour special hosted by Barbara Walters.
Links
📚 Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
📥 Want more deep discussions like this? Join our newsletter
🤯 Want the CK notes of these conversations, follow me on TikTok @thecklin
My guest is Rudy Randa, the Co-Founder of Aniwa Co and The Boa Foundation that focus on supporting humanity and the planet through initiatives in indigenous communities worldwide.
Aniwa is a movement that invites people of all colors, creeds, and races to come together and create a new story, planting the seeds of change so we may grow and thrive in harmony with Mother Earth. Our mission is to amplify the voices of the world's most respected indigenous leaders, to help us remember how to connect with the power of the elements, the memories of the trees, the teachings of the heart. Together, we awaken and join forces in these times of great change. We curate transformative experiences through ancient ceremonies, ancestral wisdom, cultural exchange, and reciprocity, creating a deeper sense of connection, and all-inclusive solutions to live a joyful life of peace, understanding, and healing.
We talked about:
- His origin story of chasing joy to being joyous
- How he found his divine purpose
- Indigenous wisdom healing traumas and maladaptive programmings
- Ayahuasca as a healing agent for the spirit
- What it takes to build an organization that supports indigenous elders
- The intricacies of bridging cultures between the West and indigenous tribes
Links
📚 ANIWA
🌳 Support Indigenous rights
📥 Want more deep discussions like this? Join our newsletter
🤯 Want the CK notes of these conversations, follow me on TikTok @thecklin
My guest is Mitch DeArmon. He is a leader of men and a forceful advocate for men. He currently facilitates the Man-to-Men event, an initiation event for men who are looking for the strength that comes with associating with other great men (man-to-men.org).
As someone who has maintained himself with men’s groups and through strong relationships with other men, he believes that this is the key to changing the role men have in our society and the social view that men are expendable.
Mitch’s areas of specialty include Drug and Alcohol Addiction, Adolescent Males, Mentoring, Initiation, Leadership, Conflict Resolution, Men, Couple Dynamics, At-Risk Youth, and Character Development. Over the last 30 years, he has served as a Mentor, Trainer, Motivator, Mediator, Speaker, Counselor, Leader, Coach, Program Developer, Problem-Solver, Case Manager, Facilitator, and Sponsor. He has been a radio show host on KSRO and authored several guidebooks on teen boys and mentoring.
Mitch’s background also includes 30 years of working with teen boys. An original founder of the Young Men’s Ultimate Weekend, he developed the programming still used today to serve hundreds of youth and also facilitated the weekends. Awarded a personal $240,000 private foundation grant for 2002 and 2003 to develop mentoring and initiation programs for male adolescents of which the LeadershipWorks programs are the result.
Links
Man to Men
My next guest is Dr. Drew Pierson.
He has spent years analyzing and working with enlightened minds, peak performers, and titans of leadership. He has spent tens of thousands of hours researching neurology medical journals and has received extensive training on the most exquisite brain-enhancing equipment and technologies available in the world. In his private practice, he has been creating real-time changes to enhance people’s brain structure and function as a clinical neurofeedback therapist for 2.5 decades.
Dr. Drew’s experience in neurosciences and neurofeedback therapy isn’t just unusual because of his vast studies, experience, and training. Dr. Drew has taken the field of brain enhancement to another dimension. With his capacities to interpret an individual’s EEG brain scans, and a deeper understanding of what the data in the clinical studies actually reveal, Dr. Drew has advanced the medicine of neurofeedback therapy from just treating pathology (such as depression, ADD, and sleep disorders) and into enhancing the intricate structures and functions of leadership, wisdom, and awakened consciousness. His results are astounding, and a new realm of human potential has been born.
In our conversation, we explored these questions:
- (6:02) How do your brainwaves (alpha, beta, gamma, theta) positively or negatively impact your ability to be a visionary leader?
- (9:40) Why are breathwork and HRV the proven entry for cognitive optimization?
- (23:18) How to select the right meditation for your objective?
- (51:54) How to use EEG technologies to accelerate your brain development?
- (63:33) What are the different brain wave patterns between world-class performers and everyone else?
- (66:42) What are the unusual sleep-wakefulness training, Einstein and Ben Franklin did to help them innovate?
- (67:03) What are the top 3 obstacles high performers encounter during their brain training?
To see all the resources mentioned, go to
noblewarrior.com/134
0AqPVBz2noJp5n4aQax5
Jonathan Brill prepares leaders to profit from radical change. He speaks and advises on resilient growth strategy and innovation under uncertainty. He is the author of Rogue Waves, Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change (McGraw-Hill*). Adam Grant called it, "An actionable framework for driving change instead of being blindsided by it***."
Deloitte called Brill, "America's foremost disruption strategist" for his advisory work. Oxford University Presssaid, “he’s not Nostradamus, but for the world’s top business and government leaders, he’s the next best thing” of his work as the Global Futurist at HP (Hewlett-Packard) and board advisor at Frost & Sullivan.Inc. called him, "a silicon valley legend" because his innovation consultancies developed over 350 products ranging from theme park rides to World's Fair Pavilions, to AI, search engines, metaverse technologies and even one of the best selling fast foods in the United States for clients like Samsung, Microsoft, Verizon, PepsiCo and the US government.
He is an in demand thought leader, speaker and contributor to organizations like HBR, Global Peter Drucker Forum, SCMP, SXSW, J.P. Morgan, Singularity, Forbes, Korn Ferry, TED, Stanford University and Thinkers50.
He holds a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute, spent years as a research consultant to the MIT Media Laband in management training at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
We discussed:
- (14:57) What happens when we tie ourselves to a set of assumptions which are no longer relevant or true
- (7:40)How to use mental models to navigate a very complex world
- When you expect disruption in your lifetime, how will you design your organization?
- (33:03)How to train yourself to have the maximum optionality like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel do?
- (51:58)How he learned to manage complex processes in a Michelin star restaurant?
- (62:29)How to properly engineer a company culture to motivate and reward people to experiment and innovate?
Links
Full episode (for more resources mentioned in the conversation)
Please enjoy my conversation with Jonathan Brill
Harvard researchers revealed breakthrough research about achieving lasting fulfillment.
Imagine a world where you get to live your best, most authentic life—where you can follow your heart, listen to your gut, and do what you love.
You don't need to imagine it...Dr. Todd Rose has found breakthrough principles to achieve lasting fulfillment.
- (18:22) (1:45:58) We talked about the 3 drivers and 3 obstacles to fundamental wellbeing—and he offered insights to build those drivers and get rid of the obstacles.
- (6:33)We talked about finding a fit between our individuality and our environment in our lives and into how we make our day-to-day decisions.
- (23:12)We talked about 2 different ways to predict your own behaviors: personality psychology vs. if-then signatures.
- (1:24:30)We also talked about how we have all the know-how, all the technology, all the resources to go beyond the individualistic to the societal level.
- (86:03) We talked about an environment that fosters "social trust" to make it happen.
- (1:13:32)We talked about the "zero-sum game" mentality as the main barrier to realizing this.
- (1:37:17)We also talk about public sentiment as the most powerful tool we have at our disposal to shift our culture.
- (1:40:48)Lastly, we talked about how social change could happen at a speed and scale that is unimaginable. And we have in our power to unleash fulfillment and contribution never done before in human history.
If you are an overachiever seeking fulfillment or you care to make a societal impact, Todd Rose will unlock new worlds for you.
🔥 Be the first to get actionable tactics to find your purpose, clarify your vision, and summit your 2nd mountain of legacy: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the video with these 2nd mountain entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/132-todd-rose-harvard-researchers-revealed-breakthrough-research-to-achieve-lasting-fulfillment/
2022 is almost here. How do we have enough energy to start the new year with a bang? (and sustain the momentum throughout the year!)
If you are a knowledge worker who doesn't have time to study the latest research and you just need to know the rules to make it work for you.
Dr. Michael Breus, America's Most Trusted Sleep Doctor, is here to teach you how to get more consistent energy throughout the day.
We'll talk about your chronotype type and your metabolism type, and use that information to personalize your daily movement, eating, and resting schedule so that you feel happier and more energized in 30 days.
Further, we talked about:
- 03:40 What is the value of "energy" and how it is foundational for change?
- 04:24 What categories of energies impact our lives?
- 07:41 When and how to monitor these energies?
- 17:44 For teaching purposes, is it better to make the ideas black or white?
- 21:59 How did he discover his dharmic path in sleep and energy?
- How to protect yourself from things that steal energy from you that you've unknowingly enabled them to do?
- 43:12 How to get 'balanced' energy throughout the day? (and the scientific research that backs up his rest, food, and movement protocols)
- 46:10 (bonus)How does he balance learning and teaching to maintain consistent high throughput over 22 years?
- 08:44 (bonus)How to design a book curriculum for readers to get results fast (without wasting their time and energy)?
- 53:14 (bonus) After 100s of appearances as an expert guest, he tells us how to get on TV easily to amplify your message.
- 59:05 (bonus) How does he pick the topic for the books he is writing to ensure they become bestsellers?(and why most authors overthink and waste time and energy)
🔥 Be the first to get actionable tactics to find your purpose, clarify your next vision, and summit your 2nd mountain of legacy: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the video with these 2nd mountain entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
My guest, Akira Chan, has worked with some of the biggest knowledge influencers of our time, including Deepak Chopra, Peter Diamandis, Joe Polish.
He shared some of his most powerful storytelling frameworks to help these knowledge influencers to craft their stories, stand out from the noise, and make a bigger impact, and become truly iconic.
Specifically, we talked about:
8:33 Why transformational stories are so irresistible to humans?
12;58 What separates the iconic knowledge influencers from everyone else
9:22 How to find the heartbeat of a transformational story?
24:57 How to balance the head and the heart as a storyteller of transformational stories?
48:06 How to cultivate growth-oriented partnerships (and how to pick your partners)
27:07 How to go from transactional- to longterm-client relationships?
39:13 How to Transition to Impact-Driven Projects?
29:29 How to make a viral video (13:37 and an example of a great founder story that started a movement)
55:07 How to protect your presence (for your spouse, children, employees, clients) while juggling multiple projects
19:02 How to parent with the head, heart, hands, and soul
61:05 How to be your most creative self (with morning rituals, tasks management, and client selection)
88:06 What are the benefits of having a men's group
72:55 How do you elevate your own consciousness now that you are a husband, entrepreneur, father and others depend on you
Links
🔥 Be the first to get proven tactics to find your purpose, clarify your vision, and express your voice in meaningful ways: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the video with these 2nd mountain entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
My guest is Shelley Paxton. She is the:
- Former CMO of Harley Davidson
- Best-selling author of the book Soulbattical: A corporate rebel's guide to finding your best life Forbe's 21 books to read in 2021
- She has been featured on NBC, CBS, Thrive Global, Forbes, Inc., Business Insider, and PBS.
- She is a fellow podcaster at Rebel Souls
- I am interested in speaking to her because she wrote her journey transitioning from the 1st mountain to the 2nd mountain in her book Soulbattical.
We talked about...* 55:01 How to honor who you are while being a public persona * 39:11 How to rejuvenate your soul without sacrificing your current responsibilities * 11:38 What are the symptoms of burnout high achievers? * 6:32 The exact steps she took to crystalize her vision - liberate 1billion souls - who she chose to share it with and why knowing these steps are important for you * 48:25 Her one technique to protect her superpower between meetings * 71:01 What's her "I am" mantras and how they reinforce her new identity every day * 30:10 The number 1 question that gave Shelly the clarity and courage to leave Harley Davidson * 27:44 What's Shelly's POV on the years you may think you've wasted that ultimately give you no satisfaction * 81:14 Finally, What does the Harley Davidson brand represent and how she is taking the lessons she learned to build her new movement Soulbatical
Listen to the Full Episode
- https://noblewarrior.com/episode/129-shelley-paxton-from-burnout-corporate-executive-to-soul-full-badass-the-journey-of-former-harley-davidson-cmo/
Links* Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life * The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection * Rich Litvin * Abby Gibb Divine Feminine Leadership Academy * Life is Priceless Foundation * David Taylor-Klaus
🔥 Be the first to get actionable tactics to help you transition to the 2nd mountain of purpose and legacy: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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“Are you doing at least a million dollars in sales?”
(Aggravated)”We’re doing twenty or thirty times that!”
I've always admired bold interviewers. One particular one is Andrew Warner.
Andrew is the founder of Mixergy, a place where he interviews founders for their hard-earned lessons and tactics. Andrew has interviewed over 2000 entrepreneurs in the last ten years.
He has had the founders of Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Groupon, Pixar, and Sun Microsystems.
And Andrew goes after questions people want to know but are too timid to ask, including revenues, rumors, personal relationships, public failures, etc...
I've always wondered how Andrew cultivates trust so that he gets the answers he wants (without the founders hating him afterward)
Now, at last, Andrew has put all the interview mechanics into his new book Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone
In our conversation, I took a step deeper:
- (23:13) The atomic unit skills he uses to master in order to go from a white belt to a black belt as an interviewer (and build a good multi-million dollar podcasting business)
- (12:44) How 2000 deep conversations impact him, his network, his career, and his lifestyle
- (5:09) How podcasting as a lifestyle allowed him to do 7 marathons in all 7 continents in 1 year (while (while growing his podcast business))
- (60:50) What new tech stack and show format he would use starting today?
- (11:54) The inside-out approach Andrew recommends beginner podcast use?
- (16:16)The framework he uses to flush out the questions he finds valuable for himself while maintaining what's valuable for the audience?
- (20:48) How Chris Rock gave Andrew Warner an idea that is at the heart of his craft as an interviewer?
- (23:30)How double-barrel questions enable him to ask edgier questions while giving guests a graceful out
- (39:43)Why being interviewed is a vulnerable experience for anyone and we offer 3 different styles of hosts can use encourage guests
- (43:34)How Andrew maintained his intrinsic motivation so every new guest is brand new and never gets repetitive
- (31:27)Which thread to follow: shoved facts or story arc?
- (45:35)Which strategy to follow: start new micro podcasts or stay within your brand?
- (49:04)How he stays connected with guests after the recording is over?
- (56:35)(bonus) A ninja technique Andrew uses to connect with all the VIPs at any conference
- (44:46)Why he started another podcast in the crypto space?
If you want to have high-impact conversations with anyone (especially your heroes), this episode is the episode you'd want to tune in.
Links* Stop Asking Questions the best book on interviewing money can buy * 128 Andrew Warner: How to Win Friends (& Build a 7-Fig Business) With High Impact Conversations * Heidi Roizen on networking
Before I introduce this week’s guest...
There I was sitting on the Delivering Happiness bus at the 2010 TED conference and Tony Hsieh (the CEO of Zappos) was pouring me shots. I thought I had made it.
(I was hanging out with the Zappos guy!)
Fast forward 10 years, when I heard the news we had lost Tony in late 2020. I felt a deeper sense of loss.
I only had a few personal interactions with him. By no means we were friends.
But unbeknownst to me, I saw him as a fellow Asian Noble Warrior who was actively pushing the envelope of cultural and business norms. I have grown to admire and respect him.
Jenn and Tony were at the forefront of a movement that is making "purpose” cool in business. They were co-founders of Delivering Happiness, a consultancy that helps companies create happier company cultures for a more profitable and sustainable approach to business.
Tony was also her soulmate. They've been close friends for decades.
So this conversation was more personal and reminiscing of Tony.
But this is also a conversation with a thought leader.
Jenn Lim is the CEO/co-founder of Delivering Happiness. They help companies create happier company cultures for a more profitable and sustainable approach to business.
She is the author of her new book Beyond Happiness How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact.
Beyond Happiness offers inspiring stories from Jenn, case studies from 400 businesses, practical mental frameworks to implement these big ideas.
If you are a business leader who values your employees as assets, not expenses; and you want tactical ways to operationalize your value for more purpose and PROFIT, this is a conversation you don't want to miss.
We talked about...
✏️ How she lost her cofounder and soulmate Tony Hsieh and how it changed the book Beyond Happiness 5 weeks before the book is due
✏️ (60:10) Why alignment session amongst stakeholders is THE best tool for businesses to immediately inject more purpose, impact, profit in uncertain times
✏️ (39:24) The core quality that makes Tony Hsieh a business and cultural innovator
✏️ (51:53) The mental model she figured out after helping 400 businesses integrate people, purpose, and profit
✏️ (53:47)The case study of how Starbucks got even stronger after COVID
✏️ (23:38) The 24-hour resilience test - how to quickly determine how bulletproof you actually are
✏️ (29:05) (22:15) The 2 meta frameworks to uncover your deepest core values: movies and high-low moments
✏️ (46:58)How to influence a skeptical CFO about purpose and culture
✏️ (13:31)And finally the key life lessons she learned about happiness and purpose and resilience from losing Tony and her Dad
Beyond Happiness offers inspiring stories from Jenn, case studies from 400 businesses, practical mental frameworks to implement these big ideas. If you value people and you want practical frameworks to bring more purpose and people, and profit in these volatile times,
🔥 Buy Beyond Happiness https://bit.ly/jennlim
🔥 Get the roadmap to find your 2nd mountain of legacy and impact: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My guest is Sam Horn.
-
Sheri Salata, (Oprah's Executive Producer) says Sam is, "One of the bright lights and most accessible wisdom sharers in our culture today."
-
Her 3 TEDx talks and 9 books have been featured in NY Times, on NPR, and presented to Cisco, Intel, Fidelity, NASA, Nationwide and National Geographic.
-
She is known as the Intrigue Expert
We talked about...
GETTING ATTENTION
- 5:27 How she can predict if someone is getting a deal without hearing the pitch.
- 4:05 How to get a book publisher's attention at the Maui writer's conference in 60 seconds
- 8:18 The framework and the exact pitch she taught a social entrepreneur to win millions in funding in 60 seconds
FINDING MEANINGFUL NEXT
- 28:14 For those in transition, she shared the 4A framework: avocation, ability, adversity, attitude to help you figuring out your meaningful next.
- 69:53 How to enroll high profile mentors and cultivate deep relationships with them
LIVING IKIGAI
- 51:14 We talked about living a self-sacrificing life vs. living a life of ikigai (reason for waking up in the morning).
- 54:22 How a simple exercise helped her write her own philosophy at 18 (and ending any future indecisions about life's tough choices)
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/126-sam-horn-how-to-create-intriguing-communication-that-makes-win-win-collaborations/
My guest is Orpheus Black
- Orpheus is the author of "The Enso: A Philosophy of Submission"
- He has been an educator of 25 years with several titles in the BDSM and kink community.
- His work has been featured in Mashable.com, Playboy, Marie Claire, and Ebony.
- Many today look at him as the "coach's coach." when it comes to healthy sexuality, and enlightenment
We talked about...
- Sex is everywhere
- The difference between wants and needs
- The difference between embarrassment and shame
- We did an exercise to distinguish the 4 quadrants of sex: social indoctrination, your self-expression, your shadow, and your perception
- The common blocks and fears to sexuality
- His own transformation to becoming more fearless
- If you are a leader, listen to our discussion about causing transformation
- The 4 components of sacred rituals: space, place, time, sacrifice; and how to use them to bring more significance in your relationships
- We had a discussion about the healthy and unhealthy cycle of desire and contentment (and avoid being hungry ghosts)
- His rituals to cultivate the capacity to be seen to receive
- Finally, we talked about purpose-driven sexuality vs. libido driven sexuality
Please enjoy my conversation with Orpheus Black
Links
- www.orpheusblack.com
- The Enzo
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/125-orpheus-black-purpose-driven-sexuality-desires-rituals-intimacy-spirituality/
My next is Barry Goldstein. He is a Grammy Award-winning producer whose passion is using music to transform lives.
He has collaborated with New York Times Best Selling Authors Neale Donald Walsch, Anita Moorjani, Dr. Joe Dispenza, and Dr. Daniel Amen. He is also an author - The Secret Language of the Heart: How to Use Music, Sound, and Vibration as Tools for Healing and Personal Transformation.
Barry’s music is being used in hospitals, hospices, cancer centers, and medical practices to help Stroke victims, those who struggle with Alzheimer's disease, people with Aphasia, those with ADD, and many other ailments.
Please enjoy my conversation with Barry Goldstein.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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My guest is Dr. Jeff Spencer – a legendary cornerman coach who has helped athletes win over 40 gold medals, executives build iconic businesses and thought leaders catapult to the top of their fields.
He has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post and worked with Bono, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Nike, Hitachi and Bulletproof.
His proudest achievement is raising his adopted daughter with his wife.
We talked about...
- 7:32 The 2 parts of our human nature: survival instinct and champion's mind
- 18:47 The role of an elder for champions
- 20:12 3 kinds of advisors champions have: coach, mentor, cornerman
- 25:52 The criteria and responsibilities of a good cornerman
- 92:25 What's the biggest difference between elite champions (Bono, Tiger Woods) and the rest
- 105:59 The source of FOMO (and his secrets to living a peaceful life)
- 110:54 The art of having a pre-conversation as advisors
- 50:03 The nature of the imposter syndrome and the self-doubting voice
- 61:02 His magic eraser method to erase past regrets
- 67:55 Finally, why this is the pivotal moment in history to show up and express your truth
Please enjoy my conversation with legendary cornerman, Jeff Spencer
Links
- www.drjeffspencer.com
- https://beforeyouwin.com/
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/123-jeff-spencer-how-to-deliberately-play-at-your-full-potential/
My guest is the powerful Jay Campbell. He is a 4x international best-selling author, co-founder of Aseir Custom, and founder of the Jay Campbell Brand and Podcast. Jay is a global influencer teaching Men and Women how to #FullyOptimize their health while raising their consciousness. #RaiseYourVibrationToOscillation
We talked about...
- 2:31 Optimizing the physical body for conscious and spiritual integration
- 72:02 Alternate-day fasting, BDNF brain derived neurotropic factor, and enlightenment
- 74:07 His nutrition (before 6pm) and fasting ritual (to help him live to 120)
- 76:08 His MWF 30-min exercise ritual as a 50-year-old (and why he is adamant about being injury free)
- 78:49 the most effective routines to induce skeletal muscle hypertrophy (by tapping into all 3 energy systems (aerobic glycolytic, glycolytic, and anaerobic))
- 84:30 His daily sauna, foam rolling, and stretch rituals
- 76: 36 His weekly cardio rituals to optimize his physical body for spiritual growth
- 39:13 Therapeutic optimized testosterone and its two-fold goal of balance and happiness.
- 90:39 Trans-scrotal delivery mechanism for therapeutic optimized testosterone
- 93:54 Microdosing of Cialis as the best form of preworkout
- 105:03 Why he is intensively focusing on elevating consciousness
- Please enjoy my conversation with Jay Campbell, the 4x international best-selling author.
Links
- 🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
- 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with multidimensional entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
- ✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/122-jay-campbell-optimize-the-body-for-spiritual-development-testosterone-nutrition-exercise-mobility/
My guest is, Keith Montgomery, a principal consultant at CyberOi, who passionately supports the evolution of an inclusive educational system that brings people together to solve the world’s greatest problems and maladies.
As a serial entrepreneur in game-changing technologies, Keith has co-founded and served as an executive in companies focused on business intelligence, cloud, and big data, with clients including McGraw-Hill Companies, Avery Dennison Corporation, and Robert Half International.
Keith creates bridges between organizational and human cultures, and is proficient at building high-performing teams that optimize the use of collaboration and technology.
We talked about...
- 8:31 How he uses the mathematical mind and linguistic strategies to make sense of the world #sensemaking
- 9:05 How he learned 6 languages and a became a highly sought-after specialists for nextGen technologies
- 19:38 Why the dream world and digital world are getting more and more similar
- 29:34 Why he is excited to use crypto as a means to give more financial sovereignty for the bottom of the pyramid #soverignty
- 16:12 How he discerns the cult of personalities as well as the possibilities in digital media and cryptocurrencies
- 50:53 The 6 ilities of NFT technologies
- 24:43 The analytical and the fundamental angles he uses to find opportunities in the blockchain space
- 90:34 The difference between spirit work vs. soul work #shadow
- 104:57 The exponential benefits of having his own systems in areas that are important to him #systemsthinking
- 104:18 The specific technique of Whats at risk to make fast and accurate decisions
- 109:19 The 2 frameworks: kanban and check-in to help him make better investment decisions
Please enjoy my conversation with serial entrepreneur, Keith Montgomery
Check out Wisdom Quotes at the full episode,
https://noblewarrior.com/episode/121-keith-montgomery-becoming-a-polymath-sensemaking-digital-technologies/
"If you really want to innovate, you need people's hearts and minds, not just their hands"
Emily Griffin led global programming for Xbox Music & Video at Microsoft before she started her consultancy to create creates vibrant experiences that enliven people and help businesses flourish. Her artistic, empathic approach is at the heart of her consultancy for leadership teams who want to re-energize their work culture with more joy and purpose.
We talked about...* Why COVID accelerated empathy to become central at work * Why empathy for others starts with empathy for ourselves * Innovation is often the competitive edge for knowledge-based businesses. If this is important for you, ask yourself this question: what does it take to fundamentally innovate? * Emily's purpose in life is to spark joy and aliveness so that people bring it back home and work. She tells her childhood story of how it ignited her fire for art and community. * Why attempting to copy someone else's company culture is futile * How her former DJ experiences brought unique superpowers to create group coherence to impact-driven companies. * We talked about specific methods to cultivate trust and culture while working remotely * Finally, we wrapped up the conversation with a great case study: Cleo Barnett at Amplified exemplifies someone using the power of art to change hearts and minds.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/120-play-secret-to-boost-innovation-while-working-remotely-emily-griffin/
My next guest is Alison Armstrong, the founder of PAX Programs Incorporated. She is best known for her Understanding Men, The Queen’s Code, and In Sync with the Opposite Sex. Alison has dedicated the last 30 years of her life giving millions of people access to more fulfilling lives, loving relationships, stronger families and productive organizations. To learn more about her work go to understandmen.com.
we talked about
- Her origin story
- THE 'what if' question saved her
- Why she loves archetypes and the limitations of archetypes
- Why freedom is her highest value and how she maximizes her value
- Why she uses ING words to describe paradigms rather than labels
- The 3 components deepen our experience of love
- What are the 6 hidden dominant drivers that drive our choices
- What's the difference between expectation and need
- The 2 things you do to get more of what you want as a receiver in a relationship
- Finally, how do you clarify what you need at the deepest level?
Please enjoy my conversation with Alison Armstrong, the founder of understandmen.com
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/119-deepen-your-experience-of-love-with-these-3-elements-alison-armstrong/
My guest is Jevon JT McCormick.
He was born the son of a black pimp father and a white orphan mother.
he’s made millions in the stock market (even though he didn’t go to college),
He serves as a board member for Conscious Capitalism
Today, he’s the CEO of Scribe Media, a multi-million dollar publishing company with more than 1700 authors, including members of The Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Nassim Taleb, and David Goggins, whose blockbuster book Can’t Hurt Me has sold over 2 million copies.
Jevon and I talked about:
- Why he said 'negativity never solved anything in spite of being raised in a negative environment that could easily lead to cynicism
- Why he doesn't believe in hope and instead choosing belief
- Why he focuses on god, health, family, business, and investing only and is cutthroat with everything else
- How he broke the intergenerational pattern to create his greatest accomplishment that is his family
- How he uses gratitude to brings himself and employees back to focus
- Why his unstable childhood became the source of his extraordinary EQ and social intelligence
- Why confidence was all he had and how that brought him success and fulfillment
- Why he printed only 5 copies of his book instead of making it public at first
- Why he believes 'listening and surrounding yourself with great people far smarter than you' is the secret to running a multi-million dollar business
- Why he thinks CEOs are over celebrated and why people, process profit and going 3 layers deep is the way to go
- His 3-step advice to young people who are reinventing themselves during this time
- The number 1 question he asks candidates to weed out those who don't have a culture fit
Please enjoy my conversation with Jevon JT McCormick the CEO of Scribe Media
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/118-rise-above-hell-reach-great-heights-through-belief-gratitude-and-hard-work-jevon-jt-mccormick/
My next guest, Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and both a Diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a Fellow of The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Dr. Breus was recently named the Top Sleep Specialist in California by Reader’s Digest, and one of the 10 most influential people in sleep. Dr. Breus is on the clinical advisory board of The Dr. Oz Show and on the show (40 times).
Dr. Breus has been interviewed on CNN, Oprah, The View, Anderson Cooper, Rachel Ray, Fox and Friends, The Doctors, Joy Behar, The CBS Early Show, The Today Show, and Kelly and Michael.
Dr. Breus lectures all over the world for organizations such as YPO (Young Presidents Organization) 20+ times in 2018-19, AT&T (10 times), on stage for Tony Robbins (Unleash the Power), hospitals, and medical centers, financial organizations, product companies and many more.
We Talked About* The counterintuitive higher risks entrepreneurs take on when they are sleep deprived * How sleep impacts our mood and spirituality and all of those aspects to us as humans * Why naturally waking up without an alarm and waking up feeling refreshed and ready to meet the day is the goal * Why eight hours is a myth and what qualitative and quantitative data we ought to pay attention instead * The 4 stages of sleep and which stages we ought to optimize (hint: stage 3 & 4 are the money stages) * 2 under detected signs of sleep deprivation * His 20/20/20 protocol to prime our body for rest * If you are a true biohacker who wants to improve your sleep efficiency, what factor you ought to optimize * The 3 most common questions most people ask him * what mattress should I buy * what do I do about wake up in the middle of the night? * how do I turn off my brain at night? * The 4 supplements you need to get for better sleep * Why chronotype test helps you fall asleep quickly and get into deep sleep faster. * When is the best time to have sex as a couple (and how to have that conversation)
Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Breus, America’s most trusted sleep doctor
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/117-sleep-doctors-tips-to-have-relaxing-deep-sleep-michael-breus/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
“The goal is how can we have a rich life and that's not measured in dollars. Dollars are nice, but it ain't the answer.” - Matt Kursh
My next guest is Matt Kursh. He founded Clearview (later sold to Apple.) Then he founded eShop (later sold to Microsoft.) Then he ran MSN, the #4 largest website at the time. Today he is the CEO and the co-founder of Oji Life Lab.
We talked about:
- Why the entrepreneur dream of selling to big companies is not a very good dream
- The paradox of business goal-setting
- Why the concept he coined ‘optionFUL’ is especially important for people who must control all aspects of their lives
- He gave a piece of tactical advice to deal with people who want you to project more certainty than reality
- Why he continues to start companies after selling 2 to Microsoft and Apple
- We talked about why emotional intelligence for working adults is important and the potential downfall for any organization if emotional contagions don’t have emotional intelligence. and the potential life-saving moments when people are equipped with these skills
- Oji Life Lab’s unique approach to mapping out the emotional landscape and give people the tools to get around from point A to point B
- The 5 areas of emotional intelligence help you in concrete ways: decision making, attention memory learning, creativity performance, mental physical health, relationship quality
- Lastly, his straight feedback to fellow CEOs and founders who think their anxiety is the source of their edge
Please enjoy my conversation with the CEO of Oji Life Lab, Matt Kursh
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with spiritual rationalists. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/interview-with-this-serial-entrepreneur-was-a-master-class-in-emotional-intelligence-at-the-workplace-matt-kursh/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Susan Harrow is a renowned media coach at PRsecrets.com. She is the author of the best-selling book, Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul. She has media trained thousands of CEOs, celebrity chefs, start-ups, speakers, entrepreneurs, and authors for Oprah, CBS’ 60 Minutes, The Today Show, Good Morning America, etc
We talked about:
- How she coaches introverted CEOs who resist going on shows to shift their context
- How she coaches her clients to remained composed during even the toughest questions on tv
- The 3 questions she asks herself whenever she isn’t sure if she should speak her mind
- Her methodology to finetune her clients’ target audience and messaging
- How to connect with the audience whether they are on zoom or live in the studio
- How to adjust your talk on the fly
- We talked about her spiritual practices right before she gets on any shows
Please enjoy my conversation with a renowned media coach, Susan Harrow.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with spiritual rationalists. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with spiritual rationalists. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/115-media-training-martial-arts-secrets-to-become-a-media-star-susan-harrow/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My next guest is Ava Pipitone. Ava is an entrepreneur, adviser, and futurist. They assemble teams and design infrastructure to operationalize emergent intelligence, as our world integrates millions of new minds via technology. Currently a general partner with Permanence Capital and CEO of Suyana Technologies; following a life in public policy and government technology. Their expertise in business design, inner technology, and social equity has established them as a speaker, investor, and public intellectual throughout the Open Society Institute, Summit Series, TEDx, and other private ecosystems.We talked about: Their purpose - building that infrastructure for emergent consciousness to stabilize on our planet.Their mental model of honoring their purpose and making them fully alive and ecstaticThe importance of having someone doing exactly what they want to do and doing it in such a way that feels resonantThe importance of having mentors to affirm their decisions and the path they are onTheir autodidactic, following of their joy, finding their center and finding out a way to stabilize that. The importance of cultivating the feeling of ecstasis and how that sense of playful contribution is what most people yearn forHow the heart is a quantum computer and the mind is a linear computer and listening to the expansiveness of the heart allows for constructive decisionsWe discussed the latest inner technologies she found to productize our wetware and train our body to calibrate our nervous system for healthy interaction, with larger data sets. Lastly, we talked about her spiritual disciplines to induce neuroplasticity and within the right container heal trauma. Please enjoy my conversation with Ava Pipitone, the CEO of Suyana Technologies.🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/114-inner-technologies-for-the-emergent-future-ava-pipitone/👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Marques Anderson is a former NFL player. He is the founder of the World Education Foundation and Urban Matrix One. He is also the podcast co-host at Ancestralcyborg.com. He is a thought leader, keynote speaker, and cyborg-anthropologist.
We talked about
- How he uses his somatic wisdom to make congruent decisions
- Why the choice of leaving the NFL into the world of futurism wasn’t a difficult one
- The exact moment when his passion for the NFL left his body
- The importance of being brave enough to lean into a new identity
- Using breathwork to achieve desirable qualities instantly
- How to integrate both the intellectual and somatic life to be in flow
- How to use precise language to create a powerful narrative to build his ideas
- The 2 indigenous practices that are relevant to bring disparate cultures together
- How to leverage technology to transform our fragility to naturally and subconsciously rebuild the earth
- Marque’s personal practice from visualization, movement, meditation to properly focus his lifeforce in harmony with the earth
Please enjoy my conversation with Marques Anderson, the founder of AncestralCyborg.com
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Mitzi Perdue. She is
- The daughter of the person who founded Sheraton Hotel Chain
- The widow of Frank Perdue of perdue chickens
- Founder of Win This Fight, Stop Human Trafficking Now.
- If you want to follow up with her, text Mitzi @51555 with "WTF"
We talked about:
- Why she is still working hard and dedicating her life at 80 years old
- How to use wrongness to attract attention for the right cause
- A counterintuitive and brilliant way to combat human trafficking rings
- Why storytelling is her weapon of choice for the impact she wants to make in the world
- concrete tactics national speakers association use to teach powerful storytelling skills
- The #1 skill of success the founder of Sheraton passed down to his daughter
- The specific tactics the founder of the Sheraton hotel did to boost employee morale during the depression era
- How to cultivate grace as a mindset
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven multidimensional entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
My next guest is Chris Voss, who is the CEO & Founder of The Black Swan Group Ltd
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Author of Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. (1 million copies sold)
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Most popular course instructor on masterclass.com
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Former lead International hostage negotiator at the FBI
We talked about:
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How he discovered tactical empathy as a superior negotiation method after dealing with cutthroat commodity dealers
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Why hammering his opponent with empathy got him better deals
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How his mindset around negotiation is fundamentally different than most people
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How he maintained positive even after dealing with terrorists for 25 years
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How tone is the single most overlooked superpower when it comes to negotiation
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How practice is the path to mastery even for something as esoteric as a cold read and
tonality
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Chris’s morning rituals to setup his day for success
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And his project 120 to stay healthy at age 120
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://bit.ly/3lVRhhN
"Whatever you're dealing with, it's what makes you strong. Where you think you're weak, where you are anxious, fearful, nervous, because you don't understand you value because no one ever helped you have that value to understand that confidence and say, I. Am, Enough."
My guest is Ken Dubner, a master hypnotherapist. He is a frequent lecturer at ucla school of dentistry and the American Hypnosis Association. He is the founder of the Life Formula Method to help people break free from the self-imposed prisons and step into their power.
Ken talked about his superpower as a hypnotherapist involves his humor, involves his personality, involves his total openness about his history, which most therapists don’t do.
He said: “I'm delightful, I'm engaging. I'm funny as fuck because I was a comic when I was in my twenties. So part of my superpower is my ability to make most people feel comfortable cause I'm so upfront and irreverent around my own struggle and because I'm free and they want to be free like that. He is unapologetically himself and he wants to teach everyone else to be that. That's his mission in life.
We talked about:
- How he bulletproofs his mind where he gets excited on stage where someone else gets frightened
- Transmitting your greatest weaknesses into your greatest strengths
- The 3 steps to fundamentally shift your belief system
- How to be unapologetically you
- How to foster owning your accomplishments
- The psychology of confidence
- Different levels of depression
- Being adaptive and maladaptive in life
- The comparison between martial arts and mental health
- The safety protocol he uses to put his people in psychological safety in minutes
- The importance of reminding people of their heroic progress
Please enjoy my conversation with Ken Dubner.
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✍️ Access all the wisdom clips: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/110-how-to-turn-your-greatest-weakness-into-your-greatest-strength-ken-dubner/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors on the journey: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My next guest is Josh Brill. He is a music and mindfulness coach, artist, and entrepreneur.
He is an acclaimed guitarist and producer, founder of Yoga of Guitar, Yoga of Ukulele, and a transformational guide with over 32 years of experience.
With over 27 years of guitar teaching experience including a position teaching at Berklee College of Music, Josh combines his vast experience as a professional musician and as a master teacher to educate internationally on the power of music as a mindfulness practice.
Josh's life and career as a professional musician further developed and evolved through his work and participation with Robert Fripp and the Guitar Craft/Guitar Circle and Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists courses and projects.
Links* Yoga of Guitar
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🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the Youtube Channel for short clips from these Noble Kings. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Access all the wisdom clips: https://noblewarrior.com/episode/109-music-as-an-exponential-path-of-awareness-healing-lifes-mysteries-josh-brill/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors on the journey: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My next guest is the international bestselling author and serial entrepreneur, Jay Samit:
- He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups,
- He has partnered with the whos who of our time: Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman, David Geffen, Richard Branson, Paul Allen, and Pierre Omidyar.
- A former NASDAQ company CEO and Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte
- The author of Future Proofing You (Wiley 2021) where he made a case study of taking someone who was on welfare to a million dollars in revenue in 1 year.
Jay dropped 30+ knowledge bombs, including:
- After you change the voice in your head, changing the world of business is easy
- How will your past mistakes inform your future decisions is a better use of your mental cycles?
- When rejected, they are not saying I can't do it; they are saying they can't do it with me. It's their loss
- Being happy creates the best conditions for success - your brain, mood, appearance, sales, decision-making, and creativity.
- A million a year is a mental 4-minute mile. Break it.
- Today can be better than yesterday and I have the power to make it so.
- The failure of our current education and economic system is that we failed, teach 90% of Americans how to get their piece of the American dream
- There is 2 axis to select a problem that is suitable for the soul-impact fit: 1) total addressable market for the possible impact. 2) the passion you have about the problem for your own fulfillment.
- By watching where the 800-pound gorillas are spending big, bucks, you'll see where the wave is being created.
- Find your niche by pairing the problem with the buzzword of the day
- His number 1 hack to get connected with the industry leaders who are impossible to connect
- Find a big company with the existing audience you want to reach; your can offer your product/service as a customer acquisition tool or value add or a way for them to be hip and cool again
- Why he advocates for selling out early vs. holding out for a higher offer? And specifically why 50% cash / 50% equity is a wise choice.
Here is my favorite: only a small % of your decisions are going to be home runs, so make more decisions.
Go buy Future Proofing You...it's full of gems https://adbl.co/2NUpOAz
My next guest, JR Martinez, is an army vet, burn survivor, winner of Dancing with the Stars, a New York Times best-selling author, and the podcast host of the podcast “Rebirth.”
He speaks all over the world to share his story and knowledge on overcoming life’s battles.
We talked about:
- How he grew up with a single mother, struggled his identity, and felt alone in the world growing up
- He talked about speaking with intention and the power of words and the consequences when he got away from that
- He talked about how he grapples with saying something vs. holding back; doing it with compassion vs. doing it with force whenever he sees a chance to remind others who they could be.
Whether you can see the parallel in your own narratives and learn from his lessons, one thing is for certain, JR’s desire to help people have hope again, to have trust again, and to have self-love again is palpable. Feel his heart.
Links* jrmartinez.com
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://upbeat-originator-8740.ck.page/516c17f1d1
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🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the Youtube Channel for short clips from these Noble Kings. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Access all the links and clips: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/how-to-manifest-surviving-burning-car-tv-acting-winning-dancing-with-the-stars-jr-martinez/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors on the journey: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My next guest, Carolina Reis Oliveira, is the co-founder & CEO of Oneskin, a biotech company developing solutions to target anti-aging at the molecular level. Carolina holds a Ph.D. in stem cell biology. OneSkin is leading the development of the first anti-senescence topical product designed to promote skin health and strength. Carolina has been actively engaged in the longevity ecosystem in the Bay Area. We talked about: How she journeyed from a small town of 7000 people in Brazil to Silicon Valley. (and why Peter Diamandis is betting big on her stemcells) How the academic salary cap pushed this Brazilian rebel to come to America and form her VC-backed startup. How she unifies her scientific training and spiritual faith to (confidently) navigate startup uncertainties The secret advantage Carolina didn’t know she had that would save most entrepreneurs years of pain. How she and her 3 cofounders engineered healthy founder dynamics and workplace culture for the last 5 years And finally their unique inside-out approach to anti-aging that’ll help us live to 120 🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube Channel for future interviews about entrepreneurs sharing their journey from warrior to commander to king. https://bit.ly/35cea8q 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the Youtube Channel for short clips from these Noble Kings. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v ✍️ Access all the links and clips: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/106-the-biotech-entrepreneur-peter-diamandis-is-betting-on-to-make-living-to-120-possible-carolina-reis/ 👪 Join other Noble Warriors on the journey: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My next guest, Memnon Uzan holds 7 different ranks in a variety of barrage of different martial arts. He is a polymath (bodybuilder, mathematician, Violin player, physicist, African Wisdom keeper). We talked about the path of becoming limitless, specifically: The Blueprint for becoming limitless in your soul, spirit, and intellect How the childlike love of action figures helped him grow into a real-life superhero. How being misunderstood help him find the fountain of never-ending motivation The process Memnon created to stay “reflexively connected to God” The formula for overcoming lust Finding the truth on the collision courses of science, faith, and love The 5 metrics Memnon uses to track and measure spiritual growth How stepping out of reality helps to create your ultimate spiritual self The 5-step blueprint for creating an unstoppable will 🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube Channel for future interviews about entrepreneurs sharing their journey from warrior to commander to king. https://bit.ly/35cea8q 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the Youtube Channel for short clips from these Noble Kings. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v ✍️ Access all the links and clips: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/105-5-step-blueprint-for-becoming-limitless-memnon-uzan/ 👪 Join other Noble Warriors on the journey: https://noblewarrior.com/group
His company Yolélé Foods brings ancient African grain Fonioto 1000 stores in Whole Foods, Amazon, and other retailers across America. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube Channel for future interviews about entrepreneurs sharing their journey from warrior to commander to king. https://bit.ly/35cea8q ✍️ Access all the links and clips: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/104-from-losing-everything-when-arriving-the-us-to-becoming-a-world-renowned-chef-pierre-thiam/
Eamon is the creator and host of Life is a Festival, a podcast promoting a lifestyle of adventure and personal development through the lens of festival culture and beyond.
He serves as VP of Communications at Maya Health, a psychedelic medicine software company where he also hosts the weekly interview series, The Psychedelic Therapy Podcast.
Prior to joining Maya, he was the Creative Director of Chip Conley’s industry-leading online festival guide and community Fest300.
We talked about:
🔥 The journey of vulnerability that led him to a moment of naked courage on stage at Burning Man.
🔥 Using loneliness to bear and uncover life's richest treasures.🔥 Leveling up his experience or your experience to beating the game of life's final bosses.
🔥 Airhead candies were a gateway drug to entrepreneurship.
🔥 Love as a currency and the different currency that you didn't even know that you spent.
🔥 How to beat loneliness and raise your self-esteem through the architecture of community.
🔥 The journey of becoming the Oracle of festivals and transcendent experiences
🔥 How to harness the genius of others to create your own abundance.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube Channel for future interviews about entrepreneurs sharing their journey from warrior to commander to king. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to the Youtube Channel for short clips from these Noble Kings. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Access all the wisdom clips: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/103-how-an-entrepreneur-journeyed-through-loneliness-to-create-a-lifestyle-on-his-own-terms-eamon-armstrong/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors on the journey: https://noblewarrior.com/group
When Steve Schwartz began his journey of extensive study in preventative medicine at the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico. Since then, Art of Tea has become a leading purveyor of organic and specialty teas. Each year Steve travels extensively, returning with rare and unique teas from around the world.
Steve Schwartz is known by many authoritative figures in the tea industry as a Master Tea Blender. He has blended award-winning teas under our Art of Tea brand and his blends have won awards offered under our private label program for tea companies around the world. His drive and passion for expanding people’s knowledge and history of tea is captivating. Steve has lectured sold out tea blending classes for World Tea Conventions and frequently travels to offer educational programs on tea and tea blending.
We talked about* Why would high performers like Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss be interested in scouring all over the world for the best tea? * How to unlock your full power and potential through the wisdom of thousands of years of native botanical use * How to use tea and other botanicals to create an experience that rivals psychedelics (without the potential downside) * Why silicon valley favors the elevated state of “Tea Mind” for productivity. * How samurai warriors use tea ceremonies to win battles. * How a 2% shift can make a huge impact in the lives of others. * How to create a rockstar team that supports you (to stay in your zone of genius) * How to 10x your flow of abundance through a simple mindset shift * The one discipline necessary to lift yourself from your darkest times. * The 3 morning-rituals that give him the deepest flow * How to harness your darkest moments into a powerful force for creation * How the alchemy of tea can unlock your gratitude, mindfulness, and purpose. * How to make a global impact with your mission through storytelling.
If you want more, click on the links below:
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🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT WISDOM CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Access all the wisdom clips: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/102-the-search-for-healing-took-one-man-on-a-unlikely-journey-of-abundance-steve-schwartz/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Adam Quiney is an executive leadership coach specializing in working with the Smartest People in the Room. A former software developer and attorney, Adam’s learned the hard way about the costs that come from keeping your heart safe and chasing after external rewards to feel whole and complete. He is a man on a mission to bring the world to a more inspired and fully-expressed place.
We Talked About* How to create our own art of expression with more courage, integrity, and unique brilliance, specifically 3 types of brilliance: head-based, heart-based, and spirit-based * Walking a tight rope of loving ourselves exactly as we are and developing ourselves * How to change our beliefs that we know no longer serve us: beliefs, actions, environments * How our resistance is the linchpin of our next breakthroughs * How he found his dharmic path by confronting his resistance around it * How to not give significance to our struggles * How plant medicine opens a window get beyond our mind * How to ask for what we need as human beings * How to be an empowering partner * How social media could be a spiritual path
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL INTERVIEWS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT WISDOM CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/101-how-to-cultivate-3-types-of-brilliance-bring-more-soul-into-our-life-adam-quiney/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Jeff Tkach serves as the Chief Impact Officer for the Rodale Institute. Jeff is responsible for expanding Rodale Institute’s global influence in healing people and the planet by unlocking the transformational power of regenerative organic agriculture.
As Chief Impact Officer, Jeff leads the development and execution of the Institute’s core strategies, overseeing opportunities for partnership and co-investment that drive positive outcomes for Rodale’s philanthropic and programmatic initiatives.
We talked about
- The origin story of his mission
- The steps he took to come out of his health crisis (due to Lyme disease)
- How he put together a championship team towards wellness (including his selection criteria)
- The difference between a therapist and a spiritual coach
- Reducing the cost of healthcare by how we grow our food
- Agriculture as a spiritual practice (including the micro-steps we can take)
- Regenerative organic agriculture as the solution to the UN sustainable goals
- Does organic agriculture yield truly nutrient-dense food (more than conventional methods)? (hint: yes, 100x higher)
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
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🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/100-making-global-impact-with-soil-food-and-people-jeff-tkach/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Andrzej Cetnarski is the founder CEO of Cyber Nation Central, a worldclass expert in VIP cybersecurity, ex-UBS I-Banker, Harvard MPA, and Wharton MBA. He is also personally passionate about consciousness and living authentically
Links
- VIP Cybersecurity Masterclass
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
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🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/099-protecting-what-matters-most-according-to-a-cybersecurity-expert-andrzej-cetnarski/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Sky Nelson-Isaacs is a theoretical physicist, speaker, author, and musician. He has a master's degree in physics from San Francisco State University and a BS in physics from UC Berkeley.
The study of self-awareness has always been a strong interest for Nelson-Isaacs, and his background as an educator, scientist, software programmer, and speaker led him to found the Synchronicity Institute to educate, inspire and train a new generation of geek monks.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
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🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post:
https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/098-living-in-choice-synchronicity-according-to-a-physicist-sky-nelson-isaacs/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Links* “Living in Flow, The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World,” * “Leap to Wholeness, How the World is Programmed to Help Us Heal, Grow and Adapt,” * Synchronicity Institute * LivingIn Flow Course
Sky Nelson-Isaacs is a theoretical physicist, speaker, author, and musician. He has a master’s degree in physics from San Francisco State University and a BS in physics from UC Berkeley.
The study of self-awareness has always been a strong interest for Nelson-Isaacs, and his background as an educator, scientist, software programmer, and speaker led him to found the Synchronicity Institute to educate, inspire and train a new generation of geek monks.
Links * “Living in Flow, The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World,” * “Leap to Wholeness, How the World is Programmed to Help Us Heal, Grow and Adapt,” * Synchronicity Institute * LivingIn Flow Course
Full Episode Wisdom Quotes
Synchronicity is a serendipitous event that happened that actually helped that, you did not anticipate that actually helped you realize or actualize a desired outcome that you want. And so the context doesn't become clear until later.
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Flow in Mihaily's terms is an optimal state that we get into psychologically where our head and our decision-making from our head and is aligned with our decision making from our body. We start to lose track of time because we're doing…
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It's our emotions that block us from flow when we are. Feeling like resistant to something or scared, or when we're feeling angry or resentful. these things stop us from being willing and able to move forward in a way that actually helps…
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With synchronicity, what you're controlling is the meaning of the circumstance and the experience. You can't predict or control the circumstances at all. But we can be pleasantly surprised by the types of opportunities that come to us.
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Synchronicity is a program that helps us understand ourselves, helps us heal, grow, and adapt in the optimal way. But it happens through challenges because we have wounds that we're trying to get through. So we can get back to being more…
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What we anticipate becomes the Apple on the tree. The apples are the expectation that we will fulfill our quest. It becomes a thing that we're targeted for as synchronicity unfolds. But we were not always aware of what we're intending.
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The quicker I can go from grieving a frustrating situation to 'okay, what's next?' The faster I will accelerate myself. By valuing growth over accomplishment, I actually move much more quickly to success, even though I might lose this…
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If you can have more awareness and control over what you FEEL, you can have more awareness and control over what you DO. And that leads to more success in various ways.
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Growth is both about changing the way we think and changing the way we feel. by removing certain patterns that aren't serving us.
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By moving in the direction of my intention, I'm increasing the likelihood of getting the experience I want because I'm moving to a part of the tree where there's more of those experiences that I want to have. The closer you get to the…
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Keeping that momentum up means keep investing in the action. Yeah, actions that are relevant and then trusting that letting go of the attachment to a particular outcome and trusting that the one will fall in your lap at some point.
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Quantum mechanics is a study of what the world is doing when you're not watching it. Yes. How is the world unfolding when you're not observing? What I would advise is to recognize guys that you're in this liminal space where this is…
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It will unfold when the timing is right at some point, and in the meantime, who do you want to be?
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Anytime you've experienced success, you've been in some kind of flow. You've been aligned with your mind and your body and your spirit to make something accomplished.
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It's important for me to choose the job and the career that I love, not just because. It's selfish for me, but because I actually have an outsized impact when I do that, I influence other people to do that. I also influence my field most…
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With flow and synchronicity in general, I do what I can that's consistent.
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How we make real change in our lives is what are the things that we can do that are consistent, not what we think we should do in our heads. And we were doing to impress somebody else or prove it to ourselves, but what's, coming from our…
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Flow is about letting go of the worry about being in control. So when you're in flow, you might take control and you might let go of control and let somebody else be in charge. It's not prescribed. And this is, why it's not easy to…
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Wisdom Clips « Prev1 / 2Next »The #1 Habit That Most Improved My Life - Sky Nelson-IsaacsWhat Are My Embodiment Practice For More Flow And Synchronicity - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow to Identify What You Truly Want - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow Do We Choose Self Care AND Serve the Highest Good - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow to Choose One Path Or Another - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow to Cultivate Self Compassion - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow to Reinforce My New Identity And Ways of Being - Sky Nelson-IsaacsMy Daily Practice to Manifest My Book - Sky Nelson-IsaacsWhat to Do When There is No Supportive Evidence Yet - Sky Nelson-IsaacsWhy Momentum Leads to What We Want - Sky Nelson-IsaacsYour Problem is the Gateway to Flow - Sky Nelson-IsaacsBalancing Mental Models & Synchronicity - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow Emotional Intelligence Leads to Higher Synchronicity - Sky Nelson-IsaacsHow to Use Filters to Remove Noise of Your Life - Sky Nelson-IsaacsA.R.G.H. Process When Making a Decision - Sky Nelson-Isaacs« Prev1 / 2Next » Transcript By AI
Sky Nelson Transcript By AI
Living in Choice & Synchronicity (According to a Physicist)
CK: [00:00:00] Welcome to Noble warrior. This is a place where entrepreneurs talk about what it takes to create a life of purpose, meaning joy and fulfillment. We're going to talk about mental models, actionable tactics, mindset, such that you can take everything that you learn and go out and create your own life.
[00:00:17] A purpose, meaning fulfillment.
[00:00:19] My next guest is a theoretical physicist. he's a speaker, he's an author. He's a musician is the author of living in flow and leap into leap to wholeness. And soon to be published in March, 2021 is the founder of the synchronicity Institute. He has a master degrees in physics from San Francisco state university, and a bachelor in physics in.
[00:00:44] from UC Berkeley, please help me welcome sky Nelson Isaacs.
[00:00:48] Sky: [00:00:48] Hey CK. It's great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. And it was really nice to get to know you over the past couple of months.
[00:00:54] CK: [00:00:54] Yeah. a lot of people have been on the show before we had coaches. We have had entrepreneurs, we had a musician and investors, and one topic that consistently come up over and over again is the topic of flow and synchronicity.
[00:01:10] Now we come at it from different angles, from personal experience, from the spiritual experience, from the entrepreneurial practical experience, but I've never had a theoretical physicist come on a show at actually talking about flow and synchronicity. So I'm actually personally really excited to be speaking to you because here's the thing, synchronicity in my mind, something that's out of the realm of science.
[00:01:35] So I love to talk to someone. With actual hard science background to actually have a productive conversation with
[00:01:45] Sky: [00:01:45] yeah.
[00:01:46] CK: [00:01:46] Why don't we start off from some definitions so that way people can say, Oh, okay. So that's what flow is. That's what synchronicity is. Why don't we start there? What is flow for you and what is synchronicity for you?
[00:01:59] Sky: [00:01:59] I first had my, questions about synchronicity back in my early twenties. And I had experiences that I would call spiritual growing up. Cause I was raised in a pretty spiritually minded family. And, but it wasn't until I was a mature person in my twenties when I could start to look at this through a like whole picture context and ask myself, these experiences that are I've had, like I had, I've had experiences of running into people in unexpected places and.
[00:02:31] Having it be like this, isn't likely enough to even be calculable in physics terms, it's that unlikely and, or having, opening up to the right page of a book, looking for some guidance on some issue and just opening up a book and being like, that's totally what I needed to hear. And there's, alternate explanations for these things too.
[00:02:52] but I had that same question of is the science and ultimately I. Sort of the question I ask myself, it's either a science or it's in my head, like I'm making up this connection. And so that was what I sat with for a long time. And gradually, with enough experiences started to. Presume that, it must be something that's actually really happening.
[00:03:17] There must be some way to understand the meaningfulness of these experiences and why, how they reflect what I'm thinking about and what I'm feeling in my life. And if it's science, then we must be able to explain it with science. Now it may be that science has to evolve and expand a bit. And I do think we need to expand science to incorporate this, extra spoke there's in physics.
[00:03:38] We have matter energy space and time. And this extra spoke would be meaning incorporating meaning into our fundamental description of physical reality, but meaning has another word, which is already incorporated in a physics, which is information. So it's not a big stretch. The question is, how do you establish this?
[00:04:00] How do you make it formal? And if you do. Do you have a theory? That's just a better explanation. I'm not saying it's necessarily right, exactly as it is, but is it a better explanation than the current explanation for synchronicities, which is that they're basically random chance. And if you do see meaning you're, forcing that meaning onto the situation and trying to connect the dots that aren't there.
[00:04:20] And I think that we can have a better theory than that.
[00:04:27] CK: [00:04:27] Yeah, no, that's really great. as a, scientific person, myself, it's easy because we, in our brain, we have a reticular activation system, which is the whole point of that is to look for patterns. And it's easy for us to see pattern or meaning when there isn't any, how would you define, to, make it really simple for anyone that's listening?
[00:04:54] How would you define flow and how would you define?
[00:04:56] synchronicity
[00:04:57] Sky: [00:04:57] So let me start with synchronicity and the way I see it. first of all, Carl Young invented the term social, positive psychologist. No chick sent me high, was developed the field of positive psychology, young developed the field of analytical psychology and young defined, synchronicity as an a causal.
[00:05:16] Connection between two things between what you're thinking and what you experienced in the world. I'm going to be a little more specific because there's different types of synchronicities. You can have dreams, synchronicities, where you have a dream that connects to your, waking life. there's, different types.
[00:05:33] what I focus on is trying to untangle one specific way of looking at this, which is a synchronicity is a situation or experience that you have in the moment. Which becomes meaningful because it leads to another situation in the future that you're already wanting to have. So you have something that happens right now, which is it doesn't make sense.
[00:05:56] How did I bump into this person in the middle of grand central station when I've been thinking about them for weeks, but it doesn't make sense right. Then how that could have happened. And yet, later, maybe a week later you realize you needed to talk to them about a book or about a movie or about.
[00:06:13] Oh job or something like that. And so the context doesn't become clear until later. And so I look at synchronicities as events, which are happening in our lives, whose context is not clear to us. And yet it does fall within a bigger pattern that's happening in your life. And so there's this meaning that is there.
[00:06:32] So that's a synchronicity
[00:06:33] CK: [00:06:33] pause. Just, I want to underline this point real quick. So for anyone who believes in, Intention manifesting a desire outcome. Synchronicity is a serendipitous event that happened that actually helped that, you did not anticipate that actually helped you, realize or actualize a desired outcome that you want.
[00:06:56] Is that an accurate rate to reflect what you do?
[00:06:59] Sky: [00:06:59] Yep, definitely. Okay, cool. So I'll give an example. I have a friend, this is a really simple one. this friend had a ring that they had worn for many years and they couldn't remember the stone on it. It was this blue stone. And finally, one day they decided, as we do sometimes like today, I'm going to figure this out, been thinking about this for months, trying to remember this stone, I'm going to email my jeweler and ask him a picture and send it to them.
[00:07:20] So they sent off the email and they didn't hear back right away. So they went to the on with the rest of their day, which included going to get a manicure. At the manicure, she, finishes up and the manicurist asks, do you have a stamp card so we can give you credit for coming today? So the woman reaches in her purse and fumbles around and pulls out a card.
[00:07:40] And it's not the stamp card. It's the card from the jeweler. And on the back of the card has written the words, blue Topaz, which has the name of the stone. She realizes immediately. Yeah. She had written this down many years ago when she got the stone. So how did that card come to be in her purse? How did she end up at the manicurist and have the manicurist ask her to reach in our purse?
[00:07:59] That's really the synchronicity here, this small moment where she's asked to do something, which has an unrelated to her quest to find out the name of the Jewel but she goes along with it and she reaches in her person finds the answer to this other question that she's seeking. So there's the, moment when she's asked to look in her purse as this unrelated experience of, I'm going to be asked to do something I don't understand, but the context becomes clear a minute later when she pulls out the card and realizes that it answers her question.
[00:08:30] CK: [00:08:30] Beautiful.
[00:08:31] And the definition for flow.
[00:08:33] Sky: [00:08:33] So flow in Mihai chick sent me highs terms is an optimal state that we get into psychologically where our head and our decision-making from our head and is aligned with our decision making from our body. We start to lose track of time because we're doing something we love.
[00:08:49] And of course that we're doing something we love is a little vague. we're in a zone of optimal functioning where we're doing something that's hard enough to keep us interested, but not so hard that we get stuck. And so flow is something that, is very popular right now. And we can really benefit from collectively experiencing more flow because it makes us more, creative, more productive, less self-critical.
[00:09:17] more accessing and channeling the best parts of ourselves. Now, what I think is important and another way to define this in chick sent me his words is, if you think of your normal state as somewhere between trying to take control of life or enforce control and trying to let go of control, like sometimes you get frustrated with life and you say, Oh, forget it.
[00:09:40] I'm just gonna. Let it all happen. However, it happens. both of those are both extreme ends of the spectrum, but flow is not even in the middle of that. Spectrum flow is jumping out of that whole spectrum and saying, I'm going to pay attention to the fact that I'm worried in the first place about whether I'm in control or not.
[00:09:59] So flow is about letting go of the worry about being in control. So when you're in flow, you might take control and you might let go of control and let somebody else be in charge. It's not prescribed. And this is, why it's not easy to achieve just with the set of steps. You have to drop into a relationship with your experiences and with other people to figure out what's needed in the moment.
[00:10:24] So you develop a style rather than, just being in flow all the time.
[00:10:28] CK: [00:10:28] Yeah, I really like it. So in my mind, why I'm particularly interested in speaking to you and then obviously there's no quote unquote right. Answer by any discussion of this. I hope is, my, hope is that people would derive their own truth, whatever their own truth is.
[00:10:47] Okay. So here's the mental model, the, or the argument, there's the subject reality, right? Everything that I experienced in life happens within, it could be a mental image or a thoughts or emotions or physical sensations, Anything that actually happens in me. That's how I interpret it. The external reality.
[00:11:07] And then there's the objective reality, or shall we say consensus reality, right? That there's a table in front of me. People can measure it. and things like that as a, way to create some kind of consensus. So in my mind, what, you're trying to do is bridging the subjective reality, the emotions and intention to the objective reality, the external.
[00:11:34] Consensus reality. Is that a good, rough way to frame what we're discussing here?
[00:11:40] Sky: [00:11:40] Yeah.
[00:11:40] And that you just tapped into what is the key aspect of my work on getting people to experience more flow that it's that internal awareness of emotional state, because it's our emotions that block us from flow when we are.
[00:12:02] Feeling like resistant to something or scared, or when we're feeling angry or resentful. these things stop us from being willing and able to move forward in a way that actually helps us resolve our problems. So if, for instance, if there's something, if there's a conversation I am afraid to have with somebody.
[00:12:28] Because of some, grief that I have with them or with this experience in the past, and the opportunity comes up, I'm alone with them. the, fear or the, grief that I'm avoiding will come into in the way of being willing to say something and bring up this conversation. But when we look from the picture of, and this is where it comes into synchronicity in the study of synchronicity, when we look at.
[00:12:56] How do we end up resolving these, wounds from the past? how do we end up resolving these, this grief for this blockage we do. So by re-experiencing it and understanding the feelings we're having and having some new experience, which is different. So the way that we can, if we bring up this difficult subject with somebody and we have a different experience where we're, they're not defensive and they understand what we're saying, and we can resolve things.
[00:13:23] Like permanently resolved. We let go of that pattern. And that, involves being able to go with you and understand that we have a feeling that's making us resist that this, fear of grief or, whatever we're afraid of emotionally. And it's the fear of emotions that keeps us from moving forward.
[00:13:43] Fear of having certain emotions that we don't want to experience
[00:13:45] again.
[00:13:46] CK: [00:13:46] Yeah. I'm hundred percent agree with you. It's got here. I think the challenge that we have here is, so by the way, a hundred percent agree with you the way I think about it, subjective reality, the truth of who I am, the authentic self using your words right.
[00:14:01] Is, without, I can't remember exactly how you articulate it in your book, essentially, without this artificial lie, this artificial construct is artificial identities. So you can totally just be yourself. I remember now is without an artificial fear, right? That's the authentic reality. So the whole work that we do is to peel away the different, artificial or arbitrary, fears that we may have as a way to be open,
[00:14:36] Sky: [00:14:36] but like patterns that we've developed over time, which are not serving us necessarily, we don't even understand them.
[00:14:42] We don't see them happening, but they're unraveling constantly. Correct.
[00:14:46] CK: [00:14:46] So, that part in terms of mental model, a hundred percent there with you, I think that the challenge that I face in, number one, synchronicity. Is something that has both time and space. He doesn't happen like that right away.
[00:15:05] something, I encounter something. And then in some uncertain time, some desire outcome happened. So that in itself makes it even more complicated. Now, all of a sudden you have a multi-factorial equation here, right? Yeah. what was I going with this?
[00:15:22] Sky: [00:15:22] we were saying connecting synchronicity to those.
[00:15:26] CK: [00:15:26] Oh, I remember now I remember we announce, right? So, as a scientist, who was trying to look at this as a theory, as a system, as a systems theory, point of view, how do you quantify and measure in this thing? That's so subjective. You know what I mean? How do you, help others to quote unquote duplicate?
[00:15:47] Because this was not duplicatable. Not really science. So, you're in a paradox here. So I'm curious to know how, you
[00:15:55] go about
[00:15:56] solving it.
[00:15:56] Sky: [00:15:56] As You said synchronicities
[00:15:58] is about time and space and time and space is the realm of physics. What's beautiful about physics. Is it when you first start taking physics classes, when you're younger, you learn about time and space.
[00:16:07] That's the first thing you study. And then you do all this stuff over many years, you get your degrees. And then the most advanced people working on stuff are working on time and space. They're still trying to understand. What time and space really are. Cause we can take them for granted and we can build theories from them and to know how acceleration works relative to time and space.
[00:16:26] But we actually still haven't fully identified what time and space are. And Newton had this idea that time. Was this an undetectable, just chain like the passage through time is, unchanging. It just is what it is. Then Einstein came along and said, the faster you go and the relative speeds make a difference in the flow of time.
[00:16:49] So we've evolved our understanding of time, but we still have a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of things about it that don't quite make sense. we live in the moment. We don't have access to even 10 minutes from now, and we can remember 10 minutes ago, but we can have access to what's, 10 feet to our writer to our left.
[00:17:09] So distance is different from time in that regard. We're stuck at one place in time that we call the present. So time and space of the study of physics and synchronicities are only meaningful because they happen at the right time. I bumped into my good friend while I was traveling in Europe.
[00:17:28] This is a story. I tell him my YouTube channel, if anybody wants to listen to the whole thing. And we had been planning to meet in Greece, but I got sick and had to adjust my plans. Spontaneously went home through Paris to catch a flight home to California. And in Paris, she, got diverted to and ended up going to Paris.
[00:17:46] And we met at the Louvre museum by accident. And this is not just anybody. This is a person that ended up going on to become my wife. if we had the question, is, did we meet at that time in space on purpose or, how, does it work? That, particular moment at that particular time we were at the same place.
[00:18:06] So my, work is to study how things come together at the right time and place. The way that we can quantify that is through this model. That's, one of the simplest models in quantum mechanics of many worlds now. People might be familiar with the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics and, think about it.
[00:18:27] there are many versions of you in the world, or, in the, multi-verse and that's not the right way to think about it in my view.
[00:18:33] CK: [00:18:33] Oh, interesting. Okay. Please elaborate.
[00:18:36] Sky: [00:18:36] So the quantum mechanical wave function, the wave function is this thing in science that describes all the things you could possibly know about a system.
[00:18:44] So we don't actually know what an electron is. We know that it has a wave function that we can describe it with. And if we want to know the spin or for one another mass or of one, another position of the electron, we can measure it from the wave function and it gives us the right answer. And so we still don't know what it is exactly, but it's just.
[00:19:03] This, intermediate state between, if there's nothing there's nothing there. And if there's actually an electron there, then there's actual actually an electron, but there's this intermediate state of, okay, there's a wave function. We can query it and get a result and then we'll get something real, but it's not actually quite real in the same sense.
[00:19:22] So what the wave function does is it's constantly evolving into possibilities, branching like a tree. So if you think about a wave function as is branching tree, I usually use an Apple tree as a metaphor. And you can measure, for instance, let's say you have 10 branches on this tree, 10, 10 ways that things could go.
[00:19:43] And let's say two of those are really meaningful to have those lead to some kind of experience you're seeking to have. Let's say I'm traveling in Europe and I'm going through Paris to get home. And two of the branches. Lead to me bumping into Dana. One of them's at the loop, but another one might be at a cafe.
[00:20:02] So there's these two branches that lead to us having that experience. And there's eight other branches that lead to us, having a different experience like with not meeting. Then you can quantify that. You can say out of the 10 possibilities, two of them were meaningful and eight of them were not. So you got a 20% sort of weight factor.
[00:20:21] Pulling on those branches. And I weigh those. I marked that out with an Apple. So you put apples on the branches that have that meaningful experience, and suddenly you're able to quantify if I, the likelihood of that situation, that experience over a different situation, noting that the experience had to do with us meeting, not specifically at the loop, but in some form, because it was the internal experience I wanted to have of us talking and sharing time together and developing a relationship.
[00:20:48] That's the important thing we're after, when we talk about synchronicity, not the physical circumstances themselves, which, and this is why it's hard in science because in science, what we measure and what we are controlled experiments, we control a variable. We repeat it under that same control to get the measurement with synchronicity.
[00:21:07] What you're controlling is the meaning of the circumstance, the experience that somebody is having. And so the situation is going to show up differently every single time. You don't know if you're going to bump into someone at the loop or at a cafe or the train station, you can't predict that at all.
[00:21:21] And so there's this, is why it comes into flow because in flow, we're not predicting the world. We're not controlling the world, or we're coming into alignment with the circumstances that we have and finding ourselves surprised, but pleasantly surprised by the types of opportunities that come to us.
[00:21:38] I see.
[00:21:38] CK: [00:21:38] So you're not necessarily saying to engineer. to, lean, to, create a more favorable synchronicity point of view. It's more of a be open, right. Using a Lorax principle, be open to what's around you. you can probably tell, tell, my audience what that is and such that you can always be in or be more synchronistic in the way that you're pushed life.
[00:22:06] Is that an accurate way to articulate what your intention is?
[00:22:10] Sky: [00:22:10] Yeah. The Lorax is this process of six steps, L O R a X. Listen, that's listened to your experience, not listen to somebody, but listen to what's going on in your life. Notice it. And the second is open your mind. Oh, so a lot of times when things happen to us, we're re resistant or we eject the information because it just seems irrelevant to us.
[00:22:33] So noticing what information is coming to you and opening your mind to it saying maybe, this is useful to me. Third step is reflecting. So spend some time looking at the rest of life. This is where you look at the context of a situation you say. Oh, I'm, somebody recommended. I go see this movie.
[00:22:52] That sounds stupid. I don't want to see that movie, but I realized they mentioned it was about, cars and I've been really thinking about cars a lot. Cause I want to get more into cars and working on cars. And so with some reflection, I start to see the context of this in the rest of, within the rest of my life, the rest of the things going on for me.
[00:23:13] So listen, open, reflect, and then release. No, I have this attachment. I don't want to see this movie. I never planned to see this movie. Why would I go see it? But now I'd have some new information and I see that it actually could be useful for me. So I'm going to release my attachment to how I thought things were going to go.
[00:23:27] And I'm ready to then take action. So the action here is obviously important because it's action, which demonstrates what it is that we're really trying to achieve in life. And I think that's the, I think about the cosmos that we live in as responsive to us, it's going to respond to our actions. It's going to respond to our choices, but this action is preceded by four steps of receptivity, listening, opening, reflecting on ourselves and releasing.
[00:23:57] And so by the time we act, we are in alignment with all these other factors that we wouldn't have been in alignment with otherwise. And then the X is just a simple reminder that this is an ongoing process. So you don't quit. Don't give up one of the most powerful. tools that I use in my own life is this, non quitting, this unwillingness to, set the ball down and walk away because if I stay with it, another synchronicity will happen.
[00:24:24] Even if I've screwed up many times already, another thing will pay me, will show up and I'll start the cycle again. Listen, open, reflect, release, and act again.
[00:24:33] CK: [00:24:33] Thank you for that. That was really beautiful. Yeah. I especially loved the X. One of the things that I receive is life is not over until it's over the right.
[00:24:43] don't get off during the middle of a roller coaster ride.
[00:24:47] I'm going and series of experiments. And for me, the whole point of this is my personal spiritual belief is the whole point of it is to enjoy the ride. Yeah, because at the end, everyone is, get off the ride when this physical realm is over, it's over.
[00:25:03] So the whole point of enjoy all of it.
[00:25:06] Sky: [00:25:06] So great. Quote. it'll all be okay in the end. So if it's not okay, it's not the, yeah, there you go.
[00:25:13] CK: [00:25:13] Okay, great.
[00:25:16] Sky: [00:25:16] and I'll just say that the, I realized in writing my second book called leap to wholeness, how the world is programmed to help us heal, grow and adapt it actually.
[00:25:26] Is a book. That's all about that ex step in the Lorax process. It's all about how do we not give up? How do we recognize what we're trying to accomplish and how the world is actually supporting us in that? Even though sometimes these synchronicities can be negative, they can be challenging to us and tools for checking inside and understanding where we are along that path.
[00:25:48] So we can get up the courage to try again on whatever it is we're trying to do.
[00:25:53] CK: [00:25:53] Okay, so, 11 challenge back to you. You did say in your first book that the universe isn't a friendly place on friendly price is very neutral,
[00:26:05] Sky: [00:26:05] right?
[00:26:06] CK: [00:26:06] But what you just said now that, the universe is working for you.
[00:26:11] I like this narrative more personally for me, it's, the world isn't happening to me is happening for me, is happening through me. There's different level levels. So I'm curious to know if you can articulate that a little bit more,
[00:26:25] unpack
[00:26:25] that for us.
[00:26:26] Sky: [00:26:26] the subtitle of this new book, it has the word programmed.
[00:26:29] The world is programmed. So let's say you have a program that you work with. You can think of anything, social media or whatever. It's not programmed to help you it's program to accomplish a certain set of tasks. And in my view, synchronicity is a program that's operating to help us understand ourselves, help us heal, grow, and adapt in the optimal way.
[00:26:51] But that happens through challenges because we have wounds that we're trying to get through so we can get back to being more authentic people. Back to who we came into this world to be. And so the program is, there to assist us in doing that work, but it's going to bring us whatever is needed to do that work.
[00:27:12] So it's going to bring us a broken down car, or it's going to bring us a failed relationship because that is necessary for us at that time to recognize the pattern that we're experiencing in our life. And I do a lot of work with, recognizing patterns cause we can. Often see the same situation showing up in our life again and again, and this is that programming it's meant to help us.
[00:27:35] It's the responsiveness of the cosmos that we live in, but it's not friendly. let me just do some work for you, so you don't have to do it, or, let me give you the easiest version of life so that, cause I love you or something like that. It's in the most, even like looking eye to eye with somebody and saying.
[00:27:56] I can help you by reflecting myself to you and then, we can help each other. So I think that the cosmos is lifting us up by, showing us who we are so we can lift ourselves up.
[00:28:08] CK: [00:28:08] I love it. Okay. So can you speak a little bit more about, okay. So, now I'm practicing the lower X principle.
[00:28:15] I'm open and reflecting. I'm taking action and doing it over and over again. I'm practices this, as, a, discipline, like, martial art and like a dojo behind my background. Yeah.
[00:28:28] Sky: [00:28:28] Yeah.
[00:28:28] CK: [00:28:28] So what, could I look forward to in terms of synchronicity and let me actually maybe phrasing it in a different way.
[00:28:39] So does that mean that I can drive my life? Towards more of my intention, intentional outcome. Is that, what that means? Or is it more of just be willing to be surprised of what fruits may, this path may take me
[00:28:59] Sky: [00:28:59] both, Steve jobs said famously that you can't connect the dots looking forward.
[00:29:02] You can only connect them. And in retrospect, looking back and you can see how your life lined up to get you where you are. He's talking about how, he ended up taking a class in calligraphy at Reed college and then dropping out of college and then ended up designing the Macintosh based on those experiences, influenced by his aesthetic.
[00:29:20] and you can only see that, chain looking backwards. I think we can look forwards and start to see the context in our experiences as they're happening. What is the bigger con I get fired from a job. Okay. It hurts. It's painful. It feels like a setback. . What is the wider context in which that is happening?
[00:29:41] Is there a pattern that I can see in my life of experiencing this kind of rejection in other places, maybe in my relationships or in other jobs? What is it that I can take from this that's actually, and this is where the university in the sense of friendly, right? Because it's actually doing this in this experience is going to help us conquer the next thing.
[00:30:00] And the next thing might be more important for us, but we'll be more informed to be able to do it in a different way. Jump out of our cycles and try something different because we understand our patterns, our emotional patterns, maybe I'm being too bossy at work. And that just keeps showing up in all these ways.
[00:30:16] And it shows up in my relationships and gradually through enough experiences of difficulty, I start to touch into the grief that I feel that's making me bossy and start to develop more authentic, deeper relationships. And that affects my personal relationship. It affects my job experiences as well. So we're, growing through these processes and the experiences are there simply as a background, like props on a stage to help us experience these things.
[00:30:47] So it comes back to what I, think of as experience, we're here to experience things that will help us grow. And the physical situations that show up in our life are just there to make that happen. Now, the way I look at synchronicity, you talked about intention, I think. I want to get a little, dig a little bit deeper into that, what his intentions are.
[00:31:07] Are we always aware of what our intentions are? I might be thinking I'm offering some helpful advice to somebody. And I realize later in re reflection, why were they defensive? When I gave them advice, I was just trying to help, but maybe my intention was actually that I was worried about their safety or worried about their, choices.
[00:31:26] And so I was actually undermining them in some way and they felt that, but I couldn't see that in the moment. So we're not always aware of what our intentions really are. I liked the word, the phrase I use in the book is
[00:31:41] CK: [00:31:41] anticipated qualitative experience,
[00:31:43] Okay. That's a mouthful.
[00:31:45] Sky: [00:31:45] Yeah. There's a simpler way to phrase it. Expectation.
[00:31:51] expectation is something you're anticipating. And it's the experience that you're anticipating. Yeah. So I'm anticipating the experience of feeling safe and connected to my partner, or I'm anticipating the experience of, having to defend myself at work or I'm anticipating the experience of drinking coffee and tasting that and feeling that energy we're constantly, while we're doing in life is experiencing and we're constantly anticipating or expecting what's going to what we're going to experience next.
[00:32:21] I think that's the way our neurology works. And so my, way of phrasing this is that what we anticipate. In this way becomes the thing, the Apple on the tree. It becomes a thing that we're, targeted for as synchronicity unfolds. And so if we're anticipating being criticized at work, let's say it's going to inform our choices and we're going to do things which defend ourselves and, maybe, make choices to.
[00:32:50] Go get extra help from some on something we don't need. And then we find there. So I was put in a situation where we do get criticized and there's this sort of dynamic that I don't fully understand, but I see it in my life a lot where I'm actually anticipating a negative experience. And then I do things to, bring that about.
[00:33:06] And then I experienced that. So
[00:33:10] CK: [00:33:10] what's the difference between intention and expectation? Again, from your point of view,
[00:33:15] Sky: [00:33:15] it's really about what we're aware of. . there really is no difference, but the, in both cases, I'm trying to highlight the fact that we were not always aware of what we're expecting, what we're intending.
[00:33:31] And there was this underlying programming that we have, which is informing our choices that we're not aware of. Innocent. Maybe undermining us. Got
[00:33:41] CK: [00:33:41] it. Yeah, thank you. I really love the trio of possibility analogy and metaphor. The way I see it, came through the same, metaphor actually is, the fruit of what we desire and there are different domains, physicality, emotionality, relationships, the important domains of life, money, and parenting and all these beautiful things that we all as human beings want.
[00:34:08] And then the, what fuels. The growth or the particular tract is one my definition, intentionality as well as emotions. So I'm curious to know from your perspective, how do you go about choosing different tracks? Because different tracks may have different probabilistic outcome, And, how do you fuel.
[00:34:35] The intentionality that, what is it when you call it the anticipated qualitative experiences using your words?
[00:34:43] Sky: [00:34:43] I'm not sure. Let me answer what I understand you to be asking around tracks. each of us is multilayered and complex and we have, personal life and we have a professional life and we have, health life and, hobbies.
[00:34:57] And I think that part of the challenge of. That flow helps us address is how do we become healthy or authentic in each of these areas? So for some of us, it's easy to focus on work to the exclusion of other things. And that might be because we have history in the past of being like, I'm comfortable or I'm comfortable at work comfortable with what I'm learning there.
[00:35:29] And I'm not comfortable opening up more at home and relaxing. And that's, just something we're carrying from our upbringing or from our, how we've trained ourselves to be. But maybe we can benefit from diving into a little bit more of that vulnerability at home and, spending some time, some unstructured time with someone in our family that is a little uncomfortable because we're not used to it, but it's actually very fulfilling or it could be the other way around, maybe we're.
[00:36:01] We're very used to being focused on home, but actually devoting ourselves to something that we care about it and professionally, and sacrificing for that might feel scary. And so I think that the, a really big benefit of practicing flow, practicing tools that gets you into flow and noticing the synchronicities in your life is that you'll start to see synchronicities, which are highlighting new paths for you.
[00:36:29] New paths to explore. And these paths are part of you, right? You're not, they're not like out there in the world. They're part of who you are, came to be in a sense they exist in you as past, maybe somebody keeps bringing up the idea that you should do more art and you, keep thinking, not going to do art.
[00:36:48] That's a waste of time or something like that. But then eventually you start to tune into, Oh yeah. When I was a kid, I used to, draw all the time and I forgot about that. And so there's this part of you that is actually wanting to. Have a little more attention, a little more expression, and that could actually contribute something to your life and to the world.
[00:37:06] And synchronicities will show up to clue you in that direction. So this openness, this listen to the experience, listen to this surprising experience and open yourself to it and then reflect on. Yeah.
[00:37:18] CK: [00:37:18] And so, let's zoom in on that particular decision where you just described right now, what is, what are you advising our audience to focus on?
[00:37:29] In making a decision. Cause one may say, let me just focus. I'm just making things up, right? Me, let's, optimize for revenue. Let's optimize for status. That's optimized for power, et cetera, Versus that's optimized for this experience of fulfillment and joy and playfulness. Yeah. So if you can zoom in on that particular decision.
[00:37:57] What, do you want the audience to focus on the internal
[00:38:00] basis?
[00:38:02] Sky: [00:38:02] That's a good question.
[00:38:06] There's an exercise I do in the new book called the argue process. Argh. Yeah. Like the pirate when you're really frustrated. You want to say ARG a R G H
[00:38:17] a R G H. Okay.
[00:38:20] And okay. This process is except your situation. It's what happens when you, say Argh, ah, why did this happen to me again?
[00:38:31] Why is this person behaving this way? Or why am I experiencing this same situation again? So accepting the situation that you're in and then recognizing the pattern ours for recognize.
[00:38:50] When you recognize the pattern, you're opening yourself up to learning from the experience saying, ah, maybe I have a role to play in this situation because it keeps happening to me. And if it's really powerful, when we can start to see the things in common between our frustrating experiences. And, so in, the context of this decision about, being reminded about a part of you that likes to do art or wants to spend more time with your family, you might see yourself consistently having difficult experiences in your relationships and, ignoring it.
[00:39:35] But at this point, you're you've got enough frustration and pain in that part of your life, where the relationships don't work out. Or there's a, lot of conflict in the relationship that you recognize the pattern and you S ay yeah, I'm playing a role here because my total Uber focus on my work life, for instance, or whatever it is I'm obsessed with is actually taking away from this other part of me.
[00:39:58] And I recognize that this other part of me is important. Because I'm spending a lot of time in this part of my life being frustrated or in our having conflict. So yeah, if you're not feeling frustrated by parts of your life, then you're great, but by being willing to recognize where you're frustrated life, and then start to practice these things, you can start to see the patterns that are, might be common across these areas.
[00:40:24] So once you recognize it, you've accepted the situation, you recognize the pattern then, Growth is the G valuing growth over accomplishment. And this is, I think that's something that's really important. And it ties back into that emotional resilience or emotional intelligence. It's hard to value growth when we're attached to winning and what was got a bottom line that we have to meet at all costs.
[00:40:50] It's hard to value. this is a good learning experience, but in my experience, I'm going to win some and lose some. And the fastest way to accelerating myself is to learn from each experience. And that means letting go of the accomplishment, the quicker I can go from grieving a frustrating situation to moving through that and being like, okay, what's next?
[00:41:17] How can I try this again? The faster I will accelerate myself. So by valuing growth over accomplishment, I actually move much more quickly to success, even though I might lose this battle that I'm in right now. And from this having recognized the pattern.
[00:41:32] CK: [00:41:32] Sorry, pause. When you say growth, do you mean the internal growth?
[00:41:36] The realization, the breakthroughs, the overcoming, whatever internal barriers. Is that what you mean?
[00:41:42] Sky: [00:41:42] Yeah.
[00:41:42] CK: [00:41:42] What are you when When you say growing, implies, measuring to what I'm the status quo, Versus accomplishing. Because in my mind they are very, similar. So if we can articulate what. What do you measure when you grow?
[00:41:57] That would be really great. It's
[00:41:59] Sky: [00:41:59] actually
[00:42:00] the reduced number of artificial patterns and behaviors that you're imposing on your life, that reduce number of, what's the, word for it? obsessions or, things that you do that you're compelled to do that you don't need to.
[00:42:18] So let's say you always apologize to people, And you're, you make a mistake and you apologize, or you do something well and somebody critiques it for in some way. And you apologize that, that's a habit that we can take up. we're doing it maybe because we're trying to protect ourselves because when we were younger, somebody would criticize us.
[00:42:35] Or we thought that was the safest thing was to apologize. growth in this case would be recognizing we're in a situation where we want to apologize, understanding that we don't need to. And. Seeing that pattern showing up all over our life and then not doing it. So growth would mean removing this, behavior that's getting in our way.
[00:42:57] Got it.
[00:42:57] CK: [00:42:57] Thank you for that. That's actually very helpful because in my mind, my, logical mind says, Oh, they're very, similar. Yeah. So I appreciate that. Thank
[00:43:05] you.
[00:43:05] Sky: [00:43:05] Yeah.
[00:43:06] And
[00:43:07] that, illustrates the healing as well, because when you remove that behavior, that's getting in your way, you've healed it.
[00:43:15] You're no longer compelled. To respond to this hidden feeling. I think these hidden feelings, it's important to identify. We walk around feeling things that we don't know.
[00:43:26] CK: [00:43:26] Yeah. You know what just, I'll let you get to H in a moment, I just want to quick interjection real quick, most high achievers. Would they come to me and say, Hey, CK, I want to get to the next level.
[00:43:41] And their strategies. What could I add?
[00:43:44] Sky: [00:43:44] New
[00:43:44] CK: [00:43:44] tools, technologies, knowledge, relationships, projects, companies, whatever. Maybe what could I add the fastest way from my point of view, giving personal experience as well as coaching others actually is to reduce, the mental chatters, especially reduce the mental constructs of what the world should be versus being in reality.
[00:44:09] And just being open and okay. At any quantum is, what's happening right now. The fastest way to exponential growth for my personal experience is to reduce internal chatters. Then you roast these stuff we
[00:44:23] have.
[00:44:24] Sky: [00:44:24] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:25] That's what mindfulness is about. Yeah. And mindfulness has become much more well-known recently in the mainstream for a good reason.
[00:44:32] I'm really happy about that. Please. I'll I'll say maybe we can come back to this. Yeah. My next book leap to wholeness is about the science of filters. Filters are, if you think, if you go skiing with goggles that have like orange filters, they're filtering out the orange lights and the light, the orange light bounces off them and everyone else can see it.
[00:44:55] That's why they look orange. But what gets to your eyes is everything, but the orange, so filtering is our act of removing something from a signal. A data signal or whatever, and giving you everything else about that. And so I look at the science of filters. We use it all the time in audio and video processing and how it's about starting with something that's completely full of noise and removing the part you don't want.
[00:45:23] And what comes through is a meaningful signal and in the same way, our lives. Are cluttered with noise, all these voices and emotions and expectations and programs from our past experiences. And what we're doing with this work is filtering out those things that no longer serve us. One other way to look at those filters, which I think is really important is to also see that as a person who has these emotions and these, ideas about life, these belief structures, we are filtering information all the time.
[00:45:58] So like I'm filtering your, facial expressions through my own perceptive apparatus and deciding what I think you're feeling. And then responding to that. And I do that with everybody. That's just the way we interact. And so if those filters inside of us are warped or, it's, known, there's actually research.
[00:46:17] That's been done that we project our emotional state onto other people, by assuming that they feel like we feel, and this is of course not going to be accurate a lot of the time. And so it causes difficulties in relationship in, interactions and communication.
[00:46:35] CK: [00:46:35] since you open a loop, I want to close it.
[00:46:37] So what is some of the ways the practices that one they have since you're writing a book about it, to remain as open as possible, being as objective as possible, rather than projecting my own emotion onto others. From your point of view?
[00:46:50] Sky: [00:46:50] I think we have to see and understand what our filter is. You can't, get through it or around it, or let it go until you understand.
[00:46:59] Yeah. I'm processing information in this way. I'm seeing everything that my spouse says as a criticism and I'd done that forever. And so I just, I assume that's true, but that's actually a pattern in myself. So by, doing practices, like the one we talked about. Except your situation, except, when you feel criticized, recognize the pattern, see that you feel criticized a lot value, growth over accomplishment.
[00:47:32] So accomplishment in this case would be like arguing and B being right. Like I'm going to let go of being right with my spouse. And instead I'm going to value that I'm going to learn something about myself here. And then, and I'm going to let myself be criticized, but I'm going to heal by seeing that this pattern is happening and I can let it go.
[00:47:51] I no longer need to take it personally, when I'm told, you didn't empty the dishwasher when I asked you to, or it might be so letting go of those patterns, we have to recognize them first. And then we can start to let them no, those filters that clog up our exception and, way down our communications.
[00:48:13] let me
[00:48:13] CK: [00:48:13] do a quick recap and then I'll get into more synchronicity if you don't mind. So a R G H accept, recognize growth and
[00:48:22] Sky: [00:48:22] heal
[00:48:24] CK: [00:48:24] there's a beautiful practice to allow me to be more open to, new synchronicity synchronicities in my life. So you're essentially teaching a lot of these type of.
[00:48:37] I would say spiritual type principles as a way to help people to be more open and then guide them towards more, synchronicity. So it'd be more, open to synchronicities. Yeah.
[00:48:49] Sky: [00:48:49] Yeah. And, I love that you call them spiritual. Cause all I've really talked about is emotional intelligence. And I do think of it as spiritual, but even if you don't think of it as spiritual, you can recognize the importance of emotional intelligence of understanding what you feel every day and how that impacts what you do.
[00:49:07] And if you can have more awareness and control over what you feel, you can have more awareness and control over what you do. And that leads to more success in various ways.
[00:49:16] CK: [00:49:16] Yeah, actually let's if you don't mind, let's explore that topic a little bit. And this is a so credit inquiry. So this is something I'm curious about in my mind, emotional intelligence, as well as the whole question about spirituality for me.
[00:49:34] The pro the path may be different, but the outcome is that we feel better. So to me, they're almost synonymous. they're like they overlap with each other quite significantly, actually. So for you, what, is the distinction of the two and then what may be the, destination.
[00:49:55] Sky: [00:49:55] I, to me, they're part of the same thing.
[00:49:57] And I think, we, I think a lot of people stick with spiritual practice as like looking outside themselves for meaning or for the idea of God. And the big breakthrough in my life has been recognizing that my own emotional blind spots are the things that my spiritual practice is leading towards.
[00:50:21] My meditations are leading me to be more aware of my emotional blind spots, my places where I'm weak and wounded and hurt and reactive. And so I think that they're tied together. And then if we stay in the spiritual, which might be more of a heady thing, like how do I make sense of my life in a spiritual way, then we don't dive into what we're feeling.
[00:50:41] Then I think we're bypassing the actual growth. The growth is both about changing the way we think and changing the way we feel. by removing certain patterns that aren't serving us.
[00:50:55] CK: [00:50:55] I like that. if you don't mind, I'll share my personal interpretation of what we're talking about here. So maybe if I look at the frame of macro, and micro, emotional intelligence is of a personal practice, how do I manage the micro, the subjective reality within me?
[00:51:16] And, spirituality is more of the macro, right? What's my relationship to the greater universe that Cosmo thinks an N for me, it is once I have my own, awakening moments through plant medicine, ceremonies and whatnot, then I realized like, Oh, I don't need to fight for survival. Have a greater experience with a macro.
[00:51:42] And then again, the outcome is that I'm calmer. I'm more relaxed. I don't need you to constantly try to figure out where do I stand and how do I navigate this around this great Neo macro universe? Here's to know your thoughts.
[00:52:00] Sky: [00:52:00] I agree. I think one of the really beneficial things about having a view on this bigger, these bigger questions.
[00:52:12] What is the universe? Why are we here? What is space and time? Because if we take these things for granted, yeah, they just exist, then it feels like we're just stuck in our little, small little life. And our problems seem really big and intractable. And we're S we find ourselves fighting for survival.
[00:52:29] But if you, start to look at what the cosmos really is and ask some of these bigger questions, like. How is it that, we can constantly be expanding our sense of our estimate of how many stars and there are in the galaxy and how many galaxies there are in the cosmos and start to come to realize that there's more galaxies in the cosmos than we can count.
[00:52:47] And, what does that even mean? We, and actually one of the amazing things about the work I'm doing in my second book is, understanding. This realm of description that we call the frequency domain, where there is no time in space whatsoever. If you look at a music file, you have an audio file with music.
[00:53:11] in, regular time, you hear music in the frequency domain. There's no time. You just see the frequencies all lined up in a pattern. So there's a way of describing the world without space and time. This is a very deep subject and it should inspire a sense of awe and wonder that breaks us out of our current worldview, whatever that is that might be constricted.
[00:53:34] And so I think a sense of awe and wonder at the cosmos is really useful for getting us out of our insecurities and out of the things that are limiting us from taking a risk in our life. And saying, Oh, I don't have to fight for my survival. And this is one thing that synchronicity and awareness of this process can do.
[00:53:53] If you trust that synchronicities will occur in your life. When you have an opportunity to go for something, you'll, say instead of that'll never work, you'll say, okay, if I take the first steps and do the preparation, the next step will become evident. If I know how to look for it. How to moderate my own inner reactions and emotions and look for what's the next step.
[00:54:19] I'll see it. And so it breeds a sense of faith or trust that's based on really just a process of events that happen in the world physically.
[00:54:31] CK: [00:54:31] I love it. So I'm going to wear now wear the hat of, being a, very cognitive head heady guy now, analyst asking you this question. Okay. So let me tax rises a little bit.
[00:54:45] So nothing to lab famously wrote a book on black Swan and he wrote a number of, I don't know if you know who that is. Yeah. Okay. So he, has this very simple methodology called a barbell strategy as a way to help him optimize for. Return on investment. And what that means is you would say, all right, so I'm going to allocate 10%, 20%, whatever percentage to something that he thinks has an expected value of 10 X return of his investment.
[00:55:16] And the rest would then be, something that's safer, something, like an index fund, something like that lower return, but. Still predictable. So that way he CA he go for the upside as well as covering downside, that gives him, in the entire portfolio, a nice predictable outcome. Yeah.
[00:55:38] with synchronicity, the approach that you have, I love it. It's, saying I'm willing to take the first step without knowing what the expected outcome may be and willing to take that step. And that's the way I live my life. So I'm curious to know, comparing to you when you give your students, the methodology to live a more synchronous life.
[00:56:08] Do you even concern yourself with expected outcome?
[00:56:14] Sky: [00:56:14] And that's a good question,
[00:56:17] CK: [00:56:17] or is it just listening to the internal, knowing the internal wisdom, the higher self. It could be a good thing. Let me just go for it. Take the first step and the next and the next and live in the present moment, rather than trying to project forward.
[00:56:33] What the expected outcome may be 10 X or two X or whatever.
[00:56:38] Does that make sense?
[00:56:39] Sky: [00:56:39] There's two things I want to answer there. One is about the 10 X investment. I'll come back to that. The other is about, it's not a simple process of, I should just quit my job and go for this thing because it didn't work out.
[00:56:57] it's this very narrow passageway of committing to a new path and following what you need to do in order to get there. and so I've made the mistake of being overly risky and. Having plans fall apart because I didn't plan well enough and I didn't, take the opportunities that arrived. it's just, I think we have to refine who we are inside so we can really make use of the opportunities to come.
[00:57:24] And it comes back to over and over again in my life, whether I'm responding to fear or really acting from a place of courage and excitement. So if I'm from responding to fear by not leaving a situation that doesn't work for me, I'm going to make it hard to experience synchronicities, which move my life forward.
[00:57:44] Cause I'm, acting out of this fear of sticking with what's safe. And the other hand, if I'm, if I just radically jump and change my life, all of a sudden I might also be reacting to a fear like, Oh, midlife crisis in my life is not going where I want it to go. I just have to drop everything. And then I'm still bypassing the necessary steps to grow.
[00:58:05] I
[00:58:05] don't have these answer.
[00:58:06] CK: [00:58:06] I'm so glad that you're talking about this because in my mind, it's, a narrow path, right? maybe an analogy would be in a narrow bridge, right?
[00:58:16] Sky: [00:58:16] Yeah.
[00:58:17] CK: [00:58:17] Too much. The left. No good too much. The right. So there's a middle way. That's harmonious. That's what will lead you towards the life that you desire.
[00:58:26] Sky: [00:58:26] yeah. And flow, like I said earlier, and chick sent me highs. Words is about jumping out of that. Spectrum of control and surrender. It's not like you need to just surrender to life and go with the flow. Not at all. It's about recognizing that when you're having that debate with yourself, should I take charge here?
[00:58:46] Should I let go? Should I leave? Should I stay? It's about trying to maintain control for the purpose of probably dealing with anxiety. There's something you're worried about that you're trying to fix. And so that's where it comes back to. Okay. How do I address this anxiety or this worry in a new way? How do I jump out of this experience of, trying to control it and, transcend that and be in relationship.
[00:59:12] So that might mean staying in my job for a while, and then, but eventually seeing a way to transition or it might mean staying in this relationship and taking some really difficult steps of conversations I've never had before. And these are the really difficult aspects. And I think that if we really follow a flow, it's going to challenge us in all the difficult ways.
[00:59:30] it knows what's, hard for us and it's going to lead us there.
[00:59:35] CK: [00:59:35] Yeah. personally for me, the two gauges that I follow is one was my intention slash purpose. what is it that I want to create? And then to what, how do I, what's the flow, right? What's my emotion. How emotion cause emotions, the fuel that energizes my intention.
[00:59:55] So how do I feel about it? Do I feel really shitty right now? Or do I, am I feeling excited and alive, even though it may be hard as an example. So follow that. So those are some of the simplistic ways that I can reduce. So that way I can navigate rather otherwise it's way too complicated of a multi-factorial equation
[01:00:16] Living in Choice & Synchronicity (According to a Physicist): [01:00:16] for
[01:00:16] Sky: [01:00:16] me to even do it.
[01:00:19] Yeah. I, do find that what you said really resonates for me. excitement, as a key reframing of fear. we're given this life to live and we get caught up in all the things we might do wrong that might go wrong. We're worried about, but to really honor the fact that we're alive and appreciate, on a given day, a lot could be going wrong for me.
[01:00:42] And yet I live in a prosperous country where I have freedom to go out and do things and I can run a business and I can. Do all sorts of things. I have privileges in this culture. I'm a white man. I can do a lot of things that are I take for granted and on any given day, just those very facts can lift me up and make me go, okay, what's next?
[01:00:59] I'm excited to take on whatever's next. I might've screwed this thing up in my personal life, but I've got a lot going for me. I'm going to take that in and see what can I do next? How can I contribute to the next step of my life in a positive way?
[01:01:12] CK: [01:01:12] Yeah, no, I love that. So there's that spine that you have in trusting having faith in your own capability, having faith in your own direction and courageously moving forward.
[01:01:23] Yeah.
[01:01:24] Sky: [01:01:24] Yeah. I love that. Yeah.
[01:01:27] CK: [01:01:27] in your book and your first book, you famously had a sub chapter about, I can't remember exactly how you articulate it. Let's see if I can find it right. You can't have flow without problems. So once more thought around flow is, Hey, if I'm encountering problems, it must not be my destiny.
[01:01:49] I should stop and find something that's easier so I can flow better.
[01:01:54] I'm with you for, me, it's not about having a quote unquote, easy life. It's about having a fulfilling life. Even when it's hard, even when it's challenging, because for me, I'm a, hence the name of the podcast and the warrior.
[01:02:10] It's about leaning to one's discomfort in for the sake of growth in South actualization. So if he can underline that a little bit, it may be arguing for or against, this person who thinks, Hey, is too hard. it shouldn't be this hard if I'm truly on purpose, if I'm truly in flow, it should be easy.
[01:02:32] Sky: [01:02:32] Let me tell the story that ties back into Nasim until they book too. I bought the 10 X thing, the investment of 10 X portfolio into the high, stakes stuff, and then keeping the rest of it safe. in short, my experience is that life has asking me for a commitment in a direction in order to bring me then the needed steps.
[01:02:54] So the safe path of like I'm going to invest 10% of my time in this new. New hobby and the rest of my time, 90%, I'm gonna focus on doing all the normal stuff is not the thing. That's going to take me to another level in that hobby. and so let me illustrate that with a story. I was working for a software company and, experiencing the urge to do the things I'm doing now, writing and teaching and.
[01:03:26] And was driving home one day and asking myself, I had a pretty good situation that the software company I wasn't working full-time I was making enough money to live. And, I had a family. Yeah. And I was asking myself, should I leave though, in order to pursue this, thing that I've been doing research into synchronicity for 15 years at that point.
[01:03:46] So it wasn't new. It was something I really wanted to do. I want to go back and research this more. I want to spend more time speaking about it. And in the car I called my coach and with the coach, I argued for myself that, I really didn't have any obstacles right now stopping me from doing those things.
[01:04:02] So I could stay in the job. There was no conflict. It wasn't like I was being offered a chance to do something for my speaking or my book, but I was too busy at work. Like I could do both. And so I decided I argued myself into this state of I can do both. I'm just going to wait and see, that week.
[01:04:20] That following week at work, a good friend of mine left things got shaken up quite substantially, a good friend left as a result, someone else was let go. And we had vacancies started in the leadership and it was a lot of change that suddenly happened. And then I was asked to step into one of those leadership roles and it was exciting.
[01:04:42] I had never thought about doing that. And so I, said, yes, for the next year I find myself working a lot. And I was busy and I was in this role of just learning and growing and investing in this job. And I wasn't doing those other things that before I had some time for, so I chose to wait and see and do both and invest 10% of my time in the thing I loved and the other 90% at work.
[01:05:07] And that ended up turning into a situation where I had to invest 110% at work. And it wasn't until a year later when things, I would say weren't flowing or they were, flowing in a direction that I knew I didn't want to go anymore, getting more and more intense. And in ways that I could, control less and less that I decided this was evidence for me that I didn't need to choose carefully what I wanted to do with my life.
[01:05:30] And that was the point at which I chose to leave the job and ended up going back to grad school and getting a degree and that all worked out. with little breadcrumbs along the way to help me make that transition. So I'm not sure if I touched into the question, which you would remind me what the question here was.
[01:05:47] That's not seem to leaves work.
[01:05:54] CK: [01:05:54] Oh, You cannot flow without problems.
[01:05:56] Sky: [01:05:56] Yeah. Yeah.
[01:05:57] CK: [01:05:57] Yeah. So
[01:05:59] Sky: [01:05:59] there was some problems there, I, I. I experienced problems, which helped me understand the challenge that I was at, the choices that I was making. I experienced a greater sense of responsibility, a situation with a client that I couldn't control and more problems, which helped me understand what it is that I really wanted and finally make that choice to, change.
[01:06:21] So problems can help us make the choice to change and whether it's our job or whether it's the way that we look at the world or whether it's our relationship, problems help us. Recognize ways that don't work and find new ways to do work. Yeah.
[01:06:37] CK: [01:06:37] I love reframing certain things. So your problems are not problems.
[01:06:44] Your problems actually are the blessings that actually is helping you Wellington and the next phase of who you are. So I love that. Thank you. Okay. So, that's how you will respond to someone who was saying. It's too hard. It shouldn't be this hard. I should find something that's easier if I'm truly in flow.
[01:07:05] Is that how you will respond to that person?
[01:07:08] Sky: [01:07:08] I would say it depends. in my case, when it got hard at work, it was hard in a way that I didn't really want to experience, like I wasn't looking to become better at these things. And so when I was tasked with becoming better at these things and they didn't really line up with what I wanted for myself, that wasn't.
[01:07:27] A reason that didn't give me a reason to stay. It felt like the right thing to leave in another situation where I'm being forced to do something that it's uncomfortable, but I can check in and realize that this is something I really want for myself. Then I would advise in at least in my own life, I've tried to stick with those things and do that
[01:07:46] CK: [01:07:46] growth.
[01:07:48] Yeah. Okay. new, new, topic. You had talked about symbolic momentum when it comes to finding flow and finding synchronicity. Can you speak a little bit more about that? Symbolic momentum?
[01:08:06] Sky: [01:08:06] Symbolic momentum can be pictured as this Apple tree. We started talking in the beginning about an Apple tree of, choices that we make branch.
[01:08:15] Each branch has a different choice or a different set of experiences that unfolds and the apples are those experiences, which. Line up with a certain anticipated experience or expected expectation that we have when we make choices with something in mind, you have an intention, say we're looking for a new job and we make choices to revise our resume.
[01:08:42] We spend a week looking at a resume carefully going through it carefully, sending it out for feedback. that's Essentially setting targets on this tree, sending apples up on this tree on experiences in which that resume well, how do I put it? It's targeting those experiences in which we're successful at what we're trying to accomplish and our intention.
[01:09:05] So revising our resume is simply an act that illustrates our intention to be successful at getting a job. So the apples that get placed on the tree are those in which we have success. Or we feel success in that search. It may be maybe getting the job that we have in mind, or maybe getting a different job, or it may be realizing we don't want a job and we want to be a stay at home parent, but it's the apples are the expectation that we will fulfill our quest.
[01:09:34] So the branches of the tree that in which we fulfill our quest are the ones that get the apples. Now, those are. Spotted throughout the tree, right? Of all the choices we can make. It's hard. It's hard to know how we're going to get to the outcome we want. So if there's a part of the tree that has a lot of apples, it would be nice to get in that direction, on the tree so that we can experience those fulfillments and.
[01:10:03] By investing ourselves by, revising our resume by sending it out to a number of people. By going to job interviews, by talking to friends and neighbors about looking for work. These are all things that are, highlighting the same apples. They keep saying the apples I want are this experience of fulfillment with my, job.
[01:10:22] And gradually that moves me closer and closer to this part of the tree with more apples. And On day one, I might be at the bottom of a tree that has, apples that sort of spread out, by, on day seven. I might be over here on this part of the tree where there's a lot more apples. And if I go back again to what we did earlier of counting the branches and saying, now there's eight branches and four of them have apples.
[01:10:47] I've got a 50% chance of getting a fulfillment. Whereas before I might've had 20 branches and only four of them had apples. And so that's like a 20% chance or something like that. So by moving in the direction of my intention, I'm increasing the likelihood of getting the experience I want because I'm moving to a part of the tree where there's more of those experiences that I want to have.
[01:11:11] CK: [01:11:11] I see the closer you get to the branch that has apples, the higher, the probabilistic outcome is that's essentially what you're saying. So he takes we'll take the first step you made there. There may be. a different path and then take the next step. Maybe you four different paths, then the next step after that, maybe two paths.
[01:11:31] And then now all of a sudden you have a 50, 50 chance to get the Apple that you want. That's what you're saying.
[01:11:37] Sky: [01:11:37] Yeah. And you may not realize you've built all this momentum, right? You might've, been working on, get trying to get the job for six months. You're starting to get frustrated and lose energy.
[01:11:45] You've sent out resumes, you've done interviews and you don't realize that you're actually surrounded by a bunch of apples that are likely to come true soon. If you keep the momentum up and momentum and physics is this idea that once something's in motion, it keeps moving in that same motion unless you stop it.
[01:12:02] So this comes back to developing a practice of action, staying with the action of whatever that looks like investing in training for myself, or sending out resumes or talking to people about work and keeping that momentum up means keep investing in the action. Yeah, actions that are relevant and then trusting that letting go of the attachment to a particular outcome and trusting that the one will fall in your lap at some point.
[01:12:33] CK: [01:12:33] Yeah, it was a famous quote, but go ahead,
[01:12:36] Sky: [01:12:36] finish your thought. See it, because we might be attached to it looking a certain way, but actually the opportunity that comes is not at that company. We're thinking about it's at this other place or with this other person that we hadn't even considered.
[01:12:49] CK: [01:12:49] Yeah. Okay.
[01:12:51] So, I love that I am a man of action. There was a famous quote. I can't remember exactly how it goes. He essentially is saying that the it's not about taking massive action because oftentimes you can take massive action. We're running very enthusiastic, asically towards the wrong direction. So how would you advise someone's, as a gut-check as a, sanity check that they're not just.
[01:13:19] Taking massive action, but they're going down the wrong direction.
[01:13:22] Sky: [01:13:22] This is why it's so important to see flow as not just an external thing, trying to accomplish things, trying to overcome your challenges, trying to masculinize it like a conquer things, but also as this sort of maybe more receptive or feminine, just to use those words, aspect of receptivity of understanding what you're feeling and how that's influencing your choices.
[01:13:48] I think that we can, I'm not sure what I want to say about that. It comes back to, knowing ourselves and if we know ourselves, then we'll be taking action. Like in the Lorax process, listen, open, reflect and release that helps us know ourselves. And then from there, the action that comes is more aligned with both ourselves and what we really want.
[01:14:16] And also with the circumstances outside of us.
[01:14:20] CK: [01:14:20] Yeah. I guess what I'm cause let me use another metaphor they use in your book. Use a metaphor of acorn is their acorn, anyways, a tree, right? I see that you planted before the tree starts to get Rudy and, blossom. There's a period between getting planted and actually started to get rooted and blossom and sprouted and.
[01:14:42] And grow into an Oak tree, right? Yeah. So that is so when the, sprouts is going, that's quote-unquote traction. So there's a little bit of a faith between being planted to sprouting. So that period is what I'm talking about. How, does one discern. Something is happening. You just don't see, you can see the evidence of it yet versus you're going down the wrong direction is essentially what I'm trying to articulate.
[01:15:12] Sky: [01:15:12] Yeah. I think that in my experience, that is where the doubt comes in.
[01:15:20] So
[01:15:22] think about the quantum mechanics. If I was to explain it in the simplest terms, quantum mechanics is a study of what the world is doing when you're not watching it. Yes. How is the world unfolding when you're not observing? So the way I want you to think about your experiences is like a fence and there's fence posts in the ground everywhere every so often.
[01:15:43] And in between the fence posts, what, there's this empty space with just a string or wire, the fence posts are your actual experiences. Those are the things, those are the things that you can. No for sure. You actually witnessed and you actually experienced everything else is uncertain. And now the normal way of thinking is that everything else that happens in between my observations is unknown to me, but it happens like what's the world doing when I'm not looking well, it's still happening.
[01:16:13] But what quantum mechanics really is saying, at least at the particle level, is that in between those measurements, we make it's unfolding into all the possibilities, like a tree. It's not actually in one of them. And so there's this sort of liminal space of uncertainty or, possibility, which isn't like our regular world.
[01:16:36] And I want your listeners to think about their lives also in the same way. What you're observing right now is what you can say is reality. This is the fence post it's, not until the next fence posts that I'm going to be able to S to say what I know for sure. like I sent off that resume. That's a fence post, right?
[01:16:55] I know I've sent it. I might get an email back saying, Hey, we received this. Thank you for sending it. That's a fence post. I know for sure in between that. And the next interaction is this space that I don't know what to do with. And my tendency might be to feel like, they're taking too long to get back to me.
[01:17:12] They probably decided to pass. And so then I might have a pattern in my life of being like, Oh, forget it. I, I'm not going to keep trying. Really, what I would advise is to recognize guys that you're in this liminal space where this is possibilities unfolding, and what you can do is invest yourself.
[01:17:31] Keep working, building that momentum. I think about pedaling a bicycle, keep pedaling your bicycle. You don't need to look back and see who's gotten back to you. Check your email a hundred times a day, keep training yourself. If you want to do a job in a field, then keep learning about that field. Keep becoming better at what you do.
[01:17:47] Keep sending out more resumes. don't hang your hat on any one piece of it, because that actually stops the process of building momentum. Your job is just to keep building up momentum, even when you don't know. And so it ties into this idea of having faith, in a process that it will unfold when the timing is, at some point, and in the meantime, who do you want to be?
[01:18:15] CK: [01:18:15] Yeah, I love that. Thank you. The realization that I have is what is your life's work. If your life's work is going to be a writer, then you write, if you're a musician, then you write music.
[01:18:28] If you're a podcast, you make podcasts. If you're a comedian, you tell jokes is really, it comes down to it's all at,
[01:18:38] and it's, the daily practice that you keep producing, no matter what, because that's part of your chosen dharmic
[01:18:45] path.
[01:18:48] So, I love that I'm talking to author slash musician slash physicist, so what would you say is your daily practice as a way to fulfill.
[01:18:58] Your path, no. Keep watering that seed blossom into a mighty Oak tree.
[01:19:04] Sky: [01:19:04] I'll tell you that story of how I got this book published, because it's exactly that, and this is how I really firmly planted this idea into my consciousness. I spent about six months or nine months. I wrote the book in 2011. Okay. Oh, wow.
[01:19:21] I sat on the manuscript. I kept revising. It kept I'm a perfectionist sometimes. So I kept going back and Changing things and making it better. And finally decided one year in 2015.
[01:19:32] CK: [01:19:32] Yeah. It's like a thesis and you six hour long audio book. So massive.
[01:19:38] Sky: [01:19:38] And I went back and decided to try and publish it.
[01:19:40] And I talked to somebody who was like a niche publisher and they were easy to connect with and they were interested. But then I decided, you know what? I really feel like I want to, publish with a publisher that can get this book out there. two more people. And I feel like this is a place in my life where I want to, do that.
[01:19:57] I want to try that my best. So I spent about nine months, sending out proposals. And these were only a small list of publishers that would accept them from an, a published author except new proposals. And so I did my research. It was just like finding a job. I'd fill out a proposal would take me like two or three weeks or a month to fill out this proposal to write it, send it off.
[01:20:19] You have to wait to submit any more proposals before you hear back from them. So you'd like, This long process, I got rejected maybe three times. And then synchronistically. I reached out to a, someone who I work with and they suggested an author, a publisher. And I reached out to this publisher, North Atlantic books and they were receptive.
[01:20:38] And so I sent them my, proposal and waited for about four weeks to hear back from them. And in that four weeks. And when I finally clicked, send on the proposal and my email box, I just took a deep breath in a relief and said, ah, I'm done. And I waited, I didn't keep writing. And I did other stuff. I was like, I get to get back to these other projects in my life.
[01:20:59] And I get to, garden and I get to deal with these other things that I've been putting off. So I could feel when it came time to hear back from them, I can feel that, I wasn't really invested. I was just hoping to get a positive response. Hoping that they would approve. And I finally got the email back one night, driving home, and they said some of us liked it.
[01:21:18] Some of us didn't and we decided to pass. And I was, I knewthat was coming and I was really disappointed, but that week I in, recovering and doing a post-mortem on myself, I found Oprah's website, which is a writer's contract. And Oprah's writer's contract is spending an hour every day.
[01:21:37] Uninterrupted, completely uninterrupted. Just writing. And if you don't have anything to write, you just sit there. And I took up that practice. I found somebody who was interested in writing a book and wanted me to ghost write their book. I found, I had my blog, which nobody was reading, but I could still post stuff there.
[01:21:55] And over the course of the next four or five months, I wrote everyday for an hour. Usually I got up at 5:00 AM and wrote before my family got up. And so I did what you're saying. I became a writer. I didn't have a publisher. I didn't have an, output. But I became the person I wanted to be. And I knew that practice was what I was missing before.
[01:22:15] When I reconnected with the same publisher at a conference, about six months later, I was in a position where I knew what I was doing and they were receptive to receiving the manuscript again. And I just said, you know what, let me start over. And I gave him a totally new proposal and they said, yes. And I started the book from scratch.
[01:22:34] Wow. The book I wrote in 2011 is not the book that you read. Wow.
[01:22:39] CK: [01:22:39] That's a beautiful illustration while we were talking about, and I loved the, every time you step into the role and whether you write one sentence or a full chapter, it actually doesn't matter. Every time you step into that, you're a writer.
[01:22:57] So every time you're reinforcing the identity
[01:23:00] of a writer, I'm
[01:23:00] a writer, So, there's, that. There, is that faith in their capability and then confidence in oneself and really presented it to the world that, Hey, I'm a writer, I've been doing this. So I'm not a poser. I'm a for sure writer because you start believing that yourself.
[01:23:19] That's a beautiful illustrator.
[01:23:20] Sky: [01:23:20] You believe it because you've become experienced at it because you've in your private time. When nobody's looking, you've said, this is who I want to be. What do I need to do to practice this? Yeah, we all have these things. And one of the exercises I do with people is, called from challenge area to flow area.
[01:23:38] You look at first, a place in your life where you've been successful. Recently, come up with a few, examples and you identify what those are. These are areas where you've been in flow. Anytime you've experienced success, you've been in some kind of flow. You've been aligned with your mind and your body and your spirit to make something accomplished.
[01:24:00] And then you look at your challenge areas, places where you don't experience flow and try and compare these. So the first thing go back to it is to choose one experience where you've had, where you've had flow and success. And you identify the three of the feelings that you felt in that experience. So when I was writing in flow, I felt happy.
[01:24:25] I felt excited. I felt connected. It doesn't mean I was successful with it yet. It just meant that I felt those are the things I felt when I was in flow. And then I look at three of the methods that I use when I'm in that zone. So the methods I use to get back to, become a writer were setting apart a certain amount of time every day to do it.
[01:24:46] That was the, technique I used structure. I created in my life. Another method was tapping into how it felt when I was writing. So what's, what am I feeling like? I'm forcing this. Am I feeling or am I feeling like I can feel something authentic in myself because when I could feel something authentic and I knew the right thing was better and another technique okay.
[01:25:07] Used was being compassionate with myself, even when it wasn't flowing, being willing to sit through that and just be happy with whatever, knowing that I was putting in the time. So I've now got three feelings and three techniques that I use when I'm in my best space. And I can look at a place in my life where I'm challenged and everybody has places where they're flow and places where they're challenged.
[01:25:24] So just take the same things from your flow experience and look at the challenges in your life and imagine yourself in that challenge, maybe the challenges, having a conversation with someone
[01:25:35] at work. Yeah.
[01:25:37] CK: [01:25:37] I really love that. Thank you for sharing that. so you're speaking to an audience of overachievers.
[01:25:43] Being compassionate to oneself is actually one of the primary challenges that overachievers have because they've been using beating themselves up as a way to geek
[01:25:53] out.
[01:25:54] More motivation, more, for, yeah. More motivation to do things that they don't necessarily want to do right. Internally, subjectively.
[01:26:04] So can you share with us zooming at the moment of where you're being more compassionate on practicing more self to yourself? Oh, what's happening.
[01:26:15] Sky: [01:26:15] Great question. And I think it's one of the most powerful tool that we have because we're always gonna make mistakes. Okay. No matter how good we get at what we do, there's going to be times when we don't have all the pieces in place, otherwise we're not growing.
[01:26:31] We're, we're going to be, life is going to push us synchronistically into situations that we can't handle comfortably. So that's my view, at least. So assuming that's true. How do we handle those moments? When we make a mistake, self-compassion allows us to deal with the internal feelings that we have.
[01:26:58] if somebody, if I make a mistake in front of a crowd and it's actually somebody else, I feel like somebody else put me in that situation or somebody, confused me. And so I did something wrong. I might go into resentment and blame if I go into
[01:27:15] CK: [01:27:15] others or
[01:27:17] Sky: [01:27:17] for someone else
[01:27:18] CK: [01:27:18] to, or someone else.
[01:27:19] Sky: [01:27:19] but that's because I'm actually beating myself up. So it starts with me beating myself up for being, making a mistake. And then I go to find someone else whose fault it was so I can practice becoming less blaming, but actually the best thing to the practice is becoming more compassionate with myself because if I don't feel.
[01:27:36] Upset at myself. There's no need to go out and find other people that are to blame. So that's the root of it, of all the other negative effects that I might be causing in the world is the self-treatment the self-compassion. So if I find myself at any time in a negative space of looking or feeling resentment or anger, or these kinds of negative type of feelings that we can feel, I can look inside myself and try and track down.
[01:28:00] Where is it that I'm not being. accepting of myself or that I'm expecting more of myself than I was able to give. And this comes back. I don't need to necessarily forgive myself. I don't even know what that means right away, but I need to recognize the pattern. Ah, okay. I'm actually being part of myself because I should've put in more time preparing last night and I didn't.
[01:28:24] Okay. Okay. Why am I, hard on myself about that? I do remember a time earlier in my life when, my parent or someone, a role model was really harsh with me about that. And I really believe it's important to prepare well. So I let myself down just recognizing that pattern and that internal dialogue can help to have some space from being reactive about it.
[01:28:48] CK: [01:28:48] Okay. So, say you identify that early childhood moments. And, then, what,
[01:28:58] Sky: [01:28:58] so this is, a process that I call synchronicity as a process of healing. And it's basically saying you're going to keep repeating patterns and you're going to keep experiencing synchronicities, which replay that pattern for you.
[01:29:10] The synchronicity is your onstage and somebody screws up and it affects you. it's, a negative thing. Maybe that puts you in the same situation. So then what do you do if you know yourself enough, if you've seen the pattern enough, if you've seen how you get angry and why enough, then you have choice as to how you respond.
[01:29:28] Yes. So let's say I'm in a situation where I'm feeling self-critical for not preparing enough last night and therefore I'm not ready for the situation, then it happened. Yes. What would I do? I would pause. I'd not do whatever I thought I needed to do next. whether it's right back to somebody right away on email or say something directly to somebody, Then I'd spend enough time reflecting. I do the Lorax process, listened to the situation, pay attention, opened my mind. Maybe I don't have all the information and I'd reflect on, what it is that I'm feeling. And if I'm feeling upset at myself for not preparing enough, it's not somebody else's problem.
[01:30:09] So then I get to take responsibility for my own feelings of, letting myself down or inadequacy.
[01:30:16] CK: [01:30:16] So, you do an inventory of your emotions?
[01:30:20] Sky: [01:30:20] Yeah. Yup. That's right. That's a good way to put it. Thank you. Do an inventory of your emotions. And I think that just by doing that inventory, you start to see places in your life where you actually have made mistakes, then you're accountable.
[01:30:34] So maybe this person. made you screw up on stage, but actually it was a result of something you said that gave them the feeling that's what you want, and
[01:30:44] CK: [01:30:44] taking responsibility for what's actually happening internally for you.
[01:30:48] Sky: [01:30:48] Yeah. And once you see that, then you can have, compassion for everybody and go Oh yeah, I see.
[01:30:53] I was part of this mistake. We were all part of it.
[01:30:56] CK: [01:30:56] Yeah. Thank you. Cool. So do you mind if we zoom out now, actually I know that you want to talk about choice a bit in our conversations. Is there anything that you want to say, how everything that we're discussing here ties into this main thing of personal responsibility and choice and synchronicity.
[01:31:20] Is there anything you want to say more about choice?
[01:31:24] Sky: [01:31:24] Oh, that's a good question. I think we've talked a lot about it and that is really an essence of the work I do. I've spent a lot of time in my life feeling, looking at my own regrets. Why do I regret, what do I regret? and looking at choices, I started thinking about synchronicity seriously as a scientific process by looking at, how do I decide between one path and another?
[01:31:48] How right. How do I decide between one job career and one of another career? How do I decide between one client and another? How do I decide where to spend my time in a given day what's valuable to me. And what I found was no matter what I chose, something would unfold from that, which was beneficial.
[01:32:06] And so on. Rather, I started off coming at this with a sense of what's the right choice. And I've come to see in a much broader sense of. Anything I choose is going to be reinforced. It's like planting seeds. So am I choosing something I really want to grow? And I've grown in confidence that whatever I plant is going to grow.
[01:32:28] So I'm no longer like trying to prove something to myself. I'm actually thinking more about, okay, what's important here. What's important to me. How do I get that service?
[01:32:39] CK: [01:32:39] That's actually amazing because a lot of overachievers there's, a hint of imposter syndrome and Seth Goden said it really well.
[01:32:47] He said the fact that you're outside of your comfort zone means precisely you're doing something that's outside of your competency. So of course you can feel a sense of imposter syndrome because it's outside of your competency. So, with that said, what was I getting there?
[01:33:07] Sky: [01:33:07] Totally forgot.
[01:33:09] CK: [01:33:09] Damn.
[01:33:11] Sky: [01:33:11] I'm feeling the same kind of like we've covered so many pieces of this and choice is such of a big aspect of, of my life experience and synchronicities are those moments when we're.
[01:33:24] re receiving a response to a choice we've made, right? So we've chosen to go in one direction and then the universe gives us this experience and we're like, ah, this was the right choice. It reinforces it for us, but it's not because we made the right decision. It's because the cosmos that we live in is responsive.
[01:33:41] We're going to experience things that reflect what we've chosen. So when I took that job, that promotion at the company, I experienced more. Responsibility. I chose that and I experienced more of that, but that reflected to me that wasn't actually the direction I wanted to go in the long run. So this programing of, the world we live in is not positive it's to reflect to us what we've chosen so that we can decide for ourselves.
[01:34:08] Is this what we want to choose? Is this what's important to us? Yeah.
[01:34:12] CK: [01:34:12] Allow it to unfold. So perfect. So let's segue in, zoom out to the macro. So we are two days after the U S election. A lot of people are thinking about, the, that we are actually in a simulation rather than in a physical universe.
[01:34:29] Some people are thinking about the multi-verse, the rum, all of these things. So thinking about the macro, how would you, using the principles that you share help. People navigate to think about the macro or should they even not even worry about the macro? Just for just, think about the micro.
[01:34:53] Sky: [01:34:53] Okay. I want to say a couple of things about that. Hopefully I remember. And second thing is not worrying about the macro, just focusing on the micro that's flow, but let me come back to that. The first thing is. I've felt just like everybody else, a certain amount of trepidation around the outcome of the election and the whole process of the election.
[01:35:11] I participated quite a lot by volunteering and, phone banking and things like that. So I'm very invested in taking action. I actually spent 15 hours on the phone on election day. Wow. so it's very important to me to invest myself in democracy. My message to people is get out and vote. it's not partisan.
[01:35:33] It's participate in your life. This is my message in life, participate in life, look at the opportunities in front of you and take them. And don't take it for granted that you live in a country where you can select your leaders and where all the, comforts of life that we have are a result of sacrifices made in the past.
[01:35:52] And we shouldn't take that for granted. We should make sure to invest ourselves in the parts of our life that we want to grow. And strengthened. So I definitely think it's important to invest. What I think is also important in terms of managing the experience as I've definitely been up and down on a roller coaster of anxiety and is ties into what are we afraid of when we're on this roller coaster of anxiety.
[01:36:18] And I want to emphasize that we're actually afraid of our own feelings. We're not actually afraid of the outcome in the physical world. We're afraid of the feelings we're going to have in that situation. And so if we can become more compassionate with ourselves, if we can become comfortable with whatever feelings we're having, we will get out of that fear space and be able to tolerate the situation, whatever it is, because we can tolerate how we feel.
[01:36:49] We can tolerate the feeling of. Powerlessness or the feeling of frustration or the feeling of self criticism. And if we're not fighting against those feelings that we don't want to have, then we're much more able to get into flow and deal with being resilient with whatever happens out there in the world.
[01:37:08]So the other piece was the macro and micro. Yeah. so the macro is. should we focus on fixing the world out there? Or is there a focus on fixing our own life and maybe fixing is the wrong word in both cases, but flow is this magical state that when we focus on doing what's best for ourselves, when we understand what it is we really want in life and make space and time for that, has an expansive effect.
[01:37:38] it's important for me to choose the job and the career that I love, not just because. It's selfish for me, but because I actually have an outsized impact when I do that, I influence other people to do that. I also influence my field most positively, and I have a greater impact on the flow of the whole collective.
[01:37:58] When I make choices that are really in alignment. If I make choices that are sacrificing my, wellbeing for, safety and security, I'm not actually going to be necessarily contributing. To a greater healing and a greater process of growth at the fundamental level. And I think that's what we need right now is this, not just growth economically, but growth inside as well.
[01:38:20] So that the growth economically reflects our values. And we start to reflect values like sustainability, whatever that means for you. having our society lasts for a long time, having people being treated equitably and getting rid of dismantling systemic racism. These are things that need to be part of our economic growth.
[01:38:37] Yeah. Go ahead. and that's why being in flow is that is a internal gauge for how do we get
[01:38:46] there?
[01:38:47] CK: [01:38:47] Yeah. There's a famous quote. The most selfless thing you could do is to be selfish slash self-center. Another way to articulate it is before you put on an oxygen mask on someone else, put it on yourself first.
[01:39:05] So, in that. You said to discover and reveal what you most want and focus on that. So are there catalyst experiences that empower you to, psychedelics that empower you to really get to the core of what you truly want? Cause I may even venture to say most people, don't really know what they really want because it's covered by layers and layers of construct that.
[01:39:34] They think they want that, but actually they inherited from someone else. So are there experiences that you have
[01:39:42] Sky: [01:39:42] course called the living in flow course that I, created online, you can find it@livingandflowcourse.com and it's got an exercise in it which touches on this. How do we identify and make space for what we really want?
[01:39:56] And the key element of this exercise is really about who are you worried about letting down. Who are you worried about? Disappointing if you do this thing that you really want to do? I don't think we have to think too long about identifying something that we really want to do. Like it's, there. We have to do a little reflection and say, I really do want to spend more time writing, or I really do want to spend more time exercising or do you really want to spend more time with my family or at work or whatever.
[01:40:25] but usually there's somebody that's going to be disappointed. I'm not going to get back to them by email and they're going to be disappointed. And I'm afraid of that because if I don't get back to them by email and they're disappointed, my client might let me go, or my spouse might get mad at me. So getting aware of who it is that we're worried about disappointing, and then there's a feeling we're having when we're afraid of disappointing someone, right?
[01:40:54] There's a feeling we're having. I don't want to feel that feeling of. Threatened security when my relationships at risk or when my job is at risk. And because we're compelled to respond to that, then we respond to the email. We get back to somebody right away, or we keep not doing the things we really want to do because we're responding to these other obligations we have.
[01:41:13] So the first thing we can do is identify what obligations do I feel like I have and how are they stopping me from spending some time doing the things that I want to do. And how do I identify the feelings that are keeping me stuck in that cycle?
[01:41:25] CK: [01:41:25] I love that. So, there seem to be a theme around the cluttering, the emotional,
[01:41:32] Sky: [01:41:32] yeah.
[01:41:33] CK: [01:41:33] And tall and the relational
[01:41:35] Sky: [01:41:35] yeah. Decluttering is a good word. All of that. Yeah. Yeah. And that comes back to the filters I metaphor. the filters that we're looking through and filters are, carving out or removing information.
[01:41:48] We're not adding information to our lives to become more intelligent or more aware. We're removing the unnecessary information. And I think about, and this is a theme of the book, the second book, leaped to wholeness, I think about instead of creating something from nothing, instead of creating your life from scratch.
[01:42:07] Think of your life, like a big block of marble and you're carving away the pieces you don't want and what remains is the life that you want because you've, chosen not to do these other things.
[01:42:18] CK: [01:42:18] Yeah. The famous story about my quandary lawn, David. Yeah. Just chip away anything that's not.
[01:42:23] Sky: [01:42:23] Yeah.
[01:42:24] CK: [01:42:24] Yeah.
[01:42:24] Thank you for saying that. do you mind if we do some rapid fire questions and we'll wrap?
[01:42:29] Sky: [01:42:29] Sure.
[01:42:30] CK: [01:42:30] Cool. All right. what's your definition of purpose?
[01:42:37] Sky: [01:42:37] persistent, meaningful action in a row.
[01:42:42] CK: [01:42:42] I love it. What is your definition of fulfillment
[01:42:50] Sky: [01:42:50] knowing what makes you feel happy and recognizing it in places that you might not recognize it otherwise?
[01:43:02] CK: [01:43:02] I love it. What's your definition of
[01:43:04] Sky: [01:43:04] wealth feeling like you have enough in, all sorts of ways.
[01:43:13] CK: [01:43:13] Yeah. What do you do to not take yourself too seriously?
[01:43:24] Sky: [01:43:24] I spend time with my daughter and my wife.
[01:43:26] My daughter makes me laugh all the time. She's, a little obsessed with it because I'm so serious.
[01:43:32] CK: [01:43:32] As in, she obsessed with your
[01:43:34] Living in Choice & Synchronicity (According to a Physicist): [01:43:34] she's
[01:43:35] Sky: [01:43:35] always trying to make me crack up, and always trying to
[01:43:38] CK: [01:43:38] Oh, wow. What a blessing. She's good at it.
[01:43:40] Sky: [01:43:40] Yeah.
[01:43:41] CK: [01:43:41] No, that's, beautiful.
[01:43:43] Sky: [01:43:43] Yeah. That's a good balance for me, it's, a crucial part of who I am to have this other leg that I stand upon, which grounds me in my practices.
[01:43:53] Okay.
[01:43:54] CK: [01:43:54] So for the younger and single, sky who didn't have a daughter yet.
[01:43:59] Sky: [01:43:59] Yeah.
[01:44:00] CK: [01:44:00] What would you say to what practice would you advise him to take on to not take himself too seriously?
[01:44:13] Sky: [01:44:13] That's a great question. Maybe not have all the, not have all the answers.
[01:44:18] CK: [01:44:18] Okay. So recognize that as a mantra. Hey, you don't know the answers. You don't have all the answers.
[01:44:24] Sky: [01:44:24] Yeah. Yeah.
[01:44:27] CK: [01:44:27] By the way, do you have any embodiment practice? Cause whereas Cerebro people,
[01:44:33] Sky: [01:44:33] so yeah.
[01:44:34] CK: [01:44:34] Is there anything that you do as a way to drop into the body and emotions versus just being here all the time?
[01:44:40] Sky: [01:44:40] Yeah. first of all, as a musician, the reason I've kept up being a musician all those years, I started when I was five, it's a, it's an embodied practice of being in flow. It forces me to sing from my chest and my belly and feel the, piano and the guitar and my fingers, and actually be present with people physically, not just mentally.
[01:45:01] So that's a, real practice for me. I also, yeah, people talk about getting exercise every day and usually they talk about. 30 minutes of exercise. I get five minutes, but it's every day. So it's enough to ground me and my body to make sure I get that five minutes of running every day.
[01:45:17] CK: [01:45:17] Five minutes of running like a Tabata type of practice, or what,
[01:45:21] Sky: [01:45:21] how do you use the term
[01:45:24] CK: [01:45:24] Tabata developed by this Japanese, exercise guru essentially it's 20 seconds on 10 seconds off for eight rounds for a total of four minutes.
[01:45:37] Sky: [01:45:37] Wow. Oh, I'm very simple. And this ties into my practice with flow and synchronicity in general, I do what I can, that's consistent and what's consistent for me is I can find six.
[01:45:49] It's usually six minutes on my treadmill and I can do that because that's the time it takes me to get my heart rate up. And as long as I've done that, I'm going to be a little more grounded in my day. Awesome. I love that. It's not ideal. It's not like I'm saying I'm, fulfilling a specific practice.
[01:46:05] Cause that would be mental. I'm trying to get out of the mental idea of what's enough and focus on what is right for my body.
[01:46:12] CK: [01:46:12] Yeah. But, it echoes what we talked about because every time you step on to that treadmill, you're reinforcing the identity. I'm an athlete.
[01:46:21] And it says you're being consistent with that.
[01:46:23] That it's not even a question. Whether or not you're an athlete. Cause you are by. Sheer volume of how many A's you have exercise four, five, six minutes
[01:46:33] Sky: [01:46:33] at a time. That's how we make real change in our lives is what are the things that we can do that are consistent, not what we think we should do in our heads.
[01:46:41] And we were doing to impress somebody else or prove it to ourselves, but what's, coming from our soul, our core place that's consistent. That will define who we are. Yeah,
[01:46:49] CK: [01:46:49] that's beautiful. last question in the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habits? At most improve your
[01:46:58] life.
[01:47:02] Sky: [01:47:02] Self-compassion coming back to that because it's with self-compassion that I take myself less seriously. So self-compassion that I don't give up when I feel like I made a mistake. It's that? It's the thing that keeps me from stopping pedaling. The bicycle pedaling, the bicycle is what keeps my life moving forward.
[01:47:20] CK: [01:47:20] beautiful sky. Really, appreciate you being here on the show. We went through a lot, a wide range of topics. We talked about, being comfortable. We oneself, we talked about. synchronicity the nature of synchronicities objective reality versus consensus reality. We talked about serendipity. We talked about a number of things, how things come together at the right time and then the right space.
[01:47:45] And, there are lower X principle, the AR G H principle, and, or so appreciate you just being willing to have this conversation. It's really challenging actually, to talk about this. Very esoteric. but that's also a very important thing that, everyone wants to know synchronicity and flow and, all that.
[01:48:12] Sky: [01:48:12] I really appreciate the depth of the conversation and the questions that you ask. it's really been an enjoyment to, sit here with you and do this. Beautiful.
[01:48:20] CK: [01:48:20] I hope to, we get to do this again.
[01:48:22] Sky: [01:48:22] Yeah. I look forward to it. Thanks CK.
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- 035: How to Break Free From Limiting Beliefs (And Stay in Flow)? – James Lin
- Quotes: Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Ferriss Interview
The post 098: Living in Choice & Synchronicity (According to a Physicist) – Sky Nelson-Isaacs appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Freddie Ravel is a Grammy-nominated artist of Earth Wind and Fire. He has worked with legendary artists like Carlo Santana, Prince, Kanye, J Lo, and Lady Gaga to transcend the boundaries of music, culture, and thought leadership. Freddie is committed to raising human potential through the world’s oldest and undisputed international language of music. He has shared his "Life In Tune" with IBM, NASA, Google, Blue Cross, EY, and Prudential to transform conflict to high-performance collaboration and beyond.
We talked about:
- How to Be Professional On Zoom
- How to Learn Anything 2x Faster
- How to Define Your Personal Brand
- The First Step to Find Your Life Purpose & Mission to Serve
- One Mistake Most Beginners Make When It Comes to the Pursuit of Mastery
- How to Get Into Flow State With Music
- Learning How to Learn Faster By Music Alchemy
- Learning How Music Legends (Like Carlos Santana)
- How I Scale Cross Culture Communication (to Thousands of People)
- Ninja Technique to Warm Up Audiences Before Speaking a Word
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/097-life-in-tune-earth-wind-fire-artist-reveals-secrets-to-awaken-our-inner-genius-freddie-ravel/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Sam Morris is the founder of Zen Warrior Training®, an enlightened leadership and embodied wisdom coaching program. In 1999, Sam endured a spinal cord injury, paralyzing him from the waist down. This incident catalyzed a deep dive into somatic healing arts, depth psychology, wisdom traditions, and the innate intelligence of the body. Sam trains his clients in how to master the inner workings of the mind, body, and spirit and live from an enlightened state of presence in their businesses and in their personal lives.
Topics We Covered
- Instead of Overpowering the Enemy, Think Interactive Play
- How to Stop Self Sabotaging
- Letting Go and Accepting Divine Grace (While Insulting the Ego)
- Advice to Unhappy Overachievers (Especially Our Younger Selves)
- Open Heart Has Its Own Protection (According to Gary V)
- Samurai Leadership Lesson: Use BEATS to Get Out of Your Head
- Getting My Mind Blown on a Regular Basis
- How to Laugh at the Absurdity of Life
- How to Face Extreme Life Challenges (Without Them Taking Me Out)
- What to Do When You Feel Hopeless, Overwhelmed, Mental Darkness
- The Key to Unlock Your Potential
- What Happens After Samadhi, an Experience of Oneness?
- How to Engage the Parasympathetic Nervous System For More contentment and Peace
- A Simple Method to Quiet the Mind
- Discipline Our Mind, Don't Beat Ourselves Up
- How Psychedelics, Yoga, & Martial Arts Prepared Me For My Spiritual Awakening
- How Breath Work Led to My Spiritual Awakening During the First Nights of Paraplegia
- How to Overcome Paraplegia PTSD Dissociations and Limiting Beliefs
- No One Can Copy Your Experiential Resume And Therefore Your Unique Genius
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the SHORT CLIPS with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/3f0Nr3v
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/096-divine-adversity-from-paraplegia-to-zen-warrior-sam-morris/
👪 Join other Noble Warriors: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Sam Morris is the founder of Zen Warrior Training®, an enlightened leadership and embodied wisdom coaching program. In 1999, Sam endured a spinal cord injury, paralyzing him from the waist down. This incident catalyzed a deep dive into somatic healing arts, depth psychology, wisdom traditions, and the innate intelligence of the body. Sam trains his clients in how to master the inner workings of the mind, body, and spirit and live from an enlightened state of presence in their businesses and in their personal lives.
Full Episode Topics We Covered * Instead of Overpowering the Enemy, Think Interactive Play * How to Stop Self Sabotaging * Letting Go and Accepting Divine Grace (While Insulting the Ego) * Advice to Unhappy Overachievers (Especially Our Younger Selves) * Open Heart Has Its Own Protection (According to Gary V) * Samurai Leadership Lesson: Use BEATS to Get Out of Your Head * Getting My Mind Blown on a Regular Basis * How to Laugh at the Absurdity of Life * How to Face Extreme Life Challenges (Without Them Taking Me Out) * What to Do When You Feel Hopeless, Overwhelmed, Mental Darkness * The Key to Unlock Your Potential * What Happens After Samadhi, an Experience of Oneness? * How to Engage the Parasympathetic Nervous System For More contentment and Peace * A Simple Method to Quiet the Mind * Discipline Our Mind, Don’t Beat Ourselves Up * How Psychedelics, Yoga, & Martial Arts Prepared Me For My Spiritual Awakening * How Breath Work Led to My Spiritual Awakening During the First Nights of Paraplegia * How to Overcome Paraplegia PTSD Dissociations and Limiting Beliefs * No One Can Copy Your Experiential Resume And Therefore Your Unique Genius
Links * Zen Warrior Training * Continuum Movement by Emily Conrad * The egg
Wisdom Quotes
We are all immaterial awareness. There is nothing material about us other than the way that our minds shape our experience of life in the three-dimensional world that we live in.
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Who you are is not the subject of your thoughts and feelings, who you are is the awareness that thoughts and feelings are happening.
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For me, the potential. Is in having a deeper understanding of the nature of the human existence and of relieving oneself of the burden of being caught in the subjective projections of the unconscious mind.
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This feeling of overwhelming burden and that life just felt so impossible. And it's so easy to go into that story and believe it.
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What can I do to make the most of the challenges and try to even have some fun with them as they're happening? To be able to navigate through the challenge without it taking me out.
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Life is all that is. And I would prefer to open up to experience life as all that is versus looking at it through the limited lens of this Sam ego, through my own limited memories and experiences, going through from birth to death. That's…
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A lot of people don't realize is just your simple being your present moment awareness. Just that alone is creating value. Just your ability to listen and pay attention is creating value. You could hang out with a monk in the room who says…
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Business does not have to mean being closed off and cold at all. The strongest leadership comes through kindness and compassion and a genuine desire for everyone to end up in a better place than they started.
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If I am postponing my happiness and fulfillment until some arbitrary deadline, when I have achieved some goals, I'm just kidnapped my own happiness and fulfillment.
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When I can really let go and accept that divine grace is moving through all of us all the time, that's where the beauty really lies. The ego hates that, because it wants to prove that it was able to do things in some sort of special way.
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We actually are never separate from our animal and our animal only understands things through a very direct, simple communication.
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The mental chatter, the monkey mind that we experience is. Where we are disembodied, where we're not connecting to the body first.
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The practice of coming into your body I see as creating a resourceful mind. So the mind is able to operate in a way where it is serving a greater intention that comes from the whole body, from the physicality, from the connection to the…
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All these things that we're taking so seriously, All of these things that we worry about most of which will never happen. All of this with the punchline that we die at the end. What a great punchline.
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When you're more present, you can actually sense energy more. You can feel energy. You can feel not only your own energy, but you can also become aware of the energy of people who are also in your environment. We all know the experience…
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The noblest of human values, is warmth and kindness
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It never was about getting to the destination.It was about being more playful and creative. With the present moment experience that we're all having, because as cliche as it is to say, it's true, this moment right now is all that exists.
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My definition of the purpose of purpose is co-creating meaning along with the divine.
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My definition of fulfillment is co-creating fun. Along with the divine.
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My definition of wealth is an awareness that our needs are always taken care of
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Wisdom Clips « Prev1 / 2Next »How to Overcome Paraplegia PTSD Dissociations and Limiting Beliefs - Sam MorrisHow Breath Work Led to My Spiritual Awakening During the First Nights of Paraplegia - Sam MorrisHow Psychedelics, Yoga, & Martial Arts Prepared Me For My Spiritual Awakening - Sam MorrisDiscipline Our Mind, Don't Beat Ourselves Up - Sam MorrisA Simple Method to Quiet the Mind - Sam MorrisHow to Engage the Parasympathetic Nervous System For More contentment and Peace - Sam MorrisWhat Happens After Samadhi, an Experience of Oneness? - Sam MorrisThe Key to Unlock Your Potential - Sam MorrisWhat to Do When You Feel Hopeless, Overwhelmed, Mental Darkness - Sam MorrisHow to Face Extreme Life Challenges (Without Them Taking Me Out) - Sam MorrisHow to Laugh at the Absurdity of Life - Sam MorrisGetting My Mind Blown on a Regular Basis - Sam MorrisSamurai Leadership Lesson: Use BEATS to Get Out of Your Head - SamOpen Heart Has Its Own Protection (According to Gary V) - Sam MorrisAdvice to Unhappy Overachievers (Especially Our Younger Selves) - Sam Morris« Prev1 / 2Next » Full Transcript by AI
The Zen of Adversity and Adventure Sam Morris Transcript by AI
Welcome to Noble Warrior. This is a place where entrepreneurs talk about what it takes to build, to create a purpose driven life. We're going to talk about mindset. We're going to talk about mental models. We're going to talk about actionable tactics. So Shea can take everything you learn and go out and create your own. My name is C . I've been a PhD in biomedical engineering at UCLA. I've been a director for the university of California.
I'd be a startup executive. I am now I'm an executive mentor for philosopher entrepreneurs. I'm on a quest to find out what it takes for other. Entrepreneurs to create a life of fulfillment, joy, and purpose. My next guest is the founder of the Zen Warrior Training. He went through the hero's journey of going from top cyclist skier athlete to paraplegic to now presence.
Coach now helps others to overcome challenges and make a life in an adventure. He is on apologetically, raw and honest. Please help me welcome Sam Morris.
Thank you CK. It's great to be here. I'm excited about our conversation.
How was box breathing for you as a start of a podcast interview?
I love it. it's the sort of thing that, I try to do intentionally before I either facilitate or, or, get on an interview myself. So having you facilitate it was great and it's nice to not always be the one who's facilitating the breathing techniques.
So my friend, let me just jump right into what about you?
I'm so excited to have conversation with. Okay. So you have a really inspiring story of being a top athlete skier, a cyclist cross country to paraplegic, to presence, coach, to now help other people make their life in adventure. Now what's really cool about you right away. When I hear you speak is how.
Grounded and raw and honest you are. And I just love that.
So
was it a cultivated process that it's a life of just, this is who I am. And so be it, whatever it takes or has it always been there and you have just, Being gifted
with that.
It's a really good question. it was, for me, it was an experience of, and by it, being as grounded as I am, it's something that I began cultivating growing up in Maine.
The people that live in Maine, just for the most part are pretty grounded. And I grew up living on an organic blueberry farm. And my early childhood memories were just of myself in nature, whether that was in blueberry fields or riding my bike or swimming or whatever. I just have a lot of experiences where I have a lot of memories of just that.
Self and nature experience without all of the mental chatter. And so that I think really helped to instill a grounded personality and, energy. And then, we'll talk about this more, but you mentioned the paraplegia when I became paraplegic, that was really ungrounding for me. it, put me in a state where.
It's really hard to, name it, but somewhat disassociated, state of reference. It was, I went from feeling like a very grounded 24 year old athlete to suddenly feeling a lot like. It was like, I became innocent and almost boyish. I felt now people on the outside may not have seen that, but for me, there was a lot of needing to try to find myself and fit in and, Confusion that was wrapped around going from being able bodied to suddenly becoming disabled at the age of 24.
So the way I am now, the groundedness that you see now is really a return to who I've always been, that is not dessociated
I see. So it's like going through the hero's journey. Part of your superpower of this groundedness, this, man, this, force for good, that I see in front of me actually came from this wound in his trauma that you experienced.
Is that an accurate way to reflect back what you said?
Yeah. Yeah. And it gave me, so much firsthand experience with what it's like to not feel like oneself. Which created a lot of compassion, I think for me, because I, and I think I was lucky enough to feel like myself a lot.
And then when I became paraplegic, I didn't feel like myself at all in certain respects. And so I had to go through a lot of work to get out of my, I had to move past ideas that I started to, develop about myself, limiting beliefs that I started to develop about myself and. Returned to my true self. so it gave me a lot of compassion for where that happens with people, because I don't know if otherwise I would have had quite as much.
I know that I wouldn't have had as much insight into the way that people can become disassociated from themselves.
Yeah.
Do you mind going into that, pain, that darkness of the soul, the belly of the whale, those moments, and it's not because I'm wanting to have you 12. Back into the pain per se, but I want people to have an idea of what is it that we're talking about here, because you've experienced during those three years, you publicly said those were some of the, you suffer a lot, right?
Yeah. I, yeah, I suffered a lot for many years, more than three years. Yeah. It's cycles and m layers of suffering and so forth. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, I'm I'm happy to describe it. as best I can with the fur,
I wanted to people to listen from, Hey, we're not just revisiting. Sam's old wounds and trauma and so forth in a public way.
I'm using what he's experienced as a way to illustrate. This is not the similar to what some people may be listening right now, going through COVID or a job loss or, relationship friction or whatever it may be. their, own suffering as it is right now. So
yeah, there will actually be probably a ton of similarities that people experienced.
And that's the thing that I find so fascinating is that in a lot of ways, the human experience, as different as we all are, there's, we're a lot more alike than we are different than, we all have different trajectories and different ways of experiencing life. But so many of the same principles are consistent no matter who you are, and no matter what experience you've been through.
So whether it's physical paralysis or the loss of a loved one or whatever it is, there we are humans at the end of the day, we're humans, and we have a lot of very similar experiences. So own experience with darkness. came he first time. I really remember it was a week after my spinal cord injury happened.
So this is the fall of 1999. And I had just finished leading a cycling track across the US for 19 agers. And, that was, we finished that in August of 99. That was a 3,800 mile long track. And, I was an outdoor leader at the time. And like you said, snowboarder skier, active outdoorsman hiker. And, one night I ended up in the backseat of car, driven by a guy whom I had never met before.
He was a friend of a friend and we were going to a bar and on the way to the bar, he lost control of his car on a dirt road, hit a tree. I broke my back, broke the T 12 vertebra had what's called a teach 12 complete spinal cord injury. So that meant that the injury, I had zero sensation or motor function from my injury down after that happened.
So this happened at the level of right around my navel. So still today, 21 years later, it will actually be a week from now. It will be my 21st anniversary since my injury happened. so still today, 21 years later, I have no sensation or motor function from the navel down. And, when the accident itself happened, I maintained contact just this the whole time.
I never lost consciousness cause I didn't hit my head. And I remember being in a total state of shock because just like that I'd gone from being able bodied 24 year old guy to suddenly being paralyzed and sitting in this back at the back of this car, just Oh God, what am I going to do now? Like you gotta be kidding me.
You've got to be kidding me. Like in total shock. So ambulance comes, brings me to the hospital. And, they do MRIs and cat scans and stuff like that. That night. Next day, they do a surgery on me and they put me on morphine and, for the pain, that of breaking your back pretty severe pain. And so they put me on morphine.
I had this, the surgery, the spinal fusion surgery, and then a week after, they took me off morphine. And I didn't realize that entire week I had been in a state of denial because I didn't even occur to me that my mindset was being so influenced by the morphine. I thought that I was doing okay, but I was just totally numb.
And I became lucid for the first time, since the night of the accident. And when I became lucid, I started freaking out. It's I don't want to be here. I do not want to be alive. There's no way I can go on like this. Absolutely. No, get me out. I'm done. Done. Done. I cannot live paralyzed for the rest of my life and, it was a real.
if I had, I've told this story a thousand times, if I'd had a sharp object around, I don't know if I would be here today, but I was lying in a hospital bed in the middle of the night and there was nothing, there, no tools, no implements to off myself. And the only thing I could think to do was yoga.
I kept on thinking I wanted to do yoga for some reason. And I'm like, how am I going to do yoga? What, like, why am I even thinking that thought. And then it occurred to me that the most powerful part of yoga is the focus on the breath. And it occurred to me that I could still breathe. So I just started to breathe deeply steeply as I could in a few minutes, went by and suddenly out of nowhere, just like this boom, nothing that was previously bothering me was bothering me anymore.
Suddenly I had passed through a threshold of consciousness and on the one side of that threshold was everything I ever thought that I knew about myself and my identity, my relationship with my body, my name, my interests, where I was born, all the stuff, all the content of my mind was on one side of that threshold.
And I went to the other side and experienced myself as pure awareness. And I saw myself almost essentially it was an out of body experience. I became so connected to my breath that I no longer could feel the inhaler, the exhale anymore. I just became breath. And I just dissolved completely into breath.
I was, breath. I wasn't body of his breath. I wasn't body. And I wasn't mind, those were clearly the denser forms of the material. And I had transcended that, did the denser forms of the material and had become immaterial awareness. And what I realized is that we are all immaterial awareness. Then there is nothing material about us other than our, the way that our minds shape our experience of life in the three-dimensional world that we live in.
But it became very clear that's not actually who we are and, that who we actually are is the immaterial awareness that is aware that there is a body in mind experiencing a material world. And when that happened, It was totally profound and I, it changed me forever. it was the
pause. you had some reference points.
You had study this. This is after you studied Buddhism. This is also after your first ayahuasca psychedelic mushroom experience at 16.
Yeah. I'd had several psychedelic experiences. more than several, quite a few psychedelic experiences from age 16 or 17.
So would you say, because of those reference point, that makes you feel like, Oh, this is actually my first spiritual awakening experience is okay.
Versus someone who has never had any kind of teachings or visceral experience would be like, Holy shit, what's happening.
That's I think that's accurate. I think that's accurate. Yeah. The psychedelic experiences that I had I when I started using psychedelics, I thought. No, as a naive kid, I thought, this will be cool.
We'll make colors change. And it's supposed to make sound, different. Yeah. And stuff like that. And little did I know I was going to be playing with the very, behind the scenes, experiences of consciousness and gone. Whoa, this is way more profound. Than I thought I was. And, and, it's, it was through psychedelics and also my, my relationship with nature that, I was attracted to Buddhism and that yes, that happened before.
So my interest in Buddhism, began around probably 1997, something like that. 1997, 98. And, And also I had done some studies of both yoga and aikido prior to my injury as well. So I did have some reference points for mindfulness. I never thought that I could actually just dissolve completely and become the breath.
That was a whole other thing.
Yeah. What kind of, what What kind of yoga do you do? Because partnering for the ignorance, but in my mind, yoga is very. The entire body. So
for
what would you do as a paraplegic?
actually, since my injury has happened, so I, actually dove deeply into a practice called continuum movement, which is what brought me out to Los Angeles.
continuum is a phenomenal. Movement practice, somatic practice. it was created by a woman named Emily Conrad. And she, I, was amongst very few people who had the opportunity to study privately with Emily. she was revered in the somatics community around the world for the depth of the work that she did and the work really.
How do I describe it? It's always so hard to describe, it involved using one's awareness and creation of sound and breath and wave like undulating movement in the body as a means by which to unwind trauma. and when I say unwind trauma, Not only personal trauma, not only trauma from one's own personal experience with life, which we all have, but the trauma, the collective trauma as well, we'll just send.
and when I refer to the collective trauma, one of the things that I'm referring to is the way in which as human beings in modern culture, we've really lost our connection with the body. And by bringing your attention in, an exploratory men or where you were simply curious, and you're spending, hours in a state of curiosity about what's going on inside the body with just an open state of attention.
There's so much. In fact, I did this last night. I went to bed early last night and I was awake for a while. And for a few hours I did nothing, but the most minute movements in my body. And when I say my Newt, I'm talking about just moving my fingertip as little as I possibly can. But maintaining my awareness inside the fingertip, doing these micro movements in the fingertip.
Now you'll notice if you practice this, it's like really challenging to keep your awareness inside your fingertip in with such a subtle degree of connection, because we tend to fall out and go into our heads. And this is where we become disembodied. The continuum movement practice that I studied and that I still work with is a, I would call it a reembody moment practice.
Yeah.
So as a recovering cerebralist right. As someone who actually wants to move away from the head, and I'm very trained here and want to get closer to the body with this continuum movement, be a great. the reality for someone like me who was super.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Have you read that by the way a Vipassana?
I haven't done that. I have not done the 10 day retreat. but I would like to at some point, so
I'll reveal a little bit about the pasta. Vipassana is one of the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. precisely because it, you literally, you sit still and you focus on just those first three days.
You just focus on this area in your face three days. And the whole point of it is to develop the modality, the fidelity of your own or awareness before they, broaden the scope too. Everywhere else. And the internal, the external, all of that stuff. but it was torturous, dude. It was, pretty big.
Pretty crazy.
Yeah. So challenge similar to there's so much, there's such a similarity to what I was just talking about. Yeah. Because anytime you bring your awareness into such a fine specific place, it's like our minds are so conditioned. To want to go anywhere, but here anywhere, but this present moment.
And that's why, that's why meditation practices and somatic practices. It sounds so simple. And yet it's so challenging because our minds are just wanting to race and run and go explore. And they are like, yeah, they're, like, Wild animals, and disciplining the mind to stay present is so challenging.
So one of the key metaphors that I love, instead of trying to beat your mind into this, into, discipline into, submission, I think of it as a puppy. So whenever I wonder, you're not going to beat your puppy. Some people do, way to do it is, to bring it back Oh yeah. But here a puppy is, and then you eventually, it never ends
that's right.
But at the same time, eventually you will be able to, do it for longer, do it for. For more sustainable ways. So I'm curious to know your thoughts around this whole
that's right. Yeah. I agree completely. I think that, Trying to be too harsh with ourselves, and try to beat the mindedness.
Submission does not do anything, any good. I love your analogy of the puppy. I think it's perfect because you, yeah, you would be kind to that puppy. You would be compassionate and yet you would be direct too. And, one of my teachers once said that when dealing with the body. Deal with it in a way that is very much like an animal, because it is an animal and the animal doesn't really understand complex statements or concepts.
It doesn't really understand, things like if you're trying to focus more, it, the body doesn't understand things like, it would really be good for you to focus more because. If you focus more than you'll be able to get these things on your, to do lists done. And then you'll hopefully be able to feel more satisfied with yourself and XYZ, dah, the body doesn't really know that language and body only knows.
Sit, stay, sit, stay. Pay attention. it's like a direction. If you can give your body a direct direction, just in the same way that you would give a dog. A dog is not going to understand all these concepts,
complex arguments
don't pee on the rug because I don't like to clean up the smell. And when people, when my guests come in, all that stuff, the dog is not going to know anything, but don't pee on the rug being very like. And then move the dog where it needs to be moved. And we need to do the same things to our same thing to ourselves because we actually are in animal bodies.
And I think that's one of the most challenging things to remember is that we actually are never separate from our animal and our animal only understands things through a very direct, simple communication.
Yeah. In my younger days, the younger CK would think, Oh, I'm in my athletic mode now. So therefore it's the body.
my study mode, therefore is the mind,
categorizing it based on your activities.
And then, but in reality is actually a superposition stack on top of each other and never separate compartmentalize into one thing. Yeah. They use that more, but it's always all at the same time. So that's why I'm a, such a passionate student for integrated learning.
How they, anything integrated living. Really?
Yeah.
just focus around the embodiment practices.
Yeah, And then when you're embodied and it's like this, mind, this beautiful mind that we possess, it can be used very intentionally. it's all, I feel like the mental chatter, the monkey mind that we experience is.
Where we are disembodied, where we're not connecting to the body first. And so the mind is looking for a direction cycle. If I'm not getting a direction from CKS connection to his heart or his groin or his legs, or his relationship with the earth, if I'm not receiving that input. I'm going to create my own directions when to just go do, I'll find, a direction somewhere here, because that's what I do is I take directions.
So I'll look for a direction and I will try to create my own direction. And so that's where people get in thought loops, disembodied thought loops. And, so the practice of coming into your body, the, quieting of the mind I see as creating a resourceful mind. So the mind is able to operate in a way where it is serving a greater intention that comes from the whole body, from the physicality, from the connection to the breath, from the present moment.
And then the. Mine is able to take your direction and go, Oh, that's what we want to do here. Oh, we want to focus on CK right now. Okay, cool. We'll focus on CK because that's coming from the entire body versus, the disembodied mental chatter and thought loops.
Can you give us a concrete example? So say someone, the younger CK, I always make it the younger CK, the subject, cause he's too to throw under the bus
So say the younger CK is
having some thoughts right now and he is just, anxious about whatever. What concretely would you tell him to do? So that way he can,
since the younger CK. And then you've already mentioned this about you as someone who, really values and has always valued your cognitive capacity or really highly intelligent person who understands things intellectually.
And that the intellectual part of your, you, the analytical part of you, clearly has gotten priority, through a lot of your life. So what I would do, knowing that. Is, I would then give you an explanation that would satisfy the logical mind of why you were experiencing what you're experiencing. So instead of looking at it from the perspective of, you should be able to ground yourself, or why aren't you more grounded or whatever, or, trying to bring you into some sort of embodiment practice right away.
I would first address it at the level of the intellect. And so at the level of the intellect, you could understand that the brain creates different brainwave patterns, depending on what's going on internally and externally in our outer environment. And in our inner environment, our brain is going to be in, any given time of day, whether we're waking or asleep.
Our brain is going to be experiencing different types of brainwave patterns. And when you are stressed out and finding that you are just experiencing thought loops, And you're not able to move beyond that. What's actually happening is your brain is hanging out in a high beta brainwave state. And so that's, we, spend a lot of our waking hours in either mid to high level beta brainwave state, where we are taking input from our surroundings.
We're analyzing them with our thought based logical minds. We're taking that input and we're turning it into. we're creating meaning out of it. And we're using that meaning to navigate the world essential quality, to be able to have super essential. It's not going to help you to find out more about yourself because it's that it's not going to help you to ground inside of yourself to be hanging out in that high beta brainwave state.
Okay. When you experience sleep or rest deep arrest, there's something where that begins to subside in that state. As young as younger CK goes from being awake to asleep, there's that space that younger CK I'm sure entered. That just feels. Really nice, really relaxing. And suddenly it's like all of that mental chatter is just not present because then you're entering into an alpha state.
So by communicating, by helping you to helping younger CK to understand this at an intellectual level, I think that would then give the logical mind permission to explore. Embodiment practices, which can help to relax that type of brain activity and bring you deeper into a present moment experience where there's less of that brain activity happening.
Yeah, thank you for that. That actually makes a lot of sense. It also reminds me of the book, the five language of love as well.
What, is, someone's language of love or what they're actually listening for the physicality part that goes to the need for a physical touch, they listening for some, the mental explanation of some things as a way to relax the mind.
And then now more open to whatever suggestions that you may have individually. They might even practices that you may give.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it's the, sorry.
Yeah, please drink.
Yes. the, that high beta brainwave state, oftentimes. To a certain degree, we'll be in a mild fight flight or freeze reaction over the course of any given day, without even realizing it will be will experience amygdala, hijack, where we are having an emotional reaction to our situation and to our circumstances, our external environment will be having an emotional reaction that will.
Sometimes paralyze us, keep us from moving forward or make us react in some way to what's occurring. Otherwise life is in dynamic system. It's always in motion, It's always in movement and that's the way consciousness is really meant to express itself. It's always supposed to be a dynamic. System that is never static when things are static or they appear to be static.
What that shows to me is there's a degree to which the there's a sympathetic nervous system response in reaction to the environment, creating a fight flight or freeze mode inside of us. the easiest way to get out of that is to start to focus on nasal breathing. Which then re-engage as the parasympathetic nervous system.
And so re-engaging the parasympathetic nervous system is the physical technique that is needed to bring someone into a feeling of more contentment and peace. Maybe a state of even oneness potentially. But when we're using these examples, some of these examples can sound almost too esoteric and non concrete for a lot of very rational listeners, they might be like, it just sounds, it sounds, maybe a little flaky, new agey, etcetera But really all we're talking about is different ways of orienting the central nervous system so that it can do what it's actually meant to be doing versus getting caught in a pattern of behavior where it's in a reaction to its environment. And when that connection happens, then we are linked up to ourselves and it's through that, creates that sense of peace and contentment.
And then it really doesn't matter what's going on in the external environment because inside you're experiencing a sense of peace.
Yeah. Reality is now calm. So we went on a digression for a little while as to your spiritual awakening. Yeah. So say now that you've experienced this oneness with the collective, this one is, this ease.
I'm not my body. I'm not my emotions. And then what are you? Are you there? And the Samati forever. Are you back and back to bring us back to the moment a little bit, a few minutes after you experienced this oneness. Now you're back to your body fresh in this new, disabled body.
And now what?
Yeah, so it's a great question. Imagine that time being like, I'm not sure how long it lasted because it felt eternal, but it may have lasted an hour or so. Something like that, maybe a little bit more when I came back from it, excuse me. It's very similar to, if someone has experienced a psychedelic journey where you're familiar framework for reality returns.
Relatively completely what you're used to experiencing and how you're used to thinking and et cetera, how you're used to experiencing your environment will return after a few hours with a psychedelic experience and in the same way, the way in which I was accustomed to experiencing myself returned shortly after that, awakening.
However, just like a really powerful psychedelic experience. It was something that left a lifelong memory inside of me. And you one could even go as far as to say a multi lifelong memory, because it did not seem to be that this was limited to one life, what I was experiencing. And so there was this lasting memory and it was like a reset button had been pushed inside of me.
Where the next years, the next several years, we're going to be incredible challenging. And in fact, in many ways, my life now is incredibly challenging. So I think it's important for your listeners to know that while I'm showing up the way that I am and doing the work that I'm doing, it's not like there's some sort of permanent.
Sort of transcended space that I've managed to get to that where the challenges no longer bother me instead. 21 years later, it's in, a certain way, there's going to be radical challenges ahead of me in my life from this. but, it was like a reset button had been pushed inside of me that night.
That just said, you're going to be able to handle the challenges ahead of you because who you are is not the subject of your thoughts and feelings, who you are, is never the subject of your thoughts and feelings, who you are, is the awareness that thoughts and feelings are happening and you can always come back in relationship.
To the awareness of the subject and realize that's who you really are. And, I don't know that I, certainly would not have been able to express it in those words at that time, but I can express it in those words. Yeah, no. and, I think that's, it's one of the most fascinating things about the human condition is that we mistake.
The activity in our minds, we mistake it for, we are the idea that who we are is the subject of the inner talk.
Yeah. Who we are. Our, consciousness is the collection of mental images, thoughts, emotions, and physical reactions that we have. That's our, the totality of a subjective reality.
Yeah. That's the, subjective reality that we, reference when we think about who we are.
When you think about when people ask you who you are, the first thing that you're going to talk about is. Your name, where you're from, what you're interested in, what your vocation is, your career, whatever you're going to give this sort of laundry list of words and concepts that are describing your subjective experience, just like you said, but that's actually never who you really actually are.
And, Yeah. Anyway, it's, fascinating. This, is the, this is the thing that I can geek out on for hours.
You came through the right podcast to do that. This is exactly what we talk about because in my mind, I've been doing a lot of searching, achieve a lot in my life. And after all my search.
I realized one thing, my brain, between my years is a source of all my bliss. It's also the source of all my suffering. So unless I have this, I don't wanna say under control per se, but have the discipline to really understand that, psyche of this machinery, all of these stuff are just proxies to.
This.
So
this is why I started this podcast to actually have deep inquiries with other people who are on the same path. Are there warriors, Other entrepreneurs as well?
Yeah, yeah. No, it's, fascinating stuff. this is, what we're talking about for those listening who are trying to wrap your heads around.
What we're talking about. This to me is the key to everything. This is the key to unlocking. What we talk about is potential. And I think potential is a, strange term. And because it can. Okay, can often be adopted by the ego mind and it's and then the idea of potential than can be some people will adopt that and turn it into, what can I accomplish in my potential is related to that, which I can accomplish.
And that to me is it doesn't have anything to do with potential. That's just what you choose to do in the world. For me, the potential. Is in having a deeper understanding of the nature of the human existence and of relieving oneself of the burden of being caught in the subjective projections of the unconscious mind.
That's potential. It's Ooh, now I'm. Freer now I don't have to be, I love that qualifier is
free
or not. You're freer. Exactly,
So, the question I have for you is this right? Cause. You had an experience of this oneness of the superconsciousness one of the interesting mental model. by the way, just so that, you don't know yet, but I love mental model.
So we can metaphorically share this with you too, to tap into this very esoteric topic that we're talking about. So if you think about consciousness, I believe I come across a beautiful model, four layers. And the very inner core is the super-consciousness that you are talking about. That pure awareness, right?
The one that God had and all that stuff. And then one above that would be identity. Why about myself? My self identity. One about that would be personality. What I want you to think of me? Successful. It's more all these things and that one above there. Exactly good hair. another layer above that will be perception.
What I think you think of me. So the question now is you had this taste of this super-consciousness briefly. It is life-changing and you had a baseline. However, in my own experience, Whenever I have neurotic thoughts, these constructs, that pile on top of, my super-consciousness. I lose touch of it. I forget about it.
Then I'm back to, Oh, I am my identity. Oh, I have to be this way. Oh, I must grab that in, the empty pursuit of whatever. Hence why for me the medicine path. The, psychosomatic path or the techniques that I learned that I teach is so important to me because now I can regularly maintain, get access to this versus.
rom Doss, Once you're not going to door answers, you stop knocking it. I don't think so. I, take a bath or the shower today. I'm going to take a shower tomorrow.
You don't take a shower one time and say,
all right, I'm done.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Curious to know your thoughts?
Like what, what's your take on that?
It's an everyday thing. I had an, night, just a few nights ago where I was just in a dark place, and I was going to bed and I was lying in bed and it just felt like all of the pressures of life were just more than I could handle. It just felt wow, I.
No idea. it all felt like it was hitting me all at once and I couldn't filter out, financial pressures from emotional pressures, etcetera physical pressures. I couldn't separate out any of them. All I could do is sit there in physical pain and mental darkness, just experiencing this.
Feeling of overwhelming burden like that the, that life just felt so impossible. And it's so easy to go into that story and believe it's so easy to go into that story and believe it. And it will happen to me from time to time where I will fall into that story. And I'll just buy right in because. You know it, I think on some level it offers a certain amount of, despite the darkness, it almost offers a certain amount of relief.
if I can say life is impossible, then I can just feel like I am giving up right now.
I don't need to feed in my life.
Exactly, Dont Have to be responsible for all of this because. Everything is too challenging to be able to take on and, and so in a sense, I just, so, I just, I allowed myself to have that experience without trying to fight it.
And without trying to, without my ego coming in and saying, Oh, come on, you can't allow yourself to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I know better than to do that. I've, been through enough of these moments where it felt like. Complete hopelessness and helplessness and, it doesn't make it a lot easier, but I do know when it's happening, I generally have a little perspective and know with some rest and time I'm not going to be in that space anymore.
And, I try to remember when that's happening. Go to sleep as soon as I can get, just get rest, because it's not really that there's nothing going on at the level of identity. It's all going on at the level of the body, feeling fatigued and needing to recover. And there's usually something going on physiologically that is provoking that experience.
And if I just get proper rest and nutrition and water, I'm going to, I'm going to get through it and I don't have to even identify with any of that stuff. It's just a temporary manifestation of the body being fatigued, essentially.
Yeah. first thank you so much for being so open. I wasn't joking when I said I really, appreciate the level of rawness and honesty that you have.
And ultimately it's so easy, especially for public. Personalities, teachers and coaches and consultants to walk around and say, my life is great. Let me show you the glossy stuff only. And actually pretending not to be human. we're all perfectly perfect.
Everyone is dealing with whatever it is in various ways and, physicality. Finance relationship. it doesn't matter who you are. I don't care any in Barack Obama. I think it doesn't matter how well human,
so exactly
really appreciate you, being a great example of just being open and being totally in perfectly,
you are
My pleasure. My pleasure. Yeah.
No,
it's it's so important.
I, I.
I cannot stand the bullshit that, you know, and especially in this sort of, spiritual thinking coaching sort of thing, all of the, the big glowy smiles and stuff. it's great. It's great to be able to glow and to smile and feel your presence and so forth.
But this notion, that, people have transcended. It's no, we're in this earth plane together. We're hanging out and on the earth plane, please get over it with the transection. Unless, your life scene is just nothing but just totally ease then, but then it's just naive. Then that person actually isn't even really having.
truly embodied experience anyway, so this is, not the, earth plane is not the plane where we hang out in this state of pure bliss and transcended, somebody all the time.
I agree with you a hundred percent. That's actually my personal belief. I believe that, growth does come from overcoming challenges.
And there's a sweetness in going through the ups and the nouns. And that's the whole roller coaster ride of this human experience.
Exactly.
I truly believe that. some people want to believe that, Hey, we're here to just, be in. Been joy and bliss and I'm like, that's awesome. I haven't met a person
who can do that.
if there are, I'm happy to do a pockets interview with them, but I haven't
totally.
And if someone comes to me being blessed and enjoy. All the time that I'm going to really like
really are going to be very skeptical about, meeting someone like that.
I guess I think too, the, key has for, me has become, because I know not to expect that my life is going to be, any real easy cup of tea and moving forward.
I just know that some people will, try to, I think, in an effort to like, make me feel better or something, talk about how, they see me walking again or something like that and this and that, and I don't know where exactly that comes from, I'm very pragmatic. I know that.
My life is going to throw me challenges every day and it's going to throw me sometimes extreme challenges and, I'm not naive to that. And let's my, hope. and I guess I could say it would be maybe my practice as well as. What can I do not to avoid those challenges because I know they're unavoidable, but what can I do to make the most of them and, try to even have some fun with them, as they're happening, what, is it?
What's the outlet and B for me, humor is a big outlet. music is also a big outlet. being able to just make fun of myself, make fun of the world, turn it into music, turn it into comedy, whatever, not to avoid, things, but to be able to navigate through the challenge.
Without it taking me out.
So are you actively doing like self-deprecating type humor or can you make it a little bit more concrete for us? what does that look like watching your
life?
Yeah. Yeah. sometimes I'll just laugh at the absurdity of it all, like the absurdity of the human.
Experience sometimes I'll just, look at this body with these chicken legs that I have that are, deformed and, 21 years of hanging out doing nothing makes a lower body look pretty bizarre, and I'll just laugh at the absurdity of it all, a laugh at the absurdity of the human experience, a laugh just to laugh, because.
By herself with others,
I, myself, with others, whomever wants to laugh with me. I invite anyone and everyone to laugh with me about the absurdity of the human condition, because really ultimately it's pretty damn absurd. And, I think that sometimes we do ourselves a bit of a disservice, I think taking it too seriously.
this guy, that guy. Yeah.
Yeah. what happens at the end of this while we're we die? Yes.
it's
that's, the punchline to all of this is that we die at the end. It's like what a great punchline, all these things that we're taking. So seriously, all of these things that we worry about most of which will never happen ultimately just to die, it's what a funny joke.
The whole damn thing is. And I want to bring that awareness into the present moment and be like, Hey, I'm going to die. Anyway. I might as well die in this moment here with you CK and just let it all hang out and just be as real as possible because I'm already dead. I'm already gone.
Krishna Murti one of my favorite philosophers would talk about practicing death before dying. And then, and that was a big part of his spiritual practice was practicing death before dying. And he would talk about how there's this illusion. That people have that death is th life is related to continuity, like the continuity of one's physical body, the continuity of one's bank account and one's relationships, etcetera People confuse continuity with life. And then death is a discontinuous moment. It is a moment where we go from the known. To the unknown and yet it's, it is to, think of the duality if life and death, in those terms of continuity versus the lack of, continuity, I think is missing the whole point of life.
Now, like life is so much more than a continuous process.
as in procreation survival, is that what you mean?
Yeah. From the moment of someone's birth to the moment of their death, we can consider that a life. But what about when you just go outside and you look at the stars and you just feel the vastness of the universe?
I'm not thinking about in those moments. I'm not thinking about, I was born here and someday I will die. Instead of feeling this consciousness that we are all experiencing together. That is profound. it's absolutely it's beyond the word profound, Doesn't even describe it because it is, all that it is.
Life is all that is, it's not about one person's journey from birth to death. Life is all that is. and I would prefer to open up to experience life as all that is versus looking at it through the limited lens of this Sam ego, going through from birth to death. And that's a very limited way of perceiving life because it perceives it only through my own limited memories and experiences.
And. I don't know if this is making any sense to those listening. And I don't really care either. I'm just jamming. And I feel like I've got a guitar in my hand and I'm just jamming along and permeating whatever's going on, and just chit channeling it through to whatever we're talking. I don't even know what we're talking about it anymore.
No, this
is perfect. So let me do a quick recap. So the younger CK, we look alive as a, from the individual lens, right? This is my life. I'm the captain on my soul. I'm the master of my plates. Therefore, I'm going to set a goal and achieve it, and that's going to be my life and then seek he had a very beautiful, spiritual awakening through Ayahuasca.
And I realized like, Holy shit, there's much more to the individual. There's the one-to-one ones, one too many and many to many type of relationship in life. And then I stumble upon a beautiful video that actually describe what we're describing beautifully, called the egg. I don't know if you've ever seen it.
Oh
yeah. If you Google the egg and the YouTube video, I'll share this with you. Remind me to share this with you. It's it said it beautifully and in a beautiful way. And. The way that it articulates this whole collection of consciousness is that throughout time, from the beginning of time to the end of time, consciousness is a collective whole, and you are just a reflection of who I am in a different time.
yeah. So it's not even just in this moment. Collective consciousness.
consciousness is displaced, displacing, experienced in life through all different lenses and the collective. Yes. who we are.
huh. huh. Yeah, there you go. There you go. I love that. I love that. Yes. I mean it that's. That's a mind blown moment right there, and it's, exactly what I'm talking about.
As I want to have the experiences of the mind getting blown on a regular basis, because otherwise, if it's not blown, then what it's a doing. It's just resorting back to its own version of what it thinks knowledges And it's that's not knowledge. My memories aren't knowledge, the intellectual concepts that I've learned are not knowledge what's knowledge.
What's, really amazing is when the mind literally can't keep up with what it's taking in and it goes, Whoa, there's new input that is just completely destroyed my version of reality. And I want to keep doing that. Over and over again, because I know that anytime I construct a reality, it's it needs to be broken up.
It needs to be broken up just like when Buddhists make the mandolas. W as soon as they finished those mandolas, as soon as they've been, they've put all of these hours upon hours, days upon days into creating these mandolas, what's the first thing they do. They look at it, they pray and then they brush it away because nothing is ever permanent.
So the question now to you, by the way, again, we're on the same wavelength. I love this mantra, memento, Mori, that ultimately we're going to die. And some people at first would say, Oh my God, CK get this. Dark.
Why do you say that? what
about, but what like, Hey, this is the law of impermanence, right?
We're not going to be here forever. And if so, then what is it that I choose to do with my life ultimately? And I loved also recently I came across a beautiful way to articulate. This is a lot of people say, Hey, live as if. this is the last day of your life.
Yeah.
That's one way to do it. if it's the last day of my life, I would probably do it very hedonisticli.
But the reframe around is lit as if you're going to die today
or is there
live as if you were going to die? Yeah. So that now all of a sudden, it's no longer today. But now I can, have liberation the BNC and do everything that I want to do versus being very constraint.
Yeah. Yeah. And I, and, I absolutely agree with that.
And I think this is one of the things that when we're talking about the way in which mindfulness relates to say leadership and business, because this is the world that you and I are in is bridging. Philosophy with the pragmatic. helping people with their businesses, helping leaders through understanding what we're talking about and, taking these concepts and embodiment practices and bringing this into the moment and, creating value from it.
This is where the key is, in my opinion, in opinion, because this is how to be completely courageous. In every moment of your life, because if you have already gone through the process of preparing yourself to die, just like a samurai who has gone through a training, not only with swordsmanship, but samurai were historically trained to let go and die before going into battle.
That way when they were in battle and their movements and their mindset was so precise because they were already dead. They experienced complete presence and calm because they weren't in a conflict with anything with they weren't in a conflict with the enemy. And so this is if you're someone who. It is an entrepreneur like CK and I work with, or a leader of some sort, just think about the way in which this is, going to impact your ability to function with your work and your career and your life, your personal life.
From a place of courage and strength and power, because you're not in some kind of a mental reaction to the circumstances of your life. And you're not afraid because the biggest fear of all the one of death has already been dealt with.
So let's make it a little bit more practical. If you don't
mind.
Conceptually, it's easy to say, yes, I'm going to die one day. I'm going to live courageously. Yes. And what are some of the steps that you may recommend for someone who is, may not necessarily have the psychedelic experience yet may not necessarily had the spiritual awakening experience eminent as necessarily have breath work experience yet.
What are some of the ways you can chunk it down for them, to actually. Truly embrace and surrender that, Hey, I'm going to die. And today I'm going to live let's fully as deeply as possible.
Yeah. So I use an acronym in my work of beats and beats is B E A T S and it stands for breath, energy, attention, talent, and service.
And so the reason why it used that acronym is because yeah, in every moment of our life, we are either on the beat or we are off the beat. when you are listening to say a musician, it's very obvious if they're on the beat or they're off the beat because. Musician is creating something auditory, which allows you to be able to hear that when you were doing athletics.
There's a rhythm going on. There's something that the, if a basketball team is experiencing a collective rhythm, as they are moving together, there's a beat that you can sense happening and their, energy and their attention. Is responding to that beat. So if you, we listen to music or if we see it in athletics, it's really obvious that there's this rhythm happening and people are in the moment or martial arts.
So you can see a rhythm occurring with people doing martial arts. And it's a very graceful and beautiful thing to watch. Now, what we don't realize is that we are experiencing a rhythm all the time within us. And around us every day, there's an inner beat happening. There's our heartbeat, but then there's also this sort of inner sense of rhythm that's occurring.
If you pay close attention to it. And there's also say you're in a boardroom. So you're working, you're having a meeting. There's a rhythm that, group has that, team has it. If you pay close attention to it, you can start to work with that rhythm and connect to it. Now, the breath like we're talking about earlier, connects you to the parasympathetic nervous system can actually to the Vegas nerve takes you out of that fight or flight stress response.
Now you're able to be more present. When you're more present, you can actually sense energy more. You can feel energy. You can feel not only your own energy, but you can also become aware of the energy of people who are also in your environment. We all know the experience of when we are relaxed inside of us, inside of ourselves.
We can pay better attention. We can observe what's going on in other people more. Because we're not in our own little head trip about what's going on. So we can actually feel our own energy and feel their energy better. Now, from there, your breath and your energy, these are in and of themselves.
Neutral energy without direction is just neutral, fun. Just sitting here and paying attention to the energy in my body. The energy in my mind, it's neutral. It doesn't have a direction. So from there, then I can choose with intention what my, where to place my attention. Not from a place of habit, but from a place of responding to what's occurring now in the moment.
So now we've got the be and the a of beats From there, I'm going to want to filter my attention through my talent, whatever that talent is. And then finally, that's, it's all done in the spirit of service because I'm serving others by doing so. I'm creating value from my presence, no matter what that is.
And something that a lot of people don't realize is just your simple being your present moment awareness. Just that alone is creating value. Just your ability to listen and pay attention is creating value. You could hang out with a monk in the room who says nothing. You could feel a tremendous amount of value from what they offer just by being present, not even saying anything.
Yeah. And so by using this beats acronym, What it helps people to do is remember that we have to get on the rhythm of what's occurring inside of us, around us and getting that there is a rhythm. And when you can connect it to your breath, energy conscious awareness with attention and your talents to be of service, it gets you out of your own head and into the moment to take action based on what your intention is.
Yeah,
thank you for sharing that. A quick story. So speaking of monks, before my first ayahuasca experience the plant medicine experience. I actually had the good fortune of meeting the Dalai Lama in close proximity. And it wasn't because of the things that he's saying, or he was saying that really moved me, was his presence really felt his compassion for.
The room. I really felt his compassion for his enemies. just the generosity that he share. So I started just weeping. And then to me it was shocking at the time. Cause almost, Android, I didn't cry. what is this thing coming out of my eyes.
Wow.
So,
yeah, so to your point, and then that actually started my own path and exploring.
ways of being, and compassion and generosity and, emotion this originally in missing, my, most of my life.
I love that. I love that. Yeah. That, the, what you speak or speaking to is just so powerful. We talk about, we give a lot of lip service to living from the heart, but.
There's a way to actually do it and we don't have to compromise. On our self protection. I think a lot of people will get in their heads because they think, I can't be in my heart, in this situation where you know, this, is a very important thing. I have to be very analytical and dah, and very serious in my disposition and so forth.
I've been
there myself. and, it's can we just relax? We just let go, let, go of the need to try to protect ourselves from anything. What are we trying to protect ourselves from? What on earth, and then what you realize is that an open heart actually already has its own protection.
It's already protected. It doesn't need the reinforcement of ego behind it to,
Can you say more about that? What do you mean open up his own protection?
Yeah, an open heart is, it has its own protection. It's not going to be, how often. Do people really take advantage of someone with an open heart?
How often does that really happen? Not as often. I think as one might think, I actually heard Gary V talking about this the other day. He was saying, people get this idea that if you're kind. And just open that people are going to take advantage of you. He said I never experienced that. Never experienced and kindness operating from a place of open-hearted kindness.
It's very disarming for people and people want to collaborate. They want to be on your team when you're coming at a situation from an open heart. They want to be able to engage with you because it feels good because they know you're going to be going for a win-win for them, whether they're on your team or whether they're, someone that you're considering doing business with and negotiating with, they can feel that you're coming from a genuine place of connection and, that you prioritize kindness.
You prioritize the noblest of human values, which is warmth and kindness. And yeah, it's very disarming. It's very disarming to people. Now this, if I'm coming from this space of, with my furrowed brow and my analytical mind, and I look of distant, you're going to be looking at that energy. You're going to be like, what is he going to be trying to get from me?
What is he? he's clearly got an agenda here because his energy is held back. he's back in his body, he's holding something he's stiff. But if I'm just, show up and open and opened my rib cage and let my heart breathe, be here with you. Now, we can just be together and realize that, business does not have to mean being closed off and cold at all.
In fact, I think that's a. I think hope. I'm hoping that we outgrow that paradigm of leadership of thinking that somehow corresponds with strong leadership. I think the strongest leadership comes through kindness and compassion and a genuine desire for everyone to end up in a better place than they started.
Yeah, beautifully said. we have the U S election coming up. So, in my mind, what is a great leader, someone with an open mind, open heart, straight spine in open hand, and really coming from service versus, what's in it for me.
So open heart,
open mind, open hand, and then straight spine.
I like
that a lot in the straight spine being, taking responsibility for your own stature, both physically, mentally, and emotion personally,
and also what you stand for.
Yes. And what you stand for. Yeah. Yeah.
So for someone, again, I'm using the younger CK because target, Ho yearns to do more of that, we yearns to.
You'll have a more of open my open heart open hand, and then straighter spine. You're looking at Sam who embodies straight spine and open heart. What would you say to a younger CK like tactically, step-by-step, what can you do to try on really owning his values? What he stands for his boys and also his heart.
the first thing that I would ask that younger CK has, what's really important to him. What is his, if we, break down and we go beyond goals and we look at life purely from the place of intention, what is really most important to that? Young CK would be what I would want to know first and foremost.
I count is what's a successful life.
What feels, what makes life worth living?
So
in that response, I'm guessing there would be something beyond. Needing to prove oneself
that it would have something to do with joy and freedom and happiness.
And so then I would encourage that young CK to then look at what brings. Joy and freedom and happiness into life. And to really take a close look at it and to see whether or not it is the. Whether the mindset or what the young CK thinks is going to bring him greater joy, fulfillment, and happiness and freedom.
Whether that is actually, what's going to do that for young CK or not
the strategy,
right? Yeah. Because oftentimes we can mistake the strategy. For the experience and think, as long as I have this strategy in place, at some point I'll be happy. I will be, I will have more freedom. I will have more fulfillment.
So what do we do by doing that? I would try to, I would try to dig deep with young CK and look at well. with compassion, obviously, what are we actually doing by doing that? we're saying happiness is reserved for those who have been successful in their strategy. Happiness is reserved for those who have, followed there.
Strategy to a T and showing up with the discipline to do it every day and shut off their emotions and just swallowed their feelings and just grind their way through life and someday happiness and fulfillment and freedom will come. Now I would ask that young CK to actually look and see is that actually true?
Is shutting off your feelings, shutting off your emotions and just grinding your way through every day in order to experience what you think in your mind is on the horizon somewhere. Is that actually going to bring you more fulfillment? Is that going to bring you more of the happiness and freedom that you're actually seeking?
Because what I'd hope that young CK would be getting out of the conversation would be that he would then see that the patterns of thinking and behavior that are so rigid. Actually reinforce a rigidity. So that, day of fulfillment and freedom and happiness never truly comes and, more and more rigidity gets built into the system.
And then no matter how much money that young CK makes, no matter how much status that young CK acquires that goal of the fulfillment and the freedom and the happiness. Is always out of reach. In fact, those things that were supposed to bring more happiness, freedom and fulfillment. Now that young CK can see that they actually didn't do that.
So then he wondered if he's been lying to himself this entire time, or if he's been fed the wrong story, or if there's something wrong with him that he hasn't been able to experience the freedom, fulfillment and happiness.
Because everyone else on Instagram seems to get it
is everyone else on Instagram seems to get it right.
Exactly.
The meantime. like they say that the, neurons that fire together wire together, so what gets wired into the brain is that. Rigid strategy is the only way of getting to the freedom, fulfillment and happiness. Following that rigid strategy with discipline every single day is the only way of achieving some type of hypothetical outcome of freedom, happiness, and fulfillment.
And yet that's not led to that result. So then there's the conflict between that part of the brain going, wait a minute, I should have experienced some of this by now. But then, so then it's getting hardwired in. So then the dialogue becomes, I know this is the way that I'm supposed to proceed through life, to achieve freedom, happiness, and fulfillment.
And the other part is going well, bullshit. That didn't happen. And now you're just hardwired to think. That the more rigid you are, the more happier you're going to be, but it doesn't happen. So then it creates all this inner conflict that it creates all of the why, didn't I get there? What ha what happened in the meantime, there've been all of these incredible present moments that have been missed along the way, because it never was about getting to the destination.
It was about being more playful and creative. With the present moment experience that we're all having, because as cliche as it is to say, it's true, this moment right now is all that exists. So if I am postponing my happiness and fulfillment until some arbitrary deadline, when I have achieved some goals, I'm just.
Kidnapped my own happiness and fulfillment. And I've said to myself, I'll give that back to myself when I'm good and ready.
yeah,
I feel,
The
days of my youth have been recreated in this brief description.
And, and yeah, those are the dark nights of soul moments. What's it all for. Yeah. And, if not joy, ultimately.
Yeah. And it's, it's. so simple that I think that it's, it, comes off at an insult to the ego mind. The ego mind wants to make things so complicated, but yet it's so damn simple.
It's no, it's just, it truly is embracing that this moment is the only moment that we ever have. It's as simple as that, it's as simple as getting that every moment of our experience of life has happened through us. And that we've been, we haven't even been in control the whole time and flailing around trying to pretend we're in control.
But yet we've been divinely graced with being, and being supported by nature and supported by other human beings. We have all, every single one of us has been supported by thousands or millions of human beings and bacteria and all of these things that we don't even think of. We go through life thinking of Sam and CK and whoever is listening to this, John and Stephanie or whoever you are, go through life with these blinders on thinking that we are in control of these lives, how much control do we really have?
We're being supported by this whole ecosystem. Of the earth and of the collective consciousness and of people doing things for one another. I didn't make this t-shirt I didn't make these headphones. I didn't make this microphone. None of this stuff in my surroundings, did I have anything to do with, and yet here I am thinking that I am somehow in control.
I ended up nothing to do with any of this stuff, except for placing it in a certain orientation in this room.
Yeah.
and here I am benefiting from these microorganisms in my gut, people around the world who have been manufacturing things, creating things, ideas that have been passed on by great sages that I have internalized and made my own.
So little of it has anything to do with me instead. It's when I can really accept that, it's truly about letting go and accepting that divine grace is moving through all of us all the time. That's where the beauty really lies, but the ego hates that. Because it wants to prove that it was able to do things in some sort of special way.
Yeah. I'm the master of my fate out there. You tell me otherwise,
right? Yeah.
Okay. So let me, make it a little bit more practical for those who are listening to this. Thank you.
You can be my, ground to practicality. There you go.
They say that the mind is a terrible servant. Sorry, a great servant, but a terrible master. So what we're talking about here is ultimately the art of using this tool that we all have beautiful, powerful, very well developed, especially those who are listening to this podcast, They like to engage in intellectual. cognitive conversations as a way to exercise the muscle. That is the, so then, how do we use this tool? in a practical way, right? Cause we're not saying, the correct me if I'm wrong, Sam, we're not saying, Hey, just surrender our sovereignty. Go with the flow and, a hundred percent, we're not saying that we're also not saying to say total determinism, my will shall be done kind of a way.
And the answer is somewhere in the middle somehow.
That's right. The middle way. So
You share with us some practical ways to. You it's very powerful, this very potent tool that we do have, in such a way to create the life that we love.
Yeah. the, way the, practical way, let's just start by now, right now, just take a moment to imagine yourself in any given situation, say where you are experiencing a sense of conflict with.
Someone with another person. Now on the one hand you have what you want to communicate that is true for you. There is a, and this is important to, understand and to appreciate the fact that we are separate beings. That we are not merged into the, on, we are not merged into the same being you and your spouse view and your partner at work, whatever you're clearly not the same being.
However, there's a degree to which you are sharing in the same energy. Now a good way to work with this is to, sense it, as you, search your memory for an, experience that you've had, where there is conflict with someone feeling to what degree was that conflict either resolved or made worse by your focus?
On your separate perspective,
to what degree did you actually, and this happens with spouses all the time, where there's a right or wrong sort of a direction where it's I, want to be right and I want to make that person wrong because. This is, it's the protection of one's ego. And yet in that battle, how has that turned out any time that those battles have occurred?
How has that ultimately turned out? Probably not so well,
the
ego against ego
So rather than seeking understanding. No, the, reactive mind says I am seeking to be understood. That's what the reactive mind says. And I am seeking to have the person who is listening to me, understand me in a way in which it will shut them up so that they won't share their perspective with me.
And they'll agree that I was right. And then I will have one this conflict, and then we can move on. the child in us operates from that place frequently. All right. Used to do this a lot in my marriage. I'm no longer married, but, this came up frequently there whole right or wrong thing. Now, understanding the way in which that is feudal is essential.
No one has ever gotten anywhere through winning in a battle that is actually helped. Both parties come out on the other side with a better understanding of each other. There's no relating, that's actually occurring in those situations. Instead it's resorting to trying to protect one's perspective by separating from the other.
Now on the one hand, it's important to understand that we have boundaries and to be able to separate from the other. But the question then becomes where are we coming from? Are we coming from trying to be more right than the other person, or are we coming from truly trying to have an understanding and relate to the other person?
In a way where you let go of your agenda to be right and ultimately work on focusing on both people winning. Now, whether this is in a romantic partnership. Or whether this is in a business partnership, core founders, co-founders doesn't matter. The same rules apply. Yep. Question is, this is where, the rubber, the road with mindfulness and, emotional intelligence and, we can easily let our egos get in the way of our own best interest and feel as though we have to.
Protect our rightness. Yeah. And never actually come to a proper understanding of what's going on and then create ultimately dissonance in the relationship. That can sometimes never heal. Yeah. Whether it's a romantic partnership, whether it's co-founders or whatever, you may, even in that conversation, that one CRA conversation of trying to be right, trying to win over the other person.
You may create dissonance that takes days, weeks, months, years, or forever to actually heal. Yeah. Whereas if you just take the Mo a moment to check in with yourself and really sense, am I truly present with this person or am I trying to be smarter than them or be more right than them? If I truly check in, am I truly going for a win-win that's Hey, you're saving yourself so much time, so much energy, potentially money.
there's so many things that you're at risk of losing in those types of conflicts, just because the ego tried to take over and win the argument.
Yeah. Very, rich topic to dive into. reflecting on my own personal experience, as well as seeing other clients experience. if I look, at a simple model of ego against ego, Then it's a matter of who's, But if I actually add into a third entity and a relationship marriage, a business, a partnership, whatever, a friendship, whatever that may be, then it's less to me anyways, is less about ego against ego. It's about how do we nurture the third entity?
I like that.
And, then, also, for the first sentence of the doubter gene came to mind, the way that can be spoken of is not the eternal way.
So SIM simply said, truth can not be described or articulated
that's right.
Truth can be felt, but it can be. By described by words, right? That's the alpha and Omega. So, in my mind,
truth is not a fixed entity,
correct. In my, how I'm going forward in going to any future potential conflicts or point of discussion.
I'm going to be thinking about, it's not about getting to the truth with words rather. It's. Describing around the truth and in it, the discussion, truth can be felt and be palpable and hopefully, talking to Chris boss soon, negotiator that we all with something that's negotiated, that could be even better.
What either side thought about the beginning.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, no one image comes to mind and that it is when you, say you see people practicing martial arts and they're really practicing it. Yeah. As a spiritual discipline, there's never any antagonistic relationship with the enemy, ultimately it's like a dance.
You want to dance. And one of the people is going to be defeated in the dance, but done so with great respect and honor, in fact, there's a great, trying to remember the, the movie. It's a famous movie where there's a Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris fight scene. And Bruce Lee defeat, Chuck Norris and.
He you, could see, he clearly has honor and respect for him. And that I think is so key at true genuine honor and respect whether that is trying to, navigate through or, a. Tough communication in a relationship with your partner or spouse, or whether that is working with some sort of no negotiation or co-founder or whatever on your team.
If you can approach it as essentially a dance of two people where there's no winner and there's no loser, you just want to work with as much grace as you possibly can. And as much honor and respect for the other as you possibly can versus trying to defeat them. When I studied, Aikido I had to really learn how to back off from trying to defeat my partner.
I remember my sensei would come up to me and say, it's not about power over the other. It's about efficient use of the energy that's already present here between you. It's about, it's not about the goal is not to defeat the enemy. The goal is to manage the energy effectively with presence. And so I had to, as this big six foot three guy, I just wanted to I thought this was fun.
I'll get to beat people up, having no idea that wasn't what it was all about at all. And then ultimately seeing the ICO is much more of a dance in the more connected and centered one can become in that the more powerful they actually become. It actually translates into having greater strength.
Because you're not in a place of trying to force yourself against the opposition. You're there in a interactive play with the quote unquote enemy.
So circling back to your origin story of experiencing a tragic accident and allowing it to catalyze. It's to be the beginning of your life's work. What would you say to someone else who is on their path to discover their life's work?
Should they look for, Some great tragic suffering or, are there ways that they could do to
I'm personally, always trying to save people from, I don't know, nothing can save people, but I'm trying to the, to ultimately see how much suffering I can spare people from by seeing that you can get, You can get the wisdom without the trauma and,
challenge a loving challenge by the way, point of philosophical question that I have,
but
could you really acquire the wisdom without the pain?
I'm not saying without pain, because I think every one of us goes through pain. maybe just to try to, maybe something trauma as severe as, paralysis, maybe I'm, talking about trauma in a pretty severe level at the moment, but yes, I think you're absolutely right. And with pain comes, awareness comes wisdom and, One of the things that I would, suggest to anyone listening to this who is looking to find more of a sense of purpose, connection, et cetera. I like to use this term experiential resume. If you look at your life as everything that you have been through, especially the wounds, the psychological wounds that you've experienced that have where you have felt.
Separate from others and you felt, disconnected or whatever. If you look at everything as having value for the experiential resume, it's there that one begins to discover one's uniqueness and, in certain respects, I'm not unique. I'm certainly not the first person in a wheelchair to be helping people with empowerment.
That's for sure. And I'm certainly not the first person first Western mind to be trying to translate the Zen and Taoists practices into modern day practical advice. Not at all. However, The particular circumstances of my particular life have given me my own experiential resume that cannot be copied by anyone else.
And it's in that experiential resume that we all possess that we have our own unique genius, that no one can copy because they haven't had the experiences that we've had. Look at that, look at the, your experiential resume. Look at the education that you have received as a person that you couldn't, and that it could not have come through academic credentials or anything like that are purely as a result of how you have become you.
Yeah. Beautifully said, I want to underline this point a bit for younger Sam, younger CK, whoever was listening in maybe doubting themselves. Hey, I'm not as good looking as Sam, I don't, I'm not riding on a wheelchair. That doesn't make me believable as a, someone to support others. I'm just making things up.
But the reality of it is you are truly a unique snowflake, and I almost say it in with it is empowering context because all of your, upbringing, your parents, your education, your experiences, all of your, triumph and all of your failures that brought you. Today here. And, there's wisdom to share to others who are on this path, who may look to you and say, Oh, I want to be like you as well.
and then the reason why I keep referring to the younger CK and the younger Sam is because I know the younger CK will love to have. This type of inspiration, this type of mental model, this type of action or tactics as a way to helping create new ways of living new ways of being you, ways of action, right?
That I would've loved to pay tons of money for,
but
at least minimally one person. The younger version of you will want the wisdom that you have
right now beautifully said. Yeah, beautifully said.
I know that, you have some time constraint, are you open to some rapid fire questions and we can complete
sure.
Yeah. Throw them at me.
Cool. What is your definition of purpose?
My definition of purpose is, that's a great, question.
My definition of the purpose of purpose is co-creating meaning along with the divine.
Thank you. What's your definition of fulfillment?
Co-creating fun. Along with the divine.
What's your definition of wealth?
My definition of wealth is
an awareness that our needs are always taken care of.
Thank you. And, to, the reason why we circulate around the topic of spirituality, ultimately to me, the younger version of me really wanted some rational answers and why. I should feel psychological safety and I want it, I wanted, evidence to support psychological safety. But, the whole idea of spirituality that really got me to this ease, this inner peace, this inner calmness I finally got was well.
Ultimately I'm going to die. And so all those concerns and worries about, it's ultimately for not. So I might as well relax.
So there you go. Yeah. said,
what do you do to not take yourself too seriously?
try to be around entertaining people and try to also entertain myself. That's what I do.
I, and, it's very easy to take oneself too seriously in this world that we live in, especially, it feels like in this day and age, people are taking themselves more seriously than ever. Yesterday on Facebook. I, posted something. I said, I voted for your mom.
That's funny.
It's just I'm so sick of all of the battles you got to get out there and vote.
You need to, yeah, sure. Yeah, that's true. But let's, also realize. let's, remember the absurd here, guys, please. let's just
so speaking on that, what have you realized as an illusion in the last year, in year 2020?
What if
I realized as an illusion in the best year? Yeah.
One of the things that I've realized that it's an illusion in the past year is that, that our freedom of speech that we, have in this country is a lot more fragile than I think any of us have been realizing. Yeah. The freedom of speech itself is an illusion. At least in our modern world.
Yeah. I recently listened to conversation between Tristan Harris and Joe Rogan and a filmmaker who did, who made social dilemma. Yeah, definitely. It's something for all of us to think about. there it's quite illuminating. Yeah. Technology in these platforms and, ultimately, freedom of speech, as you said,
right?
Yeah. I'm very disturbed about what's happening with cancel culture. Yep. Topic for another conversation.
Yeah. So Sam, I want to acknowledge you for the willingness to come on my show and just dance without. A safety net. Yeah. Yeah. Really what we're going to be talking about, really appreciate you sharing.
That's the way I like it. And
your origin story. Sorry. You share with us how you strengthen, open heart, open mind, open hand, and straighten our spine. You share with us a lot of tactical tools. So thank you. Just know, being a Zen warrior embodiment that we can all be. Little bit freer, a little bit trader and a little bit more courageous in living the life that we want to live.
And through this rollercoaster, this fun ride called the human life.
I'll see. Kay. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I knew I was going to enjoy it a lot.
I could go another two hours, but being cognizant of your time, it was certainly a window on the next time.
Thank you. Sounds good. All right. Take care.
Take care.
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The post 096: Divine Adversity: From Paraplegia to Zen Warrior – Sam Morris appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Eric Neuner is the Co-Founder of Empowered Education, the parent company of Health Coach Institute—the leading online schools for wellness coaches and health practitioners. With employees in over 30 states and 10 countries, HCI has trained over 20,000 students, making them among the top learning institutions in the world. Eric also has a purpose-driven community hub in San Rafael, CA
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- What to Say When Standing For Someone
- Self Acceptance, Self Love, & Enjoy Your Achievement
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/095-thriving-families-and-businesses-in-community-eric-neuner
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My next guest, Brandon T. Adams, is an Emmy award-winning Producer and the Host of the TV Series Success in Your City. He is a podcaster, speaker, author, advisor, crowdfunding expert ($35M+ to-date), and media expert.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
We talked about
➔Simple Rituals For Optimal Energy For Speakers
➔How I Overcame My Speech Impediment & Fear of Public Speaking
➔The Steps I Took to Improve as a Public Speaker
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➔What Tech Platforms to Use For High Level 1-1 Connection - Brandon T. Adams
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➔What I'd Tell My Younger Self Going Through Dark Night of the Soul Moments
➔What Does It Mean to Live a Good Life
🔔 SUBSCRIBE to get the FULL EPISODE with philosopher-entrepreneurs. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/094-the-power-of-communication-and-strategic-relationships-brandon-t-adam/
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Leukemia survivor & speaker coach, George P. Kansas, will share his experience to support himself and his clients to bring themselves closer to their true nature, heal their limiting wounds, and bring their fullest expression into the world without ego or apology.
🔥 Be the first to get inspirational stories, mental models, and actionable tactics from proven philosopher-entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/091-the-luck-bubble-kirk-westwood/
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John Livesay, aka The Pitch Whisperer, is a sales keynote speaker where he shows companies’ sales teams how to turn mundane case studies into compelling case stories so they win more new business. From John’s award-winning career at Conde Nast, he shares the lessons he learned that turns sales teams into revenue rock stars. His TEDx talk: Be The Lifeguard of your own life has over 1,000,000 views.
We talked about
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/091-the-luck-bubble-kirk-westwood/
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Kirk Westood is a former Australian Special Forces. He produced a documentary exploring the world's Shamanic rituals. He is now an intuitive guide and the corporate shaman of Quanta, a technology company that helps increase the efficacy and potency of plants.
We talked about...
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- Steps to Hone Your Intuition As the Highest Form of Intelligence
- 10 Step Path to Commerce And Art As a Profession
- Heart-Based and Wound-Based Thought Leadership
- How to Manifest What You Really Want With Desire #lawofattraction
- Use the Gratitude Gym to Unlock Your Creative Potential
- Dark Nights of the Soul As Catalysts For a Great Life
- When You Need Inspiration During Dark Moments
- First Meaningful Ayahuasca Experience And His Healing
- and many more!
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🔥 Join our mailing list for mindset and actionable tactics from purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/091-the-luck-bubble-kirk-westwood/
👪 Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Tian Mu is a seasoned tech entrepreneur. He ran a game studio. He launched a social impact eCommerce platform, Brethren Shoes (www.brethrenshoes.com). He is also a self-realization coach who helps people find their purpose, harness their superpowers, manifest magic!
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Erik Oberholtzer is a chef, social entrepreneur, and food activist. He is co-founder and chairman of Los Angeles-based Tender Greens, a healthy food restaurant chain.
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On Box Breathing And Other Techniques Before Any Meeting
On Presence Practices (Specifically Transcendental Meditation)
How He Describes the Experience of Meditation to Non-Meditators
How He Cultivated Thoughtfulness Through Suffering
How I Navigate Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
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My Early Mentors in the Hospitality And Culinary Space
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The Bus Test For Cofounder Fit
How Ayahuasca Helped Me Celebrated My Success And Post-Exit Plan
3 Whys to Crystalize the Core Messages
How I Concretize the 10-Year Vision of Tender Greens
and more...
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/089-ten-year-plan-to-actualize-37-tender-greens-restaurants-erik-oberholtzer/
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Greg Wendt is...
- Wealth Management & Strategy Advisor for Impact Investors, Regenerative Macroeconomist
- Works with leaders in economic development groups, think tanks, investors, families of wealth to help them achieve sustainable development goals.
Topics We Discussed* The Benefits of Box Breathing Before Meetings * Passion For Aged Tea * Advice For Curious Tea Students * Starting With Light Or Strong Tea * Drinking Tea As Presence Practice * 3 Sources of My Core Philosophy * Impact Investing as a Vehicle For Change * Bringing Sustainable Development Goals to Life * My Dream Job And the Disillusionment Moment in Japan * Keep the Faith Strong In Difficult Times * Following Your Purpose According to Physics * Following Your Instinct to Focus on Purpose-Driven Investors * My Investment Philosophy According to Sustainable Development * How I Set My Vision And Goals
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✍️ Detailed Blog post:
https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/088-evolving-economics-impact-investing-to-design-a-better-future-greg-wendt/
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Murray Hidary is...
- A serial tech entrepreneur who has had multiple successful exits (earthweb, dice.com, iamplify.com)
- The composer and creator of the immersive musical experience ‘MindTravel’ (has been featured around the globe over 500 times with over 100,000 people)
- With a mission of “Moving People to Purpose Through Music”
Topics We Discussed* The Benefits of Box Breathing Before Meetings * Serial Tech Entrepreneur Changed Career to Become Immersive Experience Creator * Use Music to Make Better Decisions * Music For Emotion Health Is Like Crossfit For Physical Health * Music is Key to Unlock the Hidden Truths of the Universe * Getting Yourself Out of the Way & Unleashing Your Creativity * Connect Deeper And Intimately With Audiences * Comparing Learning Martial Arts & Playing Musical Instruments * Music as a Path to Journey Into Our Deep Subconsciousness * Duplication Principle to Release Stress, Anxiety, and Obsessive Thoughts * Helping Those Who Are Depressed, Grieving, Or Anxious * Getting to the Breakthrough Ideas and Decisions * Staying True & Attracting Super Fans * With Constraint (And Specificity) Comes Freedom * Understanding Who My Audiences (And Super Fans) Are * Creating Virtual Immersive Experience Since COVID * Responsibilities of a Musical Healer to Alleviate Suffering of Others * Scaling Immersive Musical Experiences Globally * The Heavy Costs of Separating Identities & The Surprising Benefits of Integration * Microstep to Integrate Identities Into All Aspects of Life * The Benefits of Getting to Know the Person Beyond the Role * How Vibrations Create Our Reality & Expand Our Future, According to Quantum Physics * What Does Philosopher-Entrepreneur Mean to You? * What Does Wealth Mean For You? * What's One Idea That Most Improved Your Life in the Last 5 Years?
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✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/087-the-wisdom-of-music-consciousness-creativity-and-calming-the-mind-murray-hidary
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Rob Angel is the creator of Pictionary® and author of GAME CHANGER: The Story of Pictionary and How I Turned a Simple Idea into the Bestselling Board Game in the World (38 million games in 60 countries before selling to Mattel in 2001)
Today, Rob Angel is an entrepreneur, explorer, investor, philanthropist, and sought-after speaker on a mission to help others create their own success and best life by taking their first small step. From running with the bulls to swimming with sharks and parachuting out of airplanes, Rob seeks out adventure and aardvarks wherever he goes.
We Talked About* His New Favorite Adventure Burning Man * What is Intuition * His Definitive Step to Overcome Fear And Self Doubt * How He Breakdown The Smallest Step to Create a Game * When to Take Action And When to Listen to the Inner Voice * What 3 Bits of Advice Would He Give His 26-Year-Old Self * The Journey From Curiosity, to Passion, to Love * How He Kept His Faith Going Before He Had Traction * His Path to Refine His Purpose After Pictionary * His Advice to Those Going Through Existential Crisis * How He Uses Challenges Intentionally For Growth And Personal Discovery * How He Defines the Phrase 'Personal Journey' * Where And How He Cultivates Healthy Relationships * What Structures You Should Put in Place to Foster Productive Cofounder Dynamics * His #1 Counter-Intuitive Advice to Entrepreneurs * The Counter-Intuitive Power of Saying No
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✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/086-from-waiter-to-bestselling-boardgame-inventor-failures-wins-insights-rob-angel/
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Dr. Mark Goulston is one of the world’s foremost thought leaders of empathic listening. He has been: UCLA Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, FBI hostage negotiation trainer, advisor in the OJ Simpson Trial, owner of the Theory Y Executive Coaching, suicide prevention specialist for 25+ years (without losing anyone), author of the 7 bestselling books, especially “Just Listen” - Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone.
Topics We Talked About* How to Think Like Elon Musk & Steve Jobs * What IDEO Chair Tim Brown Said About Their Approach to Product Innovation * The World's Top Communication Expert Teaches 3 Steps to Gain Trust * How to Let an Idea Echo Inside Someone's Mind * Finding Your True Calling By Getting Pass 4 Things * Make More Impact, Speak Into What People Are Listening For * Ten Ten Ten Strategy To Make Better Decisions * How to Inspire Employees, Transform Business With Theory Y * #1 Parenting Tip From the Leading Expert on Empathic Listening * From 25+ Years of Suicide Prevention Expert, Surgical Empathy For COVID PTSDs * Men Who Give Solutions Get Into Couple Arguments More, Communication Expert Says * Suicide Prevention Expert Helping Schools & Parents About Teen Suicides * Doctor Warns Entrepreneurs of Adrenaline Addiction * What You Do After the Dark Night of the Soul to Reestablish Baseline, Expert Says
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✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/085-empathy-is-one-key-skill-to-win-business-influence-people-mark-goulston/
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Ben Woodward is the bestselling author of The Empowerment Paradox: Seven Vital Virtues to Turn Struggle Into Strength. He is also a sought after public speaker and business consultant for individual and corporate transformation. He is the former company president for a global health and wellness company and he and his wife are the parents of 7 children.
We Talk About* As a Father of 8, Ben Shares The Joy of Parenthood * A Holistic Approach to Entrepreneurship: The Unseen Cost of the Single-Mindedness * Why The Best Version of Myself Prioritizes Relationships * The Post-Success Blues is REAL * How to Stay Connected And Find Homeostasis in 2020 * Son Who Turned His Dad In To Police Gives People Hope * Turning Serious Adversity Into a Blessing * 7 Vital Virtues to Turn Struggles Into Strengths * Forgiveness Brings Freedom And It Starts With You * Finding Life's Joy In Service * I Turned My Bipolar Disorder Into a New Superpower * My Daily Ritual to Sharpen My Truth & Wisdom
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✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/084-finding-meaning-and-value-in-adversity-ben-woodward/
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Ben Woodward is the bestselling author of The Empowerment Paradox: Seven Vital Virtues to Turn Struggle Into Strength. He is also a sought after public speaker and business consultant for individual and corporate transformation. He is the former company president for a global health and wellness company and he and his wife are the parents of 7 children.
We Talk About * As a Father of 8, Ben Shares The Joy of Parenthood – Ben Woodward * A Holistic Approach to Entrepreneurship: The Unseen Cost of the Single-Mindedness – Ben Woodward * Why The Best Version of Myself Prioritizes Relationships – Ben Woodward * The Post-Success Blues is REAL – Ben Woodward * How to Stay Connected And Find Homeostasis in 2020 * Son Who Turned His Dad In To Police Gives People Hope – Ben Woodward * Turning Serious Adversity Into a Blessing – Ben Woodward * 7 Vital Virtues to Turn Struggles Into Strengths – Ben Woodward * Forgiveness Brings Freedom And It Starts With You – Ben Woodward * Finding Life’s Joy In Service – Ben Woodward * I Turned My Bipolar Disorder Into a New Superpower – Ben Woodward * My Daily Ritual to Sharpen My Truth & Wisdom – Ben Woodward
Link * * The Empowerment Paradox by Ben Woodward * http://ben-woodward.com/
Full Episode As a Father of 8, Ben Shares The Joy of Parenthood – Ben Woodward having seven, we have one on the way. What knowing know now, what would you say to someone like me who don’t have any kids or who are looking to have a family?
I think it’s important to appreciate the definition of family. you’ve got to respect each person’s interpretation of what their family looks like and what they want to achieve in their family. my wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to have children, and we’ve loved the experience.
And, and I felt for me, and especially for my wife, Kim, I felt like I became a dad about a few months into being one. Yeah. And, whereas Kim, as soon as she was pregnant, she became a mother and, and that transformation for her was quite remarkable. And, and it really has become a defining role for both of us.
And. I love being a dad and she loves being a mum more than we love probably anything else. and I wouldn’t be able to, I have as many kids if I didn’t have the wife that I have, she, yeah. If it was down to me in my skillset, Yeah, maybe we’d have a few less, but I’ve got such confidence in knowing that she’s the mum that makes all the difference.
God bless all the mothers in the world
A Holistic Approach to Entrepreneurship: The Unseen Cost of the Single-Mindedness – Ben Woodward parenthood and entrepreneurship and being in relationship with another human being in a lifetime long commitment to me, these are different path of transformation.
Yeah. So in my mind, I’m hesitant to take on the parenting role yet. Cause I don’t know, I have no idea what that’s like. And to me, this is not something that. you get a kid. You’re like, ah, I don’t like it. Let me return it to the store. That’s not how it works. So curious to know your thought about being an entrepreneur for many years, and being in life partnership for many years, and now being a parent for many years, what would you say to that statement?
they’re not isolated paths. They all feed each other and they all interrelate the task is not to choose one over the other. And unfortunately many people do that. Yeah. They say I’m going to pursue my career path. So I won’t have children or I’m going to pursue running my own business.
So I’m not getting into relationships right now. the reality is learning to balance both. And govern yourself that way so that you can manage your priorities appropriately actually feeds and informs both. Or all of them so much better than if you were just to be single-minded down one track because it makes you a better person.
I’m a better father, for example, because of the career that I’ve had, the chance that has given me to travel to 30 countries around the world and be exposed to different cultures and different types of people and different experiences and different communities has opened my eyes up and given my children opportunities.
That they wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t have had that career. Yeah. And at the same time being a father of seven, has informed me as a leader. Yeah. And I’ve had so many lessons that I’ve drawn on there. It still makes you laugh. Doesn’t it? but being a father of seven has informed my abilities as a leader, because there’s been so much that I’ve learned in that space and likewise juggling all of that with a relationship that you have front and center, is critical. so I think it’s a little bit like a horse race rather than saying they’re in individual sequences and it’s one or the other or this first, and then that, yeah, when I got married, my wife was still at university. And she was pregnant.
we were going to put, having children off a little bit and just settle into marriage. And, we got married and changed our minds very quickly. And two months in. she was pregnant so that she gave birth to our first, a month before our first wedding anniversary. So we’ve been every couple of years since then having children she’s been pregnant and breastfeeding about 50% of our married life.
so it’s remarkable. Oh my gosh. but she was at university and pregnant. At the same time and my career was changing and progressing and moving forward whilst I was still having children and the family organization was growing. I believe it’s a little bit like a horse race, like I said, rather than being in silos where every now and then one horse gets out in front.
And you’ve got to bring another one up to speed. Yeah. Maybe I’m getting too preoccupied with work. I need to give more attention to my wife and children, maybe. I need to give more attention to my career right now and I need to make that adjustment so it’s just constantly being mindful and learning to the balance.
Yeah. what I’m hearing you, what you say is this is not compartmentalized. Life is superposition. I want to be sure. you have relationships, you have other responsibilities, you are a parent all at the same time, rather than I just have this in silo and in compartments.
Yeah. Yeah, because compartmentalizing is really making everything about me. Isn’t it. Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to, I’m going to not focus on a relationship because I’m focusing on me now. Personal development is essential, but the purpose of my life should never be about me.
If that’s the case, I’m shortchanging myself. And if I establish habits and patterns of thinking that are me centric, when it comes to getting into a relationship, I’m going to be me centric. How’s that going to serve the relationship? How am I going to respond to being a father or a mother if I’ve become to me centric.
Why The Best Version of Myself Prioritizes Relationships – Ben Woodward there is probably some mindset shift, from younger to where you are today. So what would you say to the younger ben who may have being more individualistic, more self-driven self center and who said, no, I’m just going to focus on me. The younger version who is more individualistic, who don’t believe what you just said, or would you say person?
I would say the fruits of getting the balance right far outweigh being individualistic.
It’s exciting to have a career. It’s exciting to have ambition. It’s exciting to have all of that drive, but the greatest fruits in life come from the relationships that we enjoy. and the best version of myself is not found by me only looking inward at myself, as I learned to sacrifice myself and recognize that my life is not about me.
As I learned to recognize that my own struggles are not about me, that may be within all of that there’s benefit for other people. And that certainly comes out as a parent and as a husband, for example, Then when I put that front and center life is so much more rewarding, so much more enriching.
and I can say that now the age of 45 with seven children, with 20 years of marriage under my name about wow. that the best experiences in life come from prioritizing the most valuable relationships that you have everything else because throughout yes. Here’s the deal. Oh yeah. I worked in a billion dollar company a few years ago, multi multibillion dollar company.
And I had a colleague that had worked his backside off for that company and given blood, sweat, and tears, he was on the road traveling. He was a road warrior like you wouldn’t believe if you cut him open know he would bleed company blood.
he gave his life and soul for that business. he was a senior level executive and They did this restructure he’s lined up for that big spot . He was really excited about it. And as his spouse also worked in the company, senior executive, she’d been there for 23 years. Did the same thing. If you cut her open she’d bleed company, blood really just devoted to the company.
He didn’t get it. In fact, he just got sidelined. he got given a different role. That was almost like a demotion. I tried to dress it up, but he was essentially, he was pushed aside, devastated. He quits because yeah, you just slapped me in the face here in front of all my colleagues, his wife, how can she say when now the loyalty is to a husband, they would have considered this in the restructuring.
So what was her 23 years of service as a road warrior
so what really matters most, who’s going to be at your funeral mineral when you die. Yeah. Is your former boss going to be that maybe they might, maybe you’ve got those relationships, but a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Put that in perspective.
Who’s going to be at your funeral. It’s going to really be there and show up. And, I just saw that and I thought. Yeah, my career is my business. If I’m working for someone else. Yeah. My job is my career. My is my business, my brand. It’s all. no, one’s going to be more loyal to me than I am because when restructuring happens and change happens, and we’re seeing a lot of that in the world right now, with everything that’s going on with the pandemic, All that change is going on. Who’s going to be most loyalty. Yeah, you are. Yeah. And your family. So I think get those relationships front and center because you will need them over everything else without a doubt.
I appreciate that. Thank you. And then echoing to my own personal journey as well. In the younger days of my life was more about the achievement, right? Going after it, certain goals and titles and education, whatever it may be, later on, in my life. And then just having gone through the peak of egoic expression to the trough of disillusionment that I realized.
Yeah. Oh, okay. This is painful. whatever I’m doing amazing. these are great, but at the same time, those are illusions. For me. What makes my life rich is these deep relationship, Ultimately it comes down to it. It, relationships is what makes my life rich.
The Post-Success Blues is REAL – Ben Woodward I was fortunate enough to retire from the corporate world at the age of 39.
And, as a family of nine, we had our mortgage paid off pretty quick and all that kind of stuff and live in a financially independent. Situation. So really grateful for that. That’s, it’s been, I’ve been very fortunate in that sense. and, here’s the challenge. I thought I had this milestone in my mind that I wanted to be able to retire financially at the age of 40.
That would be a great achievement. and I got it and it was uneventful. Paid the mortgage off. And I thought this is fantastic. Yeah. And the next day, nothing really changed. I got out of bed the same way that I did the day before, and I thought, Oh, what’s going on here? And I had the abundance of time because we all chase this.
Don’t we, if I have the time freedom and the financial independence are now my life’s my own, what are you going to do with it now? What are you working towards?
Because what I found was. All of my vulnerabilities and my personal inadequacies, my character flaws that caused me individual pain. Yeah. and just, maybe I’ll make a bad choice because of, a certain weakness or mindset that I have that is incorrect.
All of that stuff still exists. So the true happiness, the true joy comes in, mastering those moments and mastering self. I think the purpose of life in a large measure is self-mastery and then flowing out into the way that we serve others, but that’s where purpose and meaning comes from.
and I learned that interestingly, when I went, when I go I’m retired. Fantastic. This is great. And actually, no, it wasn’t.
How to Stay Connected And Find Balance in Chaos – Ben Woodward homeostasis, the way that I use it’s not. All right. Everything’s perfect. Freeze. Nobody move. Dynamic. homeostasis, things are moving and it’s like juggling, right? You don’t stop when it’s in the air. If you continue to keep going, as you also mentioned, alluding back earlier that, it’s not just about focusing on a specific silo of a relationship rather than. Focused on everything such that things in dynamic, homeostasis. That’s what you mean, right?
that dynamism is essential and it it applies to the second law of thermodynamics. Isn’t it? That entropy exists. I think in everything, we look at it from a principle of matter, but it certainly applies you the second way of human dynamics being, that everything moves from a state of order.
To a state of disorder over time. Yeah. Unless we apply energy to the system and reverse the effect of that entropy. yeah. so we see in life, for example, in nature, the wind blows and create sand dunes. It doesn’t create sandcastles. And, and so we, we see that it just goes to a state of disorder, but the same thing applies to our relationships as well, or to our businesses or to our minds.
Yeah, that if we don’t apply energy to the system of our mind or to our heart or to our relationship or to our business, that it will move from a state of order to a state of chaos. And so we need to make sure that there is constantly that engagement with what we’re working on in order for it to move forward and be progressive.
And that requires effort friction, and sometimes a little bit of burn.
Son Who Turned His Dad In To Police Gives People Hope – Ben Woodward So my question to you is. They needed to go through the suffering, the trial and tribulation as a way to earn their wisdom. What do you hope to achieve in sharing your story and your wisdom as an author.
It’s simple to give people hope. Yeah. Because, Yeah, I’ll give you a couple of experiences as an example.
And I know the focus here is for entrepreneurs and people that are getting started in their careers. And what have you trust me? When I say this relates when I was, I grew up in New Zealand, I was born in the UK, grew up in New Zealand. And when I was 22 years old, I decided fairly on a whim that I was going to return to the UK and visit my father, who I hadn’t seen since I was 14 years old.
And, I had, because it was a whim. I had enough for a one way ticket and I had 50 pounds in my pocket. that was it. And I thought, this is great because I’m going to move in with my dad and things will work out fine from there. So not a problem. I can get a job and I can earn money to come back.
That was the plan. So go there, have my overseas experience, get reacquainted with my family that I haven’t seen in a very long time. Come back. I fly over, like I said, one way ticket 50 pounds in my pocket. I move in with my father, and a few weeks in to being there. I discovered that he’s an unconvicted sex offender.
What do you do with that? Where do you go? Yeah, that was an overwhelming painful process because one, let’s build in some emotion to that experience because when you haven’t, when a kid hasn’t seen his dad from the age of 14, through to 22, there is a lot of anticipation and excitement and overwhelming enthusiasm for that moment where you can see you down again, that’s been built up for years.
Yeah. And then to have all of them expectation, just implode in a moment. and then what do you do with that? Do you just leave it be, do you say nothing? my obligation in that situation was to do what was right versus what was easy. It would be, I, I. Don’t want to deal with this? Put my head in the sand or. look the other way you can’t do that. So I stood by the side of his victims and facilitated his arrest. he went to court, I testified against him in court and I drove him to the courthouse to go to prison. and he went to prison. He got seven years in jail. that’s a long time. he came out with good behavior and what have you, but that was an ordeal and it stretched out talk about chronic suffering for the kid.
things like that don’t happen in a moment. They don’t get arrested, caught the next month and then go to jail the following day. Yeah, that dragged on the investigation before he even got arrested, dragged on. Yeah. And then the time between arrest and, going to court drag on.
And on top of that, imagine this where my brother and I sat in the courthouse, we’ve just been given a tour of the courtroom and explained by a court official how things are gonna happen for us. And we’ve just got this dread and this pit in our stomach that is just unrelatable. And we’re sitting there just with the heaviest of hearts.
No, with this conflict, because you got two conflicting emotions, you’ve got overwhelming, unconditional love for a parent, combined with overwhelming offense and shock and horror at their behavior. And it’s all crashing into each other. Yeah. And coexisting into this messy one singular space and to try to figure it was a journey, not an event and, where they’re waiting for the court case to begin.
And the court official comes out and says, we have to postpone. mr. Mr. Woodward had a heart attack last night and he’s in hospital. the stress of the ordeal put them in hospital. And so here are mine now as a son going, yep. Have I done this to him? is this because of me? Yeah. There’s so much to deal with there.
And the challenge with this as well was on. So you got that emotion there, but along with that, you also have, I have his name. I look in the mirror and I can see a little bit of him in me, some of his character traits I have some of his nuances. That even though I didn’t grow up with them, I haven’t in the way that I express myself and my mannerisms and my tastes and preferences.
And then you, and you’ve got all of this feeding into your identity. And how do I define who I am in light of all of this? it was a little long and enduring trial. That was very painful. That got right to the core of my own identity. Yeah. Now why do I share this? Because. Yeah. You say, what would you say to your younger self?
Yeah. i think of my mounger self in that situation. Yeah. I was in my early twenties going through that. I wasn’t married at that point when he went to jail, he was in jail when I got married in jail when my first and second kid came along. Yeah. what would I say to that guy? Yeah. When I’m going through that type of stuff.
That, first of all, you did the right thing that doing what is right versus what is easy is always the best choice and it will always serve you well, and it will serve you well down the road. I didn’t do that to be punitive to my father, by the way. I did it as an expression of love. I wanted to do what was right for his victims.
I also wanted him to put his life in order and I imagined if I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t have the courage to take the first step.
Turning Serious Adversity Into a Blessing – Ben Woodward the beauty of being human, having a human experience is that we do go through the highest of high and the lowest of lows. And in there going up and down, we learn what it means to be human, what it means, what are our truth and what are our core values. And also what is my wisdom that I wish to pass on to, my kids and so forth.
In my mind, without trial and tribulations suffering at best, we can get theoretical understanding of something rather than truly an embodied integrated understanding of what we stand for. What would you say to that?
a hundred percent. I love the phrase that you used of theoretical at best. Yeah. So there’s two points I want to address here. This there’s the theoretical of best. And then there is the willingness to embrace the ups and downs. Yes. The ups and downs are a part of the human experience.
We all like the ups. Most of us don’t like the downs.
the challenge that we’ve got. that I’ve experienced and write about in the book is what happens if the down becomes longer than you want or deeper than you want, or perhaps deeper than you think you can handle. And that’s the challenge is okay. I love this journey of life. It has its ups and downs. It’s peaks and valleys, but what happens if the adversity that I get, is beyond what I think I can bear it’s yeah. It’s beyond my capacity. What do I do with that? and how can I turn around and say that I want this or that, Hey, it’s a part of life.
I don’t want it at all. Yeah. yeah. For example, know, my friend fell down some stairs and broken back, man. Yeah. And, okay. He had an operation that fused his spine together, but that did more damage than good. And now he experiences pain every day of his life. And yet he says that was the second best thing that ever happened to me.
Oh, interesting.
The first thing being meeting and marrying his wife, which is great. Yeah. but the next best thing after that breaking his back. Yeah. now he wouldn’t have said that in the first month or so of that experience, that comes from a long seasoned veteran of dealing with that chronic pain that he can get the experience, not the theory.
The theory goes, yeah, if we follow this process and this model it’ll work, but in reality, the experience with suffering is a far greater tutor than any book can give.
7 Vital Virtues to Turn Struggles Into Strengths – Ben Woodward finding clarity in chaos is challenging. Share with us a little bit about how you get from internal chaos to that level of clarity.
that comes to the second half of the title of the book, which is seven vital virtues to turn struggle into strength. there are certain virtues that we need to practice that help us in that journey.
One of the ones that I struggled with the most, in that process was patience. Yeah. because I wanted it all to be over fast. And I want to, just to be out of the situation as quickly as I could. I wasn’t even concerned at that point with learning any particular lesson. Yeah. Or seeing any particular value in the, yeah.
It’s great to you, using your words, from earlier to theoretically put this language around adversity and say, yes, it’s the human experience to have the dark spaces and the opposition and what have you. And we need to embrace it. But when you’re in it, you don’t necessarily want to say, I’m going to assign value to this, look for the good in it.
And where’s the lesson. I just want an out. Yeah. And so one of, one of the first points was really learning to be patient with it. my wife and I have a saying in our bedroom on our bookshelf, it says, no one knows how strong they are until being strong is the only choice they have. Yeah.
And in that moment, I was in that place because, I went to the UK. Had that experience. I went to catch up with my father. all of the family that I’d grown up with were on the other side of the world. My support system was not around me. So I was actually going through that process quite alone.
Yeah. And yeah, what did I need in order to get order out of chaos. First, I had to be patient and see it as a process. the challenge is. What happens if you don’t have any, what’s the starting point. It’s so easy from the outside to turn to someone in that moment, say to the younger self. I love this question that you asked. “What would you say to your younger self?”
I wouldn’t say just be patient. Now that sounds again paradoxical, because here I am saying you’ve got to have patience. Yeah, because telling someone to have patients when they don’t for a start is really annoying. hundred percent agree. Yes. Yeah. Just be patient.
You’ll get through this too shall pass.
If I have patience, I would have been patient already. I don’t have patience and you telling me to have the patients
it makes you just want to punch him in the head. That’s right. Don’t tell me that. So the critical thing is, how do I develop patience?
How do I acquire that when I don’t have it. and research has shown that when we can engage our imagination, with a circumstantial situation that we’re involved in, that imagination enables us to increase and grow our capacity to be patient far more than simply white knuckling it, or trying to just grin and bear it through sheer willpower alone.
Can you say that again?
So our capacity to engage our imagination with a particular trial or difficult set of circumstances increases our ability to be patient far more than simply white knuckling it or using our sheer willpower. to just grin and bear it and get through it.
so the question is then how do I engage my imagination in order to increase my capacity to be patient and the process around that is to have a vision of the end in mind, what does the end look like?
And when you’re wallowing in self pity, when you’re. Yeah, just struggling with your sense of self and identity when you’re overwhelmed with the overwhelm of the adversity that you’re going through, then being able to take a step back for a small moment and just project yourself into a future state where this is ended and look at what that is defined. Like how, about how that looks and feels can be very transformative.
And have you heard of the Stockdale paradox? the Stockdale paradox? So the Stockdale paradox, Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking military official that was captured during the Vietnam war.
Okay. And he caught the world’s attention for two reasons. One, he was the highest ranking military official to be captured. He was an Admiral. but too, when he came out of that prisoner of war camp, he was in prison, I think for about eight years. Yes. when he came out of that prisoner of war camp, he came a stronger and better person.
How does that work? while he was in prison. Yeah. He saw his friends and colleagues die around about him. He was tortured at least 20 times. and he had no date. Yeah. Being a prisoner of war is different to being a regular prisoner, being a regular prisoner. You’ve got a deadline. I know on this date, I’ve got a release.
Yeah. I can see my family. They can come and visit me or what have you. you’re not going to get a visit from your family and you’ve got no release date. and we may beat the heck out of you today if we choose.
Yeah. there’s that factor of randomness of, yeah. It may beat you whenever I want to.
Yeah, the randomness and the no end of the whole experience turns it into a very different scenario. So he was being interviewed once and the person said to him of all the people that you saw die in the camp who were the first to go. And he said, if we break it down into three groups, the pessimists, the optimist, the realist who were the first to die, because it wasn’t from malnourishment.
Yeah, it wasn’t because they weren’t being fed. They were, so they were dying for other reasons. Who were the first to grow up to die. Now I’ve asked this question to audiences now in about 20 or so different countries to audiences of entrepreneurs, who do you think would be the first to die? The realist or the pessimists?
Probably the pessimist.
It was the optimist. Huh? Interesting. Okay. Now your answer is the common answer of the entrepreneur, right? The entrepreneurial guy as well. The pessimist is going to be the first design I’ve got the right attitude. Actually the optimist was the first to go and this is what would happened.
They’d go. Oh, don’t worry about it, guys. We’ll be out for Christmas. And then Christmas would come and go. They wouldn’t get out or don’t worry about it. Valentine’s Valentine. State’s coming. We’ll be out for them. Thanksgiving, Easter, whatever it might be. We’ll be out for this day and it would come and go and they wouldn’t get out.
And, and they eventually died of a broken spirit. it just destroyed them. And so the interviewer said to him, what was your approach? what made it work for you? And this is the Stockdale paradigm. They named it after him. he said, first of all, I had to accept the brutal facts of my present reality.
And for him, that was cause I’m a prisoner of war. I don’t know where I’m getting out. I may get tortured at some point today. There’s some brutal facts. I don’t know about you or about anyone that’s listening right now, but I’m pretty sure our brutal facts may not be as brutal as that probably yet.
Yeah. we can have some tough ones and I don’t want to belittle them, but first of all, if you really want to win, except the brutal facts of your present reality, he said, and then I, he said, you also have to have confidence in the end of your story, except the brutal facts, but have confidence in the end of your story.
And he said, and for me, The end of my story was, and this was his vision. Yeah. This was the engagement of his imagination to see him through the process and enable him to be patient with his suffering. For me, that was that not only would I get out, but that I would turn this experience into the defining experience of my life that in retrospect, I would not trade. I’m not going to trade this for anything. It’s going to define who I become. That to me is a vision for the future. That means, okay, I need to get through this moment, but I’m going to make this moment count because when I get out of this situation, I’m going to become a new creature and it’s going to give me something that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
And to add to that, Viktor Frankl in total agreement with this principle of your life is suffering.
He said, because all lives experience suffering. if life is, if life has to have meaning then suffering must also have meaning because whilst time heals all wounds, it also wounds all heals. If you can wrap your head around that. Yeah, for sure. so in that context, if life has to have meaning, there must be meaning in the suffering and so coming out of that scenario, Yeah. What is the value of that journey? for a couple of things, come to mind here.
One, the relationship with my father is what it should be now versus a pretense of what it might’ve been if I hadn’t have taken the right steps. so that’s critical, the people that were victims of his inappropriate behavior, have the chance to have justice and move forward with their own lives as well.
So there’s healing and opportunity for growth for them as well. but that’s also fed and me as a human being as a principle of confronting the suffering, the pain have learned and a measurable lessons that have informed my responsibilities as a father have informed my role as a husband. And have influenced me as a leader because as a business leader, as an entrepreneur, I am constantly confronted with the necessity to make tough decisions and to interpret reality versus bury my head in the sand.
Forgiveness Brings Freedom And It Starts With You – Ben Woodward Inevitably, in business, in relationships, things like this probably happened. Cofounder conflicts, divorces with kids. So these type of dynamic, isn’t unheard of , but I would love to, for you to underline the, how you navigate the yeah. In other scenarios and at the same time forgiving the deed.
Yeah, it’s you’ve already led into the answer. This principle of forgiveness, applies whether he’s engaged in that process or not, because in order for me to have an appropriate, healthy relationship with him and healthy being under the context of the mitigating circumstances.
Yeah. Now, first of all, there is an element, another virtue that is intertwined with this principle of forgiveness, which is surrender and the word surrender is not about giving up or giving in or quitting or anything like that. It to me is one of the most courageous, boldest of virtues that are talked about in the book.
And yet the word sounds so much like given up yet. it’s the boldest most confrontational. Requirement of us in this process of moving forward, because what surrender truly means is that we are willing to let go of the illusions that we hold onto it about ourselves, about our circumstances or about our future.
Okay. And that would have been something that I’d have fed into my youngest is let go of the illusions and don’t be scared about that.
the illusion being, I don’t want my dad to be this. So I want to hold on to this illusion of maybe he’s something else. Let go be okay. Yeah. Be okay with this.
and how is this going to define me? Goodness. Look at this situation that I’m in now I’m on the other side of the world, away from all my family with no money. I started university and they said, Oh Ben, sorry, your you’re a citizen of the country. You’re not a resident. Which means your overseas student, which means you’ve got to pay overseas student fees.
You’re not entitled to government grants, loans, student loans, or anything like that. I’m like I live on the other side of the world away from any support system. And now I can’t go to university and further my education at that point, I was like, ah, everything was just blocking me off in every angle.
So let go of the illusions that you know, around the false beliefs that you have. That’s gotta to be a step number one, if I want to forgive him, I’ve got to let go of the illusions that I hold around him and embrace the reality of what is truth. What is correct. And also let go of the illusions about myself.
How does this define me? it doesn’t have to write letters. Let’s let go of that illusion for a second. What false beliefs do I have? Yeah. Around the circumstance that I need to let go of. Because forgiveness involves that process as well. So if someone’s going through a divorce or if there is employee cofounder confict, like for example, in a startup scenario.
Yeah. let’s look at the underlying beliefs that I have around this relationship. And what do I need to let go of what’s incorrect. Yeah. And that’s an important one because a lot of the time it forces us to look inward at ourselves. and causes us to make some changes before we ask someone else to make some changes.
What I found in that journey with my dad in order to get to a good place where I could have an appropriate relationship. I had to make a lot of changes, which was really, again, paradoxical, how come he’s the one that commits the crime and goes to jail, but I’m the one that needs to start making some changes first.
but that’s what needed to happen. you start off with a false belief that he’s the one that’s done something wrong. So it was on him. no. It’s not. He can, if he chooses to, but irrespective of that, I have an obligation to forgive and let go. And so I needed to understand what are some underlying core beliefs that I have that are not correct about who is responsible in this relationship and I had responsibilities too, so I needed to learn how to forgive. And that was a process and it’s a journey of going, okay, I give this over and then I take it back again. I give it over and I’d take it back and you can forgive on Monday. And then on Wednesday you realize you’ve got to do it all over again.
And what I like about that process, which I didn’t like it first is the chronic nature of some struggles. Yeah. In the sense of them being ongoing is they teach a deeper and more profound lesson. If it lasts for a week, we can learn the lesson and we can forget it next month. And so it can have an influence on us, but it doesn’t necessarily transform us.
But if something is enduring and it’s chronic and it’s painful and it requires me to forgive on Monday and then again on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday and I’m working through that and I’m having to now look introspectively at myself and change myself. So I can have the capacity and the strength to do that.
Look at my underlying beliefs that are incorrect and don’t sack them and pull them apart and reframe my sense of identity and who I am and who I want to be in order to get through all of this as I’m going through all of that repeatedly and repeatedly. because what’s the alternative.
So I want to underline a few things, man. This is so beautiful. I really appreciate that. so I love the way that you recontextualize the chronic pain. why they’re dealing with some kind of physical addictions or depression, or dealing with the difficult marriage relationship.
You recontextualize as a way as a path to really anchor your own wisdom and conviction and the lesson that you learn versus just enduring through it, Yeah. Really loved that re that reframe of what you just share.
Finding Life’s Joy In Service – Ben Woodward some people may say, Hey, see, Ben, CK, you guys seem to really dwell in the suffering part because you want the wisdom, The lessons. But what about joy? What about, I’m glad you raised brightness. Yeah. What’s your response to that?
Yeah, absolutely. the suffering is this, but we’re here to experience joy as well. Aren’t we? Yeah. And so a hundred percent, the joy is to be found.
Yeah. Just like you said before. That there is, purpose can be found in suffering. It can also be found in service. So I would say there are two, two methods. If you want to find purpose and fulfillment and joy and abundance in your life, Yes, there is joy on the other side of suffering as a reassurance for those that are enduring it, wisdom is a part of that, but so is joy.
but at the same time, if you want to find purpose and greater meaning and greater sense of contribution, then service to others is a way forward as well. And that is a way that we can have an abundance of joy. And it goes back to the very beginning of our interview when we talked about having the multitude of responsibilities of being the entrepreneur, but being the spouse or partner, having the family, having children and so on is that we can embrace all of that and have an abundance of joy versus compartmentalize and pick and choose.
I Turned My Bipolar Disorder Into a New Superpower – Ben Woodward can you share with us a little bit about your path to have that courage and be more open as a human being?
Yeah, it, again, it’s really wonderfully mundane because it’s all about practice, trial and error. Making mistakes and having a willingness to pick myself up every time I hit the floor, and if you hit the floor a hundred times, that’s okay. As long as you get up 101.
Yeah. and it’s really been that and learning to embrace the vulnerability. Like I said before, there are aspects when I had, when I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I was actually thrilled when I got the diagnosis, which sounds weird.
It does. Please elaborate here.
Yeah, wait, just a second. You just got diagnosed is with a mental illness and you’re excited about it. How does that work? Because it was causing chaos in my life. And I, I didn’t know what was going on. I had an inkling and a feeling, but it took a while to get the diagnosis. but when that happened, the relief now I know what’s happening now.
I know how to address it. what I learned since was. just because you got the diagnosis doesn’t mean, you know how to address it. It’s been a ongoing process of discovery and sometimes the hard way frustratingly. so that’s been a journey. but again, it’s been this kind of give and take with this of, I accept it.
No, I don’t, maybe the diagnosis is incorrect, maybe it’s something else and I would want to reframe it and reposition it and question it and doubt it and all that kind of stuff. And then I’d have experiences that would bring me right back and go, ah, yeah, this is what you’re dealing with.
but to get to the point where I was willing to open up in a book, Yeah. Cause once it’s in print, it doesn’t come back or to talk about it in a conversation like this. that was a big step for me because being the president of a big organization, I’ve got big networks of people where I’ve always been field facing, especially as a public speaker, you’ve got audiences in front of you, to talk about something like mental health and be that candid.
Yeah, it was a big step, but the starting point for me was a surprise.
I was at an event as a keynote speaker in the South of England, and I was asked to give two presentations. One was the journey to success. It was for a group of entrepreneurs. What does success look like as an entrepreneur?
and the other question was what are some of the obstacles and how do we overcome it? Yeah, how do we deal with the tough stuff? And when I got to day two, dealing with the tough stuff, I thought I’m going to talk about my disorder here and share that.
worst case scenario, I don’t think I’m going to see this group again. So there’s, I was, this was a case study of practice for me to see what would happen. And I explained to them that, I’ve got an advantage over you in dealing with adversity and the tough stuff in business. And, and I said, I’m going to tell you what that is. I have somewhat of a superpower and that superpower is I have bipolar disorder.
And, and the people that knew me looked shocked, wait a minute, what I did not know that about you. And then I started to explain the lessons that I’ve gleaned from the disorder. And how it had informed me as a business leader and helped me as an entrepreneur and how it had been a blessing in my life and had bought a bout some great lessons and instruction that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
And afterwards people have tears in their eyes. They were moved. Tons of people connected with me online and it had been a trip formative experience for them. And I learned that there was benefit. And my struggles for other people. And as a consequence of that, going to your question of joy, ironically or paradoxically, the struggle that I went through I learned was not about me.
And as I can get out and be comfortable enough to talk about it with others, then I can bring joy to others. I can bring hope to others and if they’re struggling, they can go, okay, if Ben can do it, if he can have bipolar disorder of his father prison know, find himself on the other side of the world from his network of support with 50 pounds in his pocket and not be able to further his education or do anything and yet become a self made entrepreneur by the age of 40 and have a 20 year marriage with seven children.
And one on the way, if he can do all of that, then maybe I can do this. Yeah. And, and if I can bring a little bit of hope and a little bit of encouragement to someone else, for that reason that makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it? And there is the joy. There is the happiness that comes and it’s a great feeling.
It’s an awesome feeling that can come from that
My Daily Ritual to Sharpen My Truth & Wisdom – Ben Woodward what is a ritual that you do regularly as a way to not only have the understanding, but also now a tactical to operationalize the wisdom of you share it. Do you journal, do you meditate?
I can show you. I’ve got, I’m a religious person. So my ritual or routine is I get up. In the morning before everyone else is awake.
But my scriptures that I read, I’ve got my journal that I write in and I’ve got my knees that I sit on and I get on my knees and I pray and I meditate and I study and I journal. And I’ll do that. I don’t necessarily journal every day, but I do that on a regular basis, but I will study and pray and meditate every morning.
and that helps me to master the day.
If I can master the morning. It gives me a stronger start for the rest of the day. It gives me the right mindset, to move forward. And so meditation, stillness, prayer and lifting study helps the process. Do you do it concurrently, as in you have these, the book, the meditation mat, the journal all at the same time, or do we do it sequentially?
it’s a bit of both. Yeah. I start my study with prayer, just to get my mind In that process, but then as I’m studying, so I’ll be on my knees for that. but then as I’m studying, I will be prayerful. and then I’ll write sometimes what I’m learning in the process, or sit down and write afterwards and then be a bit more mindful again, at the end.
So there’s some intertwining of those activities as I go.
If You Like This Episode, You’ll Like These Too * 032: How to Unleash the Human and Collective Potential? – Ben Tauber * 075: Finding The Perfect Clients, Creating Joy In Business, And Finding Enlightenment In Work – Samantha Hartley * 050: The Time of The Lone Wolf Is Over – Philip Folsom * 082: How I Turned Pro as a Thought Leader (Got 10+ Millions of Views) – Michael Simmons * 029: What Opportunities Are in the Intersection Between Psychedelics, Technology, And Meditation? – Charlie Hartwell and Maureen Pelton
The post 084: Finding Meaning and Value In Adversity – Ben Woodward appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Seibo is the CEO of 3 companies: BRNR Lab, Hanu Labs, Vapexhale. He has reinvented himself multiple times from being a stuntman and background dancer for various artists, such as Bone Thugs N Harmony, Mortal Kombat, Bush and The Grinch. To top revenue-generating roles in Silicon Valley that led to 4 successful exits (Data.com, Successfactors, E2open, Yammer). To be a cannabis entrepreneur and evangelist. We talked candidly about his other responsibilities as dad, husband, entrepreneur, and mindset coach.
Topics we discussed:* How I Sparked My Passion in Cannabis - Seibo Shen * How I Turned My Curiosity to a Major Passion - Seibo Shen * How Cannabis Increased My Creative Flow - Seibo Shen * How I Help Athletes Tap Into Group Flow With Cannabis - Seibo Shen * Tapping Into Deeper Levels of Flow State - Seibo Shen * Don't Just Save Your Business And Life. Reinvent It - Seibo Shen * How I Reinvented My Life And Career 4 Times - Seibo Shen * Seibo Dreams of Psychedelic Group Retreats - Seibo Shen * What Psychedelic Research Can Learn From the Cannabis Industry - Seibo Shen * Psychedelic Medicine And Better Investment Opportunities - Seibo Shen * How I became a digital evangelist of cannabis - Seibo Shen
Links* 🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more inspiring conversations with seeker-entrepreneurs and leaders. https://bit.ly/35cea8q * 🔥 Join our mailing list for mindset and actionable tactics from purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo * ✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/083-how-combining-coffee-weed-and-truth-can-put-you-in-a-flow-state-seibo-shen/ * 👪 Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Michael Simmons is an award-winning author, and his writing in publications like Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur, Time, Business Insider, and Harvard Business Review has been read tens of millions of times. He is an expert in learning how to learn, mental models, and thought leadership.
Topics we covered* What is Thought Leadership As a Profession? * Lifestyle Advantages of Being a Thought Leader * Disadvantages of Being a Professional Thought Leader * The Long-Term Thinking Effect As a Thought Leader * My Counterintuitive Method to Set Goals * Criteria For the Right Teachers, Mentors, or Role Models * The 80/20 Relationships Applied to Professional Relationships * 4 Core Skills of Being a Professional Thought Leader * 2 Simple Mistakes That'll Sabotage Your Thought Leadership * The Major Cost of NOT Mapping the Emotional Journey as a Thought Leader * Improving Your Chance of Success As a Thought Leader * Melting Writer's Block For Thought Leaders
🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more inspiring conversations with seeker-entrepreneurs and leaders. https://bit.ly/35cea8q
🔥 Join our mailing list for mindset and actionable tactics from purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/082-how-i-got-millions-of-views-turned-pro-thought-leader-michael-simmons/
👪 Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
Michael Simmons is an award-winning author, and his writing in publications like Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur, Time, Business Insider, and Harvard Business Review has been read tens of millions of times. He is an expert in learning how to learn, mental models, and thought leadership.
Topics we covered * What is Thought Leadership As a Profession? * Lifestyle Advantages of Being a Thought Leader * Disadvantages of Being a Professional Thought Leader * The Long-Term Thinking Effect As a Thought Leader * My Counterintuitive Method to Set Goals * Criteria For the Right Teachers, Mentors, or Role Models * The 80/20 Relationships Applied to Professional Relationships * 4 Core Skills of Being a Professional Thought Leader * 2 Simple Mistakes That’ll Sabotage Your Thought Leadership * The Major Cost of NOT Mapping the Emotional Journey as a Thought Leader * Improving Your Chance of Success As a Thought Leader * Melting Writer’s Block For Thought Leaders
Links * Michael on Medium * Mental Model Club * Learning How to Learn
Full Episode What is Thought Leadership As a Profession? – Michael Simmons you are a professional thought leader, right? So number one, how would you define thought leadership? Let’s start there and then can go down the rabbit hole.
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I actually have never been asked that before. And, one thing I feel like we’re moving towards is a world where thoughts is becomes a parent. That thoughts become control more and more of our reality. When you think about, our world and that we can just press a button and suddenly there’s a cab five minutes away of the amount of, we could have the idea.
And then that reality happens. I think we’re going to a world where that things like that become more and more possible. And then. Even to the world where we have brain implants and things like that we just literally have the thought and then something happens in the physical world. And so in a way, I think just that sense, if you can have thoughts that are rare and valuable, you can really shape the world in a lot of different ways.
Got it. So for you thought leadership means rare and valuable ideas that people can understand and grab onto. Is that accurate?
Exactly. And so you could put it in a speech, you can put it in an article, you can put it in a video, but that underlying part comes in finding that rare and valuable idea that naming it, that creates a thought space for other stuff now thinking.
Lifestyle Advantages of Being a Thought Leader – Michael Simmons let me ask you this, in terms of lifestyle, what is the pros? What is the cons of being a professional thought leader?
Yeah. I think it’s awesome from a lifestyle perspective and especially, it depends on how you set it up.
So in my previous company, we did a road tour. my wife and I, after graduating college, we basically purchased an RV and we did events in all 40 States. our company did, we do over 450 half day conferences. We also play a thousand keynote speakers and I love the impact of that business. But on the negative side of it, it was doing the same talk over and over.
And so it wasn’t as fulfilling intellectually now with something like the mental model club or the writing, I’m constantly exploring new ideas.
And so I love it from a lifestyle perspective.
Cause number one, I get to learn something that I’m curious about and then apply it to my life. So that just even if that was it, I’d be really happy.
And then I get paid for it. which means I could do more of it. And, I could build a team of people who are also involved in that.
And then part of I can have an impact and I can also build a community of other people who want to learn that same thing.
and also the fact that you learn so much by teaching someone else and explain to someone else that, from a self growth perspective, if you value that in your career path, it is something where you get way more growth than other areas of my experience.
so the pros is you get to learn more, you get the, deepen your understanding. You get to also teach, share your learning and your style learning with others. You get to constantly be immersing new knowledge. So if there’s something that you’re like, that’s the pros of being a professional thought leader.
Yeah, I would say the other part is scalability that by writing an article. The cost in terms of hosting the webpage and other things is the same, whether it’s true and people are million or even 10 million people. And so it’s exciting that if you really take the time to perfect this craft that with just a little bit of effort, page millions and tens of millions of people, which is just a crazy amount of leverage.
I’ve had a lot of different points in my career where that hasn’t benefited. And part of it is that I’m someone who’s curious and I like learning and being put in new environments. And I realized I was self sabotaging myself as an entrepreneur because as soon as I figured out something that business and in charge to become all more about operations, I became less interested for whatever reason, just how I’m wired.
I liked that newness. And it’s a career that can fulfill if you’re a polymath and like learning across different areas.
And I would say for someone who doesn’t like constantly learning or going to us different across different areas or teaching, or they find writing tedious, then it would be a nightmare career people, people don’t enjoy reading or writing.
Aye. Aye. There’s a reason why we’re talking.
yes.
Yes. So what are some of the cons if you don’t mind going into it from your perspective, right? Cons of being right professional thought leader.
maybe I can kickstart us. From our conversation and our work together, one of the things that could be considered as a con is that you constantly go through that creative struggle. You stare into the abyss, you stare into that blank screen, right?
So you need to be comfortable. with that discomfort, that’s perhaps one of the cons, right? And then perhaps the con of being a professional thought leader is you’re alone a lot. So if you enjoy that great. But if you don’t then perhaps not. So obviously there’s different ways to get around it.
But as a thought leader, that. Silent space is really important. So these are some of the things that I see. Are there things that as potential
visual elastic? Because the things that you mentioned are also one of the reasons I really like it, right? Learning how to learn. There’s this idea of desirable difficulty.
That’s one of the things that one of the ways we learned something more, is it by having it being difficult and our body and our brains struggling to remember it or to use a concept that actually helps it sink deeper. So I actually really like the hard parts of the process of, with an idea of like, all right, how do I narrow down?
Or how do I really say this correctly? It doesn’t come across as a struggle where for me, what comes across as a struggle is more just the operational parts and that’s my weakness that I have to, and to have a team that helps on that. And that’s what they love.
Cool. So all pros, no con
it feels really weird to say, but for me at this point, it’s not to say there’s not challenges, but I feel really good. I feel good. And it’s worthwhile versus the suffering where you’re just challenges and you don’t see where it’s going and you feel like it’s going backwards.
Yeah. so that, I think that’s a really good indicator, right? If you speak about it in an authentic way, not in a posturing and my, but in an authentic way, that means there’s that sole market fit, that you are actually on your path, on your Dharma to do the things that your soul wants to do.
Yeah. I used to not believe in that. Cause I remember during the tour, I came to a conclusion that I have to really force myself to do things and be really disciplined. And that. Okay. I guess I’m not following through as much on some areas, so I guess I’m not disciplined is where I came to, or I’ve read something like Warren buffet says he’s like a kid in the candy store or is dancing to work.
I’m just like, is that really true or not? And so now, knowing what I know, I could really see that there’s certain types of businesses and ways of starting them or running the company. Where that strength. That’s that thing that is normally a weakness could be a strength to it. Cause in this area I am very disciplined.
Cons of Being a Professional Thought Leader – Michael Simmons I think one thing is there’s Steve jobs has the quote that the dots in your life don’t connect, looking forward, they connect looking backwards. And so a lot of times we take people we’re attracted to the past where there’s the most certainty and prestige and short term clarity.
So when I went to business school, Most of the people literally 95% or more majored in finance and investment banking. And even though you have to work a hundred hours per week, it was one of the most prestigious and highest paying short term. And even the people who are undecided, that’s where they went. And so I could see that sort of way of making decisions a lot. it’s very easy to fall into that.
And then there’s this other path of when you find those things that you’re really uniquely curious about that you enjoy doing. Sometimes there’s a perfect market fit for that, where you can see, okay, if I do this, it’s going to work out well, you get a job in this, but sometimes there’s not clear what that’s going to pay off.
And I think one is really valuable to give yourself permission to follow those things. And you almost have to have faith that the dots will connect. And I really believe that the dots do connect. And if you let it compound over time and you keep getting better and better, more and more options grow for you.
I think the hard thing about being a thought leader is that it’s a winner take all winner, take most market. So there’s incredible scale for the top people writing articles, but for most people they’re getting like three shares, which means friends and family are seeing it, but not much else. For their content and their ideas.
So what that means is you have to be willing to suck and not get results for a long time or get less than you like to keep going. And also, another thing that happens in thought leadership is all of the way that information is distributed to us through social media is through algorithmic newsfeeds. So they’re designed to highlight the things that are most engaging, that get the most engagement and bury the things that get the least engagement.
So when you log into Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, and you’re seeing people’s engagements, you’re just seeing the very best of all the hundreds or thousands of posts they could have showed you. They’re showing you the top 1% or 5%. And so it’s easy to judge yourself against those and then assume that, okay, there must be not good at this.
And just give up too soon.
Yeah. you mentioned, there’s a, there are a few different topics that can go into, so one thing that I want to say that you said to me, I thought was super helpful is just think about the internet. You go into this mega store and you have infinite shelf space, and then the one that captured the most attention is the one that’s the best. And then I think that’s what you meant by winner take all. can you say a little bit more about the winner take all or winner take most?
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things is that once things become digital, they become winter taking most.
So one belt, one way of looking at the distribution of results is as a bell curve. So Heights is an example of that, where. I’m six, five. How tall are you? Five, 10, five, 10. Okay. So you’re about the average height and I’m higher than the Belker, but you never gonna find someone who is 10 feet tall, but in the world of wealth, you have someone like Jeff Bezos, I think, is worth more than like the bottom a hundred million Americans combined or something the wealth wise.
So you have things that happen like that. And when something becomes digital. Yeah. number one, it could spread globally right away at zero cost. And that’s part of it, and then there’s other effects that can happen. But, so when you find yourself, a lot of people are in winter, take most markets and they don’t realize it.
And so in order to take the most market, you have the extreme people at the high end and relatively few of them compared to the most people who try to become the best at it, or try to do something there and then don’t get any results. in economics, there’s this idea of overcrowding in these markets as well.
There’s these huge success stories let’s say in basketball or something, and everyone wants to be the next basketball player or the next musician. And you don’t realize. And so there’s huge competition and small rewards. And so in those markets, I feel like you want to go into those markets with a strategy to be one of the best. And if you’re not willing to do that, then you should just really lower your expectations.
The Long-Term Thinking Effect As a Thought Leader – Michael Simmons a big turning point for me from a learning perspective was deciding who to learn. And it’s very, a lot of results that happen in the world. Are because of randomness, but they’re assigned because of someone’s expertise or you picture there’s a hundred people flipping a coin, or what are the odds of flipping a coin a hundred times heads if it’s really low.
But if you have, I don’t remember what the odds are, but if you have 10,000 people flip the coin, you’d expect one or a few of them to actually have high a hundred gun times. That number could be way off, but you get the idea. And so in the world of starting a business and people’s going for it, you’re going to have a large percentage of people who are success full primarily because of luck.
And for me in starting that first business, I think that was a large part of it. We have to be, you have, things like persistence and like pushing forward. Those are the table stakes, but what really, the luck was a big factor. And so when I had that, is that okay alive? Is this a lot? How do I find the people that are successful because of skill not because of luck.
Then I really start to narrow down who I look for. I look for people who are against the odds of successful multiple times in multiple industries, and or where they’re starting from scratch. And, yeah, narrow it down. I started to study people like Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger.
Investors are really interesting because their track record is public. So you could see their records going back for decades and they constantly have to be making these investment decisions. And, and so I found this group of people and one of the patterns that I saw was just a longterm thinking.
And when you make, when you think longterm, you’re fundamentally willing to make bets that other people aren’t.
And one of the things that Linda many of the best bets to make. They don’t even pay off for five years, 10 years. Amazon, I think has a seven year window of when they expect an idea to pay off when most other companies that just as much smaller window.
So they’re not even a go for certain of the best ideas. And It’s harder to hear this message. If you’re earlier in your career, cause counterintuitively, you should have more patience because you have a lot more time, but you want things a lot sooner. And so that was definitely my case that I didn’t fully have this in some ways, but there’s a, in terms of becoming a top performer, world-class at something is you’d have to have realized that part of the process is not being good for awhile.
And be okay with that and get started and just, most people are not willing to even get started. And those who do just give up way too soon.
My Counterintuitive Method to Set Goals – Michael Simmons I’ve become to really question goal setting. I think the idea with goal setting is you’re in a way predicting the future of yourself in the world. And you’re thinking, okay, here’s what I want in 10 years. And you’re assuming that you’re going to be the same person almost 10 years.
And but the reality is you’re gonna have to probably change very dramatically in those 10 years. So you’re gonna have different values and things like that. And the version of you said seven years from now might not even want that goal. It might feel obligated to pursue that goal because as you’ve already put in so much time into it.
So I think, and then also it’s just hard to predict what the world is going to be like. And so I’ve, they switched to more of an emergent paradigm of trying to give myself the space to grow and to follow my curiosity. And it sounds imagine your future self as a different person, as like a child for
you,
you want that your child version to have the freedom to explore what they think is best and the moment, and not feel like okay. You’re giving them the family business and they want to run it or don’t wanna run it, something like that. So that frame was very helpful for me and choosing this business with the mental model club, for example, because I very consciously structured it for my personality.
Every month, Eben and I have been pagan and I, a role model investor, a friend, co-founded the mental model club, but every month we get to do a new mental model.
And so we’re constantly able to do choose what we think is the highest value and curiosity at it at a given point for us. So I would say that’s one thing.
And before I was always thinking, okay, I want to cement who I am and I just going to do this. I’m assuming I’m going to do this forever. And then another thing that helped, was looking back at all of myself and my career. And there was some passions that were fleeting, but that there’s other passions that have always been enduring
and betting on those enduring passions. The things for me, I’ve just loved ever since I was 16 in high school, I was spending hundreds of dollars per month of my own money buying books. I would go to Barnes and noble and get like a pile of 10 books and hang out there for hours at a time.
And I found that works really well, that if you’ve been passionate about something for 20 years, like a kid in a candy store is likely that will continue. Versus if you happen to be passionate about something in the last month. you’ll get value from it, but it’s probably not going to be something you’re passionate about in five years.
Got it. so few criteria, I wanted to underline this right, by the way, this is my style. So one is, what are you curious about it right now? And at the same time, dig deep and really look at what are the enduring curiosities that you have. You’ve been just interested for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter why I’m just interested in. Okay, great.
Then take a mark there. And at the same time, I also hear you didn’t say this, but I hear is how do I design my life such that I have maximum flexibility in options. As I grow five years, seven years, 10 years, 20 years from now. Am I projecting or did I actually hear that?
Yeah. And it’s not just building options to have options. It’s just giving space for your future self, like a as if you think about as your child to emerge.
Criteria For the Right Teachers, Mentors, or Role Models – Michael Simmons What are the criteria from quote unquote right teacher?
Yeah. Okay. I feel like this is really fundamental because it’s had such a big impact, I think the first thing is really getting to the, that people who are successful cause a skill versus luck.
And when I got into that vein of people right away, just the knowledge is very different, the insights. And so that was higher. Then I would say you to find someone who’s really good at teaching. And coaching. And let’s see with teaching, there’s a lot of people who are really good at something are doing it implicitly through skills.
It’s hard for them to explain it. It’s hard to know exactly what they’re doing and there’s other people who are very conscious about it and are good at teaching others. They’ve had feedback loops. They’re good at explaining it to others. And so you definitely want to try to find the people who are good at explaining.
And then a coaching. I think one thing that really Eban’s really good, that is huge. We’re really good at chemo to give me any advice for six months. I didn’t even want the advice, but he was really listening, observing how I was acting. And then when he gave advice, it was very much designed to be at the fundamental level.
And so it would have the biggest impact rather than giving lots of advice on the surface level. And in order to do that, you have to get to know me. and one of the big things that shows how holistically he thinks his wife, Annie, is amazing. And she’s a marriage coach and she emailed me one day and saying Hey, part of Eban investing in companies is you get me, I hadn’t mentioned anything about my marriage at that point.
And so at first, and I felt uncomfortable accepting that at first and. but part of the idea is that any of the challenges you have personally will impact you professionally and vice versa. And so if you really, the deeper you go, the more it’s going to impact your business, your marriage you as a parent.
So those are harder to find obviously if somebody would be willing to do that, but that was really transformative. and then There’s obviously having a rapport with them, it’s hard to force something where there’s not a connection. The good news now is that so much of things are online now. So even if you don’t have a personal relationship with someone, you can really still get a lot of value from what they’ve written online.
You can get a taste of their energetic transmission in addition to the content.
Yeah. And yeah, you mentioned the energetic transmission. I think that’s really important as well. And that is really hard to copy someone whose values you do disagree with. And so things that was hard for me, why I didn’t learn marketing or sales for a long time is because the ones that I was exposed to people doing marketing pretty with the values of it.
So learning from Eben and seeing the marketing at a deeper, more humanistic level. Was what finally allowed me to be able to learn it. And if somebody has a different style, then you’re just not going to, you’re going to feel weird. You’re not gonna able to copy that. And if you do, it’s going to be authentic to who you are.
Yeah. I resonate with that. Beautiful. Anything else around choosing the right teacher for you?
I guess I would think, one thing I did in college, I was, I think a good decision was. you, haven’t just asking a lot of people out to lunch at the time and setting up those informational interviews at the end of every informational interview, I would just really thank them and share the impact that had and send them a thank you letter.
I would ask if there’s anybody else that they knew, and then I, and until I got introductions to more meetings, and then if they recommend that I do something, I said, okay, once I read this book that you recommend it. Would it be okay if I circle back and just let you know how I applied it in a few months.
So I kept the relationship open and expand the network and deepen that relationship. And, it’s dating as well. That there’s some relationships that just go deeper. And Eban is one of those relationships. And previously, in college, I shadowed Steve Mariotti did the network for teaching entrepreneurship, which is amazing nonprofit that helps low income high school students in inner cities start businesses and still very close friends. And at the time, like he would just really transform my life. So I would work out of the office. He let me use the office space on the weekends. I’d work out of the office. He invited me on business trips, got to co-speak at conferences with him. He made introductions. He let me read his mail and just understand the business world from that perspective. And he’s, he’s raising funding from billionaires, the largest foundation. So just seeing how communication happened was really helpful.
And, even just one or two of those types of relationships where it’s just an open, deep relationship like that is really to make your life or career.
Without those two relationships, I would just be in a very different person.
The 80/20 Relationships Applied to Professional Relationships – Michael Simmons for you, are there disciplines that you implement, such that you can ensure that people who are important in your life don’t just fall out of priority list because you have some other urgent things. That’s happening in your life.
it’s a good question. I’ve actually, we really thought very deeply on this. I used to write for Forbes and I would write about this topic and interview a lot of people and that should go deep on the social network science related to it. And my thinking has actually changed a lot, number one, I go to this idea of the 80 20 rule that applies to loss across a lot of areas.
So in relationships, 20% of the relationships might give you 80% of the feeling of connection or the learning or growth, things like that or introductions. And so it’s good to have a phase where you’re going really broad, but I think it’s also really valuable to really. Invest in the high and it might just be five relationships and invest in those.
So when I was younger, your, I did a really good job of going very broad, constantly going to conferences and things like that. And, but also came to the point where. it felt like overwhelming to keep in touch with people. And I was just keep, Hey, we haven’t talked in a year. Let’s just talk. I moved away from that sub and really focused on some of the top five to 10 people.
And we’re talking, multiple times a day or a week. And, And that feels really good. It doesn’t feel like, Oh, I have to catch up. But there’s that feels like
it feels like a chore, like a to do
exactly. It never feels like it. And it’s so connected to, so I guess one thing is I found people, some of the people I resonate with the most they’re hardcore learners.
So they’re constantly drawing and most relationships. If somebody is not a learner in beginning, there’s going to be a lot of learning. But over time, there’s gonna be less and less learning. You’re going to know what they’re going to think or say. And so if you’re talking to someone as a learner, then you know, you don’t talk for a month.
It’s only there like a they’ve studied a whole discipline or learned a lot. Then number two is. I have a friend, Emerson Spartz who literally, he’s been a very successful entrepreneur. He really understands ideas and how they spread online as his sites have generated billions of views and maybe even tens of billions.
And, so he’s exited his last company, maybe two or three years ago, and he’s just been traveling full time learning and literally wakes up at 5:00 AM and is just hardcore learning until evening.
And so if I don’t talk to him for a month, literally one month, he’s literally going through trying to get to the equivalent of a medical school degree over a period of this was a few months, but cause he’s just focusing on full time and using all his learning hacks or another month, he’s gone into an esoteric field of science as an example.
So polymath learner, somebody, and then I’m naturally a giver. Somebody else who’s a giver as well. So you give an idea and you get more back. And I feel like those relationships are really exciting where it’s just, you’re almost like out competing each other to share more, give more, and just build off of each other.
And other relationships, the energy isn’t there as much, or it’s just neutral where you feel okay after talking to them, or you feel energy drain, but in these relationships you feel like man, I’m alive, you feel alive basically.
And so on a tactical level with those relationships, if you feel like somebody might be like that, and you want to explore that more.
The big thing is for me, has been moving it from formal. Like we have to schedule a call to informal. So I’ll give people permission if they’re on their commute or just driving somewhere, Hey, just give me a call. And I might do the same for you. If that’s something you interested in.
And then I use an app called Voxer and the officers you could send asynchronous audio messages, and then listen to them at the two to three X speed.
So somebody could really ramble or just really express themselves for awhile. And then they don’t have to feel guilty that they’re rambling. And then the I’m listening can really listen to it quickly and respond. And so I have a few of those I do each day . I’m not using discipline to be like, okay, I have to respond to this person today. Or, I haven’t kept up with my quota.
4 Core Skills of Being a Professional Thought Leader – Michael Simmons what are the fundamental skills that if you just do this, that you will be on your way to be a thought leader?
I would say one is value hook. So the way people discover content online is through algorithmic newsfeeds.
And so a value hook in that context will be the title, the image and the subtitle. That people are going to see. That’s where a lot of the competition is. And a lot of people aren’t even putting any time into becoming good at identifying the title and the image.
Then number two, I’d say is research that the something like 90% of all living scientists, all scientists, the living scientist today, California, 90% of the science to say that I’ve ever lived and that the amount of academic research papers that have been published as doubling every seven years. So being able to wade through that and find the needle in the haystack, there’s a huge skill.
and then I would say naming things that the ability to, as you’re doing that research, to find these areas where of white space, where there should be an idea, but there isn’t, or conventional wisdom says this, but it’s actually this other thing.
And then having a name for that is once. Names really help people think better, differently, or communicate with each other. And it’s another area where most thought leaders don’t even think about that as a category of skills to learn.
2 Simple Mistakes That’ll Sabotage Your Thought Leadership – Michael Simmons What are some of the questions that you’ve seen people struggle with, but I didn’t ask you about
one thing I’ve noticed more a lot of times when people buy a course, they’re trying to buy us. they want to get a result and they think that the learning the skill and the course is what’s going to get them the result. And for a live times, it’s actually a deeper transformation that needs to happen where it’s not just the intellectual skill for writing.
There’s a huge amount of stuff around imposter syndrome, going down rabbit holes. Is this going to pay off? A fear of judgment, fear of wasting your time. I have a list of about 30 different of these emotions. And when I observed people stopping, there’s two things that come most people to fail fundamentally in all areas.
This one is you stop trying and then too stop improving. So you’re just doing the same thing over. And so I think the emotions are often what causes to stop trying or stop improving.
The Major Cost of NOT Mapping the Emotional Journey as a Thought Leader – Michael Simmons are there ways that you have tactically to help people manage their emotions?
I’d say one is looking at the emotions as part of the curriculum. Most of the time, we just think about intellectual parts as part of it and realize that emotions often accompany different parts of the learning process. There’s a good book. I think it’s called like moves and learning how to learn.
but the main idea from that is that, if you’re just learning something, you’re more likely to get overwhelmed, let’s say. And so that’s an emotion that comes up cause there’s so much stuff. And what should you do first and charge the distance that maybe another part you’ve made some progress, but you’re hitting a plateau.
And so there’s emotions that come up around the plateau. And so one, I think is just normalizing that a lot of times when people have the emotion, they assume, it seems like I’m doing worse than everyone else. So there must be something wrong with me. I’m going to give up basically versus being like, okay, this is about the time I should be feeling overwhelmed.
This means I’m about as I’m forcing myself to learn a new thing and I’m going to come up with a better schema, that’s going to really help me. So it’s almost a positive thing that you’re feeling these emotions, because that shows that it’s part of the learning you’re learning in the process.
I love that.
when the visual that comes to mind is the flow chart. Where there’s a middle of where a flow happens. If you’re not stimulated enough, then you’re bored. But if you stimulated too much, Oh, you’re overwhelmed. You’re anxious. So the idea I love, what you share is being internally cognizant about what’s happening within, if you are two bored, chances are, you need to just step it up a little bit.
If you are totally overwhelmed, that’s okay. Step it down and take a break. Then you come back so you can continue that flow, ride that wave. So I love that. Thank you.
Improving Your Chance of Success As a Thought Leader – Michael Simmons yeah. And then there’s patience , I think one basic thing that we can all do better is come up with whatever we’re trying to do, come up with a better model of it.
So if you start off thinking that, you’re going to become really good, really fast. And that doesn’t happen, then you feel really bad and you might, and the model I have of how it works is that it takes a lot of work, but with deliberate practice, the odds are very much in my favor because most people just aren’t willing to put it in as one example,
mentally change how you react to the events that happen.
So I also have a better understanding of luck and probability and randomness. So before something bad happened, I assumed, okay, I must’ve made a bad decision or something’s wrong with me, but sometimes you can actually make the right decision and at bad event happens or it could just be bad luck.
And one thing I didn’t understand is that, the roads to success is paved with failure. So you’re failing, and then something works. And then that like pays for all of the other failures and way more than the cost of them. But. It’s counterintuitive because you feel like if things aren’t working a lot, it feels okay, something must not be working.
I’m doing this wrong.
Melting Writer’s Block For Thought Leaders – Michael Simmons What about inner struggles?
So I’m staring at the screen. I’m intimidated as hell. How do I overcome that inner struggle?
I would say to write for yourself. And to just not sense of yourself and do your first drafts that way and just to get out of your head.
If You Like This, You’ll Like These Too * 049: How to Build a Purpose-Driven Business From Zero – Jason Earle * 080 – Everything You Need to Know About a Mastermind Group – Brad Hart * 029: What Opportunities Are in the Intersection Between Psychedelics, Technology, And Meditation? – Charlie Hartwell and Maureen Pelton * 044: How to Scale An Open Trusting Culture in Organizations? – Jim Donihee * 069: Developing Communities, Facilitating Interactions, and Building Relationships – Kimberly Han
The post 082: How I Turned Pro as a Thought Leader (Got 10+ Millions of Views) – Michael Simmons appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Award-winning director of films, music videos, social content, and commercial branded content, Logan Stone, shared the mechanics of the hero's journey for storytelling and personal discoveries.
Topics we covered:
- Joseph Campell and the history of the Hero's Journey
- Master Your Internal Narratives: Hero's Journey For Personal Development
- Understanding the Hero's Journey and the Patterns in Storytelling
- Getting Out of the Dark Night of the Soul With the Hero's Journey Framework
- Navigating Through Life With the Hero's Journey Framework
- Start With the End of the Hero's Journey in Mind
- How He Inspire Clients to Be Open And Vulnerable
- The Transformational Power of Telling Your Story
- Telling Compelling Stories to Stand Out In a Noisy World
- Authenticity Will Go A Long Way In Making Content On The Internet
- Unleashing Your X-Factor When Making Content
- What I Learned About the X-Factor From Celebrity Clients
- How to Use the Hero's Journey Framework to Craft Brand Stories
- Using the Hero's Journey to Tell Nonfiction vs. Fictional Stories
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Award-winning director of films, music videos, social content, and commercial branded content, Logan Stone, shared the mechanics of the hero’s journey for storytelling and personal discoveries.
Topics we covered:
- Joseph Campell and the history of the Hero’s Journey
- Master Your Internal Narratives: Hero’s Journey For Personal Development
- Understanding the Hero’s Journey and the Patterns in Storytelling
- Getting Out of the Dark Night of the Soul With the Hero’s Journey Framework
- Navigating Through Life With the Hero’s Journey Framework
- Start With the End of the Hero’s Journey in Mind
- How He Inspire Clients to Be Open And Vulnerable
- The Transformational Power of Telling Your Story
- Telling Compelling Stories to Stand Out In a Noisy World
- Authenticity Will Go A Long Way In Making Content On The Internet
- Unleashing Your X-Factor When Making Content
- What I Learned About the X-Factor From Celebrity Clients
- How to Use the Hero’s Journey Framework to Craft Brand Stories
- Using the Hero’s Journey to Tell Nonfiction vs. Fictional Stories
Links * https://www.loganstone.com/ * Hero’s Journey Workshop * Epic Story Generator
Full Episode Joseph Campell and the history of the Hero’s Journey – Logan Stone the history of the hero’s journey chemists from this guy, Joseph Campbell, who was a mythologist. He studied all the different stories.
He studied a lot of stories from throughout history and these different pockets of the world. And he found that these different stories at a, at a point in time when these pockets of civilization had no way to talk to each other, that they told the same story. Maybe the heroes were different in the skin , the settings would, would change, but the general structure of how the hero would go through the journey of the pitfalls, the valleys peaks, and valleys. That it was the same. It was basically everybody it’s it revealed that humans tell the same story and it’s that we call that the hero’s journey.
So the significance of the hero’s journey, as it relates to, an average listener, somebody who’s listening to this right now is that consider that you’re in the middle of your own hero’s journey
and that the hero’s journey is also a fractal tool. So you can look at it in terms of the hero’s journey of your whole life.
You can think about your hero’s journey of your week that you’re having this week. And when you look, there’s the old adage of like seek and you shall find right. If you look for the pattern, it helps.
the hero is the hero because the hero slays the dragon at the end. Right? So when you’re listening, same thing seek, and you shall find if you listen for, let’s say that you’re in the middle of a low point in your life at the moment.
Right. You just got fired from your job, or you’re in the middle of some turmoil about what’s going on in the middle of, in the, in the world today. Right? Consider that you’re in the low point of your story right now. And the low point is where the hero gets the tools really like, they have the rebirth moment where they shed the old skin and they be reborn with the tools and the knowhow and the certainty to slay the dragon and that they do slay that dragon at the end of the story.
So it’s really helpful to. Be able to diagram and map out where you were, a year ago in your hero’s journey or yesterday and your hero’s journey. And it’s helpful to, orient yourself as it relates to, where are you going next? And what’s, what’s on the road ahead. And how do you prepare for it?
Master Your Internal Narratives: Hero’s Journey For Personal Development – Logan Stone yeah. I love that. So a friend of mine coined a term recently, he said that we are personal development nerds. I listened. I was like, Hmm. Is that accurate? So regardless, whatever the label is, I think if you’re interested in really. Curating a life of what’s possible curating in exploration of what’s possible.
To me, hero’s journey. Not only is a great tool for any professional storytellers like you, but as a great tool, personal discovery for personal development, right?
So as you said so beautifully earlier, how can we use a hero’s journey as a framework, as a lens to look at it, what’s occurring, life, however, big harvest, small.
Right in their whole life or just the, just a week or just a day, every day we’re going through this hero’s journey.
So I love the hero’s journey as a frame. And I also love archetypes because for me, archetypes or frameworks like this is such an easy way to help us shift perspectives.
And help us look at things newly such that we can, explore different blind spots. So, like you are, I love the heroes, right?
Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think, I think humans, we’re always looking for other ways to know ourselves. And so it’s, it’s helpful too. I find that the hero’s journey is just another way to know ourselves. Right? Another way to know, like what, what, what, how has my past created who I am up to this moment? Right.
And like, yeah. It’s like what you said about self-development nerds, because I relate to that record and wrote that.
Yeah. The reason why we’re friends.
Right. So, so with that said, I also want to, to not so much caution, but I wanted to, to put a caveat on these tools by no means these are deterministic tools.
These are just tools to try on different perspective blank, where am I at? And, in my heels journey as a possibility, right? As a different way to look at it.
And then, then from that space, then you can say, okay, turn left and turn right. Or what should I listen for kind of a thing rather than deterministic, like, Hey, I’m at this point on my story, I should just look for this other thing, according to the hero’s journey formula
Understanding the Hero’s Journey and the Patterns in Storytelling – Logan Stone the hero’s journey always starts with just like the familiar world. Right. It’s just, it’s the status quo. It’s it’s just the way things are. Right. And then this inciting incident happens. And it’s, it usually comes in the form of, it basically, it leads into this call to adventure.
Something happens that adds some greater awareness to the hero, right? Maybe it’s they see an opportunity in a market is opening up, right? So at the same time with that comes a call to adventure that, what actually I’ve got a connection with. So, and so I could enter this market right now, almost immediately after the call to adventure.
There’s the refusal of the call. And there’s a, there’s a hesitation there. The hesitation could take one minute. It could be years that this hesitation goes on, right. Where they just don’t want this fully step into what they want to say expensive. then after that, there’s the meeting with the mentor and the meeting with the mentor, it’s this kind of supernatural aid, right?
It’s just a little nudge or a little, they gained some kind of other information or it truly can be supernatural in the form of, If we’re relating it to everyday stuff, maybe they keep seeing a certain billboard or a message keeps popping up and it’s, it’s just in the front of their mind where they’re, maybe they get, they get a surprise check or someone from their past reaches out with a new opportunity or something like that.
And it’s just like, it’s the synchronistic kind of things that just push the hero just a little bit farther into really looking into it. Right. After the supernatural aid, there’s the crossing the threshold and crossing the threshold literally looks like, like, it’s like, it’s no return right after you start the hero, it could be making the investment, right.
It could be getting, buying the equipment. It could be buying the office space. It could be making the huge higher than whatever the investment is. Once you sign on the dotted line, you can’t unsign you can’t, you can’t get your investment back. You’re going. So then at that point, right after that then becomes the road of trials.
And the road of trials is really like where the hero learns, what they learn, like who are their allies in the space, who are their enemies in the space competition. If it’s in business, right. Who are my competitors? Ideally they’ve done their research before that they know the competition before they put the deposit down.
Right. But this is really where they have like the face to face interaction with. they they’re, they’re acquainted in one way or another with it. It’s like the, the rules and the laws of this new world they’ve entered it into. Then at that point there becomes the midpoint, right. And the midpoint is the false victory.
So they get something, you get something along the road, but maybe it’s not, it’s not as satisfying. It’s like, it’s the point where the story can completely turn on a dime. And they realized, I actually got into the market for this reason, or actually wants to be an artist to do this. And after doing enough and struggling up through the road of trials enough, it actually, I actually need to pivot.
And I’m seeing that this is actually an opportunity this way. So that’s like the pivot point right now at this point. Now this is when we enter the low point and the low point is I, the pivot they’ve had, they’ve had that false victory a little bit, the unsatisfying win. And, the low point is really the point where it’s the most struggle.
It’s the most doubt, right? It’s the, why did I do this in the first place? I made a huge mistake. I’m out all this time and now all this money, what have I done? Right. And it’s the point of it’s like, it’s all hope is a loss, right. I might as well give up. Right. And so this is the make or break point. This is the make or break point in the hero’s journey.
I, it’s, it’s it basically, it prompts the apopstasis where the hero or the company. Sheds their old skin. They have the opportunity to shed their old identity. They die a physical death, right. They die. They maybe they were attached to a way of doing things or they were attached to a certain brand of music that they wanted to make that, it made totally made sense on paper, but just they, they let go of that old way, that old commitment or the way they thought that it had to be done.
And then they move forward, reborn and spirit, and almost every single time it has to do with like, just allowing yourself. It’s like, you didn’t even realize that there was this much easier method over this way. Right? It’s like almost a hundred percent of the time, the hero or the company or the artist realizes that it’s actually, this was kind of staring me in the face all along.
And it’s, there’s a reason why it’s a cliche in storytelling. Right. It’s the reason why every romcom it’s kind of like. Oh, well, you were, you, your heart got broken by the person you wanted to go for, but there was this, your true love was right in front of you the whole time. Right? It’s it’s like, it’s a cliche for a reason, but again, it’s a human story. We can all relate that story. So after they have that awareness, then that becomes now it’s the, they have the rebirth, but it’d be goes into the climax now. And they realize that after they’ve been reading born, they have every tool. They have every method that they need to slay that dragon.
And, Lay on the ship, basically, and it’s, it’s the, it’s the point of the highest stakes, the climax, the ultimate boon, they win. It’s the, it’s the massive success. But again, you can’t have the massive success without going through the low point.
Getting Out of the Dark Night of the Soul With the Hero’s Journey Framework – Logan Stone Yeah. why don’t we actually do this? What are some of the lowest points of your life if you don’t mind sharing. And then what is the wisdom that you have earned throughout and use the hero’s journey as a way to illustrate what you were referring to?
I think that would be really, really helpful.
Yeah. So I would say, one of the hardest points of my life was my first year of college. My first year of college, I, I went to a business school in Dallas, Texas, and I realized really quickly, it was a very big Greek school and it was probably the point where I was like the most depressed in my life.
because I had given up on anything artistic and I was just want to do business. Right. So that sense, that would be the low point. Right. And the low point of the story, just for anybody who’s listening can relate to it. The low point is like the dark night of the soul.
Right. It’s all hope is lost. It’s, this is the part, if you’re writing a story or, if you were writing yourself as the hero in this story, this is the part where like you’re broken, right? Like it’s, this should be the hardest point of most suffering. and so what happens as a result of that low point is that the hero, the forces, the hero to get real, to take a really critical look at what has put them in this situation.
Right. How have they been being up to this point that has them in all this suffering to begin with, and then it begins what’s called apostasis. And the apostasisis when the hero dies a physical death to be reborn in spirit. Right. So if I’m relating it to my story, I went through this, this Greek, the hazing and all this stuff.
And like, I just realized like, this was going to be, the rest of my life was, giving up on anything creative. that was really the thing that, that did it the most for me. And so I had to take the critical lens, like to look at myself to say what had me in this position to begin with. And then I actually ended up transferring school.
Right. And so I, I killed off a physical version of Logan Stone as this, frat boy college kid partier. Right. Killed off that version of Logan Stone. I was really good at playing that version, but that version had to die in order for me to take a step and go move. I literally moved across the country to Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, and started taking film school classes, downtown Chicago.
And so I was reborn in spirit. I had this new invigoration. I had a complete change of scenery I had, but I completely shed that old skin, the old Logan completely. done. So does that kind of, is that kind of point to what you’re saying? Yeah, for sure.
For sure. and what would you say is the wisdom that your earned from going through that, apostasis process that you’ve gone through? Yeah, I would say the wisdom Ireland was really,
so I remember watching a speech by, by Jim Carey. And Jim Carrey says, he talks about watching his dad. His dad was the funniest person he knew. and he said that he gave up on his dreams of being a comedian to sell insurance, to provide for his family. And he eventually got fired. His dad got fired from that job.
And the takeaway, I think this was a commencement speech that Jim Carrey was giving the takeaway of the commencement speech was you can get fired for doing stuff that you hate. You might as well do something that you love.
Hmm. And so it was really, I literally watched that video. I remember watching that video in my dorm room to this day.
And that was the moment where I was like, okay, well, that’s a good point. I am not enrolled in what I’m up to right now. So something’s got to give and, That identity is frat boy, Logan was killed in that moment.
Mm. And I asked that question because when that mindset gets shifted, the action to transfer, it became a lot easier, right?
Oh God. Yeah. Shift transfer, transfer. And the thought of letting the old Logan die and then the, and then creating a new life by transferring. It’s a Herculean task.
Navigating Through Life With the Hero’s Journey Framework – Logan Stone So, so let me ask you those questions. So as, as someone who was very masterful at these mechanics of storytelling, right. how to, look at the beats of a story, the hero’s journey really well in this subjective experience of being you living a human life.
Is it easier? It’s kind of a leading question, but I’m just curious to know easier.
Yeah. I mean, I’d say it is a little bit leading, but I mean, I think like you’re pointing to something that I’ll say the reason why I find that it’s the reason why I find that life is, is easy is because man, I didn’t even realize that I have the belief that my life is easy.
but really it comes from like the hero, the hero, man. I appreciate your question. Cause I’m in a state right now where like I’m kind of struck by epiphany. So I’m like kind of processing this live right now.
but yeah, I think it’s really a matter of. it’s like, it’s your decision away? I I’d like to think that deep down, everybody kind of knows the steps to take. Like, you kind of know it in here. And my experience up to this point is, times in my life where I’m most dissatisfied with myself or my life or moments when I’m blocking that when I’m blocking the intuitive knowledge of where to go next. Right. And really what it is is it’s holding on, it’s holding onto like an identity or holding onto, this egoic, like, how, what a CK think about me. What do I think about what CK thinks about me? And it’s like, it’s in the process of letting go of that. And it’s, when the dust settles, when left to our own devices, it’s kind of like, Yeah. that’s the North star, as far as what you’re, what you’re meant to be doing in the world. So it’s like, I guess your question was, why do I think that it’s easier to live life or something to that point, right? I’ll let you I’ll allow you to restate it here. If that’s, if I’m off track of what you’re going, what you’re asking.
Yeah. in my mind. It’s, it’s a function of awareness. Having more awareness using the hero’s journey, these types of frameworks. Is it an easier life? That’s basically the core of my question is, yeah.
Hearing the question newly. I don’t know that it’s easier. I actually don’t know that it’s easier, because it’s, it’s still difficult.
It’s difficult. The difficult part is in the letting go of the old identity. It’s the apopstatis, right? It’s if anything, it’s almost like, actually it might be more difficult because I know that the low points coming up around the corner and I know what it’s going to require of me, So it’s like, yeah, it might be more difficult, but the, the payoff is more assured.
So if I can weather the storm and get through it and do the hard looking at myself. Then yeah victories is a matter of time. Yeah.
Yeah. I was actually talking to a client yesterday and he asked me, why does it need to be so hard? And I thought about it, And then I realized that. It’s the ego. It’s the mind that’s making it hard. If you just let it go. It actually is very simple. So in other words, how, if I ask you to go get a glass of water from your kitchen, it’s like, okay, sure. Of course, no problem. But if I started making a big deal out of it saying like, could you please and go get a glass of water?
And you’re like, why are you making it so weird? Yeah, it’s kinda like that internal activation energy it’s as difficult as we make it to be, but obviously it’s, it’s it’s one of those things that’s simple to say, but when you do it, it, you still inevitably go through that internal hero’s journey, the struggles grappling all of that to achieve whatever you needed to achieve
Start With the End of the Hero’s Journey in Mind – Logan Stone since you’re so well attuned to the hero’s journey mechanics. When you look at, let’s say someone who hire you for the music video, your role is to help them pull out the story that they want to tell, right?
Yeah. Some of the processes or the mechanics, you have been able to say, Hey let me work with this person to help them tell their story based on this framework. Is can you share with us any examples?
Yeah. Yeah. So if we’re creating, so in the music video analogy that you used, for me, it’s helpful to start at the end, right? We start at the end, we start at the end, even if it’s,
Okay. Well, if we’re just strictly talking about music video, start at like, where do you, how do you want the audience to be. on an emotional level after they finished watching it, right.
There’s a thing called peak end theory, which was basically says that we human beings measure our experience, but the, we say we judge our experiences based on their peaks and how they end.
And so the example that I could use would be like a rollercoaster, right? If you’ve ever written a roller coaster, it’s like, it takes the average time that you spend in the rollercoaster experiences, you might spend two hours waiting in line for the rollercoaster. And then the rollercoaster itself is like 30 seconds long, but it is such an exhilarating end and peak that we say, that’s amazing. Let’s get back in line. Let’s do it again. Right.
So we build it around. How do we want that climax on that end to leave our audience with. and then reverse engineer it.
Right. What has to happen for us to earn that satisfying know at the end, if you, if we’re talking about it, not in a music video way, but just from a personal diagnostic, right.
It’s easy to look at how, what has happened in the past, but again, like the wake doesn’t steer the ship. Right.
So it would be the same thing with goal setting. It’s like, Standing in the future fulfilled, we’ve already slayed the dragon. What had, had happened? What did we have to do in the past to have slay that dragon in that way?
And it’s useful, sometimes you might draw a blank. I already mentioned the low point, for example, the low point it’s, it’s easy when you have these archetypal like milestones on the journey and you can slot in action steps or. you can even reasonably expect like a little bit of a setback if you want.
And too, in a way that’s not going to like throw you off your game while you’re in your business
How He Inspire Clients to Be Open And Vulnerable – Logan Stone after outlining all those steps of the hero’s journey, the whoever I’m speaking to, can reasonably slop themselves in. Okay. I haven’t really been at that maker. I haven’t given up what there is to give up yet or speaking to the fractal aspect of it. They might’ve said, well, I gave something up, a year ago, but there’s still more, again, it’s it’s there’s hero’s journey stacked on hero’s journey.
It’s a cycle. So. So, so I guess what, what I’m asking here. Cause mechanically, someone can look at the template and say, all right, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom let’s force forced, square pack in general, wrong hole. Let’s make this way. Right. I could do that, but let’s say someone who is at a high level a competitor let’s call a UFC fighter. Right. and I think, what I’m talking about. So, so for them, they have an image, they have to maintain that ego of Supreme confidence. But at the same time, they also need to reveal their low points or self doubt their internal world to use it.
Should I assume that you can show that to dramatic, rollercoaster right within how do you get them to share their truth, like, versus just put on some, sugarcoating thing that they think that we’re wanting to see. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Well, it’s really in it’s like do you want the win, right.
If you’re unable to share that, that vulnerable low point or the truth about the pain of the, of, maybe the part that someone would be more unwilling to reveal. You’re not going to have the apopstatis. you have to have the awareness and be able to, it’s like, if they’re unwilling to get rid of that, then they haven’t truly let go of that the egoic identity that’s, that’s keeping them from slaying the dragon. So, part of the work is in just reminding them of that and guiding them to,
Great. So how do you deal with that egoic resistance is one of them. How do you enroll them into this vision of like, Hey, on the other side is actually not only good for you commercially, but it’s really good for you personally. what I mean? Yeah. You’d share that. How do you enroll them into that?
I point to other examples and I lead first, I go there first, now it’s. It’s easy to like, I look at like Robert Downey jr. Is an example that I like to use a lot. Right. Robert Downey jr. At a certain point was, was an addict and alcoholic and everything. And for all intents and purposes, his life was in the gutter.
But we know Robert Downey jr. Today, As being Ironman, right. This made a hundred million dollars on one movie type of thing. Right. And so it’s, it’s in, I’ll, I’ll play videos of him just being very candid about here’s where I was and when watching him own it, it’s, it’s easy to, when you create that space that’s where the juice is. it’s easy to lead someone there when you see how actually how safe and how necessary it is to go to that place. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. let’s see, I think it was Shakespeare that said the world’s a stage and everyone’s an actor.
Right. So if I can look at it through that lens and there are certain actors. Not that I’m aware of. And I may not like there political leanings or how they act or behave, but there’s a deeper level of, admiration to how free they are just be their full ego, self, or full spiritual self. And just like, they’re able to just really own all of it.
And that to me, is very inspiring. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. The reminder, what I’m hearing in that is it’s, it’s the reminder that like, they’re just playing a role up to this point and that their block is their attachment to the role that they’re playing their current role.
The Transformational Power of Telling Your Story – Logan Stone to me, that’s the power of stories because it shifts your internal narrative. So who you are, if you, one of the things that we talk a lot about on this podcast is the nature of consciousness.
If you think about it, there’s like four different layers of consciousness per se.
one is perception is what I think you think of me, right?
Another one is identity, or persona or personalities, what I want you to think of me?
Another one would be ego, ego, right? What I think of me.
And then you have the pure consciousness, pure awareness.
I’m the, I’m the awareness as watching as experiencing this entire. Objective reality through the lenses of my consciousness. Right?
So a beautiful narrative, like transformative experience to me is able to shift more and more of the perception, personality, layers, then get access to that pure consciousness level.
That’s me, it’s the power of a really great story.
Yes. Yeah. What I’m hearing you say in that is like it’s in the low point is when we make contacts with that pure consciousness state. Right. And we shed the physical, we shed the ego. We die, like in my story. Right. that physical, that egoic Logan had to die off.
and it was only when I had that, if I would call it, the communion with the soul, right. Reconnected to. what I was actually really excited about doing for the rest of my life.
So yeah. A good story and a good hero’s journey will have those moments where it’s, a good story has, has it’s a radical shift, right?
We want to see the hero change hero that doesn’t change, or shift between those different, those different States. it’s just not satisfying. Right.
So with that said. So on the, on the line, the activation energy to take the action that you want to take for this internal shift, it was insurmountable to transfer to another college because you had this identity of the fraternity. The frat boy, as you said right now, when you were able to let that go and you’re able to then just very quickly shift your energy to actually to transfer.
And I am underlining this point because. A lot of times we hear Sage advice. Like, just be happy. You just do things that makes you happy or you follow your passion.
And these type of almost cliche lessons is so easy to say, but in the moment of indecision in the moment in that crossroad, To let your old identities die or let them go. It’s a very difficult internal thing that you had to do. So I love stories.
Yeah. It’s terrifying. It’s you’ll know like why you haven’t gone through the apostasis if you haven’t made a terrifying decision,
And so that’s kind of a helpful barometer there to know, if you’re applying this to your own personal life, It’s gotta be scary,
Telling Compelling Stories to Stand Out In a Noisy World – Logan Stone in my younger years, I didn’t really care for stories so much. Cause I thought, I’m a scientific person. Just give me the facts. But what I didn’t know was I was in tune it biographical stories of famous scientists or engineers. I was very inspired by that. I just didn’t see them as stories. I just saw them as facts, right.
This person did this. This person did that. And then as I get more and more in, older. In my life and is starting doing this podcast. I still didn’t see myself as a storyteller. I just tell, like, Hey, I’m interested in to know this person’s, life story. I’m just pulling the jams out of this person and said, yeah, that makes you a storyteller.
I was like, Oh yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So, it’s a preamble to this question in a day and age where more and more content I made every single day, it’s becoming really challenging to stand out in a noise. Right. And knowing that story is such a ingrained it’s in, it’s in our brain human beings, love stories.
I see storytelling is one of the key ability to, for anything that you do, whether it be. On a day to day, trying to find a mate as a, you need to be a good storyteller, whether it’s, you are starting a company, a purpose driven organization, whether it be you starting a movement, right.
The BLM movement, as an example, a required storytelling. what do you, what do you say to that? Yeah, I think story is story is everywhere. The power of story, when you initially just said a minute ago that, when you were a kid, you didn’t, you didn’t like story, I think that it’s, maybe you were relating to it, not as stories.
Right. But, in an increasingly noisy world story story is like the beacon in the dark. what I mean? It’s like, everybody’s just trying to shout they’re there. They’re prerogative there, but a well told story can change the world, and, and it’s, it’s a, it’s a noble pursuit to know your own story and know how to tell that story so that you can make, leave your own impact and in our society and communities and families out there.
Authenticity Will Go A Long Way In Making Content On The Internet – Logan Stone let’s move on to asking the question. I think I made a comment at some point in passing a, you made a point of underlining date. I said, I’m not that interesting of a character, right? You actually gave me a loving challenge. He said, I would advise you to relook at that. Right. So say more about that.
Cause I would assume. And at that point, what I share with you is if you have any level of humility, Yeah. probably most people think that they’re not that interesting to look at. So as a director, trying to get the most out of someone that you’re doing documentary with, how do you, well, one having to set aside, I believe that there are not that interesting.
why don’t we start there?
Yeah. Yeah. it’s in a documentary perspective, you really just want them to just be themselves. Right. Cause the second that they try to do, they try to perform for the camera or do anything like that, that it’s just inauthentic, like it’s what it is regardless of your job or your role or anything like that.
It’s, that’s the authentic humans like to watch humans being humans. Right. We love the human experience.
So it’s more about just the amount that they, you can, yeah, it’s really, it’s interesting. it’s getting out of your own way again. Like what a theme on this, on this. On this podcast so far, but it’s really like to which they can get out of their own way and just be themselves relates to more it’s more compelling content.
I see. So it’s not even interesting or not interesting, just be you cause bias. I’m not that interesting that you’re diminishing your light. You’re diminishing your authentic self by saying I’m more interesting than what I’m actually in now. You’re just artificially boosting then the performance or how you react to certain things. Is that accurate?
In my personal, I mean, I’ve never been someone for reality TV. There is something to be said about like, bright lights, like we’re still, we still have the, the monkey brain at the end of the day that says that someone being loud or someone, the stimuli is going to attract more eyeballs.
Right. But from a, from an interesting, like story perspective, like truly everybody has a story and in my opinion, it’s about. It’s like, it’s the job of the filmmaker or the whoever’s framing, what we’re watching, maybe not all of it, the hero, for example, somebody doing the authentic thing might just sit around and watch TV.
Right. But it’s, what are you framing it against? What are you juxtaposing that with?
So it is in that sense that if the storyteller’s role or if you’re applying this to yourself, it’s it’s in fact it would be your job to, how am I framing my behavior in a way that it’s the backdrop, right?
Yeah. So, so I was actually on a call with James Altucher he’s a, a very popular author investor entrepreneur. And he said that he just recently finished filming a documentary about choosing yourself. Right? One of the things that, one of the books that he wrote, and a lot of it is of shooting him, doing his everyday stuff.
Right. And I asked him the question of. when you shoot this video, who do you have in mind and so forth? He said, well, I’m just doing it.
And he let us slip that. I don’t know how interesting it is for the audience. I hope it is, so that’s how he was thinking about. So as a filmmaker, do you then just basically have that faith and trust that whatever footage you gather about this subject at the end, you can actually make it interesting.
Yeah, you’re trying to make it interesting in the creative process. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s
obviously you want to make it interesting while you’re capturing the footage, but what I’m hearing you say in your question is, or do you want to make it interesting while you’re filming or do you want to make it interesting while you’re editing? Yes.
So it’s like, The more you’re in your head about, it’s kind of like, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy a little bit to believe that it’s not interesting.
it’s the same thing as your glass of water example, you used a minute ago, right? Where if your belief that is that it’s going to be weird for you to ask for water from your host, it’s going to come across from that, the host that like, this is a weird request. Right? Right.
So you’re, you’re creating that. It’s not interesting by believing that you’re not interesting. . So if you can just let go, let go of that old belief, the, let that die off, have your own apopstasis moment and you just document and you just be authentic, what’s going to happen, especially like no one becomes a star overnight.
Right. So the more that you release content from that authentic place, right. Or if you’re a business, right? The more communication you can put out from an authentic place, the more that the audience is going to be able to build a relationship with you and authentic relationship. So they say, I know exactly who CK Lin is.
I’m tuning in for CK. Right? Cause I know him cause I’ve seen, I get his office authenticity from the videos or the podcasts or, or whatever. I, I get who he is. He’s not putting on any airs for me.
Unleashing Your X-Factor When Making Content – Logan Stone let me ask you this question. Since you’ve interacted with a lot of different celebrities or a very accomplished people, let’s just say musicians or fighters , right?
Yeah. Let’s talk about the concept X factor, right? I would define it as something that’s intangible. That’s in the ethers. that’s a manifestation and expression of that superconsciousness that we talked about, right. Is as if they’re able to channel something that’s beyond the cerebral and the body, the mind is, the, the, in an actually touch that divine expression.
And that’s what I would call like a X factor. How would you define it? X factor?
I like that analogy. what I’m hearing in that definition is that it’s kind of like reserved for a select chosen few, I think like it is, yeah. May be different depending on industry, for example, a really talented singer with a certain kind of vocal cord makeup is just going to have a leg up over somebody who their vocal cord makeup isn’t as good perhaps.
Right. But in the sense of putting out content and just being who you are in public, I think an X factor it’s really the work is, I think that it’s a limiting belief to say that, so, and so is just a clearer channel. Oh. Than I am. I think it’s, I think it’s truly in the letting go it’s in the letting go of that as a belief and yeah.
it’s like when you have that belief that so-and-so’s just a better channel that person’s just endowed with that divine gift that they’re just there to have the X factor. They’ve got it. Right. That you’re actually cutting off your own perfect channel stream, Yeah. So it’s about the work to do.
It’s it’s funny. I hesitate to even call it work. It can be work, but it’s like it’s it’s in the letting go. It’s the, it’s the completely, just like. Letting go that it needs to be any kind of thing. It’s like kids, right? Like I would argue that every single child age, up to age two, three or something is an X factor.
Like they’ve got the X factor and certain point that X factor is pulled from them, or they give it away because for whatever reason, right? We kind of Rob children of their X factor. There, there, we close off that stream by. Putting our own stories about why we’re not X factors into their heads, but it’s, I think it’s just, it’s an innate human thing,
Yeah. Bring him back to what I shared earlier about the whole onion analogy, right? The, the, superconsciousness that ego XL, the personalities and the perception, right? Yeah. These are essentially in my mind, barnacle. That’s stopping your different layers that you added on because something that you added on yourself or somebody else giving you this ideas and just add it on these layers of beliefs that ultimately stops you from accessing that pure consciousness that, that infinite self that we had talked about.
so I love that you bring in the idea of, two, three years old. kids are, have no layers where they just, be who they are, I think you’re right following.
What I Learned About the X-Factor From Celebrity Clients – Logan Stone So bring it back to your experience of interacting with these very, talented individuals who have honed their craft in singing and fighting and whatever. Right in as an, as an actor. Yeah.
What have you observers some of their practices perhaps to allow themselves to step out of the way of that divine self? Yeah. Yeah. The thing that strikes me as a consistent thing with, with all of them is it’s like, they ha I have the experience of it’s like they know exactly who they are.
Right. There’s, there’s a, there’s a quote from a tribe in like Papa new Guinea that says that knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the muscle. Mm. And their knowledge of who they are. It’s not something that they have to conjure up and like psych themselves up for anything like that. They don’t have to remind themselves of it here because it lives in just their embodiment of how they’re being just.
a good friend of mine that goes, he’s a prominent, lead singer for a big, rock and roll band. It’s captivating to watch him on stage. And he is the same person on stage as he is behind stage. If we’re hanging out at a party or something, same exact same. Exactly. And it’s magnetic to watch him in person because, he might tell you differently, right?
He’s like, Oh, I’ve got all my doubts and everything just like everybody else. But what I see from him is just like, He it’s man, again, like it’s coming back to this theme of just like, it’s just an allowance. Right. He knows who he is and he’s comfortable with who he is. And he just allows himself to, just to just express exactly like it’s I see him as his inner child is out to play all the time.
Right. So he has that clear stream, he’s not second guessing ideas of what, what he wants to say. He’s just, it’s just, You just lots of flow. Yeah. I love that. Thanks for sharing that story. You’re welcome. Because it brings back to you the point that we’d been making consistently in this conversation that it’s as effortless or as difficult as you make it to be.
Right. You can make it effortless. Yes, of course. you’re still going to experience waves of emotions and thoughts and mental images of body sensations, but the waves wash over you easier versus like, Oh my God, the waves are coming and I want it. And it’s so hard. Why, why am I the, the, why me walk in at the street or whatever?
Why are people spitting up?
Oh, man. Beautiful. I appreciate this.
How to Use the Hero’s Journey Framework to Craft Brand Stories – Logan Stone let’s actually broaden that to the perhaps your organizational level, right?
One of the things that I also, help people with is to help organizations reinvent themselves first, by identify at what their core purpose and missions are. And, few tools that I use are stories. So share them with you and see what you think of them. So one is, I asked them to think about their favorite movies.
And, and recount their favorite movies. And, and then based on that, what about these movies are the, the core common denominators. And then that potentially is a, because you emotionally resonate with those core values. That’s therefore are your core values as an individual, and then collectively as a leadership role.
And what are some of the core values that you wanted to, to, that are the common denominators amongst the leadership team and that you can then use as the core value of the organization? What do you think about that approach?
Yeah, it’s what I’m hearing there is it’s in the archetype, right? When someone relates to a particular story or particular hero or film or whatever, really the commonalities that they’re picking there draws upon a certain archetype, right? The different hero, good types. Well, they’re not here on market types, but just character archetypes or organizational archetypes, it might be Nike plays the role of the hero, right. or Godiva chocolates plays the role of the lover. Right? So depending on the organization, they’re, they fit into the different archetype.
But the reason why that’s significant is because each archetype has its own story, their own challenges to overcome their own strengths and weaknesses there. Right?
So like you see, it’s easy to theme, like, the hero’s journey and the pitfalls and the peaks and valleys and everything are going, that’s going to be consistent.
But it’s like the flavoring of that hero’s journey is where the archetype plays into it.
Say that last sentence again, the flavoring of the journey is what the architect plays in. What do you mean by that? I like. The hero’s journey itself, actual structure and the ordering of the moments going to be consistent.
But the archetype, for example, let’s use the ruler as an example. Right. So the ruler just wants to create order. That’s like their motto is like, just order and. Order from chaos, right? So there’s like, there’s the enlightened version, which we would get a good ruler.
Archetype would be like IBM . But the shadow version of that archetype is like the tyrants. Right? You can have a benevolent ruler, or you can have a tire ruler. So the story, right? Let’s if we’re bringing it back to the low point, now that related to the low point, the apopstasis moment is that they have, what they have to do is giveaway.
man, if I’m, if I’m creating a story off the top of my head, I would imagine that, a hero, an organization that’s currently in the low point, they’re going out of business or something. potentially there’s something to look at. Yeah. Around, if they were. If they were imposing too strict of a rule or something.
And so they, they exhibited more of their shadow archetype either within the company or in their products that they use or their relationship to their customers could be resembling more of that shadow archetype. And so the, the room that they have, the opportunity that they have is to dissolve that old way of being and step into the higher version of that ruler archetype. Right.
So they’re still going through the low point. The hero’s journey is still intact, but the work that they have to do is flavor differently based on how that archetype expresses itself.
the overall structure is intact, the hero’s journey. They’re still going through the low point in order to reach the ultimate boon there at the end. But their story is going to be different if they have identified themselves as being a ruler versus being an Explorer . Like two different lessons to get from their individual low points.
Yeah, I got it. So it’s from your perspective is the path of the hero. The journey could look like an explore. The journey could look like a benevolent King based on the archetype that they choose to integrate for their own journey.
Right. Okay, cool.
The Explorer and the ruler will both find the low point, but what they learn in their low points will be different.
Totally. Totally. Thank you. Another way. Very revealing question that I ask my clients is who are your heroes? Because there are certain internal value that they hold that would have deemed these individuals as their heroes.
If you look at all their heroes, two or three of them, very clearly you can start to see some common denominators for those people that they deem as heroes, you can call them mentors, you can call them people that you admire, whatever name they may give it. But people that this founder look up to are very revealing of what they may not even personally be aware of.
What I’ll say is this, this, this type of questions are insightful because when you were a fish, right, you’re swimming ocean, you can’t see water. Right. So when you’re in the midst of your personal stories and personal values, you can’t really know why I’m doing this. I’m doing it because I like it.
So these type of questions actually takes you out of your own fishbowl. So you can actually see it from the front. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think again, it comes back to the archetype, right?
Who their heroes are, points more to who are like, if you’re. If you idolize a certain executive or something, let’s say they’re one of their heroes is Elon Musk.
it reveals a lot about where they’re, where they might fall as an archetype, and that they really relate to the, the rebel. Right? If it’s an Elan example,
Using the Hero’s Journey to Tell Nonfiction vs. Fictional Stories – Logan Stone Actually. Let me ask this question real quick. Is it easier to tell a nonfiction story like someone live and you try to tell their story, or is it easier to tell a fiction story where anything goes? Yeah, I think it’s easier to tell a fictional story. Well, I won’t even say that it’s easier.
They have pros and cons, right? What’s what’s nice about a nonfiction story. If you’re going to write, if you’re making a biography biopic on someone, you don’t have to invent. Story steps because it already happened. It’s the film wrote itself, before you even got involved with it, however you sacrifice flexibility in where you, if you were telling me a true, authentic story, how it went down, you have the stories already written, so it’s easy, but you don’t, you can’t, there’s only so many liberties you can take with them.
Pulling different, man, you have to stick to the source material is what I’m saying. Yeah.
If you’re telling a fictional story, it is a blank canvas, you can create it exactly how you see it. But with that blank canvas comes, it can be a little bit intimidating. There’s a lot of, yeah. It’s the paralysis through analysis.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you bring anti gravity boots from the future or do you make a dragon come out of the sky or, or the shatter into two parts? it’s, it’s the paralysis of having way too many options. Yeah. Right. I like that. Where you get the flexibility. Yeah. Yeah. Where anything goes.
If you like this episode, you’ll like these, too: * 050: The Time of The Lone Wolf Is Over – Philip Folsom * 068: What Passion, Medicine, and Cancer Taught Me? – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz * 027: How To Bridge The Cultures Between The West And An Amazon Tribe ? – Dennis Notten * 033: Mobile Nations And Consciousness – Andrew Carton(Opens in a new browser tab)
The post 081: 14 Lessons From Hero’s Journey That Will Fuel Your Next Venture – Logan Stone appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Today I spoke with Brad Hart, who has been a part of over 30 masterminds, built several startups, and written the book "The 8-Minute Mastermind". We had an engaging conversation on what masterminds are, how powerful they can be, and why Brad has worked to teach people how to create their own.
Impactful topics:* The dramatic importance of note-taking * Learning to move on after you've mastered something * The "airport test" for people around you * Finding the thing that clicks before scaling your organization * The importance of finding a product-market fit before scaling -Rapid ways of testing your ideas * Why failing to test your idea usually leads to failure * Experimenting with a mastermind * How can introverts gain value from a mastermind? * What a mastermind can do for you * Why you should try something when you're scared of it * Spending 10 days with Tim Ferriss
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Today I spoke with Brad Hart, who has been a part of over 30 masterminds, built several startups, and written the book “The 8-Minute Mastermind”. We had an engaging conversation on what masterminds are, how powerful they can be, and why Brad has worked to teach people how to create their own.
Impactful topics: * The dramatic importance of note-taking * Learning to move on after you’ve mastered something * The “airport test” for people around you * Finding the thing that clicks before scaling your organization * The importance of finding a product-market fit before scaling -Rapid ways of testing your ideas * Why failing to test your idea usually leads to failure * Experimenting with a mastermind * How can introverts gain value from a mastermind? * What a mastermind can do for you * Why you should try something when you’re scared of it * Spending 10 days with Tim Ferriss
Link * http://8minutemastermind.com
Full Episode Tony Robbins to the Young and Ambitious: Use the 33% Rule to Maximize Learning – Brad Hart Yeah, let’s actually geek out about the learning model if you don’t mind, because you’re a very enthusiastic learners for me. The purpose of life is learning. That’s my life purpose. No matter what I do, I always want to learn.
So, the question I asked is what is the best way to learn and what I have deduced for me personally as well. I can learn from someone else, someone who is a few steps ahead of me, I can mastermind with someone who’s walking beside me, that I can teach someone who’s walking a few steps behind me
for me if I do all three, all at the same time, then I really are deepening my understanding of something. Right. So that’s how I have deduced it. What are some of your learning models as way to really help you accelerate, , and, explore what’s possible
well, definitely I call that a, the 33% rule, right?
33% where you’re at 33% above 33% below, your current level of skill and expertise. but I think also just the immersion. Peace is what I learned from Tony Robbins, immersion and space repetition. So when you learn something you really want to go all in, you might want to spend two, three, five days just going all in. It could be weeks, depending on the complexity of scale, with the best possible people and teacher, you can find full immersion.
And then as time goes on, you’ll eventually lose those skills unless you have spaced repetition.
So, you’ve got to commit to every two months, three months, six months, whatever it is for that particular skill to go out and use it again. So like when I learned how to ride a motorcycle, I rode as much as I possibly could, but that first year, and now I ride a lot, but I don’t ride nearly as much as I can put thousands and thousands of miles on that first year. Cause I want to get really comfortable and I want it to like get all the jitters out because I recognize it. I understood. And this is the same thing when I was driving.
I’m actually pretty good. When I come across a situation that’s potentially hazardous. I don’t get, I don’t freak out. I get really common. I handle it. But that was trained into me after putting myself in so many hairy situations over the years where I just know not to freak out and I just react, , and I don’t react in a way that’s detrimental.
so whatever it is that you’re learning, I think that is really important that, that full immersion at first, cause you, you can learn a language over 10 years. You can learn it over 10 years weeks. If you immerse, if you move to Spain, you can learn Spanish or if you’ve moved to Mexico and you, ,
out of Necessity.
Yeah, you have to. Yeah. So one of the sad things about the world is that it’s becoming so easy to learn things that nobody’s actually mastering things, , because the information is so accessible, used to be able to go out and seek it and find it and find the mentor and like really go through the hero’s journey.
You got to Google it and in the world of google and YouTube in the information age, you would think everybody would be a shredded billionaire with a perfect relationship and a perfect family. And everything would be amazing, but it’s not true because people pay attention what they pay for and what pays them.
And there’s that element of mastery that I think is, is being left behind and the most successful people I know yourself included have really fallen in love with that idea of learning. whatever they do, they never want to stop learning. So whatever my business is, whatever my title is, whatever I’m involved with.
I think my first goal. As a human, I just like the three Ls is leadership, love and learning.
Right. I love that. Thank you for sharing that.
My pleasure.
Virtual Mastermind Is the World’s Smartest Entrepreneur Strategy – Brad Hart for those people who are not familiar with the term mastermind, why don’t we actually define that first for those people?
so masterminds are not new. Although the interest in them has gotten really big in the last few years. masterminds are groups of people that come together that have similar vision goals, mindset, and they really want to move forward in their lives. And it’s kind of like having a support group, but with action and accountability.
So it’s like taking all of the best of everybody’s connections, resources, opportunities, systems, wherever they have and bringing them together to help solve each other’s challenges and move them forward faster.
Typically they’re groups of eight to 10 people. I’ve seen them as large as 50, a hundred, 150. They tend to get a little unwieldy after a hundred people. but then again, you can create masterminds up to 2000 people. If you break people into smaller groups and you have a way to do that.
So, like I said, I’ve been, I’ve been doing it for like a dozen years now. I’ve been a part of a lot of them and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.
And when they work really well, it’s like one plus one equals 11 is just incredible insights. It saved you a lot of time can make you a lot of money and the right person, the right deal, the right connection at the right time.
If I’m Scared Of Something, I Know That I Have To Try It – Brad Hart “Right. But what would you say is a real value of being in a mastermind, being in a proximity of those who have the same, values.
Yeah. So I think all those are fun stories, but they don’t define who you are. I think the real moments of the work you do on making different choices than you made before to get different results in your life. Because the easiest thing for humans to do is to drift and stay in their conference zone.
It’s like the way we’re wired, really. So it’s conserve energy, stay safe. Our ego keeps us in a little box that we hopefully don’t go across. And what I loved about all these people that I’ve met over the years, that, you know, I consider my heroes and I think a lot of people might. Was that they were always pushing the edges of their comfort zone.
So the biggest thing that I learned was just to keep pushing and expanding this idea of what you are and what you’re capable of. so I, I have basically a mandate, like if I’m scared of something, I gotta at least try it.
And that’s led to a lot of things that I would never, I could never picture my life having the quality it does without, as led to a lot of things that I’d never do again.
but I’m glad I did them because I don’t want to live with the regret. I’d rather live with the story and the experience and the, even the traumatic stuff. Then the regret of never having tried.
What’s an example of that actually, before you move on to the lesson.
So one example is motorcycles. Like I used to be definitely afraid of getting on a motorcycle.
Now it’s my preferred mode of transport. I have a little scooter for around town and I have a motorcycle. And, however you feel about motorcycles. If it wasn’t in my life, I think I would, I would be very, you know, I don’t know what I would have been missing. It’s such an enjoyable part of my life.
And it all started out as something I was very afraid of and would like judge other people and be like, you’re crazy for getting on that thing now I get it. That’s a good example.
What’s another one?
Drugs. I used to be really drug judge about drugs. you know, a child or an alcoholic ever wanted to get involved in any of that.
I quit drinking, you know, with some success for, for a long time, have you back and forth things. I think I’ve been, often now about three and a half, four years, something like that. And I would never like try any kind of hallucinogenics. I would never get involved with that. And I got introduced to the burning man community where that stuff is kind of commonplace and it’s a little more caretaking, at least in the communities.
I’m not saying, you know, go to any dude at burning man and ask for drugs. But, you know, in those communities, there’s people that really understand this stuff at a high level and can do it safely and create a supportive environment. So my experiences with that, it really opened me up to, different levels of impact that even the most astute development work, personal development work can’t touch like MGMA therapy is off the charts. For me, it was such a big deal for me.
And then without drugs, like, EMDR is that what’s called with the lighter. Yeah, that was fascinating. I did too many sessions in too short of time.
Against the advice of the therapist. And I would recommend like, if you do EMDR, it’s more powerful. Then you realized, and you needed to take time off, like at least a couple of weeks off in between sessions. I did four sessions in two weeks, 90 minutes, way too much too soon. And then my whole life unraveled for the better overall. But. Too painful of a transition.
So it’s like, you have a conscious grip of reality, but then when that dissolves and there’s stuff happening underneath, and you’re no longer able to cope with that, or there’s too much being surfaced at once. There’s too many memories being processed. Like I processed my entire timeline in my whole life three decades in two weeks, it was too much. It’s a process all at once.
You need to like, take a chunk, bite it off, chew it, finish your meal, take another chunk, you know, relax and rest. So stuff like that, NLP master prac was huge for me having the therapy and learning about all that.
And then actually doing it on a number of other people. I don’t practice professionally anymore. cause it just takes a lot of time, but it’s the most powerful work I’ve ever done. So like if people are listening at home and they’re just looking for stuff to check out, you know, I can’t obviously recommend drugs, right.
That’s that’s a very personal choice. it can be a very dangerous choice if you’re not supervised and you don’t know what you’re doing. And there’s, there’s a whole bunch of things that we just don’t know. Right. So I’m not telling you to make that choice for yourself, but anything that doesn’t require direct intervention or chemical changes to your brain chemistry, like I would absolutely give it a shot.
Cause what’s the downside. The upside is you lose a piece of baggage. That’s been holding you back. The upside is, is, is tangible. And it’s worked a lot for me and I can only tell you what I’ve done, but. I would keep going down those roads and, you know, if you have the right access to the right people and the right guidance, then you know, I think society is starting to come around and say psilocybin and LSD.
And, MDMA especially for, for therapeutic benefits.
Yeah, for sure. I would say on the broad level, I mean, as a scientist, as a former technologist engineer, I would say any of these transformational modalities, even as something as mundane as like an ice bath, as an example, right. That’s super basic at the same time, there’s always some quote, unquote, risk or exposure involved. Right. Because even as something like vipassana, a 10 day retreat, you just sit there and do nothing. You just sit there for 10 days. Some people have really delicate, psyche, and then they come out, as you said earlier, and their life unravel, because you were really, really delicate.
So, it’s a lot of it depends on your own discernment. So for those people who are even interested in exploring all these different kind of beautiful, transformational modalities, exercise your sermon
yup. A hundred percent and just. Go slow. Yeah. Small go slow. Get in a comfort level and then expand from there.
And there’s no reason to go pedal to the metal all at once. You know, and people have a tendency to make light of, of things like this. I, I don’t think there’s a good reason to, to go fast, you know, enjoy, savor, get what you get out of it. Journal a lot, process a lot, rest a lot, and then go back to it.
At the end of the day when it comes down to it, the way I I think about is, you know, in statistics, they call it what’s the expected value, right?
What is the probabilistic payoff minus what’s the probabilistic cost and the end of that, you get net, net positive, they’re negative, and not that neutral, then, then you can make it accordingly. So that’s kind of how, you know, how I think about it
Want to be Successful faster? This entrepreneur Says Do This (but most Probably Won’t) “there’s product market fit, but there was also founder market product fit. Right.
This could be a great idea, but, you the right person to bring it to the world.
Right. Let’s talk about more on the purpose side of, of core value side of things.
So for you, you had mentioned. Hey, I did this thing, many things, with Tony Robbins, you know, now I have an opportunity to do it with my ex girlfriends. You actually start something, right. That was a serendipity. that was opportunity but something within you click and say, I’m going to continue to do this.
Can you walk us through some of the processes that you have for you personally, for your clients perhaps can actually help them? I don’t find that founder market fit.
regard to, you know, why am I the guy for masterminds? I think it was a question, I just feel like it’s what I meant to do at least at this stage of my life and to help people, because I realized at one point, like I could start a hundred masterminds, maybe, you know, and an impact, you know, thousands of people, but it’s never going to be as big as the impact I could have if I help other people start masterminds.
So hence the company and the book and everything that I’ve done with Tony and Dean in regards to that, It’s such a powerful framework that I want more people to use. And they use it in ways that I would have never imagined.
Like I have a guy with a mastermind cops, this lady at a mastermind for horse owners.
there’s all these wonderful things. He niches that I would never, ever impact in my lifetime 10 lifetimes. But now they’re, I think as well, that’s a really cool thing
to your point the opportunities are endless. There’s so many, any people you can help solve so many different problems, you don’t have to be the expert.
It’s so beautiful. As far as a business model. and when you really find that thing that clicks with people, you can scale it. I have clients with hundreds of clients. It’s great. And they, they just keep coming fast and furious. They get ads gone, and it’s just crazy. I have one client that, spends a dollar. It makes $9 on Instagram right now. Cause his niche is just so cool. It’s like New Zealand cops,
that’s a very specific group of people. Yeah. He’s able to do really well with it.
Hmm. I love that. So let me actually recap some of the things I heard. Okay. So, so why I heard that you like is, was a scalable model.
You enjoy the interaction, you know, whether you can be the group providing answers or you can just be the interview or holding the space for them, right. They enjoy the, the leverage impact you get to make. You’re now helping others, creating masterminds. and there’s certainly the, the, the residual is subscription. The monthly subscription that comes with that as well,
What I Learned From Spending 10 Days With Tim Ferriss – Brad Hart “During the time that you guys spend together, that you’re like, Oh wow. You know, he’s, he’s the real deal. And here’s something I learned from him what to do, perhaps we’ll maybe even what not to do.
So this is going back 11, 12 years. So my memory might be a little fuzzy on some of the points, but some of the things that stick out are how much you read, like any time you wouldn’t be talking to him or he wasn’t talking to anybody, he’d have his nose in a book. and you took a lot of notes. So a voracious reader, that was one thing.
another thing was just how detailed his questions were. he’s just a great question asker Like he just really wants to go deep. And when he finds out that you don’t know anymore, there’s no more questions.
It’s it felt like there was just like this, this air between like, cause I’m 24 Oh kid. He’s this really successful guy. that was a little bit challenging for me because I, like, I felt like I was on the spot sometimes.
And then. I got malaria on that trip. I got really sick towards the end. So my memory is a little bit fuzzy from that too. And just being in Africa, generally, it was very hot and a lot going on, but like we had some fun experiences. Like we got to play golf with the president and, general of Kenya. They were playing behind us and they like were yelling at us and Swahili cause we weren’t fast enough. We didn’t know what the hell are you doing? And we had to wear these like ridiculous pants. The 10 minutes that’d be barks. I didn’t bring any pants. And you had to wear pants on the golf course. So I was wearing Tim’s like blue bonobo pants that stuck out like a sore thumb and were the only white guys for like 50 miles. It’s really funny the scene that we got into.
but I think generally what I learned from Tim is that when you have an expectation of what somebody is going to be like, and. You know, like he had no desire to keep up with me or be my friend after that. And he made that very clear.
I was like, that kind of hurt. Cause I wasn’t going to try to be your best buddy, but it would’ve been nice for us to part on good terms, you know, and even like, I’ve forgiven him for it, but it just didn’t feel good at that time. You know?
Like I wouldn’t treat anybody like that. So that was something I learned is like, when somebody is really investing to spend I’m with you, at least make them feel like, yeah, you don’t have to be your equal, but at least like, you know, That there are human beings.
And, and I feel like for all the gifts that Tim has, at that stage of his life. You really wasn’t that well dialed into personal stuff or there’s something else going on there who knows? Right. I don’t, I don’t know him personally. I just met him that one time and spent 10 days with him.
And then we bumped into each other a few times over the years, but, he made it really clear that he didn’t want to be friends. So I was like, okay, cool. But I was hurt at the time. I’ll be real.
Yeah, of course. I appreciate that. Thanks for sharing that story. let’s see, what can I take it? reflect on that personally, I would say that I used to be someone who is like that as well is younger. And I would say, you know, inside those are not part a part of my proudest moments, shall we say? and especially doing any kind of ceremonial type work when kind of like long retreats, those are the moments that actually show up like, Oh, okay. So now here’s what’s it like to receive why you said on the other side. And then for me it was very humanizing and very humbling, very in an actually helps me get a little bit more compassionate towards myself as well as towards others.
yeah, and without him, I would’ve never, you know, been introduced to all the, like, he taught me how to swim. Like I read his book. Is his part about swimming without him? I would’ve never discovered masterminds. I would’ve never fell into Neil circle. And, you know, I get now as a much older man, you know, where his head was at, when he said that, but at the same time, it is, you know, I felt like it could have been handled better.
Like that would be my feedback. So yeah. Yeah. I totally get it. And I understand, and it made me less of a sycophant, like, cause I used to really like look up to these guys and then I realized, well, they’re just people, our own problems. And I don’t really need to just talk up to anybody. I just need to be the best version of me.
So that actually kicked me off.
that’s great. That’s a, that’s a great lesson. Cause, where are human? I think it’s easy to look at some of these people with great accomplishments, and say are demigod levels. And they don’t have their own problems or they don’t put on their pants one leg at a time.
Yeah. Well, and then that all saying comes back full circle. It’s like people forget what you say. They’ll forget what you did. They’ll never forget how you made them feel. You know, a decade later, I still remember how that felt. I don’t even remember the context of all the conversations or why it came up.
You know, it doesn’t matter, but, it’s interesting to remember. So like, I just try to be sweet to people as best I can. And I have a temper I’ll just be real vulnerable. Like I’m a child of an alcoholic. I’ve struggled myself, you know, a lot of anger issues that I’ve worked through over the years. And when I’m under resourced, I can get snippy with people, especially if I feel like they’re, you’d be being aggressive towards me.
Like I’m a very protective energy about that. And I’m like the sweetest guy you’ll meet, but you pushed me over the edge. I’ll get nasty, you know, and I have to notice that about myself because people, you can’t take anything. Personally. People are out where they’re at. It’s nothing about you or 99% about them, you know?
That’s another piece that I think is really important to understand. So I hope that’s what you’re looking for as far as, a thorough, vulnerable, authentic answer.
What I Learned From Creating My Own Masterminds – Brad Hart ” so you’ve done all this mastermind, you’ve experienced it, you know, partake in 30, which is a lot.
And then when did you make a switch and saying, Hey, I can do this. I can, I can be a curator to help others. And I could actually be a curator of masterminds myself.
So it happened around the time I got into Tony Robbins. Now I’ve been to like 15 Tony events of Madam. I’m going to spend time in Fiji. VGs private islands.
A resort called Namaly, either late this year, early next year, hang on. COVID and how everything goes. I’m a top affiliate. I’ve worked with him and Dean on, on their project, mastermind.com. And I’m not saying any of this brag or impressed, but just to impress upon you, like, I understand this really well, and where it all started even before any of that was an idea that they have dad was with being at his event.
I met one of his coaches, a woman named Elena for hardo, who. we were dating at the time and we ended up starting a mastermind together and she was really sharp on, you know, she understood Tony’s process. She had done like 40 of his events or some crazy thing. And we started this, this kind of brand merging.
It was, abundance and purpose. So she was the purpose coach. I’ll find people’s purpose. And I was the make more marbles guy, the abundance guy. Right? So purpose mastermind, we started out very cheap, you know, like 50 bucks a month or something and ran it for a year. And. it went pretty well, you know, and we started raising our price over the time.
We actually text our pricing over time and just kept rolling with that. We wrote a book as a mastermind together, which was really interesting and fun. And I just realized like, okay, there’s not that much to this. I can do this. I love this model. It’s consistent. It’s monthly. the people that are showing up are really great.
And I just realized, like I could create masterminds to learn things too. for example, I really wanted to learn about Amazon. I met a guy at a conference. They Michael Quinn, who was really crushing it on an Amazon. Who’s doing like a hundred thousand dollars a month, maybe four or five years ago. And he had been at it for awhile.
And I asked a man, like, can you teach me how you’re doing? This is you’re, you’re making, you know, seven figures working five, 10 hours a week. I’m like, this is great. He’s like, yeah. It’s like 30 grand to coach with me. I’m like, okay. Yeah, I could spend 30 grand, but. What if, you know, I asked them questions like w you know, what, if you taught this to a bunch of people and brought the cost down for each person and brought the, the impact up for everybody, everybody takes better notes, ask better questions.
We all go as a group. Maybe I’ll go to like China and Hong Kong, go to the product fairs, learn how to source products. You could teach us as more of an experience and have a lot of fun doing it. like a mastermind. I said, yeah. Okay. I’ll be into that. And he had a pretty good following of people that couldn’t afford to coach for them, but would be very interested in learning from them.
So I took on all the work of like enrolling these people and putting them into this group. And we brought 52 people to China and Hong Kong. We did like a week mastermind where, you know, we had training, leading up to it. By the time people got on the ground, they were like, they knew what they were doing.
And then he would like answer their questions and show them how it was done. And we had a really great trip and I got my trip paid for, I made some money. He made some money. He ended up spending all on a boat party. It was really fun, but more importantly, I connected with a lot of people who wanted to do this also, and learned enough where we were able to with a couple of partners, launch a marketing agency and Amazon marketing agency that went from zero to 75 K in six months, I ended up selling my share.
And moving on from that project, but it was just really powerful that, you know, somebody who didn’t know anything about it was able to get paid, to learn from an expert, launched something in real time, because that’s really what masterminds can do is they can create incredible opportunities in short amounts of time, whether you’re an expert or not, if you’re committed to helping other people get the answers that they’re seeking as well.
So as long as you come from that, that space of abundance, that space of, you know, I don’t need to be the expert. I don’t need to be like the guru. As long as you come from a place of, like , I want to solve people’s problems and I want to learn and I want to grow and I want to earn, and all these things like you can make it all happen.
So that’s kind of the premise of my book is the eight minute mastermind. And that refers to the length of the hot seat, which is how to travel anywhere for free at a hundred thousand dollars for your business in five, 10 hours a month to solve any problem that your business can come up with, because it’s really, important that people understand they have this incredible opportunity to learn.
If they’re just willing to think outside the box a little bit. And if you don’t mind, I can share a, we have like a free plus shipping offer. If you guys want it’s an eight minute mastermind.com. There’s also three free bonuses. When you go to check it out, even if you don’t grab the book, we have 101 questions for mastermind facilitators.
That’s a cool little download. We have a mastermind cheat sheet. and then we also have, 50 recordings of me doing hot seats. It’s called 8minute mastermind. So there are about eight to 10 minutes long and you can learn like, okay, this is what a mastermind really is. This was about how to get clarity and solve problems in the shortest possible time and move people through through the various stages of that.
and you can hear me do it. So if you wanna check that out, it’s eight minute mastermind.com. That’s my latest fuck. I’m also working on one on money. I used to run a hedge fund Australia successful, and we have another one on marketing coming out next year.
Sam Ovens Shows How Introverts Can Successfully Start Mastermind Groups – Brad Hart “for someone who wants this type of engagements, rather than just reading a book, joining your masterminds, et cetera. One question that may show up may be, Hmm. I’m kind of an introvert. I don’t know if I want to be a part of this or I’m kind of an introvert. I don’t know if I wanted, but I don’t know necessarily I have what it takes to start one. What would you say to that person?
Yeah, you should have a lot of clients who are introverts and that’s a great question. I mean, you have to honor your energy. You have to honor how you relate to the world. I’m getting more introverted as I get older.
So natural introvert, most of my life, and that are extrovert. Yeah. My life. And I’m getting more introverted as time goes on. and my girlfriend’s an introvert, so I understand like the real difficulties yeah. That comes through is I’ll just share a quick story. We were out on our scooter, he went to the farmer’s market the other night, or Sunday rather.
And I went to just drop something off at my friend’s right after. And then, you know, like we’re in the driveway, I’m chatting, she’s waiting out by the scooter. I’m like, just come in, come say hi. And it’s like, no big deal to me. And she’s like, I just need, I need like time to like, get into extrovert mode.
I’m like, really? Like, you can’t just say hi to somebody and then we leave. And like, for me, it’s, it’s it feels like no big deal for her. It’s like, it’s it’s work to, yeah, it takes real energy. So she just needs to prepare. And she actually was able to explain to me what it’s like. So I get it to some extent.
She actually started out as my client. She was running two masterminds when I met her and we got them to triple their revenue and decrease her working hours from like 80 hours a week to 30 hours a week after a couple of months working together. But, the biggest lesson for me is honor your energy honor, your style and your focus.
It doesn’t mean you can’t run one. You just have to be more. prepared, maybe know what you’re going to say, know what you’re going to do. You’re not going to be the kind of person that’s gonna want to wing it. You’ll probably want to rely on experts even more, even if you are, you know, the model of expertise and have your content structured.
So it’s not like a bunch of rapid fire questions, you know, some of the most effective entrepreneurs and mastermind runners I’ve ever been to, you know, like Sam ovens and like these kinds of people are very introverted. So it’s absolutely possible to run one. You might just rely on the structure a little more and you might not be as, able to, or willing to do all the networking and the glad-handing and everything afterwards.
and then just protect your energy the best you can just understand that you have limitations that maybe some other people wouldn’t have with that. And just make sure you have the time to care for yourself. Maybe scheduling a massage, maybe scheduling some body work or some quiet time or some meditation.
Like we always have meditation rooms that are masterminds and we do them in person. You could just implement that as well, or keep it virtual. So it’s not your whole schedule. And then you just choose the times you’re going to be on. That would be some of my advice for more introverted folks and maybe find some introverted mentors to model.
There’s a lot of them out there that you wouldn’t even believe it, you know, that are so introverted, like painfully shy. but they’re huge names and they’ve learned to speak and they’ve learned to share their message in a way that is, it works with their nature and it also, gets the job done.
So Sam oven, who else?
I think James Wedmore is pretty big introvert. Brendan Burchard strikes me as a little bit of a closet introvert. You know, people like that, you know, I don’t know who you would look like. Amy Porterfield’s might be more extroverted, but I think she, you know, Oh, what’s the one I’m thinking of.
she’s really popular and she does a lot of launches. She’ll come to me. but you know, there’s, there’s definitely a lot of introverts out there that are just crushing it in this extroverted online space. Hmm.
2 Rapid Tests To Find Out If Your People Are Right For You – Brad Hart “Yeah. So let me refer to Dane’s model because he said it so beautifully. So I wanted to, to, to borrow that he said, business really simple, simple, you can, you can simplify into three components, you know, a customer, a end result they want, and also the mechanisms to fulfill where they are and where they want to be. Right?
Most entrepreneurs focused on the mechanism part. They fall in love with their widget versus falling in love with the customers and as well as helping them get to their end state, get really clear about those things.
The rest is easy for me, that that makes a lot of sense. So I was asking you the questions about the founder market fit. One of the things I recommend my listeners to do, do a lot is these things call the airport test, right? Hey, if I ever stuck at the airport with this person for an hour or two, three hours, four hours, what’s my gut reaction. When I get excited or I just get like, Oh, Oh my God, I can’t believe I got to spend time with you. Right. So, so that’s a very easy, Easy test.
Another test I asked for you to ask them to do is imagine now a it’s called a conference test. Now imagine that your company takes off right now you’re conducting a convention of all these people. Again, what’s your gut reaction to a convention hall full of your people? Are you like, you want to spend some time with them? Are you again? I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m spending time with a thousand people like that.
So these to me are really good gut checks. The subjective reality, what you are actually enjoying time spending with a customer.
And I say this because at some point I was serving rotarians and plumbers. And for me, I realized in hindsight that those were just people that I wouldn’t really want to engage in a long,
yeah, they were paying you. You wouldn’t have gotten into it in the first place. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Ideally, if you could find something that you could serve that you would do for free and get paid for it, like masterminds, I’d go for free. I love masterminds. So that really got me. I was like, Oh shit like this. Maybe I should be the mastermind guy. I’ve been a part of so many. I spent so much money on them. You know, how could I take what I’ve learned and make it easy for people to start their own idea was born.
How I Lost $45k With a Good Idea With My First Company (And How You Can Learn From Me) – Brad Hart “looking at your own journey, knowing what you know now, do you feel that for the people who are starting this journey, they have to go through similarly and, you know, charging very little to charging more?
No, no. I made a lot of mistakes early on, which is why I do what I do. I help people to kind of skip that.
I want it in a way more market research. I would’ve gotten better at crafting offers and selling. And I would have followed a formula really that helps do it. And really like, we don’t just teach people about masterminds.
We teach people how to build a business from scratch. Right. We teach people. I do market research, have conversations, sell in a way that has integrity, and sell it before you build it because you don’t want to build something and spend a ton of time and energy on I’ll. Just give two quick examples.
I spent $45,000 on my first internet business back in 2011 and I failed miserably. cause I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And then when I went after it again, cause I got into real estate.
can you underline some of the mistakes.
I was focused on everything, but doing the actual work, which is finding a product market fit.
So I was a real estate agent in New York city. And back then the real estate. Game in New York was dominated by brokers and you had to pay these giant fees. And the landlords loved it because they got free labor out of the agents. And the agents loved it because they got big commission checks. But guess who hated it was the customers, right?
The actual renters hated it. They hated the system. They wanted a different way. So I knew there was a pain and a problem, but I hadn’t like connected to what they really wanted. So I created a course like how to find your own New York city department. I’m like, I’ll, I’ll put up a website. I’ll just, I’ll, I’ll promote it on Craigslist.
And I didn’t like, it was a solid idea and there was nothing else like it at the time, but I didn’t test it. I didn’t find the market private market fit. I didn’t test the marketing of it either because my whole plan was to get it on Craigslist, which guess what their entire funding was coming from real estate agents paying $10 per ad per day.
Right. That was their bread and butter. They were making all kinds of money on it. They didn’t want me advertising, competing product on there and they shut me down without recourse. I realized like after a bunch of begging and pleading to let them get me back on that. I, you know, I wasn’t holding the keys to the kingdom.
I didn’t have the, so it was a great idea. But at that point I already sunk so much money into it. I built the course. I had done all these things. I could have tested it out with a couple of ads and see how it went and like, pre-sold it. And then refunded people if I didn’t workout or I did anything and that’s kind of the way I do it now.
So, you know, I did everything. In backwards order.
Now, if I have an idea, I want to rule it out as fast as possible. I want to find the reason it’s not going to work as fast as possible, but when you’re young and you have an ego and everything’s tied up and your sense of identity and self worth, or your idea that you had, which may or may not be a good idea, you know, everybody asks me, is this a good idea?
I said, I don’t know, ask the market to do that. So now, you know, after a few more failures like that, I just, I have this dial to the point where I’ve launched a couple of hundred projects. And I always start with the idea on paper. And I go find 10, 15, 20, 25 people to sell it to. And if nobody buys it, that’s a big red flag or if only a couple of people buy it, it’s a big red flag.
The Lowest Risk Way To Benefit From A Mastermind – Brad Hart “when you think about mastermind, you think 10, 20, 15, whatever number of people, there’s a lot of pressure. I got to be all professional, all these things. What is the smallest, the lowest risk way to start one?
If you just start with the hot seats, it’s not on you, you just facilitate and keep it moving and keep the time you make sure people don’t get too long winded.
You make sure that everybody feels supported. It’s not really about you being the center of attention. In fact, if you’re doing it right, you’re kind of in the background a little bit. so, you know, versus going on a huge stage 500 people and giving a speech, it’s a very different experience. So, you know, for, for people who are really looking for a way to increase their impact and income in a short amount. I would absolutely try it. You can do a one off, right? You can do a half day mastermind. You can do a two day mastermind and just see what it’s like in reality, before you make up a story about it in your head, right.
You can do anything. I have two days, you know, I just like to try things personally and I encourage people to try it as well. I don’t want them to make up a story.
Like people tell me I don’t like sushi. I said, have you tried sushi? They said, no. I say, all right, you get to try it. And then you, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but you can’t not try it and say, you don’t like it before you’ve had an experience.
Rapid Testing Is Not Just a Skill For Scientists. It’s Key For Any Entrepreneurs – Brad Hart “I often speak to overachievers and they want to build this big thing. Right. They’re looking at their mentors and then say, I want to do that thing. Or I want to do that thing that used to do, you know, building out industry or whatever they’re at a past success. And if I don’t do that, I’m a failure. It says a one or a zero type of mentality. And I was encouraging them to actually break it down. When you get to a atomic unit of fulfillment, like find the thing that you enjoy, however, small, maybe you can always do incrementally versus setting this huge thing. If I don’t achieve this huge thing. And then you have, you know, a failure. So what would you say to someone on the psychology side of things? Hey, I just wanted to go big or go home. I don’t want it to do these type of little incremental tests as a way to find my groove.
I think bill Gates said it best, you know, multiplying inefficiencies just creates more inefficiency.
It just increases inefficiency exponentially. So getting it right, but nailing it before you scale, it is paramount. Sure. You could go throw a bunch of capital at it. If you have it, you can throw a bunch of time at it if you have it. But we generally have limited resources as humans. We have limited time, energy, attention, and money.
You have to decide how you’re going to utilize and deploy those resources. And that capital. And once you spent it, especially at the time part, it’s gone forever. And if you keep spending money poorly, you’re gonna be out of money and people aren’t gonna write you checks anymore to try out your new venture.
So part of the trick of entrepreneurship is to get that product market fit as quickly as possible. I think that’s like more than half the work in my opinion is just getting the right product market fit because you can scale a company easily that has the right product market fit. But if you don’t, then you’re going to have a lot of things you’re going to do are gonna struggle.
Getting the operators just paramount.
You’re Hurting 3 People If You Don’t Move Past Positions You’ve Outgrown – Brad Hart “Eventually. I just know my way about things, I I’ll stick with something for three or four years and I’ll be like, okay, How do I systematize this and let other people step into my shoes?
Cause what happens is this is just important. I think for anybody in any stage of their life, if you don’t move on, when you’ve mastered something and you got to the point of saturation with a skill, you’re really screwing three people, you’re screwing yourself because you’re not rising up and moving onto the thing that you were supposed to move on to next, right?
You’ve gained all the experience and you sucked all the, whatever you could out of that experience.
You’re screwing the person who could step into your shoes and take on that leadership position. So in my example, like, you know, my former clients, for example, I want to teach people and they’re like confident at the bet, like, get me involved. I want to help, I can allow them to start to do that and train them and do that.
And then you’re screwing your future self, right? Cause if you stay in a position that you’ve outgrown, then you know, and not move into the next thing, then you’re, you’re robbing the world of your gifts in that regard. So I always try to think, like if I’ve been in a place for too long, regardless of whether I feel like I’m done, regardless of whether I feel like I’m, I’m the only person, like I don’t, that’s how I keep myself from getting stucked. Cause I know I need to move and change in order to not screw three people.
Do You Recognize These Strange Tools? They Used Them To Make Taking Notes Easier – Brad Hart “So for someone who’s listening to this and they said to themselves, I’m really inspired by Brad’s story in how he thinks, how fast he thinks. So what’s one thing you would say for them: hey, if you just take this one, the little nugget and then start practicing that as a atomic discipline that you’d take on.
write everything down. So I’ll show you guys something I have a very specific notebook that I buy. It’s called the echo low. It’s a gilded 256 page book. And these are all my notebooks for the last three years. I don’t know if you can see the dates.
Whoa,
that’s everything from 2017 I just open a new one today. And I write everything down. This is every interview.
Every meeting, every sales call, every everything with the dates. And I make sure that. I write it down because I ingrained it in my brain. That way I’m a visual person. If you tell it to me and I don’t write it down, I’ll forget it I’ll even do this with like, I have a little mole skin that I walk around with when I’m at meetings and stuff.
And I’ll just make sure that I’ve written everybody’s name down because otherwise I’ll forget. Cause it’s not all their freaking forehead. I’ll tell you that much. And if, if you told it to me and I forget, I apologize, but I do my very best to work in the medium that I’m, I’m understanding. So like visual auditory, kinesthetic, you gotta learn your learning style.
And then play to your strengths. For me, it’s all visual. I got to write everything down. So these notes are, are everything’s me. And then, when I go through a book, I’ll take a few minutes and I’ll just flip through it. And I’ll Mark any pages where there’s, there’s something that might be valuable in the future.
And I’ll put like a little note or clip it or, write it down again just to remind myself of it, review it, I’ll put a paperclip or. A folded page, whatever it is, just whatever your system is that works. And I write notes everywhere. I write notes online, offline, the writing physical writing act has been so valuable for me.
And I have a five minute journal as well. So I do five minutes in the morning, five minutes at night, and I switch it up to, I don’t keep my morning routine the same. So there’s like that there’s meditation, there’s exercise. There’s all these different pieces of incantation running. There’s always things I do just to put myself in the right frame of mind.
so that I can learn my best. I can be my best and I can do my best for myself. And that’s a little bit of a quiz you have to figure out for yourself, what’s your best way to do it is, but I can give you.
Yeah. I love that. well, let’s talk about that for just a moment. If you don’t mind.
It’s cause you’re talking to someone who’s a geek about workflow as well.
I realized that for me, I take notes constantly, but that’s my attempt to capture a stream of consciousness effectively. How do I package up my stream of consciousness?
what I realized though, is I rarely revisit the notes that I made. So it’s valuable the fact of writing it down, but the actual physical artifact of it is actually not very useful.
Right. Then I came across this interesting idea called intermediary packets. So Google, if you want. And, and in it, they were saying how in computer science, they write these sub routines as a way to, , you don’t need to continue to write code from scratch. You can just reuse these sub routines as way to accelerate the creative process, doing computer programming.
Right. So similarly, what if you have ideas that you can pull out, that’s already developed in its own sub-routine forum called intermediary packets. And you can very quickly build, holistic ideas, right.
Mental models.
Yep. Right. So exactly. So, so that’s one form of intermediary packets. So there’s this guy, he wrote a beautiful book called how to take smart notes.
I believe that’s what it’s called. And they were, Essentially making a documentary of this guy’s method of workflow. He, in his lifetime, he was not a learned man. And then in his lifetime, he became a sociology professor. He wrote 60 academic books. He wrote 600 papers.
Oh my God.
It’s insane. How, how prolific this guy was
a hundred academic papers, little on, right?
Yeah. And then, and, but here’s the thing. He didn’t just write those books in one topic. He wrote about, , society, relationships on money just a wide variety of topics. Point being this method note taking is such a beautiful Skill once you have in a way to package your consciousness into something that people, someone else can actually can use.
absolutely. Well, and that’s, this is how ideas are Genesis, and this is the Genesis and origin of all ideas. It’s like, how do we make the experience of taking notes even better? So like Evernote got a piece of it right. And Google drive got a piece of it right. they have that app that Evernote called scannable. You can scan your notes. That’s really helpful. And then you can search your own texts. That was really cool. Yeah. , I’m kicked out all these rocket notebooks, the one where it’s like the special ink that you put it in, you use upload it to the cloud, and then you, you microwave the book itself and it deletes all the ANC and you start over. Like, that was, I was geeking out on that for awhile. And then I settled on my tried and true favorite, which is, , my little physical books. They fit in my notebook. If it were ever, I want to go. And I kick out on that.
And then my other system is I’ll just give a little extra value here, my index cards. So I got this from Tim. Right. True priorities on the next card. No more than three to five every day and rip it up at the end of the day. And then if, as longer term than that, and it’s a project or something, I’ve got to look at it later. I have posted notes that I have a system for my postings. These are industrial grade, extreme, sticky, posted notes.
They like, they work on fricking brick and drywall and anywhere you want to put them in they onstage. So I use them as
the names for those posters.
So these are called extreme posted notes, right. , there are just really high quality material. And what I do is I have three different codes for my saw, right?
So if it’s green, it means I’m doing it myself and nobody’s going to help me. If it’s yellow, it means I’m collaborating with somebody, but I’m still involved. And then if it’s orange, it means I’m delegating it completely. So I might have a meeting about it, but it’s off my plate completely. So, and then I know based on how many green, yellow, or orange post it notes, I can give myself a quick grade visually.
I’m like, how much am I delegating versus how much am I actually taking out myself and adjust accordingly? Another thing I learned from Nathan Hirsch, he’s a big VA guy. He built a huge eight figure company off the back of VA’s no paid advertising and sold it. And he says he will never do anything for more than 90 days before he outsources it. That’s his time limit. He’s got to figure out a way to outsource it in 90 days or less.
Hmm. I love that. I love to interview that guy
I’ll introduce you. Who’s awesome.
Yeah. Very good man. Check out this tool. So for the listeners, this is a tool that I geek out about these called roam research
let me tell you why I love it. Right now, part of the issue, I try a number of different ways to capture my consciousness. Right? All kinds of different experiments. I even build my own website as a way to try to track my ideas very freely. The problem is bi-directional linking. So whenever I take notes, that’s that?
It’s a holistic thing. If I want to take on another project or none of the idea I need to start from scratch again. Right? Well, Rome did, to me, it was really. Revolutionary actually, it’s so simple, but so revolution is, is you can link documents, document very easily, very effortless, and they also allow you to see the graphical.
I’m imagining there’s a network in front of you, a neural net in front of you. You can see the intersections of all your ideas. you can find those things yourself. You can also see it. They will also suggest the vintage Dyneema has for you. If you think about the nature of creativity is in the intersection of ideas.
That to me is a beautiful feature.
So that mind map on steroids
totally. Totally.
You reminded me of another one that I’ve used with some success called WorkFlowy. Yeah, that’s a good one too.
Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so roam research has a WorkFlowy interface.
Oh, cool. Cool, cool.
So it’s very easy to use anyway. So yeah, check it out.
You’ll love it.
I don’t want to overload people with stuff I use. It are very effective because it’s not about doing more stuff. It’s about doing the right stuff at the right time consistently. So my clients and everybody, like, if you can do three things, three things that actually move the ball forward.
They’re actually high, high impact every single day. Even if you only work five days a week, that’s 750 things a year that are actually moving the ball forward in your business or in your life. And if you just did that, you’d be way more productive than 95% other people out there. Hands down. And then anything else you get Done is a bonus, but those three things, as long as you’re consistent about those.
So I don’t take calls in the morning. I don’t talk to anybody until my three things are done. And I typically write them out the night before I’m just dead to the world. And then that’s how I maintain productivity. That’s how I keep all my products. That’s how I write books so fast. That’s how I, I get it done because I blocked the time I do it when I’m fresh.
So then anything like errands either it’s off my plate completely, or it’s at the very end of the day. No, I don’t do shopping for myself anymore. I don’t do errands for myself anymore. I don’t like do my own laundry or, or, , and it didn’t start out that way. I didn’t have the budget for it, but now that the budget for it, I’m absolutely going to get all that stuff off my plate.
That’s just not high impact.
If You Like This Episode, You’ll Like These… * 063: Finding Self Love Without Job Titles – Jennie Sze * 057: Moving Through Change with a Healing Heart – Will Cady * 071: Architecture, Resilience, And Building a World Worth Living In – Cameron Sinclair * 059: How Jujitsu Made Me a World Champion (And 10X My Business) – Dane Barlow * 076: The Zen of PR, Marketing, And Paying Attention: – Jimmie Stone
The post 080 – Everything You Need to Know About a Mastermind Group – Brad Hart appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Today's guest is Gopi Kallayil, chief evangelist of brand marketing at Google, who I connected with at the opening ceremonies of Burning Man. We had an incredibly compelling conversation on human connection, persistence, and what it means to be a tech evangelist.
Impactful topics we discussed:* The common denominator of all Gopi's pursuits * Learning to walk towards the storm * Going through darkness to gain enlightenment * Becoming a confident public speaker * Learning to become doggedly persistent * Learning to let go of the idea of "the other" * How our own mortality can calm our anxiety * Understanding the inner-net of human connectivity * Being an evangelist of the tech industry * Translating internal awareness to external awareness
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✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/078-living-life-at-its-fullest-tech-evangelism-the-yoga-of-learning-gopi-kallayil/
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Today I am joined by Shane Metcalf, co-founder of 15Five, a company that provides a leading performance management software that helps to unlock each company's highest potential.
Impactful topics we discussed:
- Giving others their freedom in order to give yourself the freedom
- The harmfulness of spiritual high horse
- Building a company based on love
- Making the choice to stick with your principles during COVID
- Keeping your culture healthy when working remote
- Disentangling people from a corporate culture of fear
- Thinking of your people as human beings, not just resources
- The "selfish reason" to help your employees become their best selves
- How to ask the right questions of your employees
- Where his desire to serve comes from
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✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/077-company-culture-of-being-best-selves-as-a-strategy-shane-metcalf/
👪 Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My guest today is Jimmie Stone, the Chief Creative Officer for New York & Latin America at Edelman, former adjunct professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and a Zen Buddhism practitioner.
He is a master storyteller and we had a fantastic conversation about a wide variety of subjects.
Overview of topics discussed:
- Discovering the "sun" that guides your path
- Finding the source of the river of your life
- Being self-aware vs. working in advertising
- The atomic unit of making an impact
- Practicing equanimity
- The importance of empathy and EQ in the modern world
- The power of living mindfully
- Being a vessel for creative ideas
- Discovering your career path
- Serving the public good through brand consciousness
- Discovering your organization's core beliefs
- Building intention into every area of your life
- The "compound effect" of your words and actions
- What does a Kalpa mean in Buddhism?
Links
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- 🔥 Join our mailing list for mindset and actionable tactics from 6- to 9-figure purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
- ✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/076-the-zen-of-pr-marketing-and-paying-attention-jimmie-stone/
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My guest today is the brilliant Samantha Hartley. Her company, Enlightened Marketing, helps consultants to double their revenues by finding and growing with the perfect clients. We had a fantastic conversation on the best ways to find joy and enlightenment at work.
Overview of topics we discussed:* Clearly communicating your values * The importance of joyful marketing * How to cultivate the desire to bring joy * How to find the perfect clients * How to discover joy in the corporate world * Methods for becoming more decisive * The method to discovering the true potential of your business * Finding the balance between being driven and being relaxed * The spiritual journey in the corporate world * Learning to acknowledge your divine guidance
My guest today is the author of the book Monday Again and the owner of the Merrinoble Wellness Consulting Agency, which empowers people to be physically harmonious, mentally sharp, and emotionally vibrant. We had a powerful conversation about race, perspective, and parenting that I feel is very important given the recent events in our world.
Overview of topics discussed* How can non-black people gain an understanding of racial injustice? * Being a father and mentor during troubling times * How to cultivate self-worth and affirmation in your children * Having conversations with your kids about race * Finding organizations that have true multicultural representation * How can you make sure trauma doesn't lead to cynicism? * Overcoming disbelief of your own positive affirmations * Two experiences with police that changed his perspective * What does it mean to grow up as a black man in America? * Finding the best resources to parent your children * Finding a positive lens for life
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✍️ Detailed Blog post :https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/074-being-a-positive-force-in-the-face-of-prejudice-and-chaos-marquese-martin-hayes/
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My guest today, Eric Holdener, was in charge of strategic alignment and continuous excellence at Nestle the global food conglomerate and currently he helps many organizations develop AI capabilities to improve sustainability.
We had a fantastic conversation about sustainability, food, and the future of AI in organizations.
Topics Of Conversation:* Being a gardener vs. being an architect of an organization * The importance of rituals for a team * How to design a brand deeper than its packaging - * Important problems that AI can solve * How to use AI to eliminate food waste * Changing consumer behavior to increase food sustainability * Why Eric chose to address sustainability * Testing theories about your personal growth with those who have more experience * How Eric found his passion for sustainable food * How to use food to enrich your life
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🔥 Join our mailing list for mindset and actionable tactics from 6- to 9-figure purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
✍️ Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/073-the-importance-of-sustainable-food-practices-and-how-ai-can-help-eric-holdener/
👪 Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
My guest today, Eric Holdener, was in charge of strategic alignment and continuous excellence at Nestle, and helps many organizations develop AI capabilities to improve sustainability.
We had a fantastic conversation about sustainability, food, and the future of AI in organizations.
Topics Of Conversation: * Being a gardener vs. being an architect of an organization * The importance of rituals for a team * How to design a brand deeper than its packaging – * Important problems that AI can solve * How to use AI to eliminate food waste * Changing consumer behavior to increase food sustainability * Why Eric chose to address sustainability * Testing theories about your personal growth with those who have more experience * How Eric found his passion for sustainable food * How to use food to enrich your life
Eric’s Bio “Eric is the CEO at Kinestry.
He started his career in Consulting and spent over 12 years with Nestlé in numerous functions both in Switzerland and in the USA.
His experience includes driving business and technology transformation initiatives, launching products, conducting large-scale LEAN initiatives and partnering with executive leadership teams on strategic projects to deliver organic growth.
He introduced Human-Centered Design and developed innovative tools to help organizations visualize value and improve their performance. His passion and expertise in organizational alignment, innovation design, and disruptive technologies make him a versatile and strategic thinker who likes to operate in any environment. ”
Links * Kinestry * Farm2people * We need innovation now, more than ever
Full Episode Insight Quotes Coaching And Leadership Development Is Essential For Your Culture To Flourish – Eric Holdener ” I used to be in charge of culture in a startup that went from a small team to 200 people.
so it’s an interesting question that we grapple with, right?
Do we build it like an architect. Here’s a blueprint. Here’s the framework, here’s the drywall, here’s the painting. You just do it step by that way.
Or do we build it like a garden, like an ecosystem? we help have some frameworks, but things will happen organically
and it’s a challenge because if you don’t have a structure, then it’s very easy to lose it. whatever magic , it’s hard to, reinforce it.
But if you do it too structure, then it’s artificial and it’s not authentic.
So there’s a fine line somewhere. the way I went in by all of my audience members to really think about is from my personal lesson is less about being an architect is more about being a gardener and, cultivating a rich diverse ecosystem would use them.
Yeah, absolutely. I can totally agree with what you’re saying. And the difficult tension between having a structure, but not being too prescriptive in what you’re doing.
But actually there’s, there’s one element that we tend to, underestimates on not even see is that, you need the garden and you need the gardeners.
So in your garden, you can create a beautiful garden, okay. With a lot of potentials to be used.
But, who the leader is going to be in his organization, his garden is so important. So spending the time with coaching and leadership development in the right way it’s so important because they are the one enabling this garden to flourish. and if they’re not, and it’s a losing battle.
And I’ve seen this many times. So it’s understanding how to coach and train and grow those leaders, but also very quickly understanding when those leaders actually would not be the right partner from the very beginning.
And usually, people have a good sense. We understand the type of leadership and management, who we should put a lot put in his gardens. Okay.
Coaching Leaders To Enable And Promote Rituals – Eric Holdener “so you had said, CEO’s making a town hall. That’s a ritual, right? Any other rituals that you’ve experimented, that serves as a way to really reinforce this innovative ethos?
So there’s the ritual of how you get this group together and run those meetings.
So typically we’re doing a 15 minute stand up meeting, in this space. So people go there in the morning and they just talk about the top priorities that they have.
We could visualize some of the problems and who was assigned to where there was no problem solving. So just, just aligning and then five minutes talking abou moods of everyone. Like anything we’re doing like smiley faces. so when people get in a room where like a whiteboard and people could just puts a face. And we could see globally if the face where it’s like smiley or neutral or like this. So it gives a sense as a team, where’s the mood? So that’s another small ritual.
and we had like recognitions for every time somebody was solving a problem. So every time there’s this weekly meeting, we do recognitions. And when we say, Oh, I want to cook a nice, sake CK for, hitting, solve this problem and having done that, or et cetera. So we condition was an important part of rituals.
But to your question, every team was creating their own rituals, and that’s where you start getting too rigid on say, okay, as an organization, this is the rituals you need to adopt, and I’ve seen this. In a condition where a little bit to regions, Oh, this is the Richard you to go, so we need to go to recognition to this and that.
If the recognition is done, the heart is not here, then it feels superficial. You feel a constrained and you actually create the counter effect. So it’s about defining the rituals from what the team is about and having these team to come with their own rituals is very important. Something I’ve learned.
Yeah. coaching the leader to be actually the enabler of those rituals. Cause that’s a very difficult things. and not to be actually the giver of the rituals.”
How To Design a Deeper Brand Experience More Than Just Packaging – Eric Holdener “any examples you can share with us where these group of VPs are so delighted about something they never seen before.
Yeah. the whole approach was about we sell a product. We never see the consumers because sell product to the different supermarkets.
so the way you do design brands is around a messaging that’s going to go through, advertising’s around your packaging.
But I took it into a Nike store. , when they went through this exercise, they realize how much the brand was actually be reflected in the visual environment. And in the way people were actually interacting with you.
So in the service, in the language, in the design of the apparels that we’re wearing and what to ask them to do in say, okay, now let’s imagine that this grant is actually. Like a Nike brand is a store. How would you design the store and the head to actually do design the store and decide what would that experience be?
that’s one example when there was a clear realization that what are the driving values for the brand that they carry and not just working on a surface of packaging.
And the big takeaway there was like, no one is Duke of, And harness message. That’s it. In French. you cannot convey an idea if people feel whether it is sincere or not,
if the message of your communication since you’re an arts and if it’s going to be sincere because you really thought through what the value drivers are for this brand.
one of the things that we say a lot on this podcast is people often don’t remember what you say or what you do, but they will remember how you made them feel. So I love the fact that you take, you took these VPs to a new environment and you ask them to broaden that awareness.
And then observe new things happening and also internalize and communicate what they observe. So in my mind, this is a very holistic. Transformational experience that you share with them. So it was not only insightful, but also you shift it, shift the way they, how they look at it. And you also ask them to, create a new experience based on the new data that they have.
So now all of a sudden, it’s not just intellectual insights, but as actually embodied practice completely.
”
AI Can Find Data Patterns That Humans Can’t! – Eric Holdener “to me and technologies and multipliers is just a tool that we use to solve a particular problem. And AI is a very sophisticated tool. So let’s do a little for looking right. What kind of problems that you can already anticipate, the likes of AI to solve that you have already anticipated, Oh yeah, you can solve this, this, this, this, this type of problems.
yeah, I can give you a few. Let me think of a few examples where a very basic thing that people, when we talk about, AI is doing a customer segmentation. Okay. So customer segmentation in marketing and sales, that’s a very immediate benefit by using machine learning because, especially on unsupervised learning.
So we call unsupervised learning where there’s no clear goal objective. So you have data you have not rhythm, and basically the system’s gonna find patterns that you as a human wouldn’t find. So you have an eCommerce platform, for example. using the data you get there and, and doing clustering and then customer segmentation is very helpful. Oh, I didn’t realize that this. So that’s one aspect of it.
another aspect of leveraging I can give you is, so is doing personalization. Okay. Of, of recommendation. So very straightforward. Spotify. Okay. So that’s for music, but you can do these also when you’re killing this platform. That’s just understanding the behavior of your consumers and generating the content that he needs to see for the purpose of selling your product. That’s another very immediate benefit of it.
Now you can extrapolate into other fields. we’re in discussions about crops. Okay. Using image recognition and, and to optimize crops and water usage. Well, that’s a wonderful way of leveraging AI. The second I use AI to understand how those, either things that burgeoning actually, where do they need water? And you can optimize your water usage for growing crops,
can you say that AI can either help you, automate some of your repetitive tasks, or help you augment some of your decisions? when you need to take decisions in a complex environment with a lot of data, AI can help.
So automation, augmentation, this is really two way to look at it.
that’s the reason why when you this training is to say we try to not go into industry business case like this is all the things, all the applicability. That’s not how we approach this training. We said, well, we want to teach people is to think, okay how do we innovate first and then whether or not AI can help achieve that. ”
How To Use AI To Eliminate Food Waste – Eric Holdener ” as an entrepreneur, you start small and you have big ambition of course, but you start small and then you go, level up that way.
So when you think about how to approach, because your goal is sustainable food for everyone. and you’re starting off with a meal prep service, essentially, right? Yeah. how did you like decide to chunk it that way and then how do you plan to parlay up to making that larger and larger impact that way?
it’s how you divide this into different problems you want to solve. Okay if you start by looking at the entire valuation of this, there’s a lot of touch points on it and the costs possible
if you look at prepared meal today the whole idea is to see how can we keep the cost of a prepared meal under $10. Okay. so that’s really, at the center.
That’s why it took us a while to figure out the model. We’ve been working on this for two years now and been testing this with different people in the sector to really pressure test whether we can actually scale.
there’s one aspect which is your supply chain. and that’s why when you leverage AI all the time, it really learns how to optimize products that you want to buy in terms of quantity, okay. don’t buy more than what you need. by using AI, it helps you understand also seasonal and a product and an implant ahead of time when to buy the products so the cost is lower.
Second aspect, which is huge in that field. is food waste. If you look at everything being produced today, 60, 60 to 65% of any produce, is being wasted on the value chain.
so the consumers at the end, get 35 products of what’s being produced around the rest get wasted. So it’s looking at new ways of food preservation.
And there’s a couple of technology we’ve been looking at. and conserving, preserving the nutritional benefits of the product.
After that the idea is that how you can create a model where on the $10 you can have, what you need as to function as a human, to be fulfilled that is healthy. And then how this model is flexible enough to actually do unknowns on it. So you have elasticity on the pricing system, so people can afford is going to buy actually these great protein in addition to these great product, et cetera. And so they going to be playing on higher margins because they can afford. And these then actually fund and finance the nine 99 our meals for the ones that cannot afford.
So as a kind of a price elasticity with a solidarity system in it.”
How To Keep Food Production Sustainable While Keeping Prices Down – Eric Holdener ” if you look at how do we reduce, the cost, monocultural would be the easiest way to do it. Cause economy scale. Right. But as you said earlier, that also makes the system very fragile, because if something’s wrong with their supply chain, the whole thing breaks, so having more localized version of it, essentially, you’re enriching diversity in the ecosystem, essentially. So you don’t have model where you have diversity of the different players, smaller players, which is good for the ecosystem overall.
However, where I have challenges about is it the price of the individual local system is going to go up to you. At the same time, you also have a lower cost, a food item. So now the consumer is presented with an option, a $3 bottle of honey to a one bottle. so a $1 a bottle of honey.
Most consumers, myself included, are just, pick like, okay, so honeys makes no difference for me. Let me pay the dollar, save the two. So you would go against that. Even though I know this is the right thing to do, I still buy the dollar honey.
how do you then raise the awareness or change the purchasing behavior.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I totally agree. I’m the same situation. why should I spend $9 for these honey versus 15? Yeah, that’s nine times more expensive.
and so first of all. I would say as a major disclaimer, it’s a very fast and complex problem because there’s so many things that are dependent. for example, if you look at the U S it is an industry that has been, highly dependent on conglomerates around corn production.
And then there’s incentives and the systems in place to actually keep the price of meat down. So there’s a lot of economic dependencies that are created by different forms of lobbying for reasons of how this system was supposed to work. But it is based on one key element, which is really hard when it goes back to consumer behavior , it is going with the logic of abundance.
here there’s an expectation of abundance on everything. That’s how you define customer satisfaction. I can have everything I want whenever I want in the largest quantity for the lowest price
and food shouldn’t be treated that way right? There’s a lot of product that shouldn’t be treated that way in general,
but if you look at what your body needs, we are overly consuming. protein meats, which is the highest, the most costly, protein you can buy. but we expect abundance of that. We expect eating a pound of meat every day a steak, on the table.
so reversing the idea and say, okay, actually I’m going to eat red meats. maybe. Once a week, but I’m going to eat something that is pasture raised, has good quality, that’s actually good for my body and good for the planet.
It takes a whole different logic because then you can eat only one piece of meat a week and you divide this by how many times you buy the same piece of meat. this is the economy.
adjust yourself. That’s just one aspect. I don’t saying we are going to solve everything because definitely he’s an problem is how we create food that is affordable for everyone.
And that’s a mix of, this in itself. Regionalizations of our agriculture. You can do this with having techniques of regenerative agriculture. there’s a lot of technology today that we should invest in, that can help, grow and get better product, at the lower and lower price.
So it’s the same thing as what is the acquisition cost of a new technology and then how this technology of the time actually reduced your overall cost. So that’s another aspect.
When you look at a sustainability, we could go for hours, but that’s why it’s so complex. It takes, public institutions, governments, private institution lobbies, consumer pressure to actually change something.
But you knew back in Europe, there’s so many countries that are so ahead of us here on those studies that are 10, 15 years ahead of us in terms of reducing the footprint and still being able to actually provide food for categories of population.
”
Why I Chose To Address Sustainability – Eric Holdener why did you pick sustainability? going back to that, out of the million other, problems that you could be solving,
I guess sustainability is across everything. I mean, if there was not a few years ago, today’s even more important.
but sustainability is, is really how you are balancing how you’re balancing the process of putting things out in the world. For the benefits of few and the benefits of a of a larger group. How you take into consideration the side effect, the cultural effect, the interdependencies of things you put out.
What you innovate in a very holistic way instead of just on the field where you are good at and working in. So that’s a model that not only, is essential for us to be able to continue to live on this planet.
if companies either don’t get that eventually going to be irrelevant all the time. Because we live in an ecosystem. That’s what we do with the other copy I have called collective future. And where we have proteinization is to think about future, you know, and possibilities of the future. But really from a place of where we call it an ecosystem,
we live in an ecosystem. Everything is connected. and sustainability is another word to actually take into consideration this ecosystem when you think about innovation.”
Learn From Others That Are 15 To 20 Years Down The Line From You! – Eric Holdener “can you walk us back on maybe some mental models or processes that you did as a way to help you make the best decisions possible holistically for you, for your family, for your community, everyone that depends on you.
Aye. So one of the things I’m doing a lot is talking to a lot of different people. and usually talking to people that are like 10, 15, and 20 years ahead of me, interpret experience. that’s something I’ve been doing a lot and actually testing some of those ideas about my life with these people and see how they respond to that and what were their experience.
Tactics that I’ve been using a lot is really trying to learn from others that have been there. because they can tell you very straightforward, what they love, what their regrets are, what they could have done differently. And that gives you some information about who you might be like. 1520 years down the line. So in the case of me leaving the state, was that , how do I see myself in 10 years?
I left Nestle my mid forties. Yeah, we did before, and say, if you stay any longer, I will be defined by me in this company because I’ve been there, called me so long. So is there anything else to discover and is it worth the risk? And so that’s kind of the reflection and just predicting my session in 10 years after and say, okay, now if I step back and look in the past, you know, what can I tell about myself and that new experience.
Beautiful. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, I asked this question specifically because this is a common human challenge, right? It’s part of being human is we got to constantly evolve ourselves. we get to constantly evolve ourselves, and make new decisions and take a leap of faith such that we can get you to the next level of our life, of our career, of our relationships.”
The Moment I Discovered My True Mission In Life – Eric Holdener “was there a singular moment where you start to say to yourself, Oh, I really care about this.
I wanted them to do more about it, around innovation, and I want to educate people about, I want to use artificial intelligence, this bigger tools to have bigger impact on this. was there a moment where a light switch got turned on? This is something I want to dedicate my effort, my life, my career in focusing.
That’s a good question. I’ve been working for long time for a big company. nestle is the biggest food corporation in the world. and. What is interesting is that I left the copy like two years ago, and this was this moment in my life where I was about either to continue with another mission with a company.
should I just continue there? And Nestle was a fantastic, phenomenal school. is the biggest real life business school because you get to work on so many projects with such impact.
But at the same time, I was trying to align with what I do really care about food. They’re also about innovation and how innovation and technology actually should serve sustainable corporates. So that’s the reason why I left nestle.
Okay. I’m going to bring all the things I’ve learned in working with this company and to start something else. so that was the moment for me,
we have this tendency to think that you have control on your life. That you are setting plans and you stick to your plans.
But, I have to be honest with myself. It’s not like that is, is, it’s always been a mix of have kind of an idea of what I want to do. But, they are taking turns here, and left and rights, and then sticking me to other places, and then have to kind of rationalize. and you have to rationalize these when you have to present yourself as a person. And when you present your profile on LinkedIn, et cetera, which is a, you know, difficult work to do. But in reality, I’ve been more a person that’s taking different transit direction, reading based on passions and where in a given moment in time in my life I can do what I have and what I see as a potential.
the whole idea is how do we create a meal? There’ll be system of, personalized nutritional meals. So that, that good for your health, that is sustainably sourced, using regenerative agriculture and that can be healthy for your health. The using recyclable, reusable, packaging. So how do you create a circular economy that people can afford? And so that was the main idea.
And one of the key competence of this, one of the key number is actually leveraging artificial intelligence because , AI can help you understand. your consumer behavior in terms of food. So you imagine like the Spotify or food that’s, that’s the idea on one end and the more you try something the more we can really personalize about your lifestyle, about your activity and everything, so we can really tied something that is nutritional balance for you.
And then you use AI on the other end for managing supply and demand. So how do you reduce waste so that you do the most optimized, food order of real products and that cause you can start anticipating most likely how much and what kind of product people would need. So that was kind of a first step in the process.”
How To Use Food To Enrich Your Life – Eric Holdener ” as someone who view food as fuel. To me, food is food, right? but I do want to learn. I am curious. I do have the desire to learn, right? so teach me, right, so someone who is really passionate, who is a aficionado around food to someone who view food as just fuel. What are some of the ways that I can do to enrich my life with food better.
Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, no means in a way a food expert. I know chef, just no Fujis part of my life. I’ve worked in the food industry for awhile, and see connected to it.
But when it comes to food from a personal and experience, there’s cultural aspects of it. So it’s easier to talk about love of food when you French. because that’s part of your birth rights when you grow up in falls with amazing products. . And then you eat in in a family setting. And you may spend with friends and family two, three hours just sitting and eating and discussing. So everything is centered around, the food that is on the table, and how well it’s being prepared, how good the products are.
And the start for everyone who is looking at food as a fuel is to look at so products like, like tomato as itself is just to try to get a good tomato from a farmer’s market versus the one in a grocery store.
And you will see that the precision of food restart with appreciating single ingredients and product as they should be. and knots, those ingredients that are being functionally, cultivated and harvested.with not a lot of taste, not at all of flavors that you have to mix with or their enhancer to actually to actually create something that is more acceptable to your pallets.
I think for some people maybe thinking this is a strange question, what am I asking specifically around dishes and teach me about taste when we want to talk about sustainable food in a broader system with AI and so forth.
But the way I think about it is having this emotional relationship with the food that we eat is the atomic unit of anything that we want to talk about.
if I just view food is fuel , then I wouldn’t care what I put into my system so much, but if I actually do have an emotional relationship with the taste of the sophistication with the people that I eat with, and then all of a sudden I care much more about, the cradle to grave, so to speak, about the whole ecosystem because I care so much about this atomic unit.
Does that make sense?
yeah, absolutely. it’s so true and applicable in my experience when there’s no atomic connection to what you want to do, how difficult is actually to get engaged.”
If you like this, you’ll probably like these, too… * 043: How to Create Value For Anyone in Any Organization? – Anas Ghazi * 049: How to Build a Purpose-Driven Business From Zero – Jason Earle * 059: How Jujitsu Made Me a World Champion (And 10X My Business) – Dane Barlow * 071: Architecture, Resilience, And Building a World Worth Living In – Cameron Sinclair * 072: Designing Spacecraft, Finding Inspiration, And Going To Burning Man – Robert “Kilo” Morgan
The post 073: The Importance Of Sustainable Food Practices, And How AI Can Help – Eric Holdener appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
My guest is Robert "Kilo" Morgan, who designed over 33 cutting-edge prototype flight vehicles, including the Virgin Galactic reusable spaceships.
We had a fascinating conversation about a wide variety of topics, including:
- The power of getting comfortable with pain
- Psychedelics and the "school of hyper-reality"
- Using humor to relieve stress and break down barriers
- How to build a team that successfully pushes the envelope
- How to walk up to the edge of the creativity cliff
- Using risk to live a rewarding life
- Using the right mental models to design aircraft
- Extending the range of your comfort zone
- The power of art at Burning Man
- Random acts of kindness at Burning Man
Today's guest is Cameron Sinclair, the co-founder of Architecture For Humanity, the director of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, head of social innovation for AirBnB, and a pioneer in humanitarian architecture. He has dedicated his life to making the world a better place through more conscious and community-focused architecture.
Some of the topics we discuss:
- Gaining true perspective through tragedy
- How to use architecture to improve humanity
- Universal Basic Income and the balance between fixing the old world and creating a new one
- How to stay courageous
- How to recognize when you are in a bad situation
- The difference between a startup and a stay-through
- Learning to deal with detractors
Links* Full Episode--> https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/071-architecture-resilience-wisdom-cameron-sinclair/ * www.givefrontlinecare.com
My guest, Tino Chow, and I talk about reinvigorating your brand during a crisis. He is a brand strategist, TED Fellow, and former military officer who works to help organizations effectively tell their stories so they can make the world a better place.
TOPICS WE DISCUSSED
- Reinvigorating Your Brand During Crisis
- How To Renew Your Brand Values During Unexpected Hardship
- Using Adversity To Validate Your Brand Values
- The Discipline Of Brand Strategy
- Measuring The Impact Of Your Brand
- How To Bring In People Who Multiply Your Organization's Value
- The Importance Of Admitting Your Mistakes As A Leader
TINO'S BIO
Tino Chow comes to branding with an unexpected background. As a former military officer in the army of Singapore who went to art school, Tino discovered his niche by combining his experience in operations with creativity. His passion is helping companies and startups leverage the power of brand strategy, design thinking, and design doing in order to maximize their position in their market.
LINKS* Reinvigorating Your Brand in a Crisis
My guest, Kimberly Han, has coached 50+ international chapter leaders to run their local communities and grew a movement from 8 people to 3000+ people. She is well-known as an effective and powerful community builder. We discuss the best strategies for creating communities from scratch, how to make those communities thrive, and how to maintain and develop genuine human relationships.
TOPICS WE DISCUSSED* My Friend Helped Me Break Out Of My Comfort Zone * How Can I Cultivate Meaningful Friendships? * Using Your Curiosity To Delight Others In A Group * How Can I Be Intentional When Building Relationships? * How Can I Be Intentional When Building Relationships? * Finding The Right People To Start Your Community * Creating A Community With a Team of Builders * Cultivating Connections Within Your Community * How To Use Walking Meditation To Get People Comfortable With Human Connections * Using Creative Experiments To Facilitate Group Connections
LINKS
- Full episode
- Kimberly Han's LinkedIn
Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz is a nationally renowned expert for integrative women’s health. She helps women transition through important phases of life and she is on a mission to explore what it means to be a woman in this culture and age.
I asked her how she navigated her life challenges and how you can learn from her journey for a post-COVID world
- How COVID impacts city code
- How COVID impacts patient behavior
- How COVID impact healthcare workers
- How COVID impacts healthcare business
- Her origin stories and her insights
- Her methods and principles to navigate life
- Her one recommendation to live a purpose-driven life for fellow Noble Warriors
Link to the full blog post --> https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/068-what-passion-medicine-and-cancer-taught-me-dr-suzanne-gilberg-lenz/
🔥Subscribe for mindset and actionable tactics from 6- to 9-figure purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
🔔 Subscribe for more free Entrepreneur tips: https://bit.ly/35cea8q
✍️Detailed Blog post : https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/067-how-to-design-your-fearless-life-peter-scott-iv/
👪Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
TOPICS WE TALKED ABOUT
How did you decide to tackle fear as your life mission
How he reinvented his career from investment banking to transforming fear
The outside-in vs. inside-out approach
Breaking through doubt, fear, and rejection during uncertain times
Finding your allies
Building your tribe
Everyone wants to tap into flow, but what consciousness states enable you to tap into flow more easily? How do you do it when you are in the middle of a hurricane?
Today’s guest is Jackie Knechtel. She is the co-founder of the Flow Consciousness Institute, a research and training body dedicated to developing cutting-edge, consciousness-based tools for unlocking human potential.
Her work has been featured on Forbes and Fast Company. She sits on the board of Directors for Evolutionary Leaders Council alongside esteemed conscious thought leaders.
TOPICS WE TALKED ABOUT
- The difference between flow and flow consciousness
- Her spiritual awakening moments when she chose herself first
- How to grapple between the inner tension between hustle vs. self-care
- How to integrate the heart and the mind to make the best decisions
- The power of the placebo and nocebo effects
- How do you face challenges during flow consciousness
- In the moment of challenge, what to do to shift into infinite possibilities?
- How to shift one’s belief?
- The importance of psychedelics and integration
- How to make high-level connections
LINKS
- FB https://www.facebook.com/jackie.knechtel
- IG @jackieknechtel
- For full episode and video clips of this interview, go here --> https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/066-flow-consciousness-how-to-thrive-in-challenging-times-jackie-knechtel/
Innovation is connecting disparate ideas and creating a new bridge.
In the post COVID world, we are effectively in the 'in-between spaces' where new paradigms are being created at this moment.
My guest, Safir Bellali, is the head of Advance Digital Creation for VFC, the parent company of Northface, Timberland, Vans, Dickies, etc.
TOPICS WE TALKED ABOUT
- How Capoeira fosters creative conversations
- The relationship between flow and play
- Connecting a tribe together based on hobbies, values, interests, professions
- The importance of sharing your voice
- The origin story of his brother visiting Haiti
- 6D of exponential transformation (based on Peter Diamandis)
- Teaching ‘disruptor thinking’ to the next generation of product designers
LINKS
- https://www.vfc.com
- @safirbellali
- See the full blog here --> https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/065-how-to-accelerate-innovation-in-a-post-covid-world-safir-bellali/
I am going to share how Dane’s teachings created 15 millionaires.
🔔 Subscribe for more free Entrepreneur tips: https://bit.ly/35cea8q
✍️Detailed Blog post here: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/062-the-entrepreneur-teachings-that-created-15-millionaires/
🔥Subscribe for mindset and actionable tactics from 6- to 9-figure purpose-driven entrepreneurs: https://mailchi.mp/noblewarrior/9czbxmafgo
👪Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
👑Join the 5 Day Challenge to Reinvent Yourself https://m.cklin.com/certainty
Dane and I are sharing how he started from zero:
— The necessary mindset and identity shift from employee to entrepreneur
— The profound importance of listening in business that’ll save you weeks and millions
— The fastest way to find a worthy problem to solve
— How he chooses problems to solve
— How to hone your mind to be fierce and disciplined
COVID devastated many small businesses and industries. This week on NobleWarrior I had serial entrepreneur, Ron Miller, a four-time INC 500/5000 Award recipient and as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year Finalist.
He and I talked about how to cultivate a winning mindset and disciplines ready oneself to solve problems and seize new opportunities in a post COVID world.
TOPICS WE TALKED ABOUT
- How to do well by doing good during a crisis
- 4 step framework to find more certainty in uncertain times
- The #1 wrong thing to do during a time of crisis
- Elevated importance of digital community
- How to identify new opportunities in the post COVID world
During the 2008 recession, Dane had to move his family into his sister’s garage. At his lowest point, he thought about ending his life and giving his life insurance payout for his family. In our podcast, he shared how jujitsu woke up the champion in him and saved his mind, marriage, career, and ultimately his life.
Currently, Dane has a blackbelt in jujitsu and is a world champion at Pan Ams. He is also a ceramist, teacher, and lecturer.
TOPICS WE TALKED ABOUT
- Setting and achieving impossible goals
- Cultivating a champion mindset
- Dealing with the dread in the face of adversity
- Being a business owner of integrity during hard times
- His morning rituals
- His relationship to fears and failures
- How he cultivates trust and relationships
- The importance of sharing our dark moments
- How to find certainty in an uncertain time
When is the best time to plant a tree? The best time is 20 years ago; the 2nd best time is today.
If you have a business, there is a huge opportunity to expand your brand from local to global with digital media.
Andrew Gottlieb has worked with big names such as Eckhart Tolle, Lisa Nichols, Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts and Ken Blanchard. He is the Founder of No Typical Moments. His company supports authors & thought leaders in selling their educational products through digital marketing.
TOPICS WE DISCUSSED
- What is "readiness" for digital marketing
- The purpose of social media marketing (hint, it has something to do with data)
- Progression of digital media marketing (client list, social media following, JV connections, cold traffic, etc)
- Which social platform is best to advertise for your business
- Use Facebook video pixels to garner your audience
- Use Facebook to create look-alike audiences
- Even before social media marketing campaign, assess the long-term impact of Covid19 to your current business (e.g. restaurant as an example)
- The top 2 things he does in his rituals: Tony Horton's P90X and Vishen Lachiani’s 6 Phases Meditation
- Podcasts to get inspiration: Aubrey Marcus, Jacko Wilink, Lewis Howes, Impact Theory, David Goggins
Due to social distancing and quarantine, we anticipate a rise in depression, PTSD, and other mental health issues. Healthy social connections and healthy mental wellbeing are directly proportional to each other.
Will Cady sits at the intersection between community and mental health. He is the current Head Of Brand Strategy at Reddit, one of the largest internet communities. He is also the creator of HEAL, a Heart-centric creative thinking complement to the Brain-centric logical thinking of STEM’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics focuses.
We talked about:
- 1 simple and actionable tactic to easily get in touch with someone you thought about.
- Blocking specific time for connecting with people
- Different kinds of virtual events
- 3 opportunities for business owners to lead their community: pandemic, resilience, and observation
- The opportunity from local brand to global brand
- How to find entry to other communities: value exchange (creation, curation, sharing)
- The transition between creator and curator
- How to maintain spiritual/mental hygiene with tarot cards
- His HEAL framework as a contrast to the STEM framework
- How to measure the subjective experience (phenomenology) (location, feel, color, shape, size, strength)
- 7 chakras and 4 bodies(physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) as the map of emotions
- 4Rs to energize a community (reward, recognize, release, rules)
LINK
- A mini-course about managing your mind in the middle of chaos cklin.com/certainty
- https://www.reddit.com/r/HealMovement/
- https://www.instagram.com/willcady/?hl=en
- https://medium.com/@willcady
TOPICS WE COVERED
- Step by step guide to training yourself to be comfortable in front of the camera
- Identifying your assets
- Selecting projects to experiment
- Finding your mission
- Clarifying your purpose / why ‘what do you want to be remembered?’
- Be in the hub of connections and opportunities
- Brainstorming framework and the power of ‘how might I…’
- Power of relationships
- Criteria to select your trusted advisors
LINKS
- Leave us a 5-star review if you enjoy this episode bit.ly/noblewarriorreview
- A mini-course about managing your mind in the middle of chaos cklin.com/certainty
- Humans for Happiness https://www.facebook.com/groups/703537853513246/
In this episode, I talked with serial entrepreneur, Anthony Collova. He describes himself as a healer, a husband, a student, an artist, and a Burner.
We talked deeply about what mental models and actionable tactics business owners could use to restructure their business when the world is falling apart.
TOPICS WE COVERED
- Our power of choice
- The 3 step framework for people who are starting a business right now
- The 3 step framework for current business owners pivoting right now
- The decision framework for difficult decisions and priorities
- The importance of self-care
- How self-care rituals give you a direct sense of certainty
- His entheogenic experiences and lessons from them
LINKS
- Leave us a 5-star review if you enjoy this episode bit.ly/noblewarriorreview
- A mini-course about managing your mind in the middle of chaos cklin.com/certainty.
- Anthony's IG handle: @IIFYM
- Anthony's Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/selfcaresaturday
Welcome back to the [From Adversity to opportunity] series. This is CK LIN. This is day five of our series. The intention of our series is to help you be stronger, healthier, happier during this uncertain time.
Yesterday we talked about having empathy for others. If you haven’t listened to yesterday’s recording, I highly recommend you go back to listen to having empathy for yourself first before listening to today’s episode.
Today’s episode is about having empathy for others.
I am excited to introduce you to Mike "Zappy" Zapolin. Zappy is a pioneer in the domain name industry. He also co-directed the award-winning documentary film the Reality of Truth where focuses on the importance of going inside one’s own mind for answers and healing. The film follows Zappy and his friends, including actress Michelle Rodriguez as they attempt to expand their consciousness using ancient techniques. Throughout their journey, they are guided by top thought leaders including Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Dr. Drew, Marianne Williamson, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and Joel Osteen.
We talked about many topics:
- His journey from the pursuit of achievement to the pursuit of fulfillment
- His path of finding alignment
- The one surprising advice, Joel Osteen, gave him regarding psychedelic advocacy
- His various experiences with ayahuasca, San Pedro, iboga, ketamine
- His case studies these tools have at the individual level, organizational level, and societal level
- and more.
For the leaders who have achieved success and are seeking more fulfillment, this is an interview you don’t want to miss.
ps. Leave us a 5-star review if you enjoy this episode bit.ly/noblewarriorreview
Today’s guest is Philip Folsom, he an anthropologist, culture development expert, veteran, and CEO of Wolf Tribe.
We covered many topics in the next 90 minutes:
- From his origin story of overcoming his own wounds and addictions to discovering his unique path and gifts to share with individuals and companies.
- We talked about the difference between legit and illegitimate suffering
- We talked about the seasonability of our lives; when to expand opportunities/learnings and when to limit opportunities/people/learnings
- We talked about the difference between being a prince who is all about self-serving and being a king who is all about other serving
- We talked about how to hire A-players based on competency and warmth
- Finally, we also talked about the 3 master maps Philip has collected to help him guide individuals and companies to navigate their hero’s journey.
I hope you guys love this conversation as much as I did. Philip is one of the most grounded guides in the southern California area.
Jason Earle is a serial entrepreneur, environmental consultant and healthy home expert. In his current incarnation, he’s the founder/CEO of 1-800-GOT-MOLD? and MycoLab USA. A childhood burdened by allergies and asthma, caused by a moldy home environment, led him into the business in 2002, after escaping a nine-year career on Wall Street.
We talked about:
- How he became the youngest licensed Wall Street stockbroker (and set a Guinness World Record for it)
- How he found the mold removal business (starting from zero) and got massive media exposure soon after
- What he learned from overcoming adversity (specifically his mom's suicide, depression, and Lyme disease)
- How to observe your pain to liberate yourself
- How to be honest yourself as an entrepreneur (market opportunity, internal doubting voice, external challenges, cost on your relationships, cost on your health, etc)
- How to pursue discomfort as a path for personal and entrepreneurial growth
- What morning routine is and why he doesn't beat himself up if he doesn't do it 100%
- How he filters all opportunities to focus on his X-factor?
Entrepreneurs are often deeply frustrated that they aren't where they want to be financially.
BUT here is the thing, looking to get fulfillment by achievement is like looking to fuel the body by eating dessert.
If you have trouble meditating, here is a book that helped me grok the idea of meditation. When I began to meditate, I had trouble sitting for 8 minutes because my mind was so busy. Now I can turn down the chatters in my mind at will.
3X Tai Chi World Champion, Jan Lucanus coaches Tai Chi as a human performance tool. Tai Chi is an ancient Chinese martial art. In regards to ancient teachings, we are reframing older language to suit the modern mind. Jan works with top athletes, CEOs, and those seeking access to practical power in daily life.
Pleasure and s3x is a fundamental part of being human but how do you cultivate the right skills in this area?
Top sexologist, Genevieve, shared her roadmap to be a superior lover. We talked about female organisms, altered states of consciousness, erotic blueprint, and why it is relevant to purpose and flow.
We talked about:
- The multitude of pleasure is possible for both men and women
- Her daily practice to open up the body
- How to move through psychosomatic pain with pleasure
- The purpose of s3x and what makes one a superior lover.
- How to commune with your higher self through self-pleasure
- How do we get rid of the concept that we need someone/something outside ourselves to be our biggest selves?
- How to cultivate conscious masculine and feminine within yourself for more prosperity
- Sign of your kundalini awakening
- And many more
LINKS
- IG
- LinkTree
- If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a few moments to leave us a review so others like you can find this, too. Go to, http://bit.ly/noblewarriorreview
- Chat with CK on http://www.chatwithck.com
Retired Air Force Colonel, Jim Donihee shared his multinational and operational leadership experience having served as a fighter pilot in NATO operations and how he translates those leadership skills to lead through multi-billion dollar mergers and turnarounds.
We Talked About:
- Galvanize your executive team and operationalize proven tactics to deliver mission accomplishment
- The pursuit of freedom and adventure
- Demonstrating fair treatment to scale trust in the org
- Execution of tasks without ego
- Skill and joy as measures of suitability
- Money is a shallow motivator
- The ear of performance vs. the expectation of performance
- Letting people go with dignity and grace
- The key question to ask when it comes to change management?
Quotes
- “In the military, you have duty of care for your people 24/7.” they can only operate at 100% when they know their loved ones are well cared for
- “The way you foster trust in your organization when you let people go is by overtly demonstrating that these people are have been treated fairly. The manner you let people go will set a tone in your culture.”
- “If you look after the people and you demonstrate your commitment to them, then you’ll earn their respect and loyalty and they’ll go through the thick and thin with you”
- “If your key tool is money, everyone else can pay the same or more money. It’s a shallow motivator. It’s not going to develop the allegiance, kinship for the organization you want to develop”
Links
- If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a few moments to leave us a review so others like you can find this, too. Go to, http://bit.ly/noblewarriorreview
- Chat with CK on http://www.chatwithck.com
Life has ups and downs. And we often forget that we are not defined by the outcomes of successes or failures. Rather, we are defined by who we are on the inside and how we be in the moment. And more people need to see beyond the glossy highlight reels on social media. This week, I have Anas Ghazi on my podcast to talk about falling down and getting up in life.
We talked about:
- His daily ritual to maintain gratitude
- Exercise your resilience muscle
- How internal awareness makes you a better leader leadership
- The direct relationship between empathy and loyalty
- Drawing out the skills rather than finding similar values
- His rules of picking the right bosses
- How to create resonance
- How to create value for anyone in any organization?
Links
- The 5 Minute Journal
- If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a few moments to leave us a review so others like you can find this, too. Go to, http://bit.ly/noblewarriorreview
- Chat with CK on http://www.chatwithck.com
When you are centered at the core of your being, true actions that are resolute and impactful arise. That is the WarriorSage philosophy. In this episode, be enlightened by Satyen Raja, gifted mentor and the Founder and CEO of WarriorSage. Satyen opens up about his childhood yearnings that started his path of truth-seeking that led him to a fascination for Eastern wisdom. He discusses his unique ability to see people and individuals for who they are and who they can be and teaches how you can find your truth and awaken the warrior in you. Satyen emphasizes having successfully guided leaders and influencers and how you live your life speaks louder than any lectures you create.
We talked about:
- Our greatest wounds are the sources of our greatest gift
- Finding your truth vs. living your truth.
- Discern contact versus projection on where people are
- Mastery and a lifelong cultivation
- Meditation and the dulling of our edges
- Masculine consciousness and the illusion of completion
- The dissolution of polarities
- The power of the question: “who am I?”
- Plant medicine ceremonies as the conscious learning dojos
- What’s transcendent leadership?
- Growing our gravitas in the world
- And more…
Quotable quotes
- “Find the true measure within to make the impact one has.”
- “The past is memory and the future is imagination. We might as well craft our imagination.”
- “Struggle is effort laced with negative emotion.”
- “Integration is a way of life. Awakening is a way of life. Action is a way of life.”
- “It’s better to be humble all the time than to be humiliated all at once.”
- “When you’re clear with who you are, you’ll be more in the driver’s seat of your life and empowered in your choices.”
- “We fill the room with who we are, not with our identities.”
- WarriorSage is where we use the things that are antagonistic in life to bring us enlightenment.
- Enlightenment to me means ultimately going from struggle into silent power and then flowing with reality in a very useful, joyful and ecstatic way.
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Listen to the podcast here: The Warrior Philosophy With Satyen Raja I’m excited to have my teacher, Satyen Raja, with me. I met Satyen many years ago. Who he is to me is an embodied teacher. Not only he has a wealth of wisdom, depth of knowledge and all kinds of domain expertise, but he also embodies his teaching from the place of masculinity, spirituality and entrepreneurship. All kinds of ways to live a fully aligned life, mind, body, heart and spirit. Thank you so much for being on the show, Satyen.
CK, thank you so much.
Why don’t we start off with a quote that was quoted in training? You had said, “Our biggest wounds are the source of our biggest gifts.” If you don’t mind walking us back to your origin story, what were your biggest wounds as you’re growing up, which in turn, became your biggest gift and your biggest superpowers? That would be an amazing start for us.
First, it was the feeling of being very out sorts and not fitting into life. I’m feeling very alienated and not fitting into the Western culture.
How were you feeling at that time?
Right from the beginning, I am somehow feeling alienated. I have a very loving family, yet the schooling and watching TV, these things felt very unreal to me. I didn’t have words for it. It felt that way. The loneliness was my core wound. It’s not being seen, wanting to have my parents who were very devoted and hardworking traditional Indian family business people. They had their businesses, the highs and lows of all of that. With all the energy it takes to run home-based businesses all their life, I felt that I’m not getting the attention I wanted. I was yearning for something deeper. I didn’t have words for it, but I can understand that’s what it was.
What happened was I came across seeing Kung Fu with David Carradine and Bruce Lee, which lit me on fire. I saw this temple image, a place where people can come and dedicate themselves to a lifestyle of empowerment, spiritual order, mastering of self and mastering of relationship with existence. That lit me up. I felt that was the way I wanted to walk. I knew that was my home, even though I knew it’s TV and mythic and entertainment. I had a sense that there must be something like this still on the planet. This quality of depth that was expressed to this Eastern wisdom, these spiritual fables, these metaphorical allegorical stories that awaken in ways that elicit wisdom. This path of truth-seeking became the fire that was lit.
What were some of the first steps that were pivotal in a way to find your own truth? I want to preface that question with this. A lot of times we hear people say, “Follow your bliss, find your truth.” “I definitely want to do that.” “Love yourself more.” But how do you do that? I would say that’s one of the hardest things to do in our lifetime, to define our own truth, live your own truth and then live it fully without pretense. Share with us some of the pivotal points that you had.
In some of the great wisdom teachings that I was privy to, dove into, studied and thirsted for, a lot of it points to a state of beingness where one starts to surrender the desire for some type of outcome. What I did was I started that being sense. I also came into this power of the warrior philosophy. The warrior philosophy at its core is that there are true actions that arise from when one is centered at the core of their being. Those actions tend to be very resolute, clean, not complicated and simple. They have a strong effect on life in reality. This capacity within us of the warrior, I saw as a very valuable piece to cultivate to awaken. That warrior to me also represented not just fighting truth but living truth, aligned with whatever truth one discovers. It’s not about more truth, discovering some type of esoteric truth. What about the truth of how I am aligned with my life, my relationships, my friends and myself? It doesn’t have to be so extrapolated. You can start with, “How honest am I?” The truth doesn’t have to be some metaphysical far off idea.
Some abstract idea.
“How honest am I? How real am I? How much distortion in what I’m saying? How much do I over-speak, under-speak? How much am I expressing too much and letting go of silence power that’s within me?” Sometimes we blabbed too much. Sometimes we don’t speak our voice enough. To me, the path of the water was the path that says, “Find the true measure within to make the impact one has.”
Can you elaborate on that?
I believe that this core wound that we talked about, for me, it was not being felt and seen. I’ve made the rest of my life dedicated to seeing people’s core wounds and seeing them for their superpowers. I thrive. I become very excited by life. I feel I’m in my path when I see people and I see what they’re capable of. What their mastery is, what their inherent, full capacity of fulfillment can be. I see them as they are without any limitations. In seeing that, to me, that’s an exhilarating path to walk upon. The past is like a memory and the future is imagination. We might as well craft our imagination.
How do you discern what’s available versus your projection of these people? If you do it in an immature way, then you’re not being sympathetic or empathetic to my wounds or my difficulties. How do you discern in that space?
It’s so valuable to have a heart connection to contact someone’s heart first. If you’re in a position of leadership, guidance, giving a reflection in any professional way, then it’s important that you set aside your agenda. You feel at least at an intent level. How can I be of service to this person’s evolution? You allow the screen within to be blank. You surrender all the things that you think you need to know and then you’d come into true contact with who’s with you. You allow the rest of the universe to fade away when I tried to do it. There’s just myself and them, bare-naked with truth in full contact and I see them. What I’ve come to discover is that the very thing I wanted most to be seen happens to be the gift that I can offer the best.
I believe that it is our inherent capacity in every single one of us. Whoever’s reading this, whatever you did not get enough of, I know what behind that and if you haven’t discovered it already, many of you have already discovered that if you give that gift, you transmute it. You alchemize it in consciousness. You stop the endless seeking as all the great masters have said. They all point to this truth that excessive seeking always backfires. It always allows the butterfly to stay one step ahead of landing on your shoulder. You’re always pushing and exerting. My teacher, Stewie, they said to me once, “Struggle is effort laced with negative emotion.” Action is required, but it doesn’t have to be filled with heroics. It doesn’t have to be filled with valiant energies of victory over woe. It doesn’t have to be inspired by feats of revenge or one-upmanship or any of this. It’s pure, clean action born from the center of spirit with it.
One of the common responses that a lot of people who are reading this or wondering should they or should they not do meditation, their concern is, “I don’t want to dull my edge.”
It’s a real thing. It’s a real concern. Your edge will dull.
Can you say more about that?
Whatever edge you think is going to get dull, it’s going to get dull. If you think it’s the crush it thrives, keep making it bust all walls down until you attain your goal without no quarter, then it’s a very powerful energy to cultivate in one’s life. I believe that do or die, there is no backdoor. I succeed in spite of my fear. This is a very powerful mindset to develop as well as an attitude, especially earlier on in life. If we don’t have that, if we haven’t cultivated earlier on in life, somehow we feel we haven’t fulfilled that make it by our own brow energy. That particular aspect within us is very good to exercise it in healthy ways. In ways that are symbiotically balanced, that are in good relationship with your family, your health, your time management, your time with nature and existence. If it becomes too extreme, all the great wisdom teachings always share that there’s some type of balancing force that occurs when one is excessively yang towards any outcome.
WarriorSage Philosophy: When you’ve set aside your agenda and intentionally asked yourself how you can be of service to another person’s evolution, only then you’ll come into true contact with his or her full potential for growth. I believe this is inherited already within us, this knowingness. Our life is a reflection of the degree of our equilibrium or out-of-kilterness. The thing about the beauty of life, to me, the joy of life, it’s like one of these circus acts where there are these sticks and poles with the spinning plates on top. You’ve got to go around and spin all the plates. If you lose attention to the ones on the end, they’ll start wobbling, too much and eventually fall. You’ll see the more artistry, humor, and joy one can turn it into spinning plates into an incredible act that inspires all. The aspects of life are upon us. We can make art out of it or we can struggle if we run around. Struggling happens when we don’t pay attention and keep moving through the plates of life and touch them with the essence, with enough force, not too much. Touch them in the right amount of order and ultimately becomes effortless.
This is not a binary thing. It’s a lifelong cultivation. There’s no arrival at mastery. There’s no arrival at integration. Integration is a way of life. Awakening is a way of life. Action is a way of life. When we realize there’s another fallacy within our consciousness, it’s a trick in consciousness. That trick as some would call the masculine consciousness, the striving consciousness or the attainment consciousness that believes, “Sooner or later when I achieve X, Y, and Z, I will be finally free. All have arrived. I can finally do what I wanted to do and have the time with my family. Have the time to meditate. Have the time to do the deeper explorations and being.” When in fact, those are the hilarious things that you need to do now to generate the time. It’s absolutely ass backwards. We must be the freedom first to transmit and generate experiences of freedom. The freedom that’s one will be lost. The only thing that will be awakened within us temporarily is the highs and lows of some value to win. Some picking ourselves up from the bottom and the units of life force that extreme gives us until it’s no longer needed until we realize, “I’m playing this game. I don’t have to be stuck in this antagonistic duality of success and lost.”
One of the biggest takeaways from the five-day training that we had was the importance of integration. As you said, “Often in the rollercoaster of life, the highest of highs, the lowest of lows is when we get the most juice and the biggest lessons.” In reality, you don’t need to wait until you hit those maximum points or minimum points. It’s in the moment when you spin the plate, you create that dynamic balance to truly integrate so you can operate from the space of equanimity. I appreciate that because in my mind, even though intellectually I understood, I didn’t have the actual processes other than meditation. That takes a long time and it doesn’t always come. I can’t be at ayahuasca ceremonies every day. How do you actually concretize that and make it assessable every day?
This is what we’ve been diving into. This body of work that was crafted by many great teachers of mine to Yogeshwar Muni, Charles Berner. Other mentors, systems, philosophies and consciousness-raising methods we’ve assembled and we have crafted it in a way that is easily accessible, duplicatable and can enter our way of beingness. For me, the living of these principles is the real testimony of we can be the demonstration of our own values, virtues, and wholeness. It’s not about following anything than the imprint of your highest right now. That’s what we’ve been focusing on access. Developing our ability to go into it over into these higher states of consciousness. If you will, modes of turbo, psycho, spiritual, meditative absorption, they take us into high states from our very problems. To me, it’s a very simple path where we use the things that are antagonistic in life to bring us enlightenment. Enlightenment to me means ultimately going from struggle into silent power and then flowing with reality in a very useful, joyful and ecstatic way.
For you, will the benchmark of an embodied master be under any circumstances embody the joy and aliveness?
It is not necessarily. It’s absolutely signature and unique.
Can you say more about that?
We have individuals you’ve seen here that when they start letting go and integrate their greatest fears, the obstacles that are holding them back from the action that they need to take forward in the world, whatever psycho-spiritual obstacle and it’s transformed within minutes. They might be even more exuberant. They might have been repressed in their anger. They might feel, “What are we doing to the children? What are we doing in the forest?” They’re true anger, the rage that’s coming from their hearts might come forth. It might bubble over and be strong, but after a while, it’ll become even more powerful. It will turn into a gift through strong evocative communication that penetrates the stiffness and the numbness of people’s hearts and souls.
The self-expression may be different based on the individual. In your case, you have that warrior way of being. In somebody else, maybe joyous. In somebody else, maybe bitter and angry in a way that awakens people.
Our personality structure I feel is either for us or against us. All the layers and all the angles and directions of the multiplicity of identities were carried forth animating our true self through the identities of, “I am worthy. I’m not worthy. Father, do you love me? Father, I’m lovable. Mother, leave me alone. Mother, I can do it on my own.” All these particular identities but even though we’re carrying around. We bring them out. We’re living through them with our bosses, children, colleagues, friends, educators and ourselves. It’s a madhouse of identities. When we come to ourselves, which is the essential perennial wisdom, no one can own that. No one can trademark that. No one can have any magical formula for that. What we do have is a capacity to come into union with the truth of ourselves quickly and rapidly.
The past is like a memory and the future is an imagination. You might as well craft your imagination.
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What are some of the benchmarks I’ve touched a moment to myself, my own truth?
In the Zen traditions, we carry that forth in one of our kensho processes. Kensho, the meaning from the Zen tradition of self-inquiry through contemplations taken on inquiring life parables. What is the meaning of life? Who am I? What am I? There are many of them, but those are essential life questions that many of us have. When you take on the question, “Who am I?” One of the essential realizations is that one is the self. I am me but it’s not an idea. It doesn’t come with, “Here’s what I am and here’s what my career is. Here’s what my job is. Here are my roles in life.” It’s something that is prior, post and transcendent to any roles, relationships, juxtapositions, vias, sense, spiritual extrapolations, dimensions, fairies, goddesses, gods and any Cleopatras. It is what the greats have talked about that cannot be spoken about.
What it is to me is absolutely real and that’s one of the foundational things to get is, “Who am I?” When you get that, then whatever work you’re doing, if you’re a carpenter, you will be a greater carpenter. If you’re a mother, you will be a greater mother. You’ll be more in the driver’s seat of your life. You’re not going to be acting out of identities. You’re going to be acting out and you’ll be able to be more empowered in your choice. To me, those are the foundational kenshos. It’s not a permanent state of awakening. They are dips into the absolute of self and we can build on that by having that flavor, that vibration and that taste of truth but we build on that. If we realize I am me, then stop living like you’re somebody else. That’s how you live that life. Stop trying to live someone else’s dream of you, the society’s dream of you, your wife, your husband’s dream, your expectations of anyone else. What is my expectation of myself? That is the power of who am I.
In the moment rather than from my past or inherited from my parents.
From my new state of knowing who I am, unqualified bear against existence. That’s the, “Who am I?” experience. This can expand and mature, “What am I?” It can be very multidimensional and very cosmic in certain ways. These experiences aren’t the truth itself. They’re experiences. Those are the terms that we use are always limited. We all know this. If we were to play with language for artistry’s sake, as poets do, then we can say that what am I can be expressed as everything and nothingness. Some point out where everything and some point out where nothing. Some will get that their everything nothingness and some people would get the nothing of everything-ness. This is where all the language and duality all fall away and then it becomes truth itself. When others have touched that nectar and you’ve touched that nectar, there’s a tacit knowing you can be in contact with that truth that goes beyond.
There is a lot of directions we can go. You had talked about your superpower, the ability to see people, individuals for who they are and who they can be and their gift to give. I will also say one of your superpowers as well as your experiences to be able to identify fellow embodied teachers. What are some of the ways or benchmark? How do you know you have met another master?
Look at everyone in the eyes that you see for the next month and see them as a master.
You don’t limit them for whatever the identity may be. Just see them as a master.
The world needs us to all be masters at play. You are a master at your craft. I have only started knowing the touch of you. I heard that you’re an exemplary dancer. I had no idea. You have never mentioned that to me. Here’s a whole domain of your beauty that I have not even touched and one day, I look forward to seeing. It’s a very good thing. My martial art teacher said to me, “Satyen, it’s better to be humble all the time than to be humiliated all at once.” It’s good to learn. Absorb what’s useful, discard what’s not but you also got to be discerning. In this day and age where bullying can be confused as depth or sing-song and dance can be a detraction and distraction, illusion and delusion from the embodiment of living the truth. It’s very captivating and seductive the things on the path of growth.
Let us jam on that for a moment. You’re a teacher. As a teacher, how would you like to measure or discern the impact you make in the world or do you even care about that?
WarriorSage Philosophy: When you’re clear with who you are, you’ll be more in the driver’s seat of your life and empowered in your choices. We’ve been here together and I’m remembering, we had people from 25 years that have known me, work with me and have been my family and friends from everyone brand new to different generations. I was struck by that because I was feeling what’s the impact? Quite frankly, I like to keep my nose to the ground and keep stepping forward. I know my personality. I have a strong personality. The alpha energetic and whatever predilections I have. I saw what’s human desire? It says I’m a manifester. I think the shadow side of that is what I’ve lived through in my life, which is the shadow of sex, power and money within all of us.
I’m a practitioner first and foremost. To me, there’s only being a practitioner. We’re all students and teachers, every one of us. I’m open to everyone and I also love to study for people. I’ve never found anyone perfect. There are a few that are absolutely bastardly, but most people are a combination of screwed up and brilliant. For me, the discernment is to absorb what’s useful added to my repertoire. If I see aspects in teachers that don’t match me anymore, I look for it within myself and I try to clean that up. I’ve had to and I keep doing it. I don’t think there’s any arrival. The I Ching was a very powerful teaching for me. It’s the Book of Changes from the Chinese philosophy.
One of the hexagrams points to the fact that the superior man, woman, even if they go to the heights of their own power, a ruler, a king, a CEO, a leader of a company, their leader of their own business, leader of their family, it’s very easy to get diluted by your own self-knowledge, by your own wisdom that you’ve come to, by your own knowledge, by your own success, you can become diluted. It’s valuable to have other peers who can keep you in a powerful Sunga. A community where someone can say, “These are your gifts my brother, my sister, my friend. This is perhaps the shadows to be aware of that I see in you.” We’ve listened to that with authenticity. We take it in and we continue to hone ourselves. The consciousness Dojo. It’s not about neurotically self-improving. This forwarding action also has to be sourced and everything is perfect, which is always the paradox. Rather than fight the paradox of being or doing, we can become active in the spectrum of the same thing. To me, it’s the same. There’s no separation between being and doing.
The origin of question, even mentioning all of that, the benchmarking, the impact of measurement and all these other things is I may say, “In order to make the impact I want to make in the world, let me play these games of marketing and games such that they become my students. Once I hook them with what they want, then I’ll give them what they need.”
There’s a valid truth in all of that.
What is your point of view on this?
You’re going to attract the people that are moved by that. If you want people who are moved by that, those are the types of people you’re going to get. It’s like a childhood game of Snakes and Ladders. There are ladders and snakes that take you up to another level. If you hit one of the snakes, it may take you down again. A bunch of people is playing to get all the way to the end. There are snakes and ladders along the way. In a way, the growth is like that. You go up, you make a fall. You learn again. It’s not linear. It’s a very holistic lifetime approach.
Do you measure it and do you use the techniques, tactics, even though they may be inauthentic to you?
For me, the first thing to cultivate is congruency with how one lives their life. There’s a beautiful, strong warrior sage man, Memnon brother. He has a very strong Facebook page. Someone asked him, “Memnon, will you put these other podcasts? Will you make these shares more?” He says, “My weapon is not my words. My weapon is how I live my life.” The way we can live our life, if we know inside ourselves are congruent with our own innermost truth, then that settling within ourselves allows us to have less the desire to project images. Evocative, provocative or seductive images.
There is no need for that.
It's better to be humble all the time than to be humiliated all at once.
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What happens is over true self fills the screen with who we are. We fill the room with who we are, not with our identities. We fill over communication channels with who we are. We go away from contrivance and the formulation and move deeper into contact from self to others. To me, the term God is plural and singular. It’s the multiplicity of all of us combined as well as the singularity of the unity of the oneness. The word team is singular and plural. I believe all of us together, we are one and we are plural and many. We could hold that unity of these seeming opposites and we don’t have to fight these seeming opposites when we can embrace it. From there, what happens is we can make an impact that goes deeper into people’s souls and hearts. It impacts them deeper than the superficial layers of the mind or brain or their aversion or attraction imprints.
We start moving beyond that and we start touching their souls, touching their being. To do that, we have to be in touch with our being and speak into their being direct. What I find is the architecture, the models of how the communication flow happens become very unique and artistic into oneself. It starts to flourish and move. You find your cadence of delivery. You find your nuance of choice of topic. You mature with the movement, but you’ve got to keep acting. If you’re always trying to line up the ducks, wisdom would say they’ll keep always moving out of order.
You’ll always be waiting. I’m changing the subject a little bit. There are different technologies out there. In your training, you shared with me some powerful methodologies to integrate clarities and negative charges. There are also plant medicine. Are you open to talk about that? In what situations do you use one plant medicine or other plant medicines versus some other ones? You have this vast set of tools that you use at your disposal.
Whenever I have people for a longer period of time and they’re committed to a longer-term program of transformation and up-leveling, whatever they wish the transformation, I’ll bring in plant medicines in the context of a greater whole of practices. I have found that plant medicines on their own can be very valuable and transformative. In the context of pre-work and post-work and continuing to integrate the life lessons, which can be many coming on of a ceremony into these beautiful dimensions in consciousness. Also, the camaraderie, the holding of a collective container of other heart connected individuals that are growing together and continuing practice like a Dojo. In that context, I find that plant medicine goes beyond a healer, therapeutic, transformational type of a starting point. It starts to become a personal trainer.
You take on the goddess existence. However you’re anthropomorphization or how you see that reality show up, it becomes a training ground for the warrior sage within you. You go in Neo into this world where you’re developing, “Can I jump from this building to the other building?” Neo doubts himself in this world, but he goes into that alternate reality to drill his faith, his belief, and his inner consciousness development. I believe that’s what we can do ultimately with these medicines. They can go beyond as remedies and move into profound, exquisite training Dojos for us who are in leadership positions. Those of us who have done a lot of inner work for themselves. In context, utilizing these accelerated evolution methods, I like to use those to eliminate the psychological and emotional barriers that people have before they go into plant medicine journeys. The obvious ones, the ones that are most triggering, the ones that are on the surface, the ones that people know of.
The ones within their realm of awareness.
By taking them through those, it becomes a harmonious field of being that starts to grow in oneself. The charges now become opportunities. They become potential. They become choice-potentizers. It’s the calling back of the lost units of attention to recapitulate the energy and to pull back from where you have hooks. The Hawaiians call this the Aka Cords. Where are you having attachments that are leaking your life force? Some would call it vampiric energy-sucking you. Where have you got some unconscious game or arrangement of disempowering yourself while you’re empowering some type of entity? Some would call it the lost aspects of my soul. There’s this fragmented aspect of the soul within consciousness, within this sphere is of infinite reality. Calling over soul back into full union with all of our parts so we will become integrated a whole. This is what we’ve been doing. I believe we have the power in our hands to do this in a very rapid way as you’ve experienced. To me, it’s extremely rapid, very deep and one can self-administer. My personal mission is to empower us as leaders to be able to have the self-administering as well as very rapid ways of transforming groups that we’re working with.
I’m a technologist. I’m a little more affinity for technology. As a technology maker, I also know that I become keenly aware of the limitation of the tools that we have. Not everything is a nail if have a hammer. Within that, these spiritual technologies are very powerful and there are also limitations to it because requires physical contact and a skilled facilitator to deliver such transformation, such benefits to a group of people. There are other technologies like artificial intelligence or machine learning type things or software. The internet is an example. Possibly as a way to multiply the number of people you can impact, but maybe not at the depth of a skilled facilitator. I’m curious to know as this is your mission to make an impact in the world, to alleviate people of suffering, negative charges. What is your thought about using some of these technologies, machine learning, all these other things as a way to deliver more breath?
I’m 110% I’m all for it. I was influenced by Timothy Leary’s writings. He shared in some way that we’re continuously moving more to a technological or the wheel was a technology. We’ve advanced far more than the wheel, but that’s an advanced technology before there was a wheel. The same as a stone. It was a technology when we all we knew was our hands. We have this incredible leap, computer science and all that means all these. We’re still out of the gates. Timothy spoke about and the way I took it as if we’re spirit as an example, divine individuals with choice, then even our body-minds are biological technology, but nonetheless, technology. Rather than resist technological change, rather than think, “That’s technological and against the path of nature.” What if the technology is the outgrowing and continuous what we call electrical, chemical, mechanical, computer or artificial, can be attributed to these non-organic worlds?
What if those are also extensions of consciousness? I believe that we are continuously evolving as a being, which has the capacity to experience itself through infinite forms of vias, some being the eyes, the senses, touch and taste. Now, they will be subtler. I’m all for technology. I feel what’s also valuable with the technology of all the great wisdom points from Oppenheimer to Einstein. They’ve all shared that we must continue to create our technology and keep the flame of wisdom strong. The legend of Atlantis, whether it’s real or not, the legend is that it fell from its grace because the technology advanced further than the wisdom, love and unity. That’s a possibility that we are also in the same place.
WarriorSage Philosophy: Eliminate any psychological or emotional barriers you have before going into plant medicine journeys. One of the Trans-Tech founders said, “We make what we are.” If we are not as conscious or aware, then there are ramifications times 100, 1,000, 10,000, one million, one billion.
Our ability to destroy the world is magnified greatly as leaders. Our ability to create magnificence is magnified many-fold. I wish in my heart that all leaders, anyone who’s in any business position, who has the joy of creation, any artists, anyone who is in the realm of helping others come together and have more wholesome lines. I wish for us to be fully on the bandwagon with that and enlighten ourselves. Don’t just say we’re all in this. Get to the point where our enlightened brings us together in unified action. I feel that’s what is the masterful creation we can do. We can go from individual success to collective success, not because we’re left-wing oriented but because we’re in adventures of the spirit.
It’s ecstatic and it feels good to do so and we can now. The main areas to focus on, for me as a leader, I’ve seen the most valuable is the awakening of our inner power to illuminate and to awaken any egoic threads of power within us. Transmute it until we are exuding and living from enlightened power. We do the same with our sexual energy and power, which is the source of our creative life force. We see the darkness of trapped, repressed and distorted sexual energy all across the media. In some ways, it’s very good that this is happening so that we can see that the shadow side that’s lurking within us. We can blame and point fingers, but at the same time, let’s clean up those propensities within us. I feel that when we have awakened this aspect within us, over sexual power, but enlightenment connected to our heart, soul, ecstasy or divine connection, this force that can go sideways and can topple us can also be very beneficial for the creative fullness of reality.
There’s the flow of exchange that we call money. It’s the relationship of exchange, which I’m saying is money. For me, it’s the honoring of what I am, who I am, what I have to cultivate and gift to the world and how I share that honoring with you. How do we do that in an honorable, noble way that’s sourced and grounded in the symbiotic relationship that this planet, that the earth plane is designed for? Not away from our symbiotic nature. Our systems, personal governance of our exchange mechanisms from old paradigms to new going from Fiat money currency systems, all the way into cryptocurrency and new forms of relationships of exchange and sovereignty. How we as sovereign beings can create not functional worlds, but ecstatic noble Camelot realities. I believe that’s what we’re at the cusp of and that’s the ultimate invitation.
Another one of your intentions as a way to focus your energy because you can do a million different things and what you do as a creative genius that you are. One of your key focus areas is the empowerment of bringing that conscious leadership into being. To focus on conscious organizations. You call it transcendent leadership. One, why leaders versus a billion commoners? Two, how do you do that in organizations?
My dharma is to take those who are already making an impact. Dial them up, shore them up, get them strong. Pull out the weeds, clean up the internal sphere and find out their sword. What is their sword? What is their weaponry? Sharpen the sword. Train them in some new moves and get them back out on the planet. Everyone has their own system and things to offer. We’re sages by nature. We’re not clickers or followers. We have developed ourselves. We have one foot in the metaphysical, one foot in this real world. Transcendent to me means as a leader above and beyond the ordinary, above and beyond the normal paradigms, going beyond.
Transcendent leadership for me, I feel it’s the salvation of this planet. I believe that we as leaders, in front of us, me and you, whoever’s reading, you’ve got how many people behind you that you’re making an impact in. How you live your life is making an impact on those people. They’re being influenced. How I’m living my life is impacting how my children live, what they think. How my daughter thinks a man should be and not be. My son, how a good man should be, a father should be or not. It doesn’t matter what I’ve taught my kids is what I’ve realized. It doesn’t matter what I’ve taught them, what philosophy I have. They don’t care about any of my stuff. My kids don’t listen to me. They don’t care about anything I say. They don’t listen to any of my talks, my lectures and my podcast. My wife doesn’t care for it at all either. How I live my life, that’s what they look at.
That speaks louder than anything else.
They’re coming back and I’m not hearing it from them directly. I’ll hear it from a friend of theirs, a friend of a friend how they spoke about their father. How they spoke about their mother. Some lessons that we had shared or some life experience. I didn’t even know that they would even say that about us. They would never say it to my face or maybe don’t think about it. How many life lessons have you had that our fathers and mothers have given us, our teachers and our influencers? We are beings of influence. Influence needs to be 100%, not 99%. Enlightened leadership, transcendent leadership to me means awakening these potentialities. Coming into our vision and highest power. What is the power within us? What is our deepest why or vision of our mission? This is perennial wisdom. This is not new. Activating our heart, what do we love most? How can we generate the most love in our life? Treating love is value. It is a way of life. Freedom, creating freedom for ourselves and others. True freedom, freedom from the constraints of life.
Flow, where are we as leaders? Stumbling, bumbling, dropping up and down, hitting resistances, exasperated, putting out fires all the time. These are charges within ourselves that need to be looked at, addressed and integrated to bring flow back into her life. Wisdom, making sure we’re surrounding ourselves with consciously activated peers. Those who are supporting their own in your sovereignty, our healthy, honest and clear reflections and co-coaches arising together. I believe when we have power, love, freedom, flow, wisdom and we attend to these plates in consciousness within ourselves and me, we make it a path to cultivate. What starts to happen is there’s a quickening. There’s a whole physical, mental, emotional and spiritual quickening when we attend to these foundational aspects of our being. Our gravitas grows in the world. As leaders, that’s how we make the greatest impact and that can’t be done from the surface.
How you live your life is what other people look at. It speaks louder than any lectures, podcasts, or books you make.
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Any tactical disciplines that one can take on to grow one’s gravitas?
Feel into a goal that you want as a leader what you want to manifest in the world that you wish to bring forth. If anyone would like to do this, you can do it with me. As a leader within you, what is something truly in your heart that you wish to bring forth and make happen? When you have something, declare into this space. When you declare that into the space, notice, that’s an identity you have. You’re in an identity. What’s the identity? For me, it’s one who makes an impact. In that identity, there’s a goal to that identity. What’s the goal of this identity to make an impact?
To empower everyone to live the best life they can.
Mine is to see points of light awakening like a grid around the planet is a visual I got. Let’s fulfill that goal. Whatever yours is at home reading this, fulfill that goal. Imagine the goal of this identity is absolutely realized in a team. If you can go into that and embody that 100%, 99% we’ll get it. When you’re there given acknowledgment and rest and stabilize in the state of consciousness. You will find yourself in a new identity. What identity do you find yourself in? I’ve been the one who’s fulfilled in mission.
Be an example of what’s possible.
My friend at home, what identity are you in? What’s the ultimate goal of this identity? For me, being the fulfilled one, the ultimate goal is to rest. Rest and know that everything is in order. What’s yours?
For me is to be a positive catalyst to heaven on earth.
Whenever yours is, all of us, let’s fulfill that altogether. Wherever we are in time, space and location, let’s all fulfill this goal together. Whatever your individual goal of this identity is. They are stabilizing this goal being fulfilled, 98%, 99% won’t cut it. You got to go there and generate it to 100%. How would you breathe? How would you live? How would you stay in that stage of beingness? What identity are you in? I’m just in myself, my essence.
It is the same here.
Expand this state of being in all directions. This is gravitas. This is the depth of being. You can allow yourself to let this exude in all directions. If you will visualize, see, feel however you go into this. Your highest seed as a leader is the gift you have to bring from this place. What’s the action to take to move forward? One action and declare that. In honesty and know that what you say, if you could make your word law, then you’ll have gonged the big cosmic gong that reverberates through existence. You make your word the law. What do you declare to do, to act from this place of leadership? I declare I continue this path of the Warrior Sage.
WarriorSage Philosophy: Make sure you are surrounding yourself with conscious and activated peers who are supportive, healthy, honest and clear. I declare it to be this way with everyone I meet, especially with my podcast guests.
Our friends at home, what do you declare? Wherever we are in time and space, let’s all celebrate each other. This is happening to people in the whole places. Join in the etheric and the place where we cheer each other on in our noble passions and missions.
I acknowledge you, Satyen, for your presence, for your wisdom, with the depth of who you are. For all the beautiful teachings from all different kinds of domains that you are able to share with us so generously to the people will read this. Thank you. To our audience, dive into Satyen’s words. His energy and the way that he communicates his mastery. He’s a transformational artist in the best case, a master. Let’s do this a few times. Let us know what impact it’s made on you, your way of being, your discipline and in your mastery. Thank you.
Important Links: * Satyen Raja * WarriorSage * Book of Changes
About Satyen Raja
Satyen Raja is known as the private transformational mentor, advisor and confidant to the powerful and influential. A remarkable living synthesis of eastern wisdom and western practicality, Satyen combines the power of the warrior and wisdom of the sage to inspire audiences & leaders worldwide into their highest impact and personal fulfillment.
Having invested 35 years of rigorous study & practice in both creating enlightened business growth and developing higher consciousness, he is the leading authority on expanding success while serving the greater good without sacrificing the joys of personal life.
Satyen has impacted over 100,000 students from over 50 countries around the world through his global human potential company, WarriorSage. Satyen leads private one-on-one retreats for CEOs, high impact individuals, executive teams and is a corporate cultural advisor and trainer for elite companies. Satyen’s fearless and heartfelt style transforms your limitations into strengths and your life into peak existence.
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The post 042: The Warrior Sage Philosophy – Satyen Raja appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
When you are centered at the core of your being, true actions that are resolute and impactful arise. That is the warrior philosophy. In this episode, be enlightened by Satyen Raja, gifted mentor and the Founder and CEO of WarriorSage. Satyen opens up about his childhood yearnings that started his path of truth-seeking that led him to a fascination for Eastern wisdom. He discusses his unique ability to see people and individuals for who they are and who they can be and teaches how you can find your truth so you can awaken the warrior in you. Satyen emphasizes humility despite having successfully guided celebrity leaders and influencers, and also touches on choosing people to surround yourself, and how you live speaks louder than any podcast or lectures you create.
Stress is omnipresent in most of our lives. Without proper training, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the pummeling (literally or metaphorically) we experience in modern times. If you ever wonder how some seem to be more prepared and calm under any circumstances, you don’t want to miss out on the conversation between Andrew Marshall and me. Professional fighter and healer, Andrew Marshall shares how he transformed his deepest wounds into a unique set of inner and outer skills to help others overcome similar struggles. He believes that developing inner strengths and outer strengths together gives a significant edge for any leader. We also talked about:
- The Importance of staying clear-minded vs. being overwhelmed when facing a stronger opponent
- From feeling worse every day to feeling younger every day (and an important ingredient of his transition)(hint: eagerness)
- Every form of spiritual practice is a form of meditation (He started from not being able to sit for 5 minutes)
- Key areas of skills to master as a transformational healer: meditation, communication, business operation, relaxation
- The importance of logging in ‘mat time’ to become experts of any sort
- Practical advice to apply in various aspects of our life: fitness, family, finances, faith, and fun
As human beings, it's natural to want prosperity. Many seek to manifest it in many ways--using anything from vision boards to writing a check of a million dollars. Yet, they don’t always work.
Instead of chasing from opportunity to opportunity with anxiety, fear, and frustration, what if there are ways? What if we can tap into flow with more ease and peace of mind?
This podcast is with an abundance architect and the author of The 7 Laws of Abundance: How to Win At Life and Influence Reality. Rey Brannen is a serial entrepreneur who has worked extensively in nanotechnology and internet marketing. Brannen is currently the Managing Partner of Illumina Investments Group where he and his wife Rene manage a commercial real estate investment portfolio in the U.S. His portfolio of stocks has had a gain of 104% in 2019 compared to the Standard and Poor's gain of 8%.
We talked about:
- The origin of the atomic molecules we are made of, and how that tie into abundance
- How to cultivate an abundance mindset
- His techniques (including lucid dreaming and out-of-body experience) to cultivate our capacity for abundance
- The journey he took to find his dharma
- His process to follow flow (especially in the financial markets)
- How to have more time, love, creativity, and happiness
Resources mentioned
- Samurai Brotherhood
Connect with CK
- Mindset coaching for entrepreneurs
Jose Caballer is a creative entrepreneur, designer, facilitator, meditation enthusiast. Jose founded The Groop a digital agency and there he got his “Street MBA” and got to work with diverse creative clients such as Al Gore, Jamie Oliver, Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, corporate clients like Disney and Nike and over 30 startups including MySpace and One Drop. Today he combines his 20 years of design and businesses experience with his passion for teaching and trains thousands of creative professionals on webinars and in workshops worldwide.
We talked about life, career, and startup with Jose’s unique perspective of design principles, product strategies, and spirituality.
- The process of reinventing yourself every day
- ”How much are you willing to surrender providing your gift to people”
- Jose’s 3-step design process: define the vision, mock it up, share with others
- The Importance of media diet (and the cost of distraction)
- How to get more forward momentum (and feedback)
- How to find your path (hint: your path is right in front of you if you look at the right direction)
- How to innovate in your future path (by asking the right people)
Links
- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
- Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- The Coaching Revolution: How Visionary Managers Are Using Coaching to Empower People and Unlock Their Full Potential
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✍️ Detailed Blog post: https://www.noblewarrior.com/episode/039-how-to-infuse-your-work-and-life-with-more-purpose-and-meaning-jose-caballer/
👪 Join my Facebook Group: https://noblewarrior.com/group
I’ve met many people who’ve chosen the safer path rather than the path less traveled. Brent Estabrook abandoned his dental profession the day after graduation. In this episode, Brent told his story of achieving overnight success as a painter in the face of serious debt, doubt, and struggle. He hopes that this story will inspire others to pursue what excites them in life… to follow their childhood dreams to do what undeniably makes them as happy as possible. Brent also shared the key champions, the bold moves he made in the early days, and the advice to help other aspirational artists succeed in the digital age.
We talked about:
- How to thrive as an artist in spite of the fearful moments
- His three morning rituals to gain more confidence, more creativity
- How ayahuasca ceremony was a huge catalyst for his success
- How he made the jump from dental school grad with $400k debt to a full-time 6-figure artist
- The teaching Nobu gave him
- His advice to starting artists
- 3 categories of artists
- The bold moves he made in the early days
Quotes
- "If these people are doing it, why not me"
- "Once you find what you love to do, you can overcome any interferences"
- "Find out what you love doing, that passion will drive you"
- "Confidence will differentiate you as a top artist"
- "The more you do it the better you get; the better you get the more you enjoy doing"
Links
- Brent Estabrook's website
- Brent Estabrook's IG
Connect with CK:
Website | https://www.cklin.com
Coaching | http://www.chatwithck.com
Blue Truth describes the sufferings of unexpressed insight, unoffered love, and ungiven gifts vividly. And the path to aliveness and freedom. If you are a serious student and teacher of life. This would be a great episode to listen to.
Blue Truth by David Deida http://bit.ly/BlueTruthNW
Connect with CK:
Website | https://www.cklin.com
Coaching | http://www.chatwithck.com
Stephan Spencer is a recognized expert in SEO and the best selling co-author of The Art of SEO, Social eCommerce, and Google Power Search. He founded the SEO agency Netconcepts in the 1990s and in 2010 it was acquired by Covario. He has invested in over $1M over the last 10 years in personal and professional transformation and we discussed at length the power of transformation in health, mentality, relationships, and spirituality.
Joshua Fields is Executive Director of Consciousness Hacking, a global community in over 50 cities focused on the intersection of modern technologies, ancient wisdom and human flourishing. He holds degrees from Oxford University and CIIS, and in a former life was a Morgan Stanley analyst and amateur boxer.
Joshua Fields is Executive Director of Consciousness Hacking, a global community in over 50 cities focused on the intersection of modern technologies, ancient wisdom and human flourishing. He holds degrees from Oxford University and CIIS, and in a former life was a Morgan Stanley analyst and amateur boxer.
We talked about:
- Podcasting is a lifehack for deep networking
- The feedback loop is happening right now
- Boxing Is a metaphor of existence (and it gave him fitness and confidence)
- You build your character more from your failures than your successes
- The benefit of acute stress vs. chronic stress
- Signatures of transcendence
- The physical and mental games on an elite level
- Navy seal’s 40% rule
- The necessity of earning wisdom through suffering
- 2 paths of separating passion/work and combining bliss/work
- His 2.5-hour morning ritual to help him achieve lucidity and clarity
- Vipassana, improv, and inner dialog help you finetune your subtle sensations
- The movement of Consciousness Hacking
- The benefits of ultrasonic stimulation and deep stillness
- How lucid dream gives 15 years of practice
- Benefits fo fasting
Links:
- Cohack.life
- Neonosis
- Joshua on Medium
- Lucid Dreaming Made Easy
JOSHUA FIELDS 7:22
This is such a beautiful setting to have a podcast. Yeah, I used to have my own podcast actually. Did you? Yeah. It was called Neo gnosis. Knowledge. 20 episodes.
CK LIN 8:02
Why did you stop?
JOSHUA FIELDS 8:08
it lost its charge. For you can Oh, yeah, it was a kind of more of a project rather than a consistent platform. At least that’s how it felt my body.
Yeah, I’ve started to learn about myself. Like the best way, I tend to work is in short, sharp bursts. And then relaxation. So like project work works really well for me. nine to five, not so much.
CK LIN 8:32
Yeah. was perfect. Now you end in charge of Consciousness Hacking. Yeah.
So for me, a little dizzy. This is my second podcast.
JOSHUA FIELDS 8:45
Oh, sweet. Okay.
CK LIN 8:47
My first podcast, I stopped up your 12 episodes, or six episodes rather. And I realized, because I was basically speaking to the void, and there’s nothing coming back was like, I was attached to the positive feedback loop. Then my friend and I, a few years later, fan, and I started having conversations about Joe Rogan is the king of podcast rating. And my friend distinguished for me, Joe Rogan, one to 100. was, was okay. But now he’s at 1000. Plus, he is amazing. And when I realized I really enjoyed his kind of conversation, yeah, is really an excuse for me to have conversations with amazing, smart, motivated people.
JOSHUA FIELDS 9:38
It’s like a life hack for deep networking. And I hate the word networking. But it’s just a really great, great excuse to sit down for a couple of hours with people you want to speak with.
CK LIN 9:52
So I realized, for myself, even if all the money in the world, I would do this for the rest of my life, enjoy. So So now there’s no attachment to the positive feedback. The feedback loop is happening right now. Yeah. So for me, this is very fulfilling, and thank you so much for saying yes to that.
JOSHUA FIELDS 10:15
A pleasure.
CK LIN 10:16
How long ago was your podcast for you?
JOSHUA FIELDS 10:19
Was my podcast? I think I’ve started it in September 2017, August 2017. And it went to August 2018. Yeah.
CK LIN 10:31
Okay. So you’ve stopped recently?
JOSHUA FIELDS 10:35
Yeah, yeah. About a year ago. Yeah, get my podcast was back. But it’s funny being on the other side of it. Yeah.
CK LIN 10:44
I mean, now that you’re in charge of consciousness hacking, potentially, because you dealing you’re interacting with tons of leaders, investors in this space, and say, great opportunity to broaden now that you have a platform, right, and build that potentially. It’s an invitation,
JOSHUA FIELDS 11:02
yeah, to, to deliver my spiel,
CK LIN 11:05
deliver it, share it. Because it’s all about community building, right? There are so many people who are interested in this space right now. You know, we wanted to continue the discussion. But before we go there, I want to talk to you about boxing a little bit. So you share with me before we start recording that you’ve been boxing for 10 years.
And I’m I’ve just started my boxing ritual. And I gotta tell you, it’s not fun being punched in the face. Mike Tyson said Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right? So theoretically, I understood that. And why I got into it is like a life hack. Because I realized why we actually we get punched in the face metaphorically, all the time in life is part of that part of being alive part of being an entrepreneur. So I want to say Oh, hey, let’s really lean into that. enhance my tolerance for discomfort, I’m the type of person who enjoys the discomfort. But literally right now just getting punched in the face all the time. It’s just not fun. So share with me a little bit about your boxing career. And then, and why do you start? And Then why’d you stop? A little bit? That’d be really great.
JOSHUA FIELDS 12:36
Sure. So I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, and I had a really relatively like comfortable middle-class upbringing. And my godfather was heavily involved in the Scotland boxing scene. something like that. Something like that. And I started going unboxing classes in this place, Denison, which is really rough part of Glasgow when I was 13 years old, and there was a kind of middle class like private school kids going to like the nitty gritty, East End of Glasgow, and
CK LIN 13:13
a grittier part of town.
JOSHUA FIELDS 13:15
Oh, yeah, absolutely. We’re, yeah. And I didn’t really want to go. My dad thought it was going to be good for my spirit. my godfather thought you don’t have a choice here. Yeah. And character building for the first six months, man, I, I despise that. Because there I was going in and it was pretty intimidating. I don’t know if you know, much of it, like Glasgow or Scotland. Been no, it’s, it’s a tough old place. And, and so for the first six months, I really hated it. But then I started sparring. And I started actually, when I was about 14, started sparring, and started, you know, really getting into it.
CK LIN 13:58
And talk to me a little bit about hating it, to liking it, that that transition? Because I’m actually right in that six into the six months right now.
JOSHUA FIELDS 14:13
A very basic answer is we start to enjoy what we’re good at. Um, so I think there’s a positive correlation between our level of utility and our level of skill. And then that reaches a plateau and later years, I think when it loses its fun because it becomes a chore. So I think there was a bit of an inflection point was like, Hey, I can actually do this, like, I really enjoy the the fitness aspects. And also confidence, like I was quite a shy kid, and quite a skinny kid. And I think that played on my psyche, in various regards. And so by the age of 15, I was fighting in the Scottish National Championship,
CK LIN 14:50
oh, man, you were in high level, competing and
JOSHUA FIELDS 14:53
competing at a high level. Yeah. And I was having a few fights. And I really, really became my, my thing. And what boxing taught me, so I did it from the age of 13, all through school and all throughout University. So I went to university, and I was the captain and then president, my university boxing team.
CK LIN 15:15
Okay, so you were competing on a high level
JOSHUA FIELDS 15:18
decent level, yeah, decent level, but it taught me so so many things when the first was. Boxing is a metaphor for existence. you keep getting hurt. And the option isn’t to just go down, but you have to keep getting back up. And that’s certain if you’re not forced into that by life circumstances, that’s a very hard skill set to train, right. And so I think part of the problem that we have, with this modern, rich privileged lifestyle of the West is comfortable, we’re comfortable, and we don’t grow from comfort, we grow from discomfort. And so I think we have to set the conditions by which we suffer to such an extent that we’re actually growing not too much because chronic stress is terrible, but acute stressors to the system, is actually very, very healthy for a living system. And so it was a metaphor for, for growth and for life, and it gave me a lot of confidence and fitness. And it just felt really good to be fit. And I say past tense, because I’m nowhere near that moment, nowhere near there. But anyway, when I was in my teenage years, I was really, really going for and if I, I think I could have taken it to a higher level if I really wanted to go for it. I think my level was such when I was 16 or 17, I could have taken more of the professional route.
But I was more of an academic dude. And I want to go to university and things like that. And I took a year and then I went to university, and I started training, training with a different trainer. And I’d won all of my fights apart from one up into this point. I went to university. And then I lost the first, the second and the third. And I had this run of losses. And it was for the first time in my life that I was consistently failing at something right. And that hurt my ego. Like hell but it was also the probably the most profound lesson I’ve had growing up. Because things had come like relatively smoothly to me until that point. But to lose so consistently, publicly, like in front of friends and family, right. It hurt. And then I became captain of the team of the Oxford boxing team. And then we were going to fight Cambridge in the varsity match and my captain year so this is the big fight, right? Yeah, Oxford vs. Cambridge, varsity leading a team of nine boxers training 10 times a week, training camps, high altitude and 10 years. Okay. And it came to this, this Oxford Cambridge fight my second one. And I remember standing overlooking into the ring, having had this consecutively, this like, consecutive amount of losses. And I stood and I looked over in the ring of this place called the trucks in London. And it was the first time in my life that I pre cognitively knew what was going to happen. And I looked into the ring, and I said, I know for a fact, I’m going to win this. And we’re going to win six, three in the night. There was just a clear, transcendent, like a sense that this is happening. And there we won and we won and I really felt that that experience was like, even though you keep messing up, you keep failing, like keep going, like your failures, build your character more than your Wednesday. And it was beautiful man. So I stopped that when I was 22. So we are almost 10 years ends with a high.
CK LIN 19:01
So So let’s talk about that. Forget that. unpack that a little bit. Let’s see, where do we start? Do you empty yourself up? Oh, actually, and then before I even ask that you still competing on a high level? Is it a mental game? Or is it more of a physical game?
JOSHUA FIELDS 19:20
They’re the same.
CK LIN 19:22
Say a little more about that.
JOSHUA FIELDS 19:26
Okay, so here’s the really interesting point. I think when I was boxing, I thought it was a physical game. The mental side was here I am facing guys that I know, like, there’s a lot of fear. Like even mike tyson says, like, he’s he feels he felt deep fear every time he went into the ring. You know, it’s very raw, Primal, this guy wants to hurt you, you want to hurt him. And you can’t pass the ball like in rugby. Kind of like, like ask for like a timeout. No, no, you’re just gonna get hit, right. So I thought, I always thought it was a physical game, predominantly. But then I started meditating after my boxing career. And now I am this at this place that I know that if I were to go back to fighting with what I know now, through the of the mind, I’d been in a much, much better position, that if boxers actually integrated more of the mental aspect, visualization and calmness, watching your pain, I’m really feeling it. Rather than trying to pretend it’s not there, I think a lot of people is a coping mechanism and sports is to try to shut out the pain. And from what I’ve understood through meditation is that’s actually counter productive,
CK LIN 20:43
don’t suppress it,
JOSHUA FIELDS 20:45
Feel it fully. And then you just realize it’s just another sensation. And you know, the 40% rule of the Navy SEALs. And like, if you think you’re done nearly 40% of the way there now, right? You know, our body and our brain has this huge buffer, right? To keep us safe. We can go so much further. And I don’t think I’ve ever taken to myself taking myself. As far as I never took myself I think, as far as I know, know that my mind can grow. Right. So I would love to get back into some to some degree with this more holistic approach.
CK LIN 21:18
Nice. I love that. Yeah. So let’s say someone’s been metaphorically punched in the face in life right now. What would you say to that person? Because it’s, theoretically people get it right, the 40% rule you hear people say and you know, top athlete, they say, you know, you’re so much more capable. And then what you think you are so you know, these things we hear a lot, right? cliche. Right.
But when you’re in the middle of being punched in the face, when you’re physically or when you’re metaphorically like, failing. And it’s not just like, oh, man, this freakin sucks. And any tactical suggestion? Well, I’m, I’m wondering now and you are speaking to that person, right And sure, and being like, anyway, sparring and punch in the stomach, punch it in the head, the stomach. So the worst, right? It’s 10 times worse than the face. here is the thing: on the sidelines, like, Oh, it’s no big deal. But when you literally mean punch by someone, closing range, takes all of the breath out of you, then you’re just like, stunned.
JOSHUA FIELDS 22:24
I would much rather be punched in the nose and punched in the kidneys. Much right. So first of all, I think there’s a certain humility that comes from it. Like, if you see a fighter, who’s got a big ego, and he’s pumping his chest out, he’s probably not a very experienced fighter. Like humility, I think goes hand in hand with knowing that like, we’re all vulnerable and fragile to getting hurt. And there’s a lot of luck involved. So I think like, if we can if you can integrate the humility piece, just like yeah, I’m getting hit. without it. And this is the key: without collapsing. Because right, there’s this fight, flight, freeze, flop, right. These are coping mechanisms for trauma, and getting hit in the face is traumatic, if your default operating mechanism is flight, which I think a lot of it is in this day and age because if you fight your you know, civilization only like as accepted, especially if you come from like a more of a middle-class background.
So how do you maintain humility without collapsing?
And I think we’re all working on that day by day, every day. Like, I like the fact that her part of me wants to run away. And part of me wants to, you know, boxing, I think, told me like to just keep pushing forward. I think the big, big thing about boxing is sometimes when I’m like getting like when I’m fearful, but like doing something, yeah. I have this metacognition that says, hey, but do you remember that time where you really did when I go into ringing get punched? But you did it? Yeah. You know.
CK LIN 24:05
So I’m the kind of guy who enjoys the discomfort hands. You know, hape, ayahuasca, CrossFit and boxing, and some people watch me on the sideline, or ice bath, and somebody’s watching me on the side. It’s like, Man, this guy’s “crazy” for wanting to do that. But for me, it’s there’s a lot of spiritual growth that comes into that. Because then I’m willingly going there. And getting into the ice bath and doing hape, or the ayahuasca, or the boxing or whatever it may be, knowing that it’s going to be challenging. But from that, that, I think Viktor Frankl says it so well: between stimulus and response, there’s a lot of space in that space lies in our freedom, growth. So I can fight flight, freeze or flop, as you said, I choose to continue to move forward anyway.
JOSHUA FIELDS 25:04
So I do, I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, that this celebration of spiritual suffering, how much of it is real? And how much of it is a residue of a Judeo Christian like Protestant ethic that says, if you want to get to God, you have to, you know, bear the burden of the cross of suffering? You know, it’s in built into our theology. And in Buddhism, life is suffering, right? You know, so something I’m playing with, and I’m open to exploring is, how true is that? Like? How, how necessary is suffering as a prerequisite to spiritual growth? My experience thus far, is that it is necessary. It is necessary. I’m curious as to whether or not though that is a residual belief. And actually, maybe the path could be lighter?
CK LIN 25:57
For sure. Absolutely. So from my own spiritual journey myself, I realized that we joy and fulfillment and self-realization is available within that option, right. between stimulus and response. But I don’t know if I can get to that point. Without a different path. To that point, I don’t know if that makes any sense. It’s hard to articulate this, you know, I’ll just use myself as an example, in a scene I was a ceremony, it’s painful. I, you experienced both the joy, but also at the same time, you also experienced moments that you’re not so proud of, as an example, right? The painful part, all of it, right? So could I have gotten the lesson from an embodied way without actually witnessing the suffering? I wonder
JOSHUA FIELDS 27:03
what I think what the suffering represents is like, if a plant ceremony or something, it’s, it’s oftentimes the stuff that we’ve refused to feel, because it’s been too painful. And so our body has this very deep intelligence to say, Hey, your system can handle the shame, the guilt, the fear. So we’re going to put these block energy blockage layers, so you don’t have to feel. And then you move into some, you know, transformational work, and you’re feeling all the things that have been suppressed, right? And so really, like, I think suffering is often just a proxy for feeling what is already there. It’s not necessarily creating anything new.
And spiritual growth is anything, it’s the acceptance, the allowing, of the whole spectrum of reality, which isn’t asymmetric. I wish, you know, I wish reality was like curve to the upside, you know, there’s reality is also like, tragic and horrific, and also simultaneously joyful and beautiful. Sport gives us an opportunity to force us to look at the paint. And as a result, I think opens us up to the totality of our experience.
CK LIN 28:23
I’m thinking back right now. I mean, there’s so many metaphors and guys go with that, you know, it could be going to be an entrepreneur, you know, you get the highs of highs, the highs, but also the lowest of lows, right, in any kind of meaningful relationships beginning with similar the highs of highs, and the lowest of lows that almost no one knows about, unless you open to share with your close group of people. And or plant medicine ceremonies, similar, right. You experience all of that. So you feel that going back to you inquiry: is suffering necessary for growth? What do you say to that?
JOSHUA FIELDS 29:04
My experience so far is yes. But I don’t know if it’s.
CK LIN 29:09
I’m in an open inquiry. I think so. Yeah. So I’m curious. Now that you’re, how did you get into the consciousness hacking space? So did you always know that you wanted to get in there?
JOSHUA FIELDS 29:31
Oh, no, dude. So I started my career in finance. I was at Morgan Stanley. Selling if foreign exchange and like interest rates, MIT FX, FX, EM sales I was doing at Morgan Stanley. And I don’t know I said, interest rate, so many options, right. And I did that for some time and wasn’t particularly fulfilled, and realized I wanted to explore really, the things that really turned me on so used to like, come back from like, a long day at work and listen to Terence McKenna. Alan Watts, and something me was like, whatever this is, why is it that I can read an ethics morning? brief? And like lose concentration in seven seconds? Reading Alan Watts boot from front back without losing concentration, like hardly at all? Something that was it? Well, maybe this is the thing that lights you up? Like, what? What would it be like if you were to explore consciousness? So I moved out to San Francisco two years ago, from the UK, to do a master’s in philosophy and consciousness. And consciousness haking with our at present is this synthesis between the head and the heart? A lot of people I’m sure, you know, in the consciousness world, and for your listeners, I’m doing, like, earmarks, quotation marks, and air quotes. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of notes, there’s quite ethereal, new agey. can be, this is hacking was a community in San Francisco that was this real synthesis between, let’s think deeply and transcendental. But without losing our grounding, and the rational and the pragmatic.
CK LIN 31:12
That’s right, we live in this physical realm, right? It’s not meant to us I think, I love this phrase from vipassana enough. Essentially, we studied the mechanics of the Buddha achieved enlightenment or self-awareness. And then they also made a distinction about, Hey, there are these people who dedicate their life to self-transcendence, we call them monks and nuns, right? And then there’s the rest of us were householders. And then they distinguish that hey, is actually much more difficult for householders because we are the responsibilities in addition to our desire for self-realization, self-awareness. So it’s, to me anyway, it’s much more difficult to balance this-worldly pursuits. In addition to the spiritual journey,
JOSHUA FIELDS 32:02
yeah, and your worldly pursuits. And this is Karma Yoga, right? It’s the yoga of, of action, then your spiritual path is actually fundamentally into intertwined with how you show up in the world, especially in this age, if we’re going to like continue that the Hindu or if we’re going to use Hindu mythology, is the Kali yuga. And supposedly, in the Kali yuga, it’s not about the retreat. It’s actually about action is the path to God and repeating Rams name over and over again is another path. But that’s a different story. Yeah.
CK LIN 32:41
So was there an was there a moment where you said, Hey, this is awesome. I want to pursue this full time as my profession because there are two schools of thought. one school of thought is Derek’s siver, the founder of CDbaby. he said, Hey, separate what gives you joy your hobbies with your passion from your you know, what, actually what you do to make a living? Because when they’re intertwined, then now your brain that concerns of like, Hey, I gotta make a buck with this thing. And then you lose is that spiritual charge, as you said earlier, right. So that’s one school of thought and that school of thought is, I think was Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss, right? If you it’s the dream if you can actually make a living from your passion and from your and you know, what gives you fulfillment? So love to hear your distinction between these two, quote unquote, path.
JOSHUA FIELDS 33:35
So repeat the first one again. So the second was to follow your bliss.
CK LIN 33:38
Right. The first one is separate separated? Uh huh.
JOSHUA FIELDS 33:42
I see. I’m sorry. I see what you’re saying. Yeah. So Campbell also said later on that he wishes he said follow your blisters that if you knew he updated it, and I know that now he said, he wish he said, Follow your blisters. Because follow your bliss can be a bit of a spiritual bypassing technique. I think that the mechanic and this so this is what I said to myself, CK I said, Okay, well, what if you just threw yourself into what you loved for two or three years? Like, what if it goes tits up? If it goes terribly wrong, the most the worst thing that’s happened, right, you’ve lost three years, you’ve tried it, you’ve gone for what you love, then you can go back, right? So really, it was just a sense of me saying, Okay, what if I tried this like, and from a really rational perspective, there’s the sense of, if I really enjoy something, there’s a higher probability, I’m going to be good at it. That’s right. So I think follow your bliss is really optimized for what you’re interested in, because that is a proxy for what you’re going to be most likely good at. Yeah. But when to go back, was there a moment or anything? There was actually a very clear moment. And I went, had some bodywork done. And bunch of unreleased stuff came up in the aftermath, anger, rage, and all came like flooding through my body. And I started like, letting it all out. But it felt like in a way that was clean, like, had some tough conversations, and really, like spoke like the deepest, most primal part of what I thought to be true. And with that expression came this perfect clarity. It was just this knowing of like, you’ve got to go to San Francisco, you’ve got to go to consciousness, you gotta go to now, man, I’ve never had clarity like that. I am a cost benefit analysis guy, you know, have checklists and boxes, right? It was clarity from emotional de-suppression, which is fascinating. I think we’re so stuck. We don’t we’re all confused, because we actually haven’t let our bodies’ wisdom come through.
CK LIN 35:58
So question there is I do plenty of plant ceremonies, plant medicine ceremonies, and then one of the things that I teach my clients regarding integration is, Hey, you, you’re going to have a lot of clarity and a lot of insights, a lot of epiphany that comes from to you, but don’t do anything with it yet. Just let it sit. Right? Did you let it sit? All right, you know, it’s more like just follow my realization, my inner knowing my impulse, just gonna go with it. So quit my job and just go.
JOSHUA FIELDS 36:33
So I’d already I already wasn’t with my job. I was still in this I was in a limited space anyway. So I think our body mechanics are actually programmed for different things. I want to make a distinction between impulse and intuition. Sure. And post feels a little bit more rushed, and snappy. Intuition feels clean. There’s a lucidity to this experience. And this felt very clean, and also felt light. And so I didn’t wait. I didn’t let it sit. And I also think like, as I start to learn my body more, some people are better attuned to setting with things. Other people’s body mechanics are actually more attuned to making more spontaneous decisions. I don’t know if you’ve done any human design.
CK LIN 37:25
Now. I’m not
JOSHUA FIELDS 37:25
Yeah, there’s definitely like systems to say, Hey, we’re all created in slightly different ways.
CK LIN 37:29
Hmm. Interesting. It’s not a one size fits all, nope, are more suitable to take action right away, some people are more suitable to just let it sit and develop that inner knowing.
JOSHUA FIELDS 37:41
I think so I think that is the beauty of reality, we have these permutations of matter that we call bodies, and they all have different ways of knowing and navigating reality if we truly listen to them. Having said that, have I been able to get that clarity back since then? Not really. That was the big breakthrough. So I know, I know what clarity feels like, you have a benchmark, I have a benchmark and know everything was clear. Since then,
CK LIN 38:11
so. Okay, so so in that also, do you try to get back to that space? Again? The moment of lucidity and clarity. Because it’s easy to want to chase that right. And also, it’s all there is an intention to cultivate that too. How do you separate the chase versus the intention?
JOSHUA FIELDS 38:43
silence helps. I’ve tried bodywork. Yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard. There’s, there’s a sense of Yes. The more the more I can tap into silence, the more clear things become. Yeah.
CK LIN 39:12
Awesome. So do you have like a daily ritual that you do or a weekly one? Where you essentially carve out the time that you need?
JOSHUA FIELDS 39:19
Yeah, I sat every day for an hour. First thing in the morning, first thing in the morning,
but I’m about to do a new morning routine. You wanna hear it? Got a 30-day challenge number starting July 1. Yes. Yeah, I know. They’ve named it publicly and I’ve named it on radio. I can’t go back. Okay. One-hour meditation the morning, okay, which is the pasta. Yeah. That I’m going straight to ashtonga yoga class for 90 minutes. And then right beside ashtonga yogaclass, there is a sauna and cold plunge. So I’m going to then go straight into the sauna for 20 minutes do some vagas nerve breath stimulation work, kinda like Wim Hof, but some more like actual targeted the vagus nerve, and also do some visualization while in the sauna, and then go straight into the plunge pool. And then I’ll be ready to start my day. So it’s going to take about two and a half hours in total, for the morning routine.
for me, that’s the perfect combination of mindful meditation body through Ashtanga and then breath work and stuff for vagus nerve and the mind body connection.
CK LIN 40:23
I love that. I’m a systems guy. So I love disciplines. I love rituals. Yeah, I love that. Thanks for sharing that
JOSHUA FIELDS 40:32
cool bus. Yeah, they’re there. Their main builders,
CK LIN 40:39
I love it so much that I actually bought icemaker to put in my home.
JOSHUA FIELDS 40:44
So I’d love to do this. So how long have you been bought an icemaker? Like, what do you mean?
CK LIN 40:50
So you see, so what I did is actually bought those like 20-pound ice makers, they just continuously produce ice all the time.
JOSHUA FIELDS 40:57
And this is there enough to put in a basket in the morning and
CK LIN 41:00
20 pounds is plenty sufficient for one batch but actually found a much better way. So you don’t even need to do that. Okay, you can get one of those industrial ice coolers. Yeah, and then just plug it in. And then we need to use it obviously, plug and plug it in so you don’t electrocute yourself, and it will stay the same temperature at all times.
JOSHUA FIELDS 41:20
So have you bought one yet?
CK LIN 41:21
and we don’t have enough space.
JOSHUA FIELDS 41:22
Yeah, it was like I live in San Francisco. I mean, there’s no chance in hell. I mean, I can’t even fit a bed into my apartment. But it’s cool.
CK LIN 41:29
But the ice makers Yeah.
JOSHUA FIELDS 41:30
Okay, maybe I should.
When I have my own place. Yeah, the first thing I’m getting is a plunge pool. Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. Tony Robbins.
CK LIN 41:43
Yes. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right now he’s, I think him and one half of the ones that really inspire me like, Tony Robbins does that too?
JOSHUA FIELDS 41:52
Maybe I should consider Well, no. So first thing in the morning is your timing it with your peak cortisol spike anyway. So you’re actually like attuning to the body’s natural rhythms of as soon as you wake up first 90 minutes of your cortisol is at its highest. So you’re actually Yeah, you’re doubling down in that effect. Yeah. shock, acute stress structure the system. But this is a really important thing, right? chronic stress is horrific for the body. We’re all chronically stressed: Food, toxins, noise. acute stress, very good for the body.
CK LIN 42:26
little caveat there is that’s a feeling when you’re sick on your really low on energy. Because these are additional stress. And that may actually push you into sickness. So that’s the thing to be cognizant that sure. Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. is. Yeah, Chinese medicine, we believe that you don’t want to actually inject a lot of coldness into your system, you feel like constantly always cold. It’s probably a good time to, you know, pull back on the ice bath or the or the cold smoothies or whatever it is. Right. Yeah, that’s that’s my personal experience. Do you do I have any sense scientific proof beyond that know, which is my personal experience? Yeah.
JOSHUA FIELDS 43:03
I mean, even like, Ayuveda and you know, if you if you’re I’m Pitta. Fire. Oh, it’s always hot. So those would be good for you, then yeah, this would be good for me.
CK LIN 43:17
Man, I love it. I really love that you are able to inject scientific understanding into your daily rituals. That’s awesome. There’s a lot of times where people just do something one thing they are fixed to that thing, and without any real thinking about the science or things beyond that.
JOSHUA FIELDS 43:37
Also, there’s also listening to your body, right? Like this universal one size fits all thing we have, like, if everyone just meditates for a day and has the same diet, it’s like, nope, our gut microbiome is are different, or genetics are different. Or we’ve got to just listen deeply to what is actually best for us.
CK LIN 43:52
So okay, so on that note, so let’s speak to our younger selves who are not so aware or intuned our mind, body, heart, and spirit.
JOSHUA FIELDS 44:01
How old are we going? How old are we going?
CK LIN 44:05
Let’s say college days college, or 20? Let’s, let’s say you know, 20s, where we have that, you know, inner awareness. Curious now, but maybe not so attuned to the body.
JOSHUA FIELDS 44:16
I’m still in my 20s.
CK LIN 44:17
Are you really? Yeah, no, shit.
JOSHUA FIELDS 44:19
Yeah. So I need to go back to college.
CK LIN 44:22
Wow. Amazing. That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s good. That’s awesome. Man. I’m surprised you because you, you know, act so much older than you are.
JOSHUA FIELDS 44:31
Yeah, it’s kind of sometimes it can be a bit of a problem for dating.
CK LIN 44:37
So going back to the days where you just began your journey of developing that awareness that intuition or inner knowing what tactical ways can you make a suggestion to our listeners of how you actually develop that awareness? Because it’s hard to discern. Because it’s all internal. It’s not something that you can just point to a scientific instrument or the scoreboard. Oh, yeah. You’re now at 85% or 10% more attuned to, then you will before this thing that you were doing,
yeah. So you mentioned vipassana. vippassanna allows you to get very good at noticing subtle sensations. Another interesting thing is, is some sort of acting or improv. So acting that has to be spontaneous. And at the moment, whereby you’re actually engaged with the feedback loop of the other person’s energy system, you start to become aware of these very subtle cues from other people like small shifts up small shift. improv is really good for that. I loved it. I did it for like three months. I absolutely loved it. I don’t know why I stopped time. Yeah. And then you can also dialogue. This sounds a little bit more hippy dippy. But you know, like asking your body like, What do you want? And
do you literally say, What do you want? Yeah, only your mind.
JOSHUA FIELDS 46:07
I mean, either or, and then trusted the body give some sort of signal. And this for me, oftentimes, the signal is that light, or is it heavy? This light, it’s like, Okay, try.
CK LIN 46:23
I like that. So asked similar questions through my podcast guests all the time. Some people flip coins. Some people have their meditation practice or somatic practice. I think it was Ben Talbert, who we know you know, a mutual friend of ours, he would literally ask his body: How do you feel? and notice the emotions, how the emotions arising his body as part of his practice. So let’s actually shift gears a little bit. So now you’re in charge of consciousness hacking and cultivating a community. And there’s a lot of energy that right now going into this space? How? And this is, how do I unpack that question? How do you? What do you plan to cultivate this movement or curate this energy now going to the space?
JOSHUA FIELDS 47:27
That’s the million dollar question.
CK LIN 47:29
Probably a billion dollars.
JOSHUA FIELDS 47:30
But yeah. So for those who aren’t aware of the subconscious, the second was started four years ago by a dear friend, Mikey Siegel. And he started as the global community, he wanted to say, hey, like, what if we applied our scientific and technological knowledge to higher states and awakening? Because people think these two things are antithetical. Of course, science and spirituality have nothing to do with each other. Well, like you said, Oh, it’s about the community around people asking those questions. We build tools that enhance the human experience. So it started out as a global community. And now we’re moving more into the conference. You came to our conference last month. Amazing. You had a good time. Amazing.
CK LIN 48:16
It was like the TED conference for conscious consciousness.
JOSHUA FIELDS 48:21
Good. People. I think people have generally had a good time. Yeah. So we’re having our conference. We’re wanting to do member-only community events. So at the moment, we’re doing more open events, but we really want to if you have our turnover is super high. People even come like 70 to 80% of each of our events is a new member is a new attendee super high. Never heard of you before. Yeah. And they’ve heard of us, but they’ve never been before. So we want to do like member-only events all throughout the world, and to establish a sense of community. I’d also spread more awareness, start creating our own content, right? Yeah. Yeah.
CK LIN 49:05
Good. So turning into like a media company, potentially,
JOSHUA FIELDS 49:08
I’m reluctant to say turning it into a media company. But having more of the media presence is one way to put it. Yeah.
CK LIN 49:18
That’s awesome. I love it.
JOSHUA FIELDS 49:20
So what was your experience like it awakened futures? For people who aren’t aware it was a conference on the intersection points of psychedelics, technology, and meditation?
CK LIN 49:31
Yeah, actually, let’s do a little distinction real quick. How would you define psychedelics? Because I got corrected by a ceremonialist to separate the plant medicine, pardon the psychedelics, but in my mind, actually, before leading the witness, how would you define psychedelics?
JOSHUA FIELDS 49:53
psyche is obviously from the Greek. mind/soul. they’re the same thing, Greek etymology. delic says I think the word injesting. I could be totally making that up. Mind injesting. these are substances that in inviting us into altered states of consciousness.
CK LIN 50:21
Yeah. Well, so that definition is super broad. Right? So caffeine could potentially under that umbrella to truly does alter our consciousness in some way. Yeah. Alcohol can be that too. Sugar alters our consciousness? Sure,
JOSHUA FIELDS 50:44
What is it? What is the there’s something about the level of depth that plays into this, like caffeine doesn’t really take me closer to my deeper experience? I don’t think many people’s. there’s something about deepening. But then that itself is subjective. So I’m gonna I don’t know.
CK LIN 51:00
Yeah. Tell me. I don’t have one. Yeah, I thought was talking to the guy who’d know.
JOSHUA FIELDS 51:08
And then there’s in entheogens which is another term. Yeah. I see them as alters of consciousness, bringing us closer to our deeper experience. Yeah.
CK LIN 51:27
Yeah, I’m the same way. So hence why I’m not so much of a stickler to this nuance of entheogens and psychedelics, plant medicine, because to me, if it deepens our awareness of our own consciousness, then to me is under the broad umbrella of psychedelic and entheogens. To me, they’re interchangeable. Yeah. Okay, what was my experience going back? Yes, yes, yes. I’m an amazing time. I really. So one of the things I as I progress in my own journey in life is the desire to meet like minded people. And psychedelics. Meditation, technology, these are my favorite subjects. So I love the quality of the people that were there. These are, to me, people who are not only philosophers, but they’re actually doing something about it. So I made plenty of investors, entrepreneurs, even ceremonialists. people who are grounded in reality, in this round, like, we study science, we study technology, and we also have a commitment to Alright, so there’s something beyond the physical realm. Right. So when I met plenty of mystics. Right? So we I met plenty of mystics, I made plenty of people who are also grounded in reality. So I definitely met plenty of people in my tribe.
good. Appreciate that. Good. Yeah. And the mission accomplished? Yeah,
a lot of energy there. A lot of different direction that this movement can go. And that’s the number one takeaway. Now exactly, where, which direction is going for the right one? To be determined. Or there’s certainly a lot of energies, very much activated.
JOSHUA FIELDS 53:25
Come back next year, my friend.
CK LIN 53:27
I hope that there’s something that we can all do in-between events this year and next year. In the in between time. So conferences bring high caliber people together to share their thoughts, right now. That’s where you want to go. But what about the in-between times or anything that you’re acting, to cultivate? to shape? The energy?
JOSHUA FIELDS 53:57
Yeah, we’re doing, we’re going to do some so member-only events, like I said, but also just standard events. And we’re going to do two series. One is The Awakened future spinoff series. So between now and the next conference, we’re going to have some of the themes and some of the speakers doing like talks in front of 300 400 people as a kind of an extension of the conference. I know we also want to do a synthesis series, what’s that? Basically bringing together themes and domains that are historically relatively intention. So for example, like a meditation teacher and a technologist, or a scientist and an atheist, like a synthesis series here. This is what we represent. We’re bringing together tech and consciousness where we really represent. Have you ever read any of Hegel? Hegel’s evolution of consciousness philosophy, yeah, was that. So? The Hague, it was a philosopher and 17 17th or 18th century, I forget. And he says that consciousness evolves in a very particular way over time, that first there’s this thesis, which is one side of the polarity, then comes its antithesis, which is the opposite side of the polarity. And it’s only in the holding of those two things. And they’re absolute tension of duality. Do they then start to come into synthesis? So that in order for us to go to the next level of politics, say, we’ve got to see radical left radical, right, that, that we can’t get to the next level until we fully embrace the polarities?
CK LIN 55:39
So one of the things that I talked a lot about with our guest is the yin and the yang sign. And it’s in the grappling of these two polarities that you can find harmony, somewhere in the middle. And this harmony point, harmonious point is, is very personalized, who’s very individual. I can’t really tell you what your harmony point may be. But but it’s through the grappling with these two polarities, right? And then the mental, the cognitive dissonance, the grappling with it, and you can derive your own answers.
JOSHUA FIELDS 56:17
Absolutely. And also not collapsing yourself into a single perspective. Like, I think that the mark, when people say I’m all about consciousness, I think there’s also a very cognitive component to that, which is one’s ability to handle complexity. By definition, complexity often plays paradox. paradox implies being able to be okay, with two completely fucking opposite things. That’s right.
CK LIN 56:43
So I would say that would be a huge one, common traits that you’re intending set open minded to actually hear like, Oh, this person’s point of view is different than mine. Yes. Let me just get curious guess about why does he think that way?
JOSHUA FIELDS 57:04
Well, this is what I really liked about the conference was a lot of people in the psychedelic community have some sort of like deep somatic aversion to technology, right, which is understandable, because the way our programs are designed, and our software and hardware is, these aren’t deepening tools. But then what are some of our speakers spoke about where Yeah, hey, like, what if tech could adjust the similar states, through hardware and software as something like LSD goes through biochemistry? And people were very open to that from the psychedelic world over there at the conference? So.
CK LIN 57:37
So question there, because I also have had a conversation with people where they talk about the elevation or the transcendence of consciousness, whatever way you want to articulate it is a natural process. And over there is not better than over here. So then why are we putting effort to try to be over there, rather than just allow the natural progression of one’s own spiritual journey? What do what do you say to that?
JOSHUA FIELDS 58:07
I say to that, like, why should we get out of bed in the morning? Why? Why is it better to get out of bed rather than stay in bed? That like, life moves in a certain way. And I think there’s a misunderstanding that in attempting to move forward, one is somehow pushing against the grain, or like trying to accelerate things unnecessarily. Like, if we were just to say, let it all be, we wouldn’t have cured polio.
Like innovation is quite oftentimes, our lives are better, because we’ve said, Hey, we can be better. Now, there’s a distinction there between like, let’s just improve for the sake of improving. And I think this is what people resist, right? Thus there’s like techno utopian assumption of Silicon Valley, let’s just build shit and the world to be saved.
The other thing is, you said natural way, I think part of our there’s a bifurcation in our psyche, between natural and artificial. I think in the same way, we have this bifurcation of nature and culture, which is disastrous because we’re raping and pillaging the only home we have. There’s also this bifurcation of technology and nature, natural and artificial. We are all expressions of the same thing. Tech is an expression of consciousness. The way we’ve designed it, though, is in a way that is not circular, not sustainable. And so it feels so right. And I think part of our deep mission of consciousness hacking is to realign that movement of tech towards life’s more natural rhythms.
CK LIN 59:56
Which is what I really appreciate. Because you’re not saying, hey, tech is awesome. Tech is number one. That’s a, you know, use all the natural resources, we have to serve technology, per se. And there’s a through-line that I hear is that homage, right? That paying it forward. So then it’s it’s about thriving of the entire ecosystem, rather than just let me focus on, you know, make progress in this particular direction. But forget everyone else, you know, who may have to pay the price, including future generations per se, you know, which I really, really.
Is there any specific technology that you felt really excited about? Or did it a particular direction? So now that I’m asking you as an individual, rather than a curator of your community? Is there anything that you’re like, Oh, that sounds really promising.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:01:02
Did you see Jay Sanguinetti’s talk on ultrasound?
CK LIN 1:01:07
I have Yeah.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:01:12
Yeah, that’s the big one. So ultrasonic neuromodulation, which is targeting very specific areas of the brain with sound waves with ultrasound. I did that last week.
CK LIN 1:01:24
how was it from experience point of view?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:01:26
very potent. So they have a bit of 50 50% success rate. I was one of the responders. So I spent about 16 hours afterwards, in quite a deepened state of consciousness. Then it wore off. But anyway, that the idea is, you target a very, very, three very specific parts of the brain. Left, right, and the PC, the posterior cingulate cortex, with 32-second blast of ultrasonic stimulation? And would it be 50% of people when nothing happens? 50% of something quite deep happens. So yeah, ultrasound is a big one.
CK LIN 1:02:09
Describe a little bit more about what happened with that experience. So were you able to, you know, write like Shakespeare and have a huge creative burst and write a book and in 16 hours, share with us the experience of it
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:02:24
it was much more than that. just a deepening into being, capital be dipping into presence. a profound sense of peace. Yeah, it’s quite hard to describe, I’d recommend people check out persistent on symbolic experience, the term by Jeffrey Martin, he describes these certain locations of deeper experiences, because like location, one location 234. And I think my experience, it was more like, hey, this put me into like a little location, one you experience for a few hours? Yeah. And the idea is the technology still very early, it’s very safe as well. ultrasonic is very, very safe. When we start to have a better understanding of the brain, we can start to be more pinpointed with this, these interventions. Now, that is not to say that we can just like zap, our, the whole of humanity into like an enlightened state of consciousness. I think that’s a very reductive perspective. But it’s a tool. It’s a tool.
CK LIN 1:03:33
Right now that you have access to it. And I wonder how you compelled to or impelled to go back to that whenever you feel not center, not peaceful
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:03:43
The funny thing is CK. this is why psychedelics are non-addictive. They’re not Morrish. And I think the same with meditative states. They’re not Morrish. But their reference points to say, hey, this Hi, this is how you can feel like this is your base? Yeah, Correct. Correct. I said, correct. That’s a new word. You like that? correct? That’s correct. And right. Correct.
CK LIN 1:04:09
All right.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:04:11
It’s you. It’s like, you’re swimming out at sea. And you know, there’s a rope attached, and you may go, and you’re swimming with sharks, but you know, the ropes attached to the boat. So you know, you’re safe. That’s why I feel with having explored a deeper state.
CK LIN 1:04:38
So I had a conversation with a friend who experienced plant medicine for the really, he’s really new with it. And then he distinguished Why does these are called medicines. for him. The way he articulate is you are exploring the mental blocks, not mental blocks, like a like a brick wall, right in your mind. And the top part is the most of the time is what you can have awareness of, let’s say, you know, something that you learn in physics or algebra, you’re like, Oh, I learned these things. And then this allows me to, you know, look at reality or filter reality through these, these models. But with medicine, he now is able to kind of come down to the bedrock to the foundation level, like, Oh, so I build these ideas from this, this this. And for him. He distinguished that. It’s very scary for some people, but he was willing to go there himself, because he if he has the opportunity to examine the foundational blocks of his operating system, I mean, I’m using metaphors interchangeably now. Right? So what would you say to that, do you you agree to his assessment, half some people is really scary to examine the foundation, the core belief of who they are, or the is that you know, just part of, if you want to upgrade the operating system is what it needs to happen.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:06:20
All of these practices, whether it be plant medicine or meditation, is they take you to, there’s a deconstruction process, that everything that you think you are, you’re not. And that includes these little rich thoughts as this in Buddhism, called “I”, our whole identity is based on this little guy called “I”(was a guy or girl.) And so to deconstruct the foundation of I mean, this is what we call ego death. It’s this death of self, you’ve done plant medicines, you know that the death itself is not a very pleasant thing. Or it can be very, very terrifying. Yeah, and then there’s this thing like, like a shamanic initiation, it is about completely deconstructing the foundation. And really seeing that there’s no foundation. The reality is actually, you know, the word groundless. That’s fucking terrifying. The ontology of existence, like what it’s made of, is, is nothing. let that land. that can lead to nihilism. And the flip side of nihilism is freedom.
CK LIN 1:07:40
Hence, why I do what I do. So what would you say to the people who are like, No, it’s too scary? I don’t want to even contemplate this. You know, deconstruct, as you call it, my identity, I’m comfortable where I’m at. I’m, you know, I have my Starbucks, I have my wi-fi service, two kids, white picket fence. You know, you guys do what you do? And, you know, plus What do I get from that? Right? Like, they don’t know the potential? Yes. From understanding or deconstructing?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:08:12
Well, I think I used to be in a position where I’d think you guys/girls, like, you don’t want to go deep enough. When really, I’ve seen I meant we’re just all different expressions of existence. But just because, like, I used to have some sort of like meditation hubris, that was like, if you ain’t meditating 10 hours a day, like I am, you ain’t woke, okay. And it’s just not that way. But I know, there are much smarter, wiser, more loving people than I am, who’ve done a 10th of the work. We start to see that when we want to change people, that is our own ego complex, right, getting involved. Especially as regards to like, spiritual stuff. We’re trying to change people’s they’re killing people with a different story.
CK LIN 1:09:01
Right? Right. They’re impacting other people’s freedom, and safety,
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:09:07
then we have, I think, some sort of moral responsibility to act. And this is where a lot of spiritual bypassing comes in. So like, so like, I’m not a political pacifist. Like, if I were in charge of like, a country, my war strategy with actually I think, be very harsh. Your war strategy? Yeah. As and I think like you have to create a certain strong boundary, to show that freedom is really important. And fairness is very important. I think some things with spiritual ism, you said, well, so one thing I can tell you what to do is that’s not what I mean by if you’re trying to change someone, you’re somehow I think, from an ego place, like there’s an element of that. But then there’s also an element where we do need to stand up and say, Hey, by there’s that paradigm change. Yeah, we talked about change. Change bitches.
CK LIN 1:10:03
Yeah, from my point of view, is an invitation. I can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do anyway, even if they do it. They will still be resentful and angry at, you know, whoever that might and made them do something. But the opportunities here, if they’re curious about, you know, deepening of their own awareness or understanding
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:10:24
my my whole experience of this has been when I try to persuade, people don’t really listen. When I embody, people listen. It’s very different.
CK LIN 1:10:41
How do you know, embodying versus your persuading?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:10:46
I’m using fewer words. And I’m not. There’s not a “trying” energy like, hey, come. That’s more like, where I am.
CK LIN 1:11:00
Interesting, though, because now we’re talking about more of a, like a attraction rather than persuasion. And as an entrepreneur, yeah. Fascinating, right. So how do you then how do you then discern, because part of the process is awareness, bring awareness to something that people may not be aware of? So you know, how do you stand in the making a powerful invitation very
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:11:27
beautiful, very beautiful, man. Great question. Yeah. Do you want to know my deep, deep answer, please, I have no idea how to reconcile those two things. No idea. Especially with capitalistic entrepreneurship, whereby there’s a monetary incentive to persuade. It’s very hard to get the incentives really clean, really clean. But we live in a capitalist you know, a world of money. So like, if you’re not doing persuading to make money than it needs to survive, right? There’s a way to make it self sustainable. There’s ways to just there’s a way to be a positive some rather than a zero sum game. It’s hard, man. It’s hard. And there’s been a real bastardization of mindfulness and yoga, out of capitalistic incentives. Right? It’s hard. I don’t know.
CK LIN 1:12:18
Yeah. And plus, actually, one more thing about that too. social media. The options are infinite. How do you stand on top of the How do you you know, get through the noise? Yeah, you know, so. And then there’s, how do you make a polarizing statement? And coming from my embodied place?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:12:48
Yeah. And then there’s the other parents is like, what if you just trust that your truest expression as often is also the most compelling one? Authenticity being the sales tactic,
CK LIN 1:13:02
People will resonate with your message, who you are, they may be attracted to you, but they don’t even know why they don’t they don’t have a rational response. They just know what it is that you do.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:13:13
And you don’t have to brand your YouTube videos if like CK LIN destroys reductive materialist, right?
CK LIN 1:13:20
Yeah, make it a clickbait headlines.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:13:22
Like what Tristan Hassis said it’s just a race to the bottom of the brainstem. That works. But it’s kind of fucked up, because you’re playing on our deepest primal fears.
CK LIN 1:13:35
So, so the marketing side says, Hey, you know, you sell them on what they want, then once they come in, and you give them what they need, versus offering an authentic offering and say, hey, you’re going to come in, we don’t exactly know what you’re going to get, but you will leave with more peace.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:13:58
with this. The other thing is, if you can practice practicing for like, 10 years, and you know, that this is going to benefit someone health, mental and physical well being. And, you know, there’s a certain strategy to get them in, you know, right. It makes sense.
CK LIN 1:14:12
So as part of an option that you have as a movement creator.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:14:18
Right. It’s just I think this is a it can be kind of gray, the murky waters? Yeah. I’m not I’ve not figured it out yet. I think I Well, my, my sense is I’ve kind of gone. My pendulum is still swinging. Yeah. Between intention And authenticity, right.
CK LIN 1:14:38
It’s difficult and challenging. I don’t have an answer. And so I was asking, you see, because part of what I do is, I’m a teacher, I’m an integration coach, Right, I’m an entrepreneur and part of what I would, what I do is to offer to bring people who are interested in deepening their own consciousness, because having that clarity, to operate from value operate from purpose. And these are available tools, do I move forward with them, like selling them what they want, which is high performance, or more money, more connection, and more love, and then really what they, we realize that the the root of what’s available is more aligned mind, body, and spirit, and then then everything else comes easier
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:15:40
Right. So I think the issue was trying to meet them where they’re at, and then taking them somewhere deeper is that you then lose out on the market segment that are just ready to, to actually just go deeper stuff. Like they don’t need the hand-holding. They’re just there. Yeah, yeah, we have we have constraints. We have constraints of money and marketing. All right.
What’s your meditation practice?
CK LIN 1:16:21
What’s my meditation? Um, I do have one my go-to is TM, Transcendental Meditation mantra, mantra base. I really, it’s a good rope for me to in the sea of thoughts and emotions. That anchors me pretty easily.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:16:41
Continue the sea metaphor for anchoring. Yeah, yeah.
CK LIN 1:16:46
How about you
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:16:48
Vipassana.
CK LIN 1:16:48
So speaking of difficulty. I like the acute stress of plant medicine. Vipassana on is essentially the same amount of stress, but drag out for 11 days. And that was very, very challenging for me. Especially day three, when they focus on anapana breathing. Three days on the upper lip? You freaking kidding me?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:17:16
Yeah. Yeah. The thing is with plant medicines, that it’s not as cumulative.
CK LIN 1:17:26
Say more about that? What does that mean?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:17:27
You have your experience, and then few days, weeks, few days, weeks, months later, you’re back? Vipassana seems to be cumulative.
CK LIN 1:17:37
So you, you believe that it’s what you receive from each vipassana, or each day of vipassana practice. Now you can add on to your stacking.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:17:49
I think you’re stacking in a very, very minute amount each time. And after like, two, three years, you’re like, holy shit. Like I stack a lot. plant medicine, if you’re doing it two, three times a year. I don’t think the net it’s like tortoise and the hare, the way the tortoise and the hare. I see. The tortoise ends up winning. Yeah, gets further.
CK LIN 1:18:09
Right, right. Here’s my point of view on that. The way I relate to plant medicine ceremonies is more. It’s a way to benchmark what’s possible.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:18:20
Yeah. But once the benchmarks there, why do you need more benchmarks?
CK LIN 1:18:23
Well, because you’re, there’s different depth of you. Right? So the benchmark is there, but you can go deeper with with iteration right. And, and as a integration coach, I tell my clients, my participants that this is only 10% of the work 90% of the work is in your daily integration practice, right? whatever that may be, could be yoga for you meditation for you. Conscious nutrition eating habits for you. conscious noble speech, or you relationship with others, etc. Right. So noble speech, noble relationships, noble everything. So so it opens up their awareness to Okay, so here’s the gap between my commitment and my actual words, action and thoughts. Then we work together to bring all that daily life.
That’s that’s the way I look at it. That’s where it makes sense. I think that makes us not a silver bullet. Yeah. You got the answer. And that’s that. That’s, that’s my approach.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:19:36
I understood. Have you done any Joe Dispenza? Have you heard of him?
CK LIN 1:19:44
I have. You are the placebo
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:19:49
He’s excellent. Yeah, excellent. a lot of people when they think about like, healing the body, they think it’s just about holding the image holding the thought. And visualization manifestation is just about thinking about what you want. And then that will be it
CK LIN 1:20:04
The law of attraction
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:20:06
it doesn’t work. Dispenza thesis is that it doesn’t work unless you integrate it with a feeling. The feeling is actually the signal to reality that this is whatever is received, as you’re actually teaching your body semantically, emotionally in a way that is beyond just cerebral. So if anyone’s listening and wants, wants to try very powerful meditation techniques, I’ve tried to Joe Dispensa. I see.
CK LIN 1:20:30
So since we’re doing some tactical suggestions what other things you believe people should or we can invite them to?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:20:39
Exactly. A quick-fire round, quick-fire tactics? Yeah, please. Okay, so number one, lucid dreaming. lucid dreaming. Yeah, so read a guy called Charlie Morley, a book called dreams of awakening, you can actually start practicing skills and languages and in your dreams, lucidly. You can there are various ways to get there. You can do reality checks throughout the day. You can keep it keep a dream diary. You can take a drug called galantamine, which is an Alzheimer’s drug. And it gives you a very bad hangover but just if you want to try what it feels like to have a lucid dream Yeah, so basically that is like we sleep eight hours a night we dream for four of those which basically means if you live to 90 you’re you have 15 years. is that right? Yeah, third Yeah,15 years of lucid dreaming time. 15 years we can actually work in yourself. Really we just think is. But the Yogi’s had something for the Yogi’s as well the dream practice was death practice. So lucid dreaming has quite a significant skill set I’ve explored
gratitude big one.
intermittent fasting. dry fasting actually has different effects in the body than water fasting. Let’s try fasting no water,
CK LIN 1:22:16
no water for how long.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:22:18
I know someone who can dry fast for six days. And I thought that was impossible. physiologically
CK LIN 1:22:24
Yeah, I thought after seven is it seven days? We die
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:22:28
I thought it was four days. Yeah, she is she she does this I think she also her shoulders though. I had a body might be absorbing But anyway, there’s some evidence to suggest that dry fasting has even like greater to autophagic effect than water fasting
CK LIN 1:22:46
interesting,
harder though. So I do some fasting I don’t do dry fasting I do water fasting but I’d like to try dry fasting. do you want to try a dry fast with me dude?
yeah leaning to discomfort. how long do you do that water fast?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:23:08
Yeah, the last straw said it was a bone broth fast on this for three days. I see.
CK LIN 1:23:13
What’s the benefit of fasting for you? why do you do it?
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:23:16
Gut stuff I’ve got pretty bad bloating. Also clarity lightness. and also only were meant to eat three meals a day
CK LIN 1:23:27
yeah right
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:23:29
we were meant to hunt yeah find fast right Fuck
CK LIN 1:23:33
Yeah, right. But what about the headache that you get for not taking nutrient? I don’t get a headache you don’t get it? I know you got a headache me within six hours
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:23:46
Really? Yeah no no headache. Yeah, I get bit hangry. Angry grumpy
CK LIN 1:23:51
Yeah, you’re not in a relationship where you know Yeah, okay. that makes it a little easier
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:23:57
I think my habits just now makes me very hard boyfriend. Even things like sleep lately. I’m assuming this my friend this morning like sleeping in the same bed I’m so sensitive to body heat.
CK LIN 1:24:11
Right. And people moving around
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:24:16
Yeah, and I really value my sleep Yeah, I’m into this I
CK LIN 1:24:20
Hey, man. I know exactly what you mean. cool. appreciate this.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:24:29
On there’s also chanting stimulates the vagus nerve. chanting and singing and gargling
CK LIN 1:24:35
any specific keywords they should put into Google
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:24:38
no idea but it’s just chanting vagus nerve. Alright,
CK LIN 1:24:43
so chanting vagus nerve. look into that. Yes. All right. Beautiful. Thank you so much. I really really appreciate you being on sharing with us. Everything that you share your story, your disciplines, where you hope to achieve the consciousness hacking and also the tactical suggestions. Thanks for being here on the podcast
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:25:04
with me. Thank you for listening, everybody. My name is Joshua fields and peace out.
what do you want to send them to?
so cohack.life is our websites. So how to know what podcast for I have some writings up called Neonosis.com and I do a little bit of blogging on medium. So you can find me at Joshua fields.
CK LIN 1:25:26
Amazing. Thanks, Josh.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:25:27
All right. great seeing you CK.
CK LIN 1:25:30
We’ll do a part two sometime soon when you come back to LA.
JOSHUA FIELDS 1:25:34
Yeah, when I moved to LA. Cheers man
The post 036: How to Tune Your Mind and Body for Lucidity and Clarity? – Joshua Fields appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
How to get in flow in the midst of limiting beliefs and adversities? As long as you are human, there will always be adversities and challenges. James is a serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and breakfree mentor. His life purpose is to create intellectual property that transforms the human condition thru flow and inspire 1 billion breakthroughs. He currently teaches a powerful breakfree framework that helps entrepreneurs and professionals through the difficulties of divorce by guiding them to the next steps so they can get truly complete with the divorce, create a new identity and move on to creating the life of their dreams.
We talked about:
+The importance and power of the right peer group or mastermind (e.g. Entrepreneurs’ Organization and Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership)
+The greatest reward is where fear and pain is.
+Immersion for super growth
The practice of acknowledging yourself in the mirror every day
+Get into the 3rd perspective you can see the truth
+“Victory to the big mind” - the commitment to yourself, to your growth, to your truths
+How to maintain your heightened state
+How to make better and better decisions from a resourceful state?
+Josh Waitzkin’s technique to cultivate anchors of flow states
How to get in flow in the midst of limiting beliefs and adversities? As long as you are human, there will always be adversities and challenges. James Lin, also known as J Flow, is a serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and breakfree mentor. It is his life purpose to create intellectual property that transforms the human condition thru flow and inspire 1 Billion breakthroughs. He currently teaches a powerful breakfree framework that helps entrepreneurs and professionals through the difficulties of divorce by guiding them to the next steps so they can get truly complete with the divorce, create a new identity and move on to creating the life of their dreams. He is also dedicated to empowering future generations and partners with non profits to building schools in the Philippines.
We talked about:
- The importance and power of the right peer group or mastermind (e.g. Entrepreneurs’ Organization and Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership)
- The greatest reward is where fear and pain is.
- Immersion for super growth
- The practice of acknowledging yourself in the mirror every day
- Get into the 3rd perspective you can see the truth
- “Victory to the big mind” – the commitment to yourself, to your growth, to your truths
- How to maintain your heightened state
- How to make better and better decisions from a resourceful state?
- Josh Waitzkin’s technique to cultivate anchors of flow states
Quotes
- The Greatest Reward Is Where the Fear And Pain Is.
- Be Flow. Share flow. Teach flow.
- When you are in flow state, your subconscious brings forth all the information where you need it when you need it
- what we focus on is where my energy goes
- The problem is usually not the problem. The problem is the state you are in facing the problem
- How uncomfortable you are willing to be and stay there is inversely proportional to how successful you’ll be in life
- When you break through the walls that limit you, possibilities open up and that’s such an empowering feeling.
Books
- 4 Hour Workweek
- Stealing Fire
- Eat Move Sleep
- How to Change Your Mind in 21 Days
- Art of Learning
- Think and Grow Rich
- Laws of Success
CK LIN 0:06
I’m really excited to be doing this podcast with James Lin. Why I want to have James on the show is he’s a serial entrepreneur. And he’s also really committed to his personal and professional development. And when I meet people like that, I want to talk to them. And I want to hear how they are operationalizing, seeing what they learn from different modalities, different domains and bring that into their life, bring that into their relationships, bring that into their businesses. So thank you so much for being on the show, James.
JAMES LIN 0:43
Thank you. CK, I am honored and grateful for this opportunity to share my story and to share with your listeners and share with the world. So why don’t we actually start off from what did you say yes to my invitation? Well, for one, I realized that through my journey, I discovered my purpose. And my purpose is to share my journey and to serve. And it was just the right time and moment for me as I have gone through this incredible journey of self-discovery, empowerment. And I realize I have a voice I want to share. So the right opportunity came at the right moment.
CK LIN 1:40
Beautiful. Was there a moment where you realize you have a story you want to share?
JAMES LIN 1:47
Yes. When I was at Tony Robbins Date With Destiny. The first one that I went to, in December, I discovered my destiny. And at that moment I realized this path I’ve gone through, we all go through so much. But by sharing it even, and I can impact one person, I feel that I’m growing and shining my light. So there’s a moment. First, Unleash the Power Within. In November, I broke free of so many limiting beliefs, beliefs that came when I was young, and when I was bullied or when I first moved to America, and I felt like I was not enough and I didn’t understand the culture. I didn’t understand the language. And so from that, I feel in the past I would just stay low to the ground and I remember distinctively, being bullied very badly. And I was five or six. And just somehow, like, it’s called the genesis of identity, okay? where when you’re young, when you feel something happened, what caused you pain, and that in that age, you made a decision. And that decision was like, Ah, from suffering, that pain of like, being picked on. I’ve learned like, Oh be very private or just stay low to the ground. And so, when I broke free of those limiting beliefs, I felt Ah, I want to share it, I want to share how I broke free.
CK LIN 4:03
How did you break free? You don’t have to share a specific process per se. I mean, unless you want to. But share with us, unpack that a little bit. How did you actually break free because I would assert for the people who are listening. They may have already identified some limiting beliefs or mindset that they know that that’s holding them back. But they are unable to let that limiting belief go. Yes. So how did you do that?
JAMES LIN 4:34
So one was the, I mean, at UPW. They have a lot of different exercises. Sure, where one, in particular, is called the dickens process. Most people don’t want to go into the pain or into the fear. And that process actually makes you dive in and make that pain double, triple. Then from that utilize pain to shift your perspective into seeing the same scenario, but from a new point. Right. So during the dickens process at UPW. I recalled the pain of being bullied or when I first moved to America, as a child, I didn’t see it as this opportunity to go and for better education, the American dream that my parents had in mind, I just saw it as being removed away from my father, because he stayed in Asia. So, the dickens process, you go into the pain, and you magnify and magnify and then from that, you look at how that decision has impacted you in the past. Right, how is it affected? I was relatively shy. And I didn’t really know who I was and I was looking externally for affirmation or love. But when I went through the process, you then move it to the present, how has that decision that happened to you what happened in the past? How has that affected you in the present? And then effects all your relationships, family, with your friends with yourself, right? And then it’s very interesting because it then goes into the future. See, most people don’t change because it’s, they don’t, they don’t feel enough pain or enough pleasure to change. That’s how you create lasting change. So by doing that process where you bring up these old beliefs of like, I’m not enough or it’s the number one fear people have is that I’m not enough and I’m not loved right.
CK LIN 7:07
I’m not loved for who I am; I’m loved because of XYZ achievement.
JAMES LIN 7:12
Exactly Yeah. And so that’s sort of the decision another decision I made when I was very young because when I came to LA I just fell in love with basketball show time and Michael Jordan and I always remember being just so bad at it. I’ve distinctively remembered a time where I was always picked last in school and the playground This was when I was five or six. And I recall like, this moment of just feeling I was about to be picked last. And it’s usually the two most popular kids and on the court that becomes a captain, they pick right. So one time I was supposed to be picked last Already I was already last. But this guy said now I don’t want him he sucks too bad. No, I was very short. I was uncoordinated, to say the least. And I remember when he said that, the other captain said, you have to take him otherwise you’ll be six versus four. it’d be unbalanced. And they got into a fight in a physical fight in front of me over how badly I sucked. and I remember feeling so embarrassed and so much pain of feeling not enough that I ran home and I was like, I was like, expressing myself to my grandmother just beating myself up. there’s something that I love so much. But I wasn’t born with it. And she basically looked at me and said, What are you going to do about it.
CK LIN 9:03
the wisdom of grandmother, her wisdom, a grandmother.
JAMES LIN 9:05
She comforted me with some amazing talent needs food. And then she said, What are you going to do about it? I remember being six years old and putting my foot on the ground and saying, no matter what, I’m going to be great at basketball. So I made a decision about my outcome. And I basically learned the 10,000-hour rule, like, so I was just practicing all the time, I was playing basketball, I had a basketball with me, wherever I went, I said, What do you have to do? You have to shoot the hoop 20,000 times you have to dribble 50,000 times in order to be good. But the key is, it wasn’t worked for me. I loved it. I enjoy the entire process of it. So I took 10 years before I got to high school, and I made the team. There was an amazing coach who believed in me made me captain. And in that year that I was Captain, our team won the championship for the first time in 22 years. And I remember another decision from that was like, Ah, look, I feel I overcame something that I thought was impossible. And that was a core part of who I became. Because that belief is still with me today. I could pick up a completely new hobby, and just have zero talent in it. But if I decide the outcome, and I’m willing to give it my all without worrying about failing without giving up, like, eventually I’ll be good at it. Right. Yeah. So from that was a belief that came on. But then I started to tie achievement with what I was really after just love and approval from my family from my father. And through my journey, when I realized, through pain and suffering, I realized that it had nothing to do with achievement. It’s what they say the science of achievement versus the art of fulfillment. And when I awakened, it had nothing to do with the businesses that I started and I started a business in my mother’s garage, the few hundred dollars. I built it up, I got very lucky and I just was always creating value. I’m looking for ways to create value. But there was maybe a subconscious thing there. That was like, ah, but then I’ll feel acknowledgment, then they’ll love me. Yeah, exactly. Validate me. Exactly. Yeah. So when I broke free of that, and realize that the foundation, the core value that I was looking for was love and connection. And I opened up to my father I expressed to him that’s how I felt. And I learned something called the five love languages.
CK LIN 12:34
Well, before you go there, and actually I’m curious, what was what caused the awakening moment? Was it just simply you were laying around one night and came to you or was there a specific process or a specific book or specific teacher? How did you wake yourself?
JAMES LIN 12:53
You know that feeling when you work so hard for something and then when it finally arrives. How long does that feeling usually last right? I guess it doesn’t last that long. So I realized through the progress of whether it be investments or building businesses, I realized I was always still seeking more and more externally. But when I started going through this incredible self-discovery, finding myself, I was just learning a lot of different truths out there and then defining who I am, there were certain moments of peak and again, usually relates with pain. So for my father, I expressed to him like, Oh, you know how much I love you, bro. And he wasn’t expressing that back and I was like, starting to feel uncomfortable? Why isn’t he saying it back? I caught myself the new me the awareness. Yeah, the awareness of that he’s talking really quick. Let me hear what he’s actually saying. And I’ve learned that my grandfather never expressed to him to your father, to my father that he loves him. and then I realized oh he doesn’t even know the word. It’s a generational thing. But through the journey of self-discovery and exploring the world, just being present, and truthful to yourself, what you are really about. I uncovered that and then from that, I basically ran with it.
CK LIN 14:59
I asked that question because we also speculate that a lot of people who are listening to this are either aspirational entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs who are striving to make their first hit, right? The single and to them is like, oh, why are you guys talking about this? I want to be successful. But from all the high performers, entrepreneurs, leaders that I met, at some point, they realize like, that is an empty pursuit. I mean, yes, go for that success for sure. But at some point, they realize like, wow, is there is is it all about hitting my net worth goal or my revenue goal or my relationship goal? Whatever it was it was there a moment where you felt that existential stress. Was there a moment?
JAMES LIN 15:51
Yeah, I feel a specific moment would probably be when I felt great pain and suffering. And I realized that it had nothing to do with money success had to do with internally finding what you’re about. See, most people see very successful people, right? But it’s the tip of the iceberg. Right? They can see the surface and they’re like, oh, they’re successful, but they can make assumptions like, Oh, they never suffer pain, or they never know that or they were born with it or something that. What I realized through my journey is to really be successful, it’s not about what you can achieve. It’s what you can serve, what value you can bring to the world. And there’s a distinction there because People who focus on let’s say a number. Yeah, that’s what they focus on. They can manifest that but that the highest, the highest dream that you can set could be the limit. You’re holding yourself back. Yeah.
CK LIN 17:20
That’s beautiful. So what other process Have you come across that really help you let go of these limiting beliefs?
JAMES LIN 17:26
So through my journey basically just uncovering so much from within, through UPW and Date With Destiny. I have basically been on this journey this year. I essentially opened myself up to just growing, growing for the sake of contributing. From that, I’ve done Landmark. I’ve looked at Transcendental Meditation. Yes. I’ve been training in Europe, everything from public speaking to coaching to empowering people. So I’ve, I’ve learned to just free myself from, there’s just one perspective, one truth and to just dive in, dive into just learning what’s out there, what is the best in the world and how they’re, how they’re sharing, how they’re teaching, how they are empowering people and from that, creating my my truth.
CK LIN 18:50
Well, how did you pick these teachers? What are your criteria for picking these teachers? Is it just the What they say online? Was it through Friends recommendation, was it through a felt experience with them?
JAMES LIN 19:09
So I learned about this idea of modeling after the masters from Tony Robbin so, again, I’ve been to probably like, eight, nine events this year which is a lot. Yeah. I’ve been traveling all over the world. And part of it is modeling after someone who’s already excellent. who’s already outstanding in what they are in their gifts. Part of is an intuitive part of me that I’ve learned to uncover of trusting your instinct when people are talking about their experiences. So, one of the things I would do is go around asking people, what is one book that absolutely changed your life? And then I would know when I want to ask for, let’s say, recommendations and opinions, I found, I think maybe from entrepreneurship, a lot of times you will ask questions that are biased, like, in some way, okay? Like, if I say, if I asked this question of all I heard CrossFit is amazing I’ve heard so many great things about it, “what’s your experience with CrossFit? Or how does CrossFit empower you?” That’s leading you to an answer of what I want to hear, versus, what’s one tool that you use, that has absolutely empowered you? just open slate. And so learning to ask better questions, learning that the quality of questions that we ask determines the quality of life that we have, and then intuitively I’ve gotten better and better at trusting my instinct of like, oh, that resonates with me. Dr. Joe Dispenza, Or this book about, about flow, not stealing fire? Like, there’s so much content, there’s so much out there, right?
CK LIN 21:12
There is a buffet of information out there.
JAMES LIN 21:15
Yeah, correct. And we all have these filters that we can tell what’s authentic to who we are. So just being on the lookout with that intention has really helped me. once breaking free of the limiting beliefs of seeking external validation or externally acknowledgment from within seeing what resonates with me, and then just being open to talking to a lot of people, about what’s transformed their life and then as they’re speaking their truth, see what resonates with you.
CK LIN 21:55
So what are some their books that you have come across that Change your life that empowers your life.
JAMES LIN 22:04
Sure. Feel I would say one. One of the earlier ones was four-hour workweek, okay, by Tim Ferriss. Yeah, when I started building my business,
I was always of the mindset, I applied that same idea of basketball, like, I’m just gonna, like, work, work, work, work, work, work ethic, just outwork everyone. and I remember, just with this mindset of, Okay, I’m just gonna and there was success with that.
But when I read that book about the four-hour workweek, it just opened my mind to what is possible. Right? So then I started testing, I started by saying I’m gonna go buy a ticket, I was always a planner, before, I’m gonna buy a ticket, I’m going to show up somewhere in the world, and then just see what happens. So oftentimes, again, people go way from fear and pain. Now I’ve learned the greatest reward is where the fear of pain is, right? Like, why is it causing pain? Why is it causing you fear, right? And then, again, usually, it’s something that maybe happened, even when we were so young, that unconsciously, we took that and made a decision with that. But then when you flip that on the upside, you’re like, Oh, my God, I just love flowing all the time.
Like, for example, with, with flow, I remember when I first came to the US, I was always dancing. I was always listening to Michael Jackson. And I was always like, dancing and jumping up and down. I remember somewhere along the lines of growing up,I know, people say, Why are you so happy? Or like, why like, calm down like, and I think just subconsciously, I turned down the volume, so to speak. And it wasn’t till honestly covered. My flow, that’s part of my destiny, is to be flow, to share flow, and to teach flow. And just recognizing who you are. I do have a poster here that they have that great that you create, where you visually remind yourself on what do you stand for? Right to, to the listeners out there again, there are many ways to, to make money, there are many ways to succeed. But when you can combine it with something that , your purpose, one, you have an incredible advantage because you’re playing the long game. Right? If you know your outcome, you know that your outcome is to serve and people served different ways. Right? So when I discovered my outcome to serve to flow, Then I started proactively seeking out what goes towards that outcome? our unconscious then picks up like, oh, okay, there’s so many conversations Oh, that conversation. that book about four-hour workweek, or that book about eat, move, sleep. That was when I had a breakthrough about health. I remember, doing this open eye meditation. And I went to the full moon party, and I remember wandering into the waters a couple hundred feet out, and I laid there, and I just had an awakening about man, I should really treat my health as the foundation of everything. Because with energy, you can do anything. With energy, you can show up more in your relationships, you can show up more for you, for your business, or you can show more for your family friends, . So those two books have been really had an impact because once I started reading that book, eat move sleep, I started to just take a lot of tools from it standing when I’m working, moving around or learning about the 8020 rule or Pomodoro techniques. Again, the key a key is to at times chunk up into what is your intention behind
CK LIN 26:25
what’s shrunk up?
JAMES LIN 26:26
chunk up is to look to zoom out to look at what you’re doing from a 30,000 feet high angle, right? Oftentimes, we can get in the rat race in the details of like, Okay, in this business, I gotta do sales, I’m gonna do marketing, I’m gonna do this, I gotta do this. That’s why I love traveling, taking you out of your normal day to day element, and then asking yourself tough questions. Yes, I’ve been doing this, but like, what is the truth? What is your truth, and then zooming out, jumping up to look at will remind yourself of the why people focus on the how, right way too much remind yourself of the why, then you’re unconscious, and you put yourself into flow state. See, our unconscious is so much more powerful than unconscious mind, unconscious, like, if I took a look around, my conscious records, there’s that there were unconscious records, everything, all the books you’ve ever read all the TED Talks you ever watch, I mean, you’re unconscious, when you’re in flow, state your unconscious, bring forth the relevant information, when you need it, where you need it, how you need it. And I found whether it’s through traveling or going into the wilderness and meditating and just being still and embracing Mother Nature, or just like, finding some silence or time to just think, proactively versus reacting. There’s so much to react to in the world. Yeah. And when we discover that from within our purpose, then we will proactively start to manifest things and draw upon things into our lives. So those are two books that I felt are pretty, the health and the foundation of sleeping better, . And then also, just the possibilities of the four hour mindset wasn’t that like, I worked four hours, we didn’t work for hours a week, but , what, compared to what I was doing before, it’s like, I’m just going to grind it in some dark warehouse somewhere versus like, opening up, exploring, learning from learning and sharing, growing from even different cultures around the world, right? And then saying, Oh, that makes sense. Why do people do what they do? Right? So I found they say that you’re the, you’re the average of the five or six people that you’re closest to, I found that six person for me, once I uncovered about books and knowledge, that six person is masters or people from the who’ve shared through books. So then I just started to just read, read, read. And there’s so much information out there, and you can absorb and learn from people who’ve already done it like, Michael Phelps, who you won so many gold medals, like, what are the characteristics? That really people who are you know, in peak state? What are they doing way that’s consistent across the board? Yeah, so I would say different books have different impacts on my life, and to reread those books, at different parts of your life, you actually absorb and learn different things.
CK LIN 30:22
There’s a lot of different places I can go with, I will start off by saying, I actually listened to my own podcast, because I’m a different person, different time. So I can actually hear different things from what the guests have told me or told the audience to actually listen to that. So it’s a beautiful practice. Thank you for sharing. Do you look at it more a portfolio approach where the specific date and specific time that you would say, hey, from this time, this time, or from this month to this month, I’m going to focus on growth? Was it all for you would be, let me just take a hiatus and all focus on growth this whole year, versus taking a more of a portfolio approach.
JAMES LIN 31:11
So I’ve learned about immersion. Complete immersion, allows you to break through before, maybe like, I would read a book, like, next week, read another chapter next week, reading the chapter. Now I’ve learned the power of immersion. So like, this year, in particular, I’ve been just cleared my plate to just go full-on into super growth. And that’s just going into, events or seminars where for five, six days, you just go fully in and play full out, and just immerse yourself into it completely. So I found that to be a great practice, where when you have the breakthroughs that you have at different events, it then becomes about spaced repetition, about incorporating that into your life.
CK LIN 32:12
Right, the hours that you were talking about earlier.
JAMES LIN 32:14
Correct? Yeah. So the portfolio approach, I technically am doing that, because I’m immersing in different things, right. But at the same time, I found the power of presence, to be completely focused in on something, learn the breakthroughs, feel what you feel. And then from that create, a routine, create I read this book, it’s called how to how to change your mind in 21 days. So after UPWI, I took a solo RV trip up into Portland. I remember I was reading, I was reading as learning and consuming so much knowledge in that state. And then setting out the plans for say, like, morning routines, and then incorporating and then keep testing, keep adding what speaks to you most and what impacts you the most, from a third perspective. So I love that you listen to your podcast, because oftentimes, we live from our first perspective, we can shift into third, you can then see things that you can’t see from the first perspective. Because let’s just say from me, from my first perspective, there can be certain blinders, right? blind spots that we don’t see each other, when we shift into the third can then say, how often do people not acknowledge themselves? Right? How often into people. Just keep thinking, What’s next, what’s next, I’m going to double my sales, I’ll great I’m going to triple I’m going 10 X, I’m going to half into people not just stop and just say, acknowledge themselves for what they’ve already accomplished, and what they’ve already done. So from that mindset, I found just from the third perspective, mindset, you can see the truth. Again, like, there are certain practices, certain things that I do, I’ve learned from different teachings, for example, one is to look in the mirror, and to acknowledge yourself every day, knowledge yourself, like, just go on a rant of seven things. This says your name, James, I acknowledge you for knowledge before recycling, today, I acknowledge you for walking that person across the street. And that builds a certain muscle within you have an also a practice of acknowledgment. Also, forgiveness, commitment to yourself. And I added the last one, which is gratitude. It’s a muscle, people often see like, somebody walking down the street, they’re super peak performance, state, you can say like, all of that person, they run a triathlon or there’s super, super fit or strong people can see that outside. But how often can you see into other people’s minds? How much work they’ve done into growing and empowering themselves through books?
CK LIN 35:51
how do you see that? How do you see in others work that I’ve done, to overcome whatever challenge to have to achieve? Physical, the physical state, the mental state, the emotional state, the spiritual state? How do you do that?
JAMES LIN 36:06
You can just intuitively when you’re talking to people, you can see who’s present to themselves. Right. And that’s something to calibration or just looking at how, how authentic people are to who they are. Right? And that you can tell people who are super grounded and know their purpose, they know their outcome. They put in the work, or they uncovered what the truth is.
CK LIN 36:34
So my next question would be because you invested quite a lot of money, right to the Tony’s Platinum program is 100, grand or something like that, right? So for your friends who are listening, I have a specific person in mind, that’s our mutual friend of ours. He doesn’t do programs, he likes to do self-exploration. What would you say to someone like that like, Hey, you may you want to invest in yourself, as a way to help you get to the next level of whether it be business or success or fulfillment or relationship? Would you say to that, because you’ve done nine programs or nine seminars In one year? One may say, That’s a lot. Yeah. So and not the time the effort, but also the actual dollars? Right, right. So what would you say to someone like that? who’s listening?
JAMES LIN 37:27
I would say that different people have different ways to grow, and learn so how one learns, can be dramatically different, right? some people learn through visually seeing things versus hearing it so I just found that this works incredibly well, for me, because of all the transformation that I’ve had. , others just depend on what their mode of learning is. Right? I would say, one of them, one of the deciding factors that I felt was listening to my intuition, right, when I was at Date With Destiny, December, and there was just a part of me that just felt this was the right thing. And this was the right path, like, it just resonated with me. And I would say, then I compared it to an MBA. So , before in the past, I thought, like, when I was an undergrad, I really wanted to go to MBA school. And I went through this process of taking a GMAT studying for and then when I got there, I realized, is this what I asked myself? Is this what I really want, even though all the work that I did to get to that point, I was going to go to USC went to orientation. But to uncover what resonates with the way you learn best. So this was probably the commitment that I made really quickly, based on my intuition is one of the best decisions I made, because of all the, all the changes. It’s, it’s, it’s hard to like, say, to compare to say, like, Oh, you do this, you will get this result. It’s people discovering from within what, how they learn. , and there’s a lot of truth out there a lot of knowledge out there. Sure. So a mutual friend, they could go on a different path completely. But still, there are many ways to succeed, right? It’s just owning what works for you. And to be to, to be brutally honest, with like, if this is moving you forward, what are you going to do commit to get to that next level?
CK LIN 40:04
Yeah, there’s a lot of different paths in a mountain top. Yes. Right, metaphorical. And once you get to the mountaintop, quote, unquote, you also realize that there are many mountain tops. Yeah. So and it’s complete self-evaluation. So what I heard in everything that you said is, well find your own path. Look for different teachers, immerse yourself and cultivate your intuition. that awareness, that awareness towards yourself, why actually feels right to you?
JAMES LIN 40:40
Yes. Is that? Yes. And there’s this other concept of when I, when I made this decision, again, and again, afterward, I looked back, and it’s like, oh, it’s a big decision, a big cost, time commitment. But it’s this idea, a victory to the big mind.
CK LIN 41:03
What does that mean?
JAMES LIN 41:04
So when I started my business, I had to figure out I didn’t have a lot of money, I had to be really creative and figure out maximizing the resources that I had. Right, right. And so I realized, what got me to a certain level was that skill of like, Okay, if there’s I ended up 2008 going all-in on real estate. I use this example of like, if there are three contractors that you could work with, there’s the most cost-effective, there’s medium-range, and then there’s the most expensive, right? So I learned when I starting out, I had to go with I had to discover how to, with limited resource, how to get really creative with that. most cost-effective,
CK LIN 42:02
maximum outcome
JAMES LIN 42:02
maximum outcome. Yeah. And then as I built that up, I realized that I got to the next level, what got me here isn’t what’s going to get me next level, right, because of certain skills that we learned. Let’s say, I got if you had asked me even a couple of years ago, when I spent this capital no way. Yeah. But as I’m learning even from my mentor, just observing this, a victory to the big mind, is this practice or art? of like, yeah, you hit a certain level, but you have to let go of certain things. Right, let go of certain mindsets, that the principles may apply. But elevating your standard. And I felt that’s what I did with that decision. And so committing to growth, commitment into yourself and your truth. I would say it’s a victory to the big mind. Because the small mind might be like, all this where can I get this return going to? , like, I just keep going into, like, trying to figure out, how is this actually going to return versus my intuition told me, spoke to me like, Ah, this is for sure the path, this is not just the MBA about how to be successful, this is tied in with everything, right, with health, contribution, growth, love with teaching other people. And so that’s how I made my decision.
CK LIN 43:41
So you’ve carved out a certain budget certain times and an effort to the pursuit of growth. Yeah, you immerse yourself in different wisdom teachings were more specifically Platinum Partnership with Tony Robbins. He’s your guy right now. So what, uh, what other ways do you put in place as a way to help you elevate your standard while continuing to live at that elevated state? Rather than? Oh, it’s great for a weekend? Let me go back to my normal state now.
JAMES LIN 44:14
Great question. And I always share this with people who inquire about this now are asked me like, how do I maintain the state? Breakthroughs can happen at any moment. Right? When you are in a change of state if you will. You breakthrough you see what is possible?
CK LIN 44:36
by state? You mean a momentary emotional feeling? Is that accurate?
JAMES LIN 44:41
Yeah, the state of how you’re being? Okay.
CK LIN 44:44
Right. So I just wanted to make sure that our listeners Yeah, so.
JAMES LIN 44:49
So with that, like, from that state of transformation. It’s not just about mountaintops, it’s about enjoying the entire journey, even the challenges as opportunities for growth. So one of the things I did immediately was, I started to do priming in the morning. So priming is basically this practice, where one you do deep breathing, so you oxygenate the brain first thing get up before like, reacting cell phones, things that. To do deep breathing, drawing energy within you, then you bring up three moments in time when you felt so grateful. Go into those moments. So you’re reliving those moments of gratitude. And then you visualize, you visualize, like, your outcome, visualize, like, what, what is your not just goals, what is your outcome, and see it as done already. So it’s basically a way to prime yourself for the day. So to set your intentions is another one and also to, to kind of feel another part of it is visualizing, a light cleansing, you give me strength. So it’s a combination of all those things that put you into a state where you’re like, Ah, I’m ready for today, today is going to be another incredible day, regardless of what happens, because every day is amazing. Every day is another day where we have so much to be grateful for. What we focus on is where the energy goes, Yeah. Right. So if we’re focused on what we fear, that’s what you’re creating, that’s where you’re putting energy and attention to, rather than having your outcomes at the beginning of the day, like, Okay, I’m, I’m at Date With Destiny, one of my contribution outcomes is to give and give now, so, there I, I put out to the universe that I’m going to build my first school, okay. And dedicated to my grandmother. And funny thing, when you release it out to the Universe by saying it, by writing it by, just constantly focusing your intention energy on it. There’s something very powerful about the law of attraction. , somebody then introduced me like, Oh, this person’s already built the school, the Philippines, let me introduce you guys. So, priming has a lot of also creates a certain certainty that grounds you, to prepare you for the day and also prepare you for taking the steps progress to your outcomes.
CK LIN 48:05
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of paths to begin. For the people who don’t yet quite believe in the power of intention. This is hard to fathom. Because it feels like a lot of woo-woo stuff like, no, it’s not tangible. It’s not measurable. How do you actually do it? But if you really think about it, everything that you see around you, at one point was an idea in someone’s head. And there is a gap between intention and reality, physical reality. So how do you actually sustain an intention to reality? I think what you’re sharing is a very powerful practice. And, people may not actually practice everything. But I think a good place to start may be putting yourself in a state where you are resourceful. As in, what are you grateful for? What do you want to acknowledge? What have you done, as a way to, you can call it whatever you want to call it the placebo effect? I don’t care anymore, right? At this point, I care about the effect. The fact is, I am more resourceful. Because of these practices. Hell yeah, go for it. Whatever you want to believe, right? I’m very much in the same way, priming, and, get into the body and meditate and resourceful and set my intention. And what are you grateful for? For sure, all of that. But I just wanted to underline to someone who’s listening who may not be a convert yet. Whatever you do to put yourself in a more resourceful state, do that thing. do it. And then you can try out some other things that these, practices that James are talking about because, in the end, it’s about if you’re listening to this particular podcast is about results. Right? Are you more resourceful to go out And actually bring that beautiful idea you had into reality? If yes, do it. Now stop doing it? That’s it. Right. Pretty simple. And from my point of view,
JAMES LIN 50:13
yeah, testing out different things, I would say, because I was very, very left-brained.
CK LIN 50:21
You are speaking to one right now too
JAMES LIN 50:22
Yeah, very, very, just very, very logical. And that can be a great attribute for, building businesses and things like that. But I would say when I on this journey, I started just keeping an open mind to what is possible, and then just testing it. I’m like, oh, I, I absolutely believe in this and, consistently show up. It’s like, oh, it works. Yeah. , oh, versus, I would say to some of your listeners, one, the problem is usually not the problem, right? The problems, usually the state, that you enter the problem, I see. So the same scenario can happen but from a different state of empowerment or state of where you just absolutely crushed it. from that state, more possibilities can emerge and more choice can emerge. And that, I believe, is tapping into your unconscious as well. When you’re in the state, because there’s, there’s, like, let’s say, different parts of us that want different things. And sometimes we’re in conflict, all we want a here but then we don’t want to give that up to for B , And to me, that’s finding the congruency of who you are, where all parts of you are coming together gather to stand for what your purpose what you’re about finding, and that’s like, to me that’s about flow. Right. So again, you don’t have the power of the mind what you believe is Incredible. Right? So test it out. Right? And if something’s not working, yeah, then try something else and try something else, But yeah, I would find from my journey, like, the more I’ve opened my mind to the possibilities, and again, I don’t, now when I’m learning, it’s not like, Oh, I have to agree 100% with one methodology, right. But from that, if I if I have a filter, like, Oh, you’re already skeptical. Yeah. if you’re already skeptical about something, yeah. , if you already have that filter lens, then your mind will make that true. Yeah, like, Oh, yeah, I was right.
CK LIN 52:59
Yes, doesn’t work.
JAMES LIN 53:01
, and you just make that right. versus if you approach completely, from. You could learn, let’s say, 10% this, from this book, because it could reject 90%. But you take that 10%, and then from another book or idea, take 50%, then you build more and more knowledge versus like, I don’t want to change or I don’t, I heard this or my friend said, this about this book, there are more like, Oh, I respect him, therefore, this book is not what it’s about.
CK LIN 53:39
So let me ask you this. To some people, it’s scary, to be that open-minded, to really look, the whole construct the whole scaffolding of their belief system, all the memories, good or bad, trauma, things that are embarrassed about things that are traumatized by the bullying experience, right. So what do you say to that? , Is it scary? So what do you say to them?
JAMES LIN 54:09
I would say that one of the things that I learned from my mentor is how uncomfortable you’re willing to get and be there is inversely related to how successful you’ll be in life. Because that’s where the growth is, again, the fears there, for some reason, in the past, the mind wanting to protect itself, right? This the human survival instinct of like, like, this is uncomfortable, therefore, I don’t want to feel it. Just from experience, breaking through, whatever pace there’s a times dissatisfaction opening, when you breakthrough, you will say, your mind and like, think, what else is possible. Like, for example, before, let’s say with skydiving, I remember when I was like 17, or 18, a friend of mine is going into the military. He said I want to go skydiving. I said, Yeah, let’s do it. And the night before skydiving, guess what I did? I googled how many people die skydiving
CK LIN 55:38
as a left minded person would do, right?
JAMES LIN 55:40
Yeah, not a brilliant move. I mean, watch the video, some guy bouncing. So, man, I backed out. And I had always felt some kind of regret from that. And so throughout the years, I broke it down into multiple steps. First, there was rock jumping in Hawaii. , this is fine, cliff diving. Yeah. Like, this is fine. This is actually pretty fun. Yeah. And then next, I went to Rio, when I was exploring the four-hour workweek lifestyle, went to Rio for the World Cup. Yeah. And found out that hang gliding is one of the safest places in the world hang glide.
CK LIN 56:23
Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay, yeah.
JAMES LIN 56:25
So you go off the 5000 feet, and you basically, you run off a cliff, and then you’re like a big kite. Right. And you just soaring through the cloud. Right? Then I was like, I think I’m ready for skydiving. Yeah. And then, like, some time passed, and the friend asked me, wanna go skydiving? Sure. And so we go to Santa Barbara. Yeah. And it’s the only place that they advertise on the West Coast that can go 18,000 feet, versus 13,000.
CK LIN 56:57
Okay, you have to go a little longer.
JAMES LIN 57:00
Yeah, you have to wear an oxygen mask for an extra 5~10 minutes to climb to descend. And remember, when I got there, to that desk, everyone in the group went for 13,000. And I said what, I’m already here. Let’s do 18,000 ft. Yeah,
CK LIN 57:22
when you go, when you do something, you go big. That’s your style.
JAMES LIN 57:30
when I jumped off that plane like first, just to show the viewers who haven’t been skydiving, like, they open the door, and they will say, Okay, I’ll count to three, I’m gonna go, right. And on the count of one, they just push you out. They must have had too many refunds or something. So bad, because I was the only person doing the 18,000 feet. I witnessed this on ready, ready. And so after everybody went, I’m just there. Climbing, climbing, climbing, the door opens, you always have to go with the instructor and tandem. And they put me outside the plane. And all of a sudden, I hear my instructor say sorry, to the captain. So apparently, he opened the door too early. So I was hanging outside of the plane, like a good two minutes. Felt like a lifetime. Right. And I was hanging there like a kangaroo. And I was like, looking down the hole right up, I felt a sense of calm like this is, I’m ready for this. Yeah, and even when I was hanging out, man, this is a unique experience, I get to actually hang out of the plane against what the mind, what you focus on. And then when I first went, this is on video, like that first moment of like, free fall, I was like, oh, man, like this just rush. But after that initial moment, I like, just basically rocked out the whole way down is doing like Superman, it’s like, and let me just share this with your listeners. When you do something that you once thought you cannot do in your life before that it was not a possibility. And you do that. Your brain then opens up to thinking, what else can I do that I once thought I can do. And that is an empowering feeling. Because then you realize that you now in the present is so much wiser. , there’s so much more growth so much more, the adult you if you will, what have you limited yourself from past experience, maybe a rejection when you were, a middle school or something like asking a girl for a dance or something like that. What did you previously the side was like, Ah, it was and has a hesitation, it empowers and opens up so many doors. And the more you do that, the more than you, it can and metaphor could be like leveling up in a video game. Right? You just add more and more levels, and then you achieve your breakthrough, more of what’s the possibility that you can create for yourself and create for others? And that’s what I would say it’s like, if something, something, really, you’re really afraid of it. A question is why? Where did this fear come from? Sometimes people even forget about it consciously, like something that happened to them when they were young. Right? There could be some kind of negative anchor. Right? if, if, let’s say for example if I was six, and, somebody took a clipboard, and we’re just hitting my head beating me up on it, right, beating me up. It could be 2030 years later, we’d be having a great conversation with a friend just have a magnificent night hanging out. All of a sudden they bring a clipboard out. And I’m like, oh, I don’t exactly remember being beaten up by a clipboard, right? But my, my unconsciously signal SOS Danger, danger. Oh, maybe it’s CK, I don’t know what’s in it. And then it’s a fight or flight, feeling that comes up. Right. So to really go into, why does it make you feel uncomfortable? I think it’s important. Because again, at the end of that wall, and I’ve broken through a lot, and again, it’s a journey, right? When you break through walls that want to limit you, possibilities open up, and that’s such an empowering feeling. Then you’re like, Oh, well, I was this way before because of what happened. , like, for example, you’ve been doing this podcast, right? , I remember when I, I think it was six or seventh grade, all of a sudden, this memory came to me Just recently, like, I was part of a play, where I was literally the tree. I was a prop. I was just standing there. And I was beating myself up? And then
CK LIN 1:02:23
wait, why
JAMES LIN 1:02:24
I was beating myself up because I was judging myself for having no speaking role. Maybe, past experiences like being bullied. And so now just empowering myself to share my voice right? I realized it’s my it’s part of my destiny.
CK LIN 1:02:47
the journey from being a tree to Noble Warrior. Yeah.
JAMES LIN 1:02:54
And then I realized, it’s, it’s not about me, it’s about what I can you no impact what I can share. And, as I broke through this year, starting to do Facebook, live videos, Oh,
CK LIN 1:03:10
right. Amazing, by the way, just keep dancing.
JAMES LIN 1:03:15
reminding myself that even if I can impact one person that, that I’m serving, I’m contributing. And that has elevated me to rise above the natural, previously tendency of like, Oh, like, I don’t have to speak in front of a lot of people, I versus now. It’s like, what can I share with people through my journey, because everybody, everybody has challenges that they overcame, everybody has a voice, I truly believe that everyone has a gift, everyone is amazing as they are, oftentimes, they just don’t see it. Or they reflect what is social or cultural conditioning, of like, Oh, I gotta go this path in order to be aka successful or do what my parents expected out of me in certain cultures, right. But the process of freeing and awakening yourself is, it’s so beautiful, that I just wanted to share, like, and take it step by step if you want, or when there’s opening of where discomfort becomes, to a certain point where discomfort becomes like, there’s an opening of like, where you’re going to make a changing and make it now breakthrough through and then take actions that commit yourself to that. And continue to grow. Right? know, when I was done after college, I was like, Oh, I don’t want to read anymore. That was like, Oh, that’s not true, there’s so much the more I’ve learned, the more there is to learn, right? So there’s some statistic that after college certain percentage of the population is just like, I don’t have to read anymore, right now, let’s say reading allows you to get insight into what other people and their stories of what they share. And there are so many incredible journeys out there from people overcoming phobias, past traumas, and bullying. Yeah, bullying, or yeah, whatever fear that they had, and they overcame it. And they share that beautiful thing because that inspires more people say I grew up in San Gabriel Valley, like, Tony actually came from San Gabriel Valley. So that’s possible, to see what is possible of what life can be possible, i thought it is truly empowering.
CK LIN 1:05:59
, one of the things I realized for because I’m very much, so I grew up with Tiger parents, very much an outcome-driven type of parenting, if I didn’t achieve a certain outcome, right? The effort wasn’t worth it, kinda thing. So I learned that over the years, the analogy, the metaphor, is if I’m watching the NFL play, and say, hey, I want to do football, but I’m not yet at an NFL level. I’m worthless for not being at the NFL level without realizing that they took 10,000, probably 20,000, probably 30,000. So I’m going from zero and judging myself from being a zero, where they are already at 20 to 30,000. And of course, it’s like, I’m not doing that, especially about come from outcome-driven, kind of perspective, right? versus effort driven. Like, hey, I’m gonna enjoy every step of the journey, enjoying the process, enjoy the process. So one of the latest thing that I’m practicing right now is boxing. In Case in point, and it really got me to that primal state of survival. Someone is punching me in the face, right? and I’d notice these being aware of the awareness, these flinching moment, where I know logically, my my, I should lean for a mega hug, or whatever may be the combination that half, but when that fist is coming your way, the second time now, they’re ready to punch you in the first. The fist is coming again the second time, the flinching is real. And then for me, spiritually speaking, is a perfect opportunity for me to act a link forward. That’s where the growth opportunity. Yes, beautiful, right. Love that. Yeah. And that’s an actually people think like, why a Ph.D. guy, entrepreneur? Why are you doing this boxing thing? It makes no sense. But for me, is it actually a spiritual practice? Because the thing is, I can meditate all day and believe that I can be calm. And I am calm most of the time. Yeah. How do you be calm and meditative? When someone’s punching you in the stomach in the face and the body shots? That to me is the real test. Do you know what I mean? So similarly, entrepreneurship, you can be meditative all day, you can have all the theories day one when you’re looking at your cash flow, and you got to make payroll. And sometimes you’re like, how am I gonna make that happen? How do you actually tap into the inner resource and be creative actually make that happen? That’s when the real test comes. That’s the way I look at all these different paths. But it’s still the same spiritual path, just different way. He has a parent, as a spouse, as a brother, as a son, as a friend, as an entrepreneur, as a leader as a podcaster.
JAMES LIN 1:09:08
So for me, it’s about flow. Like, what you mentioned about boxing, that’s a great example of like, when your primal instincts kick in the right, you know when someone’s actually
CK LIN 1:09:23
fight, flight or freeze.
JAMES LIN 1:09:25
Yes. And so I would say, tapping into one’s flow. And what resonates with them, let’s say boxing in your case, when you, let’s say practice, or you do it over and over where your unconscious then, like, knows what to do to react without thinking, I gotta defend, right? And just reacting and unconsciously ducking when you’re in that state of flow, your unconscious knows what to do. So I would say, similarly to business, when you’re looking at cash flow, you can react to like, okay sales, and you get this or this. If you put yourself into that state of flow, and apply that context, new things will emerge.
CK LIN 1:10:21
So let me ask you a follow-up question there, right. So in the book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell said this whole idea of flow and tapping into it, he said, you’re more likely to make the correct choice when you have all the 10,000 hours already. So you can actually be more intuitive and connect the dots in the correct path. Right in the blink of a moment, hence the name blink. Yeah. So I can tell you that right now. If I trust my instincts in boxing when I’m still learning, I’m going to make the incorrect assessment and freeze. Because that’s the fight flight or freeze, right? And that’s like, what the primal instincts will resort to. So in the learning process, then how do you distinguish basically being flow at the same time knowing that you are still in training? does it make sense what I’m asking?
JAMES LIN 1:11:22
Yes. So when you model after someone who has done 100,000 hours, you can learn unconsciously from them. So you can get there much quicker without putting this? , because I had this thing? Also, as well before of like, what is the master? Like, ah I haven’t done 10,000 hour
CK LIN 1:11:46
what is a master Actually, let’s go that go go down that rabbit hole?
JAMES LIN 1:11:50
So before I would, I will relate it from my past experience, like, Oh, I have to do 10,000 hours to become a master. But that’s a judgment and the limiting belief that only when you hit 10,000 hours will you become ready? So, being a master, a friend mentioned this, is when you have someone to teach.
CK LIN 1:12:18
Interesting.
JAMES LIN 1:12:19
Yeah. So that kind of perspective helped me be conscious of the language that I was using. Because for a period, I was like, Oh, yeah Tony said this, this person said this, and there’s truth that the Masters being Tony’s done it for 40 years. But for me, if I think only when I get to 40 years will I become a master is not congruent with the truth of like, this is something that as far as coaching or empowering people you can do right away, right, but without judging yourself that to place that label of like, only then will I be ready. And that could be hesitation or some kind of past limiting belief of like, only when you put in 10,000 hours where you become master.
CK LIN 1:13:17
So why would say one readiness to teach
JAMES LIN 1:13:19
to readiness to teach, but the master can be someone who has someone to teach. I found by modeling after someone who’s done it for 100,000 hours, or however many, you can learn from it much quicker. So even, besides just doing it, and training, sparring, watching how somebody who train seven days a week, or someone who won a gold medal or like, going for the best and observing them modeling after them learning, like, what did they do whatever they do, that’s different, it makes them win a gold medal. Right? And then from that, you can take away so much more quickly.
CK LIN 1:14:09
Yeah, one of the best ways I learned as a way to accelerate your learning because I’m the kind of person and also I would assert people listening to this podcast, it’s more about achieving the outcome more accelerated way, right, more effective, more efficient, kind of way. So one of the mental models I want to share with, with you as well with the listeners is you learn from the Masters, or even the grandmasters and people who have done a lot more hours and you. And you also synthesize and teach those who are 3 steps behind you. Yes, yes. So this is a learning and teaching way we really help you articulate? Well, number one, be aware of what is it that you know, what is it that you don’t know, as well as to embody it, because now you also have accountable to embody it to your students, wherever they maybe? Right? Yes. And this way, learn one and then teach one to me is learn from one and teach to another one is, to me the most accelerated way that you can really learn something, that’s the way I think about it.
JAMES LIN 1:15:17
I agree with that. Hundred percent. I realized, when I am at these events, taking notes and learning, but with the intention of teaching it, you learn it in a different way you absorb more, because if you only learn what you consciously think applies to you, there’s so much more material content that you might just filter off. versus when you’re learning to teach you just activate your brain, so much more engaging way. And then when teach it one, you’re sharing love, and you’re sharing the knowledge and two, you’re also absorbing it so much quicker. So I definitely agree with that. And that’s something that I, I found through my journey of like, learning, and then sharing, learning and sharing it. And so before I had this language with what is a master that, like, okay, after this year, or after then I’ll start to be out of feel like I’m more ready to share, versus when that when I had that, that two millimeter shift in mindset. And I started sharing and Sharing from the heart.
CK LIN 1:16:41
Yeah, because otherwise, you’re always I can speak for you. I was always in student mode. Right?
JAMES LIN 1:16:47
Exactly. You’re always I’m always like I could have I could be better, right?
CK LIN 1:16:48
Because I’m looking at myself to the NFL player. Right? I am looking at the grandmasters and looking at the world’s number one, correct? Even for me, since I’m in the, in the intersection of entrepreneurship and spirituality. I’m looking at the Grandmaster, the Confucius the LaoTse, the Allen Watts like, these are like, Master storytellers, the Jesus Christ, right. And I’m like, not ready to be that and just yet. So cool, beautiful. So since your purpose, your mission is to share about flow, do you want to finish this podcast with some of the tidbits of because I know we went over a few already, but to summarize, if people are interested in tap into flow more in their life, might be like, three things that they could do to actualize this idea if they’re inspired by your story.
JAMES LIN 1:17:52
So I would say for one when meditating, or think of the moments in their life, where they felt the most flow? Right? So one is to recall the moments and be there, I go into those moments, recreate that in your mind with your eyes closed as vividly as possible. And take a look around and see that memory, that’s a part of you already when you were in fully flow state, and you had a resource within you. So recall that memory and go deep into it. And then from that step into a certain context, where you feel and unresourceful, right, so it’s a practice of basically, whatever hesitation or fear comes up about making a decision to go with one way versus another and you’re uncertain, I would say, practice that one can do is to go into to the past of what’s already worked for them individually. And to bring it up visually, and make it as bright and big as possible. And then from that state, then go into the context of what that decision, and then your unconscious, if you continue to train that as part of the muscle, that your unconscious will guide you more and more into better, better decisions, what’s right for you when it’s right for you. So that would be one practice. Second practice is doing something every day, that puts you into flow. Right? For some people, it’s meditation, priming, but what’s the, what’s the activity that you do? When you just not really thinking about it? And , or a gift you have some people play music some people sing, whatever speaks to them, where they put themselves in that state, just be being present now. And doing that as a daily practice or consistent practice, so that that feeling is there versus when i win the Grammys, then I feel I achieve something that lasts for a minute, right? And then you have to wait to win another Grammy before you feel that’s right. I’ve met so many peak performers throughout my journey where one they don’t acknowledge themselves, and then they only feel that they feel it’s flow when they have that achievement, but it’s only very brief. So consistently putting yourself in a state that just feels right to you. Right. So people to dance the dance every day. Why? Why wait, that’s one of the things I discovered about my journey. So why wait till events festivals? Or it’s dance? What if? What if you could just dance every day? What love that dance through life? Yeah. Like, again, that’s what resonates with me personally. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:21:04
yeah. Keep doing it, by the way. Thank you.
JAMES LIN 1:21:09
But yeah, do something that just resonates with your truth, even when there’s no external like, acknowledgment, or just something that speaks your truth could be boxing could be golfing, like, whatever puts you in that state. Whatever puts you in that state. And then, so you have that feeling within you. , you ever, have certain days where things just seem to go your way. these are just flowing you feel unstoppable or you feel just some rhythm to things. Find ways to put yourself into that rhythm, and then watch how that can apply to other parts of your life. The second third would be Yeah, I would more understand and read it. There’s a book stealing fire, then I’m reading
CK LIN 1:22:15
Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal.
JAMES LIN 1:22:19
reading about flow. I feel like, at times, there are blockages in us, and that comes from fear that comes from hesitation to understand this concept of flow, I would, I would highly recommend reading more about why are some people just like, in that state all the time? And what are the patterns around that that one can Model Model after. So I would say the third thing is just learning more about flow and how to bring more flow into your lives.
CK LIN 1:23:00
I want to actually add one more by Josh Waitzkin. He wrote it in the art of learning. Josh Waitzkinn was the inspiration for this movie called Finding Bobby Fischer. I think that’s the name. And he was one of the youngest chess prodigies, he won the World Champion at his level at eight years old. And has since actually gone out of chess and be a world champion in push hand Tai Chi. He now is a black belt in jujitsu. So he really is a master of learning. the meta aspect of learning, yeah, Master of that. So one thing he said about tap into flow is, is this. So there are certain things that he naturally does that would put him in flow naturally, for him was playing with his kids, or his kid, rather, he would then add a habit, anchoring habit, Ah, nice before he naturally would play with his kid. Yeah. So as a way to anchor that flow state. And then will train himself to get into that state faster and faster. So instead of, say, 15 minutes before he plays with his kid, he would then shorten it to 10 minutes to five minutes to them one minute and actually put himself in that state, so that he can recall that flow state whenever he wants, before a push hand competition, or before a serious chest competition, things like that. So that’s another way to look at. Instead of generating from nothing, now cultivating flow state for meditation, or whatever it may be, to just anchor it to whatever it is that you naturally do anyway, that’s another way to do it.
JAMES LIN 1:24:51
That’s a beautiful reshare anchoring as a way to bring back that state by doing something unique feeling your body or visual anchor or even music can anchor, like, like, play a specific song, when you are absolutely just being in flow, just doing something that , whether it’s like, let’s say, playing guitar, right, like, let’s say, somebody just flowing through guitar, playing certain music, and that anchors it. And then so when they come up with a challenge, or there’s a challenge that arises, playing that same music, and then seeing from that, like, ah, more choice can emerge, and more perspective of how to address that challenge.
CK LIN 1:25:43
Love it. Thank you. Actually, there’s one thing I forgot to ask you about peer group? Yes. Because you’re now running with different level of people at the Platinum group, how does that change you? or help you maintain the level of flow state? Or taking bigger actions or beyond what you think is possible things like that. Any you want to say speak about that a little bit. The importance of peer group?
JAMES LIN 1:26:08
Yes, I would say peer groups is very important, because of who you choose to surround yourself with, I mentioned earlier, that you can be the average of the five or six people around you. For me, personally, it’s elevating me to a new standard of what I set for myself by learning and growing and sharing with others, or like-minded, and on this path, right. So , I’m part of an accountability group, where we come together, and we share our top 5%, bottom 5%, it’s important to have a mastermind group. And the talk about this. Most people know, Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich. There’s also a secondary book law of success, I’ve found incredible in talks a lot about this, by being able to bounce ideas, and to share the victories, the battles, the defeats, there’s something about that, where you create an energy, that is you create a certain community mindset energy, that, you’ll be able to see things that you wouldn’t see just from your perspective, a lot of times, people think the conscious mind has a lot of thoughts, when you express it, and you’re able to express your outcome to your peer group, you’re able to express your goals, once. Once you say it out loud, there’s just some, there’s something about that, that makes it more real, it makes it more like, you hold yourself accountable to because if I, if I and I noticed this with my accountability groups with my mentor now mentees know by, by sharing that, you create this synergistic energy, that just something powerful about growing together and being able to share in the victory, celebrate the victories, again, sometimes we don’t celebrate it enough, right, the acknowledgement of what we do, who we are, and also to be able to brainstorm about the challenges to get different perspective, I found so insightful, because you’ll be able to see like, oh, there’s another way to look at it. So the power of the peer group since joining Tony’s Platinum partners, I just felt so I feel so grateful of just learning from each other there’s a level of open-mindedness and community that I really feel a sense of belonging, I’m very honored to be part of that. And even just among also my accountability groups, and the people I have around me,
CK LIN 1:29:35
thanks so much for sharing. , one of the things that I mean, I shared with you privately, and people may not know about it is because I hold these masterminds as well for entrepreneurs, and we go through transformational experiences, we create a safe container for people to really talk about what needs to be talked about. And there’s a huge value in that, because one, the mental model that I share with people is performance equals flow minus interference. And in a safe container, you can take an honest look about what’s interfering with your intention, with your performance, with your goals, where you want to get to. And, and also in that container, in that safe container, you can then speak your intention into being the power of speaking, putting words into a powerful listening, of these powerful people that are in the group. That to me, speaking in a spiritual sense, is super powerful. Because it’s not just speaking into nothingness. And to the abyss, you’re now speaking to a very powerful listening. And if you do that with the entire group, the ripple effect truly accelerates your intention to reality. That’s, that’s really one of the impetus, the reason why I created the group as a way to, to help bring more positive changes into the world. So James, I really acknowledge you for sharing your story, your narrative, and you were so generous in share with us, I truly am. And you pay so much money for the tools, the books, the different mental models. So for people who are inspired by your story, how do they find out about tapping into more of the flow in their life in their relationships and their business? Where can they find you? Where can they follow you?
JAMES LIN 1:31:51
So, right now, I basically, first thank you for this opportunity. Just so honored to be able to share, you have this amazing platform of sharing your gift. really makes an impact on people. So thank you for that. Yeah, so right now, I essentially am doing one on one coaching at the moment. So I’m sharing flow sessions, about tapping into different tools and techniques of empowering people in tapping into their flow. So I can share with you some details afterward about how to get in touch me.
CK LIN 1:32:40
We’ll put it in the show notes.
JAMES LIN 1:32:42
Yeah. Okay. The show notes. Right for the next couple of weeks right now. I’m here in LA. And I’m just, I’m just doing all these flow sessions, one on one for sessions, whether through in-person or zoom. So yeah, I’ll share with you the details. listeners can, whoever is interested. All right, amazing.
CK LIN 1:33:03
Thank you so much, James. All right, guys. Focus on flow and do what James told you.
JAMES LIN 1:33:10
And one more thing I would say is be the light that you want to see in the world.
CK LIN 1:33:20
With that have a beautiful rest of the day guys
JAMES LIN 1:33:23
Okay, enjoy.
The post 035: How to Break Free From Limiting Beliefs (And Stay in Flow)? – James Lin appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
The entrepreneurial path is not for the faint of heart. Crosby Haffner has taken the role of founder, operator, turnaround CEO, investor, advisor on this path. In this conversation, he shares his journey, mental models, and disciplines to find meaning and success on this path. If you want to bring more purposefulness and empowerment into your organization, don’t miss Crosby’s story.
We talked about
+The opportunities of ayahuasca ceremonies for entrepreneurs
+The long road his wife and he learned to build trust and depth in their relationship
+The one weekly ritual he and his wife do to build a successful marriage?
+How to use plant medicine ceremony to examine your belief system?
+How to empower your employees to contribute and lead in your organization
+How to have powerful meetings? (The prompts he uses to inspire honest engagement and contribution)
+How to create a safe space for your organization as a cultural practice?
+The one leadership tip Marisa Mayer received early in her career as a Google product manager
+The Entrepreneurial existential crisis and defining one's role in the life cycle of businesses? (Founder, investor, coach, operator, advisor, turnaround CEO)
The entrepreneurial path is not for the faint of heart. Crosby Haffner has taken the role of founder, operator, turnaround CEO, investor, advisor on this path. In this conversation, he shares his journey, mental models, and disciplines to find meaning and success on this path. If you want to bring more purposefulness and empowerment into your organization, don’t miss Crosby’s story.
We talked about
+The opportunities of ayahuasca ceremonies for entrepreneurs
+The long road his wife and he learned to build trust and depth in their relationship
+The one weekly ritual he and his wife do to build a successful marriage?
+How to use plant medicine ceremony to examine your belief system?
+How to empower your employees to contribute and lead in your organization
+How to have powerful meetings? (The prompts he uses to inspire honest engagement and contribution)
+How to create a safe space for your organization as a cultural practice?
+The one leadership tip Marisa Mayer received early in her career as a Google product manager
+The Entrepreneurial existential crisis and defining one’s role in the life cycle of businesses? (Founder, investor, coach, operator, advisor, turnaround CEO)
ANNOUNCER 0:00
this episode of the noble warrior podcast is brought to you by CK LIN mindset coaching for entrepreneurs. Whatever mental blocks in your life you want to overcome as an entrepreneur, fears of failure and ability to take the actions you know there is to take the fear of success, three steps forward and four steps back, or even that thought of not feeling deserving. After achieving all this success. Coaching is one of the most valuable tools you can have. It’s an investment in yourself, and it can yield some of the highest returns. CK LIN has the skills that will empower you to achieve the most accelerated results you’ve dreamed of. To help you get started CK is offering podcast listeners a free strategy session with him $1,000 value visit talk with CK calm and schedule your FREE session today.
CK LIN 0:53
I’m really excited to share my conversation with my friend Crosby. He’s a business owner entrepreneur, a business advisor, he has started multiple multiple businesses before and why I wanted to have a conversation with him. with all of you noble warriors listening here is that not only he is a business operator, but he is also deeply involved with his personal development. And what inspires me most is about how he carries himself, how he maintained his self-mastery, how he brings that into his relationships, and into his business. So I’m really excited to have you here, Crosby, thanks for being here.
CROSBY 1:40
Thank you, CK, I’m glad to be here.
CK LIN 1:43
So I’m curious, you know, you heard noble warrior a few episodes? And what have you said yes, to be on the show.
CROSBY 1:56
Really getting to know you a bit CK. I certainly for always, I guess I’m certainly in my adult life I have been. It’s been important to me to pursue self-development. And it’s been a, you know, I can use for all of us, it’s an interesting path. But your practice of entering into these conversations, and really pursuing the way that people understand the path of their own and are pursuing truth, pursuing their own gifts. understanding their, their desires, more deeply. Those are all things that interest me and our conversations I’ve enjoyed, you know, we only know each other a little bit. But I’m, I’m grateful for the conversations we’ve had. And I look forward to this. And some more.
CK LIN 2:58
Thank you. You know, there was a moment. So how we met, we sat in an ayahuasca ceremony screw that, right. And there was a moment during ceremony. You were the helper in the ceremony we were at. And I was a little bit more self-indulgent on the healing mat. And then, but you are so kind and gentle. And then just kindly remind me that hey, other people want to be on the healing mat too you know, you did it in such a way that with a lot of compassion, versus like a smackdown, right? Hey, you know, time to go. Right. So I thought you did it in with such class, I really wanted to one, I really appreciate that. And to I really appreciate how you embody that masculine care. So were you always this way before?
CROSBY 3:53
No. Okay, good.
CK LIN 3:55
Okay, great. Tell, tell us a little bit about how you cultivate that masculine care, or your journey up embodying that?
CROSBY 4:05
Well, let me say first, I mean, those, the ceremonial spaces are there such, they are such spaces for care. And there, there’s such a vulnerability, and now those, that ceremony practice really strips us down. And that’s a lot of what a lot of the work of that space and a lot of where the beauty and the lessons come from. But in, in that space, it’s such a beautiful opportunity to, to love one another or just to, to, to express to embody care and love for one another and even for, for people that you’ve just met me, we had just met. And? And, yeah, it’s one of the things I really like about that space. But no, I was not there. I think my you know, I think what a lot of people, sort of a lot of men, in the beginning of my adult life, and, and, you know, growing up years kind of coming into that was I was very focused on like, trying to figure out, what do I want, and how do I perform and, and through some of the early, early challenges that I had as a, as an entrepreneur, as a, as a manager, as a, as a business leader, and then also my personal life, you know, I, I had some, some big disappointments in my, in my 20s, and in my 20s, and 30s. And really, really jolted me into first due to a place of kind of loss of faith, a loss of vision for who I was, and where I was going, and what this world that experience is about. And it’s really been over the last, you know, 15 years, especially maybe the last 566 years, seven years, that they come back to a place of renewal and seeing more clearly, purpose and, and the way that my own experience and my role in my relationships, and in my organizations, at those things can be something other than transactional. I, there was a point. And if I look back, yeah, six or seven years ago, seven years ago, yes. Now, I was definitely looking to place I’ve been single for a number of years and had really good people around me, I had really built my life around my company, my organization, I had great relationships with the organization, you know, people that I loved. But at the same time, I would tell people that, because to me that I didn’t believe in love. And I was, yeah, I really saw the best way that I can understand who I was, and what I was doing was transactional, you know, like, and maybe myself a kind of a broad definition of what transactional meant, but still very limited. And it’s over the last six or seven years, I, maybe the biggest thing is I met my wife, my wife, who I just, we were just married last year. And she brought me back to life. She showed me, she restored me a way of seeing myself, seeing my community See, sense of family. That was that I really lost. And it was a long road. I mean, she stood by me for a number of years where I still like, I still couldn’t see any purpose in, in, in commitments in much trust. It was about after two or three about three years into our relationships that through a long through many things, I was finally able to take the smallest step, barest step towards first commitment, endorse trust. And it was terrifying. I looked like a look like a pit look like a black hole to me. So scary. And I took it. And it was, it was actually it was a seed, was there a moment planted into the ground that that brought new life. And that brought all kinds of things.
CK LIN 9:24
Was there a singular moment?
CROSBY 9:29
There was a singular moment of deciding that I was going to take that step. And it was I mean, it was very circumstantial. I don’t know that, that. That I can ascribe much importance to the moment itself, except that, except that it felt like trust and like, Okay, I’m going to step into this, and we’ll see where it goes. And I had very little faith and go anywhere and scare the hell out of me. But then it, it opened up things I never expected, certainly, but also things I never could have imagined. And that led to more steps into trust. And that really has flourished into a whole life that I really I enjoy so much now and has become so rich between her and I and also our community and our family.
CK LIN 10:26
Was there something that she did that really allow you to trust not only yourself by in her as well as that their entity, that it’s the relationship.
CROSBY 10:36
She had trust. She embodied this, this faith. And this kind of vision for what could be that I. Again, I wasn’t me, I had lost that I thought I had in some way I thought I had grown beyond that I was wiser than that. And but she surrounded me with that. And over the course of years, finally, I started to open up a little.
CK LIN 11:10
So I would imagine the people listening to this, and they probably want something like that as well. But what are they looking for? Like what behaviors or words or you know, that that indicates, hey, this is someone that I could really spend the rest of my life with? You remember some of those words or behaviors that she did? Or that you did? Did the reason I asked that question is I believe what you’re describing is what everyone wants. But how to get there. So was the light, the pickle, right? So So instead of just jumping over it, I wanted to do pay a little bit more, you know, vivid picture for us?
CROSBY 11:57
Interesting question, because it’s very hard to well, you talk about anyone, it’s very hard to try to describe what a person is in terms of moments or words or behaviors. But maybe the thing I can say most is that, you know, relationships are intimate voices of all kinds are intimate. And there’s this kind of oxymoronic quality to relationships, and it’s the people that we love the most is the people who become closest to us, because we love them. Those are the people that we fight with the most, those are the people who see us at our worst and our most intractable at our ugliest. And so here you are, like, oh, like, I found this person, I love this person, I want to spend more time with this person, and that’s the person that you’re going to hurt the most and that you are going to be hurt by the most it’s very, like, surprising in that way. I mean, on the one hand, I think it sounds quite obvious. And that’s how relationships work. But it certainly wasn’t obvious to me when I was a younger man when I was growing up. I couldn’t see that so much. And, and so, I would say, I think what, what people are looking for is a partner who is willing to be in that space with them. You know, really, I mean, deep quality relationships, they take struggle, that relationships where there’s no fighting are, those are, I think those are mostly kind of dead relationships. They’re avoidant relationships,
CK LIN 13:48
very superficial,
CROSBY 13:49
and in some ways it’s superficial, in certainly, if you’re on a path of personal development and personal growth, you’re gonna, you’re gonna run to conflict, and it’s in those conflicts is persisting in those conflicts that that, that we grow, and that we learn how to love and that we are rewarded with, with love and with flourishing, and with the thing with all the good things that we want. So funny partner who’s willing to be there in that with you? That’s, that’s, that’s the thing. I mean, I think it’s that’s the, that’s a bigger thing than, like, are you compatible? Are your interests are like all the other things that we kind of latch on to of who they want to be with those things? Yeah, they’re important. They’re part of what draws us to one another. But I think the real linchpin is, are you in it, you got to stay in it.
CK LIN 14:46
Especially when it gets difficult,
CROSBY 14:48
especially when it becomes difficult and so much about the difficulties like, just get through the difficulty and recover from it and return to a place of being able to feel and know that note, remember the reasons that you’re there with that person. And, and you go through those cycles. And those cycles, bring you closer together, and they build strength. And yeah,
CK LIN 15:14
thanks for sharing, I appreciate that. I think people have this illusion that when I meet that perfect someone, then life will be at the high points at all times. Really, and for anyone that’s been either married or in a committed relationship before. You know, that’s just not life. That’s fantasy. That’s Disney movies, that but the reality is, at least for me, step one is the willingness to actually do the work. Then step two is then how do we disagree in a way that’s productive? right towards that vision that we all have?
CROSBY 15:54
Fighting productively is so important?
CK LIN 15:57
Yeah, I mean, if you fight in a very nonproductive way, then then it’s easy for people to say, all right, screw you, I’m gonna go find my prince charming, or, you know, the princess or whatever it may be to come together. That’s, I think these are two key ingredients, at least from my perspective.
CROSBY 16:18
I think that’s right. And I think we also, you know, we live in a society where we have such abundance all around us. I mean, there’s such affluence and such choice. I mean, we were a consumers of advertisers is endless, endless choice around us. And the same is true relationships. And so to very, I mean, in that way, our right,
CK LIN 16:41
you can easily swipe left or right,
CROSBY 16:42
exactly right, go just go on to the next one. Right. Right. And it’s very easy, I think, for us to think that happiness and meaning and the other things that we want, are located in things that we don’t have the next relationship, and the next job in more money in the next success in all these, all these things that we don’t have. And I don’t think that’s right, I think that the things, the places where we can and must find happiness and meeting, or not of the things that we don’t have there in the things that we do have. And so that practice of presence, and really, you know, returning to a place of gratitude for, you know, practicing gratitude, which is such a lifelong practice, but something that happens can happen every day in the details, that that’s, that’s where it’s at. That’s where those that’s where our meaning and our happiness can be found.
CK LIN 17:46
Do you guys have any kind of special practice or rituals, as well? So I’ll, I’ll share mine with you. So one of the practice that my wife and I do is to do morning gratitude. What are you grateful? First thing in the morning, and the last thing at night? And that’s one way we do it? So do you have something like that as a way to practice gratitude towards each other? Or life in general?
CROSBY 18:13
We don’t have a daily ritual like that. Together, we, we do we carve out time once a week to really create alignment and to I mean, alignment in both Qatar, the practicalities of our week, and but also in, in areas where we know that there are sensitivities are
CK LIN 18:38
what does that mean?
CROSBY 18:39
Hot Topics, you know, in, in, in relationships, like triggering points, yeah, trigger points, the thing is that we know, have the potential to take us off the rails and to you know, disrupt our the flow of how things are good, you know, in our, in our daily life. So we found that to quite help. But I think, you know, most of what we try to practice is less ritualized, but just is a consistent theme that we return to is being seen, you know, how do we make sure we practice, see one another in the relationship? And, I mean, again, on the one hand, it seems on the surface, it seems very simple. being seen, like this is the person that you know, the most you spend the most amount of time with. But on the other hand, it’s in those simple lessons, that those are the ones that are the deepest, those are the ones we can continue to go back and find more good stuff and those lessons.
CK LIN 19:47
But how do you do that? Like, how do you make the other person feel seen? And I don’t want to, to bring it down to the tactical level, but for the people, people who are listening, they may want this aspirational, they want it, they’re willing to do it, they’re even committed to it. But how do you do it? Right? So that’s, that’s what I believe, is the challenge.
CROSBY 20:12
So much of it is about communication, like really developing and fine-tuning our communication skills. I mean, I, I in many ways, I think I’m a quite a good communicator. But Wow, I’ve been taught what a shouting can be. And I think there are a lot of, of tactics in that. I I have a good friend who has recommended to me recently, and it’s been recommended to me a few times, but I’m, I’m reading this book, which is an old practice, I can’t believe I haven’t read this, but nonviolent communication, which is not what I expected it to be, but it I’m so excited about, about the insights. And the articulation. This book is giving me it’s really, for things that I knew that I knew that I know, it’s, you know, giving really good articulation to those things for things that I have been trying to say, but haven’t quite, you know, quite really got clearly defined. It’s really been providing wonderful language for that. And then whole new concepts. I really, yeah, I’m enjoying reading that.
CK LIN 21:26
Thanks for sharing that. I’ll make sure the link to book in the show notes. So since we met at a plant medicine ceremony, can you share with us a little bit about your practice, or how you use the medicine space? as a way to deepen your personal mastery relationships? In your business? Potentially?
CROSBY 21:53
Yeah. Well, my wife and I, we, we started down the plant medicine road together. And it’s, it’s been a really rich, generous way for us to connect and to kind of vision for our future and for the ways that we approach our daily life. But for me, personally, like I’m, I’m such a problem solver. And such a designer, I really, really love the experience of design, I think of, I think of designers problem-solving. I think I mean, so much of what design is it’s very difficult to design something I think, with upon a blank page, like design happens around existing features, no matter what, whether you’re designing a space, or you’re designing a pricing model, or, well, wherever you’re designing, like, into design solutions happen around other things that look like obstacles or, you know, or fixed features. And, and also, I don’t like to compromise, I don’t like the idea of compromise in my relationship in my businesses, I don’t like to compromise, I like to, I kind of believe that the most, one of the ways that we can engage our, our own creativity and imagination isn’t ways to, to look at things that appear to be in conflict or objectives that, you know, seem to be, you know, mutually exclusive in some way and to find solutions that, that allow each to live out their, their, their best qualities. And, and so the plant medicine work has been a wonderful space for me to do that kind of visioning. And how do you do that?
CK LIN 24:01
Like, how do you use that space to help you be a better problem solver and designer?
Unknown Speaker 24:11
It’s a, you know, plant medicine work as a container to ceremonial container, which I really like, kind of soak in that imaginative space to like, dig into questions of, like, yeah, okay, I want this or I see that, but what does that really mean? Like to, to kind of peel back the layers of expectation, and, and, and past vision, you know, like, all of the baggage, but all of the structures that we can have our lives, our personalities of the, the the perspective that we bring to something and to take those things apart, and try to see more clearly, what’s really at the heart of this, what’s the root of drive this for me, and, and once those things are taken apart, and it’s much easier to see what the elegant solution is, or how to take away foot make my way forward towards that objective with only those pieces that really are meaningful to that. And I don’t know, I don’t know if that sounds very tactical, but that’s, that’s my experience of the planets in space.
CK LIN 25:29
So one of my so because I produce events like that, as well. So one of the participants who went through it, I really love how you articulate this particular mental model said: imagine all your beliefs, from intergenerational to gender to cultural to everything, education, parental, like all your beliefs that you inherited, is a brick wall, like ones lay on top of each other, then you may be aware of the most superficial layer, then plant medicine space allow you to be dissociative and allow you to dig, what is the belief that’s built under this belief, or our ability to believe believe, etc, etc. and allow you to actually take an objective view and say, all right, this belief, no longer maybe serve me when I was three years old, five years old, don’t talk to strangers as an example. Right. But this is, so serve me as an entrepreneur, now I need to go out and share the message and the product and services, or why I want to do this in the first place. No, it doesn’t serve me anymore. So, therefore, let me let go. And I believe in put up a new belief, etc, etc. So, to me, the medicine space is a beautiful space for me to take inventory of my entire belief system. But to the best, as deeply as I could. Would you agree with that, or
Unknown Speaker 26:59
I think that’s good, I think that’s a good metaphor for what I hear in that is, is a recognition that, who I am, who you are, is not your sense of identity, all of those, all those things. And it’s so easy in our, in our lives, to think about who we are in terms of all these different ideas of identity, and there’s actually who we are, that is, before all that underneath all of that. And it’s a very, very rich, kind of fundamental space. And yeah, I think, like looking at it, objectively, is what you said, in some way. It’s it’s kind of dissociative, but it teaches us that the true self is deeper than all those things, it’s deeper than our history, it’s deeper than our generational identity, it’s deeper than our gender, it’s deep, deeper than these other things. And, yeah, that’s, that’s one of the reasons why I value that space so much.
CK LIN 28:13
So how has it helped you to be a better human being a man entrepreneurs, a leader, as a husband, as a brother, bringing back to us and share share with us a little bit, if you don’t mind, the transformation that occurs, like before I went into medicine that was this way after I went into it was that way.
Unknown Speaker 28:34
So when I was first approaching plant medicine, I thought of it as pursuing the medicine, like the substance therapy experience, not so much the big experience, although I thought those things would come but I thought that what I was pursuing was the material The thing that I was, you know, drinking with the, you know, substance itself. And what I found instead was that the plant medicine was a component of a larger structure around ceremony. And I come from, I come from a religious background, I, you know, I grew up in the church and out of, you know, long, deep experience in that in that community, and I, you know, as an adult, I, I left that, then over the course of years, I was really looking for experience of ritual is something that as an entrepreneur, and as somebody who is prone to biting off more than I can chew and like, just, you know, like really taking, like, just piling my plate too high. And therefore being in you know, you know, constantly like multitasking, busy, you know, just like doing things all, all the time. I was looking for more ritual. And, in originally in my pursuit of plant medicine, I didn’t connect the pursuit of plant medicine, with my longing for ritual, they weren’t, weren’t, weren’t connected, and I was so gratified to find those two things together in the same place.
CK LIN 30:23
What are those two things
Unknown Speaker 30:25
ritual, and that was the other ceremony, ceremony, ritual ceremony and the plant medicine that I saw, I now see plant medicine as not something that, you know, you go and you take and, you know, gives you this transformational experience. This is not how I would recommend it to anyone, that’s not how I think it’s, it can be practiced in this best way.
CK LIN 30:46
Yeah, it’s not a silver bullet.
CROSBY 30:48
It’s not a silver bullet, silver bullet. And I also had to use the metaphor to I kind of think of flatness and like, like gunpowder, like, gunpowder, and yo pile of gunpowder on the table, and you light it up. And it’s the god i and but you pack that into cancer, and all of a sudden, it’s a firework, or it’s a bullet, I mean, like you like it’s up, it’s a powerful thing, but in it, it, it wants a structure within which function. And, and so the ceremonial space brings me to this place of pangs of such presence, and really paying attention to every movement, every sound that I’m making, the way that I have to pay attention to my mind, my physical body, and my relevant to the relationship of my physical body to the other things in the space that I’m in, and that carefulness and that presence, I found that to be so enriching in my professional world. I just actually, I just had a meeting today with the leader, a team of one of my businesses, and, and it’s a business where I have, I have a handful of partners, and they are I mean, it’s it’s such a beautiful partnership, and these men I, I love these guys, and, and, and over the course of a long process that we didn’t think was going to happen this way. Over the course of 18 months, we we opened up the partnership to a new partner. And I just announced to the leadership team in this business that we had, had made this man, a partner in the business. And it’s a significant announcement, it’s a big, the big thing for this business to have made that decision. But what’s so important about about this meeting, and today is not that decision so much, but the way that it’s conducted, and the way that even in sharing that, that news and sharing that decision to do so to do that in a way that is inviting to the leadership of this group to observe to really to share the process, the thoughtfulness, the care, and the significance of opening up this partnership in that way. And so there are so many examples of that, we were talking before your segment, the way that I asked you to get off that healing, you felt the care of that, and I’m really glad to hear that, but it’s such a small thing. I mean, that was a small couple of few seconds in a long ceremony, you know, long life. And those few small seconds are how we engage with one another are so important. In my professional life, I’ve always been a leader who has wanted to, to coach and to bring along and to create consensus and and create a shared vision and a shared understanding because I really believe in collaboration I believe in in the ways that we can work together there’s such there’s such beauty in all of our differences and all of our all the different perspectives and skills and feeling everything that people bring to anything that they’re engaged in. But but so the ceremonial space that helps me the tap into the beauty and the possibility and in an interaction that can happen over just a few seconds. For an entrepreneur who’s in you know, these tech businesses like it’s fast-moving and with candlelight, Sunder, subscribing and such effort and like looking forward and pushing and pushing, to, to, to have an integrated experience to have that be alongside how it is we recognize each other how does we see each other? I think it’s such a beautiful thing. And, and, and I think it’s an important thing. As business leaders, I business is such an important part of our society. I mean, it’s it’s leadership in businesses, a template and it’s, it’s shaped so much of who we are as a people. And so, if we can, if we can bring these kinds of practices of awareness and have a commonality of our own shared, you know, human humanity humaneness to, to these, you know, sometimes very, you know, very challenging, very demanding environments that are oftentimes a natural part of the business environment. It’s I think it’s really important. I think that it, it opens up really big possibilities for, for who we can be in, in, in this society.
CK LIN 36:22
So for other entrepreneurs listening to this, maybe they’re I’m projecting a little bit, maybe their primary objective is to win. Right? So for them this conversation about Breen, the new ones, tentativeness, the intentionality in these micro-moments may seem unnecessary. Can you speak a little bit about how, why you believe that bringing this level of attention to these micro-moments could be actually a amplifier to their business and their business objective?
Unknown Speaker 37:01
I mean, I would say first, like, let’s think about what it means to win. And, and even if winning is like a very kind of one-dimensional things like, Oh, I want this to happen, right? Okay, that’s okay. But the desire for a certain kind of outcome, a desire to win. If you have that desire, then other people have that desire to and
CK LIN 37:31
other people in your organization. okay, yeah, just double check,
Unknown Speaker 37:35
yeah, your organization will have that desire to and so to, to learn how to communicate in a way that he engages the people around you, your colleagues, people that report to you that people will report to them in a shared vision for whatever that winning is. That I mean, just as a starting point, without questioning the death of the the object itself, that that process it, it creates, it creates a commonality of vision, and that turns into momentum that can be contributed to by everyone in the organization that that ultimately will help you get to towards that, you know, faster. And also, I think we we can’t forget that. Oftentimes, the objectives we set out for ourselves, maybe they’re not the most refined, most well thought through objectives. I mean, that’s one of the things I think we’re all learning is how do we set the best objectives for one another, in one of the most common things that I have said to people who are aspiring entrepreneurs is, you know, entrepreneurs identity, they have an idea, they want to, you know, build a business of this type or that type and businesses, they try to meet needs, they try to solve problems, right. And the world is awash in problems. And one of the most important things is to pick the right problem, you know, like, there are a lot of problems to go out and solve that from a business standpoint, and not worth the time. And so, so there’s also something about if you if you can really define what it means to win or define what that objective is, then you, you and communicate that in a way that invites other people into that project, then, in a, in a certain sense, you also invite them into, into a space of thinking about, is that, is that right at the right definition? And there aren’t very many cases when fewer minds are better than one, right? So so there are plenty of places in business where singular focus and like really, like blind or determination, like there’s a place for that. But there’s also a place in the gaps between the sustained, blinder effort to really check-in and make sure like, what are we doing here? How are we doing? What are we doing here? Are we doing this in the best way, in whatever best means? Those things I think they better thinking about
CK LIN 40:41
thanks for sharing that. Before I started all of this entrepreneurial effort, I was the head of culture in a company. And we were one of the things that distinguish as they had a culture is that people will often come back with a promise of success, what that may be an exit in x years, and you know, whatever multiples this revenue number, all these things, they may come for that. But ultimately, people stay because of the humanists. And also often people leave because of the manager that you didn’t jive well with each other just didn’t like how they were micromanaging or whatever it may be. So to me injecting this attentiveness, this intentionality in the micro-moments to me is what is why we’re doing all of it. That’s my perspective, right? Not the truth by my woman’s perspective. And when you have everyone with that shared vision and communicate in such a way that you know, we can really understand each other’s context and then reached me true understanding very quickly that to me is what a celebrate you know, business success that entrepreneurs want as business scale, you can probably speak more on that, but as business scale the more humans you add to it and when ization the more unreliable we may be therefore, the more important having the right culture, the right communication style, the right touchpoints, the right rituals is becoming more important when you have a team of two/three people may not be as important quote-unquote, right. But when you have a large organization, if you do want to scale and when ization is so important to pay attention to these intangible things, like share understanding, like communication style, like the micro-moments like, like sharing an important company update with we care, right?
Unknown Speaker 42:54
Yeah, and I mean, I do think that’s so true. I think it’s, it’s, it’s funny, it’s interesting, when you think about the way that organizations go out to find talent to find new people, like the way we just went, right job descriptions, it’s all tends to be skill set and experience based, right. And those things are really important, you know, organizations need to find, you know, people that bring a certain skill set in a certain experience, but but those two axes overlook most of the human part of a person. And hiring is the most expensive thing that people that organizations do, and hiring the wrong person who’s not a good fit. I mean, let’s face it, not everyone is the right fit for a particular position, no matter no matter how perfect their skill set and experience might be. If If who they are, where they are in their life. And the thing is, they want to be in that organization, are not going to get met for one reason or another, then the time the next that an organization, you know, expense to train that person and try to integrate them into the organization. It’s, it’s a tremendous loss. And so, so yeah, and also opportunity cost to execute I’m huge opportunity cost. And huge Yeah, loss of time and, and time attention from everyone else who’s around that person and in the organization. So, yeah, taking the time to really think about, you know, what, what are the cultural values in this organization? And how do we think of our people, not just in terms of how, you know, how they can contribute to the practicalities of running this organization? But how do they contribute to the culture to the ethos of the community of people who are your engaged in the project, that business? Definitely an important additional dimension to be paying attention to
CK LIN 45:06
do you have a framework to help you clarify and then communicate and reach me to understanding of your organization’s purpose, mission, core values, and hiring criteria of all these intangible
Unknown Speaker 45:23
I wouldn’t say that I have naturally don’t have a structured approach. You know, one of the things that’s really great about the time that we’re in is there’s so many good personality tests out there. And you know, there’s being used more and more by organizations that that’s really helpful. I think the most important thing is for the leadership of an organization to be thoughtful on on these matters, and to really to have a way to articulate themselves, what these intangibles are, and to then think about, okay, now that we’ve got that define for ourselves, how do we communicate that in the hiring process? How do we test for that in the hiring process? What are the some of the characteristics that we would say no to? And what are the characteristics that we would say yes to?
CK LIN 46:14
Yeah, and I mean, that that part is, if you’re not clear yourself as an entrepreneur, how can you expect middle managers or your hiring managers to understand what it is you’re just going to multiply the confusion down the line? That’s right. Yeah. And then, and then you’re going to complain later on, like, hey, why did you understand what I’m trying to articulate to you? Right? Yeah. Because you don’t understand yourself? Beautiful, that’s great. Man, there’s a lot of different ways that I can go into our next conversation. But I’m curious to know, how do you inject the purposefulness into organizations? How do you operationalize,
CROSBY 46:57
operationalize purpose purposefulness? Yeah,
CK LIN 46:59
purpose founders or values? Because, you know, it’s one thing to have things written on the wall posted in in kind of expect everyone to rise up to the occasion, right? rise to the occasion, is another to actually operationalize into one business, as you as you said, the hiring process. But what’s beyond the hiring process? What else is there? Is there anything that you want to speak about that?
Unknown Speaker 47:28
You know, I’m not sure I, so much of it is just about how did how does a business conduct its interpersonal interactions? And then there’s lots of ways that that can be operationalize I mean, in the hiring process is one way and how meetings are conducted? In?
CK LIN 47:49
How do you guys do it? How do you guys hold meetings? So one of the things I tell everyone, any hiring managers or people who wanted to hire me as a consultant, is show me on meetings, and I show you a culture, because in that meeting, I can basically tell what kind of culture company so I’m curious to know, from your point of view, how do you hold your meetings? Because meeting is an important ritual that all companies have, right? How do you actually hold that?
CROSBY 48:19
I think that so organizations are also this interesting balance between recognizing one another as human beings, and then that sense where peers, we’re all peers, right. But organizations function based on hierarchy. hierarchy is really important. I think, I think, I think hierarchy and the quality of leadership is really important. So in meetings, on the one hand, I think it’s important that the leader of a meeting, leadership is present in a meeting, create clarity around what supposed to, and in this meeting, like, what are our objectives? How does everybody here understand why we’re here and what we’re trying to get out of this time together? Right. And so in that sense, there’s something that is something that that leadership sort of defines. And then, and then, the other thing that I think it’s got to happen in meetings is listening, listening is not the easiest thing to do. It’s so easy to show up with a predefined understanding of what’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen and to have that block, true listening. And so and so, I mean, and I think the reason to have people in the intermediate is, is to, is to create alignment to create a common understanding, and that common understanding, it’s hard to, it’s hard to cultivate that if you just have one person who’s like handing down instructions or teaching or whatever, right? There, you is much easier to achieve that when there’s dialogue. And when there is a back and forth. And when you are asking people and people are feel free and comfortable to, to articulate back, you know, here’s what I’m hearing, or here’s how I see this. I think we as human beings, we you know, we have a desire to be understood, we have a desire to be to contribute. And we have a desire to be recognized for that contribution. And so, so on the one hand, I think a meeting requires structure. On the other hand, within that structure there, I’m looking for space for the participants in the meeting to actually participate and to contribute and to be heard and to have the other participants in that meeting. respond in a way that acknowledges what has been presented by one of the members.
CK LIN 51:00
Do you have a particular practice to do that? As in? Here’s the intention that you call on people who recreate what you just said, and things like that. I mean, engineers, I’m very framework. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 51:10
I mean, I think it’s, it’s very simple. It’s, a lot of it is, I will ask people to, to really articulate, like, tell me what you heard night, tell me how you understand it. Right. Like, tell me what you think the problems are? The challenges are and what’s just been laid out? I, I really value people who in a in a business context, I value people who, who can bring a kind of analysis that says, well, in my experience, or in terms of in terms of what I see, here’s, here’s how that’s going to work well. And here’s how that’s not going to work. So well. Right? or hear that hear the challenging areas that we need to really pay attention to. I’m, I’m looking for engagement and contribution at that level. And I’ll I mean, I I can just ask for directly asked for contribution at that level,
CK LIN 52:08
how do you create that safe space where because you’re, you know, the founder, or the top guy, of course, you have all this psychological safety. So you please tell me, whatever you think, but in reality, maybe maybe they’re in a higher hierarchical point of view, they may not feel so safe to really tell you the truth, per se, right? Because do still want, you know, there’s that underlying desire still, hey, I like my job. I want to make sure that whatever I say doesn’t offend Crosby, you know, how do you cultivate that safe space, so then they can, as much as possible share how they real, how they really feel, feel about this particular issue or problem?
Unknown Speaker 52:52
Yeah. Well, I think that’s, that’s the key word safe, right? There, there needs to be a sense of safety, and it and the larger an organization gets, the more level levels of hierarchy, there tend to be, and the more distance there is between the leadership or the leader, and the staff level person. And with that distance comes intimidation and apprehension and fear and like literally not screw up, and let me not say the wrong wrong thing. And, and that that can really lead to like, I’m not going to just kind of, like sit here, I’m not going to do anything or you know, because any move could be you know, might be might be judged, it might be analyzed, and so. So in the communication process, and this is I mean, this doesn’t, this can happen in a meeting, and it needs to happen in a meeting. But it’s something that accumulates as part of the cultural practice of a company, or an organization is for, for the leader or for leadership, to invite. And in some cases, that can actually turn into a kind of demand, like, actually, I am asking you to show up in this, what I’m asking you to speak and as you just share, but then upon that sharing upon that speaking, like to be gentle, right, and to find the places to reassure and to compliment and to recognize what is what’s right, or what’s good, or what’s insightful about what has been shared, while still and then to find a way to fit it into the framework that the leader has already established, or the solution that has already been defined, because then somebody because somebody can speak and show up and say something, and it could be completely off base. But good leadership can take that and find a way to recognize that for the contribution that it is or has attempted to be right, right for the goodwill that’s in it, if nothing else, right, and then fit it into the structure that is what is going to come out of that meeting or war war, the structure that is the direction of the momentum of that organization. And that right, there is a kind of coaching. It’s not like direct teaching, oh, no, that’s not the way to understand the function of this way. Right? It’s, instead, you’re taking the gift of that person’s time articulation, imagination, whatever, you know, all the things that lead to here, I’m presenting this thing. And to Yeah, to incorporate that integrate that into the larger picture that that the leader has defined or or is so oftentimes is still leader is, is crafting right there and meeting it’s a you know, it’s a it’s always a work in progress, or best organizations are always a work in progress.
CK LIN 55:57
Actually reminds me of a story by Maria mayor, former CEO of Yahoo, former Product Manager of Google. She is super smart, obviously. And she actually have thought about all the different permutations of different solutions. And chances are she’s right. So when she first started, as a product manager, leading our team should always just say, bam, here’s what we aregoing to do. You guys go do it. And she was the coaching that she received was: be the last speak, allow everyone to share their point of view, analyzing the problem this way that way, but just like hold her tongue the entire time, and then be the last to speak. Right. And I think over the years, I mean, what you share is is effectively that be the last and speak but also acknowledge people’s contribution to what they share. So they feel that, hey, they’re actually contributing to this overall vision and problem solving. Rather than just, hey, go do this thing that I tell you to do. Because what happens if you do that consistently, then people just going to be quiet and just wait until you give them an order? And then do the thing that being told what to do, then ultimately, then what’s the point of hiring really smart, motivated people into the organization?
Unknown Speaker 57:17
Yeah, the then you both haven’t tapped into their talents and intelligence and may perhaps more importantly, you haven’t engaged them in a way that that creates investment and increase consensus, like just handing down the right answer. I mean, that’s really good. Whoever the coach was, it was giving her that advice is really good advice. Because by speaking last, not only has there been time for others to air their perspective, but what she hopefully did could do, is in presenting the right answer, when when we’re presenting her answer, she can say she can say like this person, as this person said at that person said, like, she can start recognizing the the the other insights that were there in the room, and how those are manifest in what she is presenting. And that, as you said, that makes people feel like they have contributed, and it and that that creates engagement. And that develops that. That kind of consensus that that I’m always looking for.
CK LIN 58:23
Beautiful. Thank you. So new topic. You’re a serial entrepreneur, you’ve been starting businesses since How?
CROSBY 58:32
Oh, my first business, I guess, was when I was 21. Beautiful.
CK LIN 58:39
So one of the things that I came across serial entrepreneurs, especially is when you are striving for something, there’s always hope. Right? And at some point after maybe their first exit, or the second exit, the question, the existential, existential question will come to mind is they’re all there is? Do you know after have all these accolades been on the cover of magazines, and all this money and all these employees? That is there, you can go on and do it again. It’s a repeat, but you know, so have you ever experienced that existential question to yourself as you create all these businesses?
CROSBY 59:23
Well, so first, let me let me correct you a little bit. So serial entrepreneur is is true, in a sense, okay. And my first business Yeah, I was 21 years old. But I started that business with, with to weather with a friend that I knew from college and his best friend from childhood. But in some sense. My my partner, Terry, my friend, Tara, he was the true entrepreneur on it wasn’t my vision. And at that age, I didn’t even have any particular ambition around. starting businesses, I wasn’t in tech, I had a science degree, but I hadn’t really touched the computer that much. And for the first few years, I was not that invested in being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, that wasn’t really what I was about. It was only later when the business really started to grow. And I, I learned just in practice that I had a, I had a skill and an enjoyment in, in training people and in management and in organizational development, that I started to really live into the idea of entrepreneur. And so that’s the first question. The second direction is that I’ve been in a lot of different businesses. But I’ve only started a handful between that first business, which was part of the.com, boom and bust. The main web 10 years ago, when I started my second business 13 years ago, now, I was a turnaround CEO. So I wasn’t starting businesses, I was parachuting into troubled tech businesses, on behalf of secure investors in order to fix problems. And it was gratifying in a lot of ways like you, you, you get put into a situation where there’s a lot of problems, and you’re going to solve some of them. And it’s always a lot more fun to solve other people’s problems and to solve your own. There, right. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
CK LIN 1:01:41
Because it gives you a little bit more just dissociated from problems rather than
Unknown Speaker 1:01:46
Yeah, I think that I think one of the challenges for, for entrepreneurs is, you know, anything that you do, when you I mean, anything you do making anything, whether it’s business or anything like that, by doing it, you’re invested in it. And that investment can be a beautiful thing. And it leads to a real commitment, but also you there can be a loss of perspective. And it’s oftentimes a lot easier for fresh eyes on a problem to see a solution that’s right there, the person who has been wrestling with it for months or quarter to years, just cannot see, too invested. But so I did the turnaround, CEO work for about five years. And those those, those were rewarding engagements. But they were short ones, you know, they were each about a year long ago in a strip organization down there to try to find its fundamental components, rebuild products and services out of that and rebuild the staff. And then I’d hire a mentor, Tina, and I move on to the next
CK LIN 1:03:01
I see.
CROSBY 1:03:04
And so after about five years of doing that, I really wanted to get back to long term organization building, because I, that’s what I enjoyed. And and I also didn’t want to, I can really see in that position as a turnaround CEO, just how much overhead there was in supporting a financial partner.
CK LIN 1:03:37
Right? What does that mean, actually unpack that a little bit?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:40
Yeah. So I go into these companies, a couple of them were, you know, small public companies, you know, and the public public is a whole nother kind of overhead. Right. But when you have a business is financially troubled, which is why I was there in the first place, then the, there’s a lot of anxiety around that business. So you know, is it going to work? Is it worth it to continue to put money into this thing, like, you know, where’s it going, there’s a lot of anxiety around the financial performance that business by a financial partner, what I mean by that is some, you know, people and organization is not in the day to day operations, they’re just evaluating the company, from the outside. And so organizations in that place, whether you know, any organization that’s taken venture capital, or most kinds of debt, many kinds of debt, maybe not most, but many kinds of debt, certainly in this tech entrepreneur world. Third Party financing means that you’re supporting a financial partner who wants reporting, the wants to understand what’s going on is to know if you are on track with your plan, he wants to know how it’s going, right? And there’s a lot of overhead that goes into communicating what’s going on, right? And providing the assurance or telling them what’s going on. And, you know, trying to explain how you’re tackling those problems, right. So when I started my second business, actually, that whole process was really interesting, because I I, at that point, I thought, I go, Okay, what am I looking for? What do I want here, and I actually wrote down, I wrote down a list of really unreasonable, unrealistic characteristics, you know, things like I want to, I wanted to be in the data business, because I, I could see that in the data business, you can sell the data, and then tomorrow, you can turn around and sell it again. And I wanted to be in a business that didn’t require a financial partner, like, that’s what he needed to cash flow pretty quickly. And it needed to not not require a you know, big slug of seed capital. There’s another thing that I looked at this list, and I just thought, okay, that’s great, interesting list of what you want a business, but then I can’t happen. And then it did. And it was, it was very interesting. It was an impactful experience of manifestation of just like by defining what you want, by taking the time to really carefully defined and be able to articulate the characteristics of what I’m after, I can put me in a much better place to actually see that happen. Right. So I had become a bit disillusioned with running and fixing other people’s organizations. So I went back to building my own organization, and that organization was in the ad tech space
CK LIN 1:06:52
Before you go to the ad tech space, you said this illusion, do you mind diving a little deeper on that, this kind of describe the disillusionment? Well, like, have you ever experienced a central prices that talked about or even just the stress level that that empty void, that one feels
Unknown Speaker 1:07:14
that’s what led me to wanting to get back into long term business building, and, and in some sense that, that long term business building, building my own company, again, address that, but then I just uncovered the next layer of disillusionment and dissatisfaction. So I was glad to be back building my own organization and without a financial financial partner, because it’s such a luxury beat to be able to devote all of your time and attention just to business building, right. And, you know, that business, you know, we started out, you know, a couple of people. And over the course of a few years, couple of years, we were, you know, 15 people, and that business eventually grew to be about 70, little over 70 people. Not as big as my larger business had been, but I didn’t want to run an organization that large anymore, you know, it was a good size. And that business, I loved the culture of that business. I love the the community that was there and the the ethos of staff development that we had in that business. And now it’s beautiful, beautiful community. But But two things happened. One was I realized that the thing that I loved in that business was that community and was the building of engaging with the staff and, and all the things that came along with it, and I didn’t care at all for the business model. I mean, we were in advertising and like, I don’t care about advertise. I mean, it was, it was a business model. And it was one that, you know, was fruitful, it paid the bills that enabled all kinds of things. And there’s a lots of good things in that. But But when I saw that, I was like, Okay, so now I’m here to I’m just here for the organization, the organization development, and but then that business fell apart. And I ended up having to take that organization apart. And that was very disillusioning.
CK LIN 1:09:36
Painful,
CROSBY 1:09:36
it’s very painful. And it really made me question, it really made me question what I was doing in business, what I was doing as an entrepreneur, because I also could see that, I mean, like, everything, everything, businesses have a life cycle you’re getting, and there’s a middle and there’s net. And there are very smaller businesses that have continued for, you know, decades and even century. But it’s a very small number, right, you know, most businesses, they have a beginning, a middle and an end. And, and starting to recognize that made me really have to have to think about well, okay. My vision, then, of what organizational development is all about, has got to shift somehow, because so much of how my orientation even in all the good things of developing those organizations was about growth and expansion. And, and actually, all those things come to an end at some point. And even if we hadn’t had the end, that business hadn’t had the end that had, if let’s say we had gotten sold at some point, well, then you’re still taken apart that organization at some level. And so I really had to think about what one of my doing here, and what do I really want out of this at these businesses and out of my own life. And so it was at that point. This is now actually it was when that business was coming apart, that I met my wife. And so that point that a lot of things were were changing for me, and I was kind of asking these existential questions about what am I doing here, and like, I know, I picked some goals for myself that are going to last more than a few years. And, and so initially, I, you know, I stepped out of business, you know, I bet that company had, I’ve made a few acquisitions along the way, I, I stepped into more of an advisory role rather than operational role, I actually, you know, at somebody who, as I said, before, puts too much on his plate, I really spent a lot of time just trying to kick things off with I played, and to try to create space in my life to, for I didn’t know what but just to do that do something that was different. And, and so it’s that it’s that journey that has led me to a place now where I have two things. One is kind of, like we were talking about before really paying attention to people and paying attention to the meaningfulness are the ways that small and big interactions can be meaningful in daily life and in business, they be important to those things and really trying to, to honor that, and to highlight that as a way of cultivating awareness and, you know, organizational culture and in the companies that I’m involved in. But it also, it led me has led me towards organizations that are more explicit about values. And so at that time, with a kind of a, some misgivings some a little bit of jadedness, I stepped into a couple of nonprofits. I had some judgments about nonprofits. judgment from afar, though I had never been on the inside of a nonprofit. So I decided to explore that. And I stepped inside of a couple nonprofits, and I was involved in both of them for a few years, I’m still involved in one. And, but that that whole journey, which is still ongoing, has really led me to be much more focused on and really see a lot of value in thinking about values, values within businesses, but just values within our culture within our society at large. So much of our society is focused on problem solving, and policy and growth and not on values. And I think that, I think that that’s a big missing component. We are we’re not who we are, as a people, we are the side society, we’re not talking to each other about our values. And in order to in order for us to make our way out of some of the really big, apparently intractable problems that we see in our world, in our political system, in our economic system. In our social structures, I really think we need to begin talking to one another about values, stop fighting about policy, stop fighting about who has the best solution, start finding common ground around very simple, fundamental values. And that is what has allowed me to make my way out of that place of disillusionment, and into a place where I really, I’m so grateful for that path, because it It, it, it, it, it gives me this experience of something that I think is very deep, is very universal, very common to all of us. All of us, as a people, I mean, all of us on the planet, as human beings, other people like to like to be able to really think about the things that we have in common as human beings. And, and, and I really believe that it’s, it’s that that is the way of developing new structures, new way of seeing things and communicating with one another and working with one another. So that we’re not just fighting about our differences are actually we’re actually coming together in our, in our commonalities. And, you know, at this point in human history, with all of our science and our technology, and all of the power that we have, there isn’t very much that we couldn’t do. If we actually put our, our minds and our effort to it as a people like as a global people, right? It’s not very much we couldn’t do we just can’t agree on what to do. Correct. And so I really, yeah, so I’m now like, fully engaged. I’m really excited about the next chapters in my life of, of working on those things. Yeah.
CK LIN 1:16:49
So do you plan on getting because I looked at your LinkedIn profile, you’re involved like five different boards, right? Or something like that. Really real high number? This is the visor and then you’re on the board for like five different nonprofits and plus a gallery right?
CROSBY 1:17:03
Well, the gallery was a long time ago.
CK LIN 1:17:05
Okay, gotcha. All right. So is that the plan is to bring that business rigor into these type of nonprofits, or, at some point, there’s a bigger vision to, you know, help these organizations, companies to bring more value be more value oriented?
Unknown Speaker 1:17:26
So yeah, one of the things that’s happened is that my, what initially was just like a holding company that held my business assets. And I, you know, kind of supervise them as an advisor from the outside that has that’s become more well formed over the last year. And I started to build out that team, I had really a great a great team. That, actually, for the last four or five years, I was I have a team here in Los Angeles, that does what I call back office services for all of my businesses, and backup services. Are these these disciplines that are requirement for any business, but are kind of independent of business model. So there’s finance and reporting, and legal and HR, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And so initially, was just just practical, I wanted a back office team, because I didn’t want I wanted a common set of reports to look at. Right, right. But, but that team has become more well defined and more fleshed out. And we have started to, to really think about what we do in the US kind of venture services model. And we’ve we actually just started to begin to provide those services to businesses that are not my businesses, right, and to provide them as services. Sure. And so that’s one piece of what what happened next. I because of my business background, anything that I do, you know, inevitably I’m going to bring my my business hat to it. It’s just that two superpower. Okay? Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s what I’ve spent my career doing, right. But I also recognize that’s not the place by itself, where I’m going to find meaning and, and the kind of reward that I’m looking for. So, so I have a team that can provide services that are kind of the services are more on an operational level, my my advisory work, which all continue is work that I can do very flexibly and I can do the advisory work on a, you know, both multiple, you know, multiple organizations kind of in parallel, that works just fine. But where I intend where I hope to see more and more of my time and attention really located is in isn’t focusing on supporting and building values based organization, and a lot of that is around, curating and spotlighting, holding up people that are engaged in practices that are in alignment with with that kind of work. That might be a more elegant way to say why I’m, you know, talking with you here is that I am very interested in. I mean, there’s so many people out there in the world, they’re doing good work. And there are and there are always a organizations out there who were designed at lifting those people up and and creating more exposure for them. But there’s a lot of room for more of that. And like I said before, I really believe in collaboration, I believe in a community approach to the things that matter for matter to us most. And things that matter to us most, I think, you know, it’s not so much the newest technology or widget or the you know, it’s more about who are we as a people? And where are we going in this society? And let’s, let’s, let’s talk about that. And let’s lift up. I mean, we, we live in a world that is so wondrous. Let’s, let’s celebrate that. There’s, there’s such a tendency to focus on problems. Let’s focus on how like, what a wondrous place we are in this planet. And what a wondrous people we are, even with all of our challenges we are there’s such beauty and possibility in our you know, incredible diversity as a people like that. Those are things that that a lot of people doing good work in all kinds of corners of Science and Industry and so forth. That kind of work and be lifted up. Beautiful.
CK LIN 1:22:13
Do you mind if we ask you some rapid fire questions?
CROSBY 1:22:16
Sure.
CK LIN 1:22:18
So if you you had recommended nonviolent communication. Yes, nonviolent communication is one of the books any other books that you will recommend to other entrepreneurs who are listening to this who was eager to let go of their lower self, and then in service of their highest self in service, the highest value? Any books that you recommend? that comes to mind? The first three verse two that comes to mind?
CROSBY 1:22:46
You know, I don’t tend to love business books. Okay. Although I was talking to somebody recently, about this, I think business I said, the whole self help boot, you know, category, which business books are definitely in that category is definitely becoming better than it was 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. I mean, I rapid fire questions. I liked creativity, Inc. I thought that was a really good story of that of that. At demo. Yeah. Yeah. I have to actually go through my audible list in order to recall I’m not great at that. So kind of thing. But But yeah, I’m cool. Um,
CK LIN 1:23:37
what are your daily habits, their morning rituals, evening ritual, anything like that as a way to best cultivate your sovereignty, your self mastery, so that you are operating from your best self.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:48
I mean, movement is a big part of it, you will find a movement, civic. I mean, I’m a runner. So yeah, I’m runner and I love yoga. I’m actually just getting back into yoga after a long hiatus, but any specific kind of yoga. Yoga? Well, I, I’ve been learning more about Kundalini Yoga recently. But really, the yoga that I practice and love the most is just, you know, the hoffa flow style yoga. And I don’t really think I don’t think of yoga as being about a type, I think of it be as it being about a Teacher, teacher who can create a space that allows me to close my eyes and focus on a voice and creates a flow of practice that really supports you know, just timing breath with movement, which is so much about what I think about yoga that that’s, that’s what I look for.
CK LIN 1:24:45
If you have a billboard that you can showcase in front of millions of people, what’s what’s one word or one phrase you were put on the Billboard, billboard? Yeah. The Tim Ferriss question?
CROSBY 1:24:58
Oh, is that right? Yeah, half as I’m listening to podcasts, either. You know, I, presence or being or something to like, again, our, in our society, we are so much about looking for the next thing like striving for the next thing. Anything that practice in my life that I try to cultivate are really to remember to take time out, even just for a moment or two, to practice some awareness and some presence.
CK LIN 1:25:32
Beautiful. Crosby, thank you so much for being here, I want to acknowledge you for a few things. We had talked about plant medicine, we talked about relationship, we had talked about your journey in growing a business or being a turnaround CEO, we had talked about how now you have this newfound purpose injecting and bring more value into organizations into businesses. So beautiful thing I look forward to well, I’m a fan. I’m also looking forward to how I can help. So for any of the listeners who are listening to your story, and they inspired by it, where can they find you? Where can they follow you We can then off data support in what you’re up to a specific place you want to send them to?
Unknown Speaker 1:26:18
Oh, I mean, LinkedIn is probably the only the only kind of commonplace right now. And let me say two things. So first, you know, I’ve had a couple of seconds to think we know what i would i would put on a billboard, I would put something actually that’s very different. When I said before, I think directives, I mean, like make something, make something because tapping into our own authorship, our own creativity and just to make anything in the world, write something down the glue something together, anything like that. I really think that creativity is so much about who we are as a human being tapping into that, more that in our world. That’s a first thing. The second thing is thanks for this conversation. I really appreciate the thoughtful questions. I appreciate just being in the space with you and being able to think about some of these things in a way that I don’t normally.
CK LIN 1:27:16
You’re welcome my friend. All right, guys, go out and make something Thank you.
Links
Crosby’s LinkedIn
Nonviolent Communication
Creativity, Inc
The post 034: How to Continuously Evolve As Entrepreneurs With Ceremonies and Rituals? – Crosby Haffner appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
One thing that’s constant in life is change. For any business to survive, it is critical to be prepared every time the market changes. Andrew Carton says there will always be ups and downs, but you have to keep the business going and keep the business growing. Andrew is the Cofounder, President, and Misfit-in-Chief at Mobile Nations, a leading social media and social commerce business which operates the largest and most influential smartphone communities with nearly 40 million unique visitors per month. In this episode, he talks about entrepreneurship, the business transitions he made, and how he became enmeshed in the digital entertainment convergence space and became an expert in that area.
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Ben Tauber is the former CEO of Esalen Institute and a Founding Partner at Velocity Group (executive coaching firm for startup founders and Fortune 500 execs). His frameworks for mentorship and facilitation allow pioneers across domains to fulfill their individual human potential, and to connect to accelerate the collective potential movement.
We talked about…
+His entrepreneurial background and the science of addiction
+The cost of existential stress
+His awakening moment and spiritual journey
+Emotions are physical sensations in the body: anger, fear, FOMO
+His mental model of belief system
+How to manage with compassion
+And much more
Here is my conversation with the co-founder of Camp Mystic at Burning Man
We talked about:
+The origin story of Camp Mystic
+Why he continues to return to Burning Man after 20 years
+How the founders nurture its high-performance culture
+The buddha and the mosquito story
+The benefits of bringing awareness to everyday stresses
+When is it good to receive? When is it good to give?
+His personal practices to live a spiritual life
+The benefits of 30-day sadhana, 90-day sadhana, and 1000-day sadhana
+And more
Sylvia helps high net worth families manage their multi-hundred-million-dollar portfolios. She shared her path from being a spiritual healer to family office management and the life lessons she learned from confronting her core fear of money. (Link: http://bit.ly/SylviaBenito)
We talked about:
+How she developed wealth consciousness?
+How she confronted the source of her fears?
+Whats her nonlinear path of awakening?
+What spirituality requires of her?
+What karmic costs she had to pay from operating from her blind spots?
+Why is a prenup agreement an energetic agreement?
+Why staying innocent is the best way to learn?
Sylvia helps high net worth families manage their multi-hundred-million-dollar portfolios. She shared her path of a spiritual healer to family office management and the life lessons she learned from confronting her core fear of money.
We talked about:
- How she developed wealth consciousness?
- How she confronted the source of her fears?
- What’s her nonlinear path of awakening?
- What spirituality requires of her?
- What karmic costs she had to pay for operating from her blind spots?
- Why is a prenup agreement an energetic agreement?
- Why staying innocent is the best way to learn?
- And more
CK LIN 0:00
Today, I’m really excited to share my next guest with you guys. I’m talking to Sylvia. I met her here at the awakened futures summit. She is an investor conscious investors, she was in charge of different family offices really helping them manage their wealth. And when I spoke to her, I immediately feel a kindred spirit who is all about using psychedelics and different modalities as a way to face her shadow or lower self in service of her higher self. And she just has a tremendous story narrative, a hero’s journey to share. So we’re very privileged to have Sylvia with us. Welcome to the show, Sylvia,
Sylvia Benito 0:45
thank you for having me.
CK LIN 0:46
Yeah. So why don’t we actually start off on how we drop into our conversation. We started from talking about energy, how money is energy. So if you can share a little bit about your journey to that conclusion, now, it would be really, really helpful.
Sylvia Benito 1:08
Sure. I always have the sense that we incarnate for very particular karmic reason, or particular karmic lesson, and that lesson is a difficult one, it’s supposed to be difficult. But the level at which it’s difficult is the level at which it holds the gift that we’re supposed to offer on this planet. So one of the experiences that I have is that whatever is the most difficult for us in our life is also the karmic gift that we came here to share. So our weakest place is also our strongest place. And for me, I knew at a young age that that was going to have something to do with money. But it wasn’t completely conscious for me. So when I was 18 1920 years old, I was studying healing modalities and working as a healer and studying with different spiritual teachers. And money was very much in the periphery of my consciousness as it is for many people in their early 20s. Because I was not fully embodied yet I was still in the Age of Exploration. And I worked as a healer for many years until I was like 26, or 27. And then that’s when that consciousness started to come in, where I said, Well, this is, this is great, I really love this work. But I’m never going to be able to make any money doing it. And in particular, how that looks to me is I will never be able to buy a house I would never, like how would I support children? How would I get a minivan for the children? So all of these kinds of questions started to come into the periphery of my consciousness, but I still didn’t really want to face them. And I wanted to kind of continue on my spiritual path and ignore those questions. So when I was 27, I went to India for an extended period of time to the ashram of Rama Harsha, at this mountain called our natural and our natural is this really profound pilgrimage site. It’s a Shiva mountain. And the pilgrimage is that people walk around the base of the mountain every day. It’s a three and a half hour walk. So I went there as a pilgrim. And every morning I was waking up and walking around the mountain and praying for liberation and praying for awakening and all of my intention was just liberation and awakening and liberation and awakening. And then one day, I’m walking around the mountain, and I swear the mountain I feel the mountain is speaking to me in the mountains, like, like, Fuck, you want liberation, what you really want kids? What you really want as a husband? And I was like, No, no, no, I want to wake up, I only want to wake up only one awakening.a complete refusal. But it was pushing like really pushing more and more and more into my consciousness. And on that particular trip, I met, like this beautiful, old man in a room with like four or five people and had a profound awakening and his presence. By far the most profound if you say, like awakening experience, because all awakening experiences are momentary, and they don’t last. But this one in particular was a very, like, super powerful awakening of the Divine Feminine inside of myself. And I really felt like I became the divine feminine, I became like this incredible goddess and, and it lasted for about a week. There really very little consciousness of Sylvia who she was, and I was completely in this divine self. Towards the end of that week, is when again, that message came, and it was even clear, and the message was like, okay, you can’t stay here. You can’t stay in India. You can’t renounce your life in America, you’re you’re not you don’t have permission to do that, because you have karma to fulfill. And specifically, you have a karma to go and learn how to work with money, and you have a karma to go and have children. So I moved back to the states and
CK LIN 5:37
before you go there. Was there an inner tension? torment?
Sylvia Benito 5:43
Yes, definitely.
CK LIN 5:45
Share with us a little bit about that, how were you able to surrender to this higher purpose that was given to you that was told in the inner knowing?
Sylvia Benito 6:01
I think that that we, it’s a good question, I think we actually we often have inner knowing that we’ve decided that we’re going to ignore, but there’s just a certain point where it becomes too uncomfortable to ignore it. And that was my experience. It was physically uncomfortable. I actually got quite sick. I got profoundly sick. The only time I’ve ever been sick in India, I was in bed for days. I was really, really sick. And during that illness, it just was it was kind of unmistakable was kind of like we’re going to cripple you until you listen.
CK LIN 6:39
So So in the beginning was a feather and then it become a gentle knocking. gentle nudge. Yeah. And then he didn’t want to wait until the sledgehammer come down.
Sylvia Benito 6:48
Yeah, but I am generally the kind of person who waits for the sledgehammer. I just like to play hard like that. Yeah, I wait
CK LIN 6:54
You dare the divine to tell you strongest thing else.
Sylvia Benito 7:00
I came back to the States. And really, then that’s when you really see that there is a way that the divine takes charge. And I could never really completely explain how all of it happened. But six months after coming back from India, I was working as a financial advisor for a bank.
CK LIN 7:18
How did that happen? He didn’t just like, Hey, here’s a job offer. As a financial advisor,
Sylvia Benito 7:23
there was some program that hired people that had an entrepreneurial background. And during those years that I was a spiritual seeker, I had helped to found a school of healing arts and South America and I had sold the school before I was in India. So I did have actually, you know, some entrepreneurial background.
CK LIN 7:41
Okay, so you weren’t just a quote-unquote, just right, a healer that’s doing the mission, but you actually build stuff
Unknown Speaker 7:48
I built thanks to Yeah, I did. So to spank looked at me as a female entrepreneur. But I remember the first day on the job I had, I had no experience of putting a suit on, I had no experience of wearing heels. I didn’t exactly know the difference between a stock and a bond was all brand new, it was incredibly uncomfortable. I felt like an alien. But I knew it was where I was supposed to be. So I just stayed with it.
Unknown Speaker 8:18
So how did you come up with the mental model then? And this may be a little projecting, but if I recall correctly, from our conversation, how money is energy and all that. So if you can induce a little bit about the new mental model, how did you come to them and tomorrow?
Unknown Speaker 8:37
Well, I think that, that these kinds of deepening things, again, they they they developed through difficult, painful experiences. So it would be nice if I could say, you know, I read a book, or I heard it from a teacher or I saw it in a vision. But I didn’t, I learned that the very, very, very hard way. So I began to work with money. But I still haven’t really fully met the belief yet that I quit that I am the source of abundance, I really did not understand yet that the divine is the source of abundance, I did not yet understand what it means to be in the flow of that energy of money, I still believed that money has to come from outside, and particularly that money has to come from a masculine paradigm. So it had to come from a company, you know, a patriarchal kind of top-heavy company, or it had to come from a man. So here I am working for a bank and getting a salary. And in a business meeting, I meet a man who was you know, kind and wonderful, and also happen to be quite financially powerful. And I married him. So one of the things that I really like to share, and I’d love to speak about is that awakening is not this direct path of realization. It’s not, it’s messy, and it’s circular. And so for me to figure out that I really am the source of abundance. That was a big detour as like, maybe I can do this, but let me just do the safe bet, just let me just marry someone who’s already got money, and fall into that kind of umbrella of protection. So I didn’t at that time know that money’s energy would have been, I could have maybe have said it to you in some kind of abstract way. But I would have been pretending it didn’t know it in my bones, or the cells of my body. Yeah, it was, it was like, spiritual ego. You know, like, we can be conscious with money, but I wasn’t conscious with money. I was afraid. I was afraid. I thought that money had to come from, you know, doing certain kinds of things that got you money. And so, but again, it’s like, Are there mistakes? Or was it just like the way that the path was unfolding. So I married someone who was rich, but it I still was working in the world of money, and still learning about how to work with money, and it was doing the hard work, you know, like, I went from not knowing the difference between a stock and a bond to becoming a CFA charterholder, which is a super difficult thing to do. It’s not a lot of women even ever done it. For me, that was a phenomenally difficult task. So I had to really like grind through the work of understanding that how does the world work with money? How does money get invested? What is the language of money, and then mechanics and the language mixing the language and I and I had to also earn my respect in the traditional paradigm. So to have those three letters after my name CFA reduced most questioning that people would ever have ever again, that do I know what I’m talking about with money, like it was like, This is like the stamp of approval, you understand money within that traditional paradigm, you understand money. So I had to work for that. And I did that inside of that marriage. And then I also lived a life of incredible material comfort inside the protection of a marriage to a man who was extremely successful in the corporate world. So you have to fast forward many years beyond that point to where the awakening that I had in India was able to actually truly connect to the energy of money.
Unknown Speaker 12:32
Well, not everyone has a rich husband. Or not everyone wants to go through the path of earning a CFA. Yeah. And everyone works in a bank. But I do know a lot of people want to liberate themselves. Yes, right to develop that wealth consciousness to really tap into the embodiments from from theory to experience through body mind. I am source Yes, I am the creator, allows this energy, allow money flowing through me in service of the greater good, because not about communication. So barring marrying someone get into a bank, CFA, right, what, walk us through a little bit of a tactical thing. Sure, was, how can they we develop that,
Unknown Speaker 13:21
I think the most important thing, and I can share more about what happened inside that marriage and the lessons that that brought, for me, those were my lessons, but it’s about facing the most difficult fear you have around money. Because a lot of people I would say maybe even most people have some pretty deep beliefs around money. And they tend to be quite unconscious. And if you notice, but one of the things that is difficult for people to talk about openly is money. And they can be quite a lot of shame. And talking about money, people are ashamed of their money stories, or people, or they hide their money stories, the only person who generally is not hiding their money stories, the person who’s the richest person in the room, right, and that person wants their money story to be on a billboard because they’re achieving all their self worth and all the recognition society from being generally one of the richest people in a room. So we’re in a culture that gives a tremendous amount of importance and value to the richest person in the room. So everybody else kind of is living in the shadow around money with a lot of shame. And what I noticed, particularly with with women that I know, you know, if you talk about tactical things, one of the things I did at a very young age as I started to look at women’s lives, 10 years and 20 years ahead of mine, and I really looked at them ruthlessly, and said, what were the decisions that they had made in their life? And where did they end up financially. And a lot of women in their 40s 50s and even 60s are incredibly financially disempowered, because they were hiding from these critical, difficult important questions. And because they didn’t confront them, and they were hiding from them in various ways for many years, they end up in precarious situations financially, where they really do not feel the support underneath them that that they would merit normally at that stage of life. So I, I made mistakes, I made lots of mistakes, I was terrified of money. And that, so the story of that marriage is not a happy one. Because, again, there were beautiful parts of the marriage, there were beautiful children, and there were things that were righteous about it. But there was a shadow. And the shadow was that I didn’t want to empower myself with money fully. So I grabbed onto the coattails of a man who was empowered with money. And when we met, he said, you will never have to worry about anything ever again. I will always take care of you. Which is like injecting heroin directly into the vein. It’s an incredibly powerful demotivating, right? Like why would I need to be empowered financially if somebody else is going to take care of me forever and ever and ever. Now, the dark side of that story is that days before the wedding, which was you know, again, fancy wedding at a big hotel in San Diego and I had a beautiful dress for Saks Fifth Avenue and and the whole thing, the whole entire princess wedding was happening for me. And I got a prenup handed to me. And, you know, at the time, I was surprised, well, no, I think a prenup can be appropriate. In many situations, if not most beautiful, it can be a beautiful agreement. And I was working and I did have some I was beginning to have some capacity to make money and some money saved. But to me a prenup was a document that should protect the assets of the person before marriage should be kind of unquestionably protected. Because you as a couple, you didn’t do anything to create that wealth together, right? pre existing pre existing really is pre existing, it’s like a line in the sand. I mean, it’s just something that’s apart and separate. And maybe you could say like two years into a marriage, there really hasn’t been enough of a partnership to build something. But if you look 10 years into a marriage, it becomes impossible the contribution of a couple that’s married, they have children, how do you how how would you not have something shared? like there should be something shared after some period of time? Gotcha. Because you you really are right. together a co-creating everything together. And there’s such an exchange of energy. How would you? How would you ever define that? So the prenup I was given was everything pre existing separate fine, me, I signed that happily. But everything in all eternity will always be separate. So that means that even for me for 20 years, you can never lay claim on one penny that I create or generate in the marriage, which to me felt like it broke my heart in some way. Because I said, Well, you know, again, if we have children, and I don’t work for a period of time, like that, doesn’t How does that work? Like that doesn’t seem fair. And I was the second wife said he had already been through it once before. And and the guidance that he gave me was like, Look, you sign this, or we just won’t get married, we can still do the wedding. Because it’s all planned. Now everyone’s coming. But we won’t actually legally get married, which again, broke my heart. So I called one of my friends who was a lawyer, but she was just one of my friends from college. She didn’t practice this particular kind of law. And she said, Look, maybe he’s testing you to see if you’re really in this marriage for the right reasons like you is the feminine is your heart and your intention pure. So maybe if you sign it and you prove to him your intention is pure, maybe then like things will change in the marriage. Okay, so I signed it. And then I forgot about it. And I got put in a drawer. And I really didn’t think about it in the beginning years of that marriage as the marriage went on, so like talking about 10 years married now, when I began to bring it up, because I had contributed so much to the financial well being of in many, many, many ways, from many ways, from concrete ways to non concrete ways we had really created so much together. And it was at that point that I said, I think we need to make changes in that document. And it was when I brought up the prenup and asked her to be changed. That is when my husband asked me for a divorce. So so there’s that there’s because there’s really there. There are karmic costs to everything that we do that our mistakes are innocent. So I was innocent coming into that marriage, but I had blind spots that were sourced from unaddressed fears. And those blind spots that were unaddressed fears, had to manifest themselves into what then became a very, very difficult divorce proceeding, which was centered only around the money not around the children at all. So the entire difficulty of that divorce became money. So that was really then you really want to talk about when I really began to learn the lessons is during that divorce? there’s no shortcut.
Unknown Speaker 20:22
Thanks for sharing that. Wow, that’s very incredibly personal and also difficult moments in your life. Thanks for sharing that. So knowing what you know, now, actually, that’s good little tactical. Before we jump into the last session, knowing what you know now, what would be a artful way to actually set up a prenuptial agreement?
Unknown Speaker 20:42
Just from what I think a prenup is an energetic agreement between two people. And it requires the people to really face their fears, and make sure that the agreement is sourced from love. And I don’t know what that would look like for anyone else. But you have to have enough presence to actually do the work of clearing your fear, and then finding the right document. So that document was sourced in his fear from his first marriage. So he needed to clean that fear before he could really have presented a document that would have been loving. One of my really, really good friends who’s like head of m&a at an incredibly prominent bank looked at the document and he said, This is what you would write for a concubine. When I was going through the divorce, so it wasn’t it’s not healthy documents. But again, this is two people that were not awake, creating an agreement and energetic agreement is sacred contract that was not awake. So he was asleep in his way I was sleeping my way. This contract is therefore imprinted with the signature of sleepiness. To create a prenup that is a week could be a really, really beautiful thing. It could be creative. Could be incredibly,
Unknown Speaker 21:55
Have you come across examples of a creative, beautiful pre-nup?
Unknown Speaker 22:00
No, I haven’t. But this part of the reason why I speak about it publicly is because again, I think these are the things that live in the shadows of our society. I recently negotiate help to negotiate a prenup for a family that I work with. So I was at the table with the daughter when it was being negotiated. And, and I can say that, that there were a lot of limitations that that family had and creating that prenup, there were a lot of fears that came up for them in the creation of that prenup. So, I don’t know how that’s going to carry out and who’s in their lives. You know, I don’t know what that’s going to look like for them. But I could I could mark with my finger, the places where the fear was
Unknown Speaker 22:37
one of the things that say in the, I believe was Nicole Bradford or TransTech, one of the founders, she said “we make what we are”. Yes. So the documents, the products and services, whatever we leave imprints, base on our consciousness level.
Unknown Speaker 22:57
Exactly. And, and so, so then if you look at the divorce is being a form of medicine to that. So it took five months. It wasn’t terrible, but it was painful. And it was painful, exactly in the right way. For me. It was exactly the right medicine from my heart. It was exactly the right. Like tincture from God to say, okay, like my dear beloved daughter, like you’re so devoted to truth and you’re so devoted to God, in all of these ways, except for money, like so what I had been doing for years is say, Here’s all my devotion to truth, here’s all my awakening. It lives over here and this like the over here, this reach of my consciousness, but in the real world, which is money, you know, and power. God doesn’t touch that place. Here’s where I just keep it real. Let me just be practical, let me be grounded. There’s really no such thing that is a false construct. But again, when you see like, how do you figure out money is energy, there’s no shortcut, you have to face the very deep underground fears that you have in your subconscious, one by one by one, you have to do methodical inventory, which sometimes we’re not capable of just sitting in a chair and doing the inventory. Sometimes we have to do the inventory by fucking up in life. And then it gets triggered in us and we have to see it. But you know, I had to do an inventory of my fears methodically consistently. From the day that prenup got handed to me into the day I sign that divorce was the time of my inner work, of meeting those fears. And then coming out of the divorce was really then I started to really begin to be able to flower with the with a different kind of realization,
CK LIN 24:46
you say in such a beautiful way that just the way you are being about is very neutral, even empowering the way you share your story. But during that time, I can’t speak for you I speak for just general human beings even for myself there a stage of woe was me right this How can you do this to me? Right? versus by me now I actually am accountable for all of this. Yes. And then it’s through me this is as me right. There’s that different stages of spiritual growth. So I was curious during that process going through the divorce, did you go through that those seniors? Or were you immediately jumped to stage three?
Sylvia Benito 25:28
Awakening is messy. It’s gritty. Yeah, it’s supposed to be gritty. Yeah. So know, when the divorce first started, I was just a mess. I had a circle of girlfriends around me, they called me They called themselves boots on the ground. And they were on speed dial. It could be two o’clock in the morning. And these women would pick up I didn’t even know which way was up or which was down right or left. I had no idea because if that prenup was an forced, I was going to really end up in a bad financial situation with two children. Now there’s child support, but Child Support is this very little amount of money. Sure. That’s not going to pay your bills. Yeah, so there’s no alimony like it was just so I had to go through a period of of like, really deeply advocating for myself. And I had a whole team of lawyers and it was super difficult even that I had one lawyer who was amazing. I had another lawyer fell in love with me and thought I was a soulmate. It was a mess. I was like to like just represent me. mess. But I got through it. I got through it. And and and in the end, we settled and we settled exactly in the right place exactly in the right medicine for us financially, exactly perfectly. So that I left that marriage, feeling perfectly in balance, perfectly in balance. So but that took time it took it took quite a bit of negotiation, and self advocacy.
CK LIN 27:10
Right, that in itself is a journey. Right? Self advocacy,
Unknown Speaker 27:13
it was a total journey. I mean, I was I was raised to be a very nice girl in my dad’s an Iranian to he’s a beautiful man. But you know, I was trained to be nice to be sweet. I mean, the feminine is completely rewarded for being compliant, being sweet being nice. And I wasn’t in all honesty, very sweet and nice wife. So for me to go from that sweet, nice wife to Okay, like, I’m going to really truly like not back down and I’m going to be difficult and I’m going to be difficult, I’m going to be difficult was, again, it’s it’s all perfect medicine. And I came out of that process. Like, like a warrior.
CK LIN 27:56
Right. So, so tactically, right people would listen to is they’re going through some difficult times, maybe not with divorce, maybe not with money, but difficult times. The trial of life. Yeah. tactically, how did you source your warrior spirit? To start to do this self advocating? for yourself and your children?
Unknown Speaker 28:17
Yes. Right. So there’s really only one secret to me, which is to “face what you do not want to face.”
CK LIN 28:24
So that was a mantra that you just keep,
Unknown Speaker 28:26
it’s a practice. It’s, it’s again, it’s a visceral, gritty practice like to to turn towards the thing that you don’t want to turn towards. All the time, every moment, like you were. I if we just speak about the awakening process in general, true, you know, I’ve had profound awakenings in my life, that that does not mean that you don’t have to still do the gritty work of embodiment. But we, we can all have these peak experiences of knowing that we’re God. And then we say, Well, why do I come back? Then? Why do I go like people say, at one going down, I went down, I knew I was God. And I went down. Like I am, at this stage of my life and conscious that I am always awake at this stage, like, I don’t feel like I’m going up and down out of God. And I’ve gotten like I am God, I know that, it does not mean that I don’t have to still every single day face, what I don’t want to face, face, the shadow face, the fear face, the dark side. So it’s like, it’s a practice. And, you know, when I gave birth to my first son, so I had a very beautiful birth experience. And many people asked me like, what, like, what did you do? Like, what’s the secret to to to a breath work? Did you have essential oils? Did you have dolphin music? Because I did have dolphin music packed in my bag that never came out of the bag. Dolphin music is irrelevant for birth, you know, what was relevant was in the moment that it got so uncomfortable, something in the new turn towards the pain, not away from the pain, you turned towards it, you’re going to open the portal, turn away from it, you’re going to be here for a long time. And it’s going to hurt. Yeah. And that’s a muscle that’s a spiritual muscle. It’s like going to the gym. So what are the tactical things of that muscle is setting your intention. So intention setting saying, you know, I am willing to see what needs to be seen, I’m willing to experience whatever I need to experience I’m willing for whatever conditions need to be present for my awakening, I’m ready for those conditions to be here. Now, set your intention. My intention is to wake up, no matter how painful it is, my intention is my intention is to take this pain and use it and transform it as the medicine that it is. So you have to set the intention to stay and process and digest whatever is present. So the intention setting is one. The second is to hold your learnings as innocent, to be self forgiving.
CK LIN 31:02
To hold your learnings as innocent, what does that mean?
Sylvia Benito 31:06
So when I like? Was it a mistake that I got married to a guy? In large part because he was rich? We could say that right? increase a look at say that like that could be kind of a brutal assessment of it. And I could hold a lot of guilt around that. But then how can I learn if I’m holding guilt? I’m going to hold it in shame. And then maybe I’ll even tweak the story or I’ll change it or I’ll say, oh, but there were other reasons. Oh, but he was so nice. Oh, but he was this open he was that you can’t learn. So you had a learning disability, the glass ceiling, right? Because you have to know that deep down inside, we are innocent. We are learning we came here to learn and caught his benevolent like that, like it was profoundly and beautifully innocent, to to walk in what I was walking into, because it was the exact right karmic medicine for me in my life to learn and to be as service to God. So you have to hold these mistakes as innocence. So one, turning towards the pain as a muscle to its innocent. No matter how bad the mistake you made is, no matter how big the shame is, it’s innocent. And then three is to really surround yourself with conscious friends or conscious guides. because too many people will actually counsel you to turn away from the pain or distract yourself.
CK LIN 32:32
Or point the finger victimhood is easy. Yes. Like, this guy’s a jerk.
Sylvia Benito 32:38
Yeah, women love victimhood. So like, if I hadn’t had been surrounded by girlfriends who were like, such a jerk. How could you do that to
Unknown Speaker 32:46
you? And I was like, Oh, yeah, boy, me right
Unknown Speaker 32:49
corner me, look what he’s doing to me. Right? then guess what? You’re going to be miserable in victimhood. till you die. Right? It is good to incarnate to learn the lesson. So why not just get rid of the victim paradigm and surround yourself by people who say, you’re innocent? I love you. Let’s be self accountable. I’m like, look it in the face.
Unknown Speaker 33:11
So So you mentioned the word conscious friends? What are some of the criteria of conscious friends? I think that because you probably know thousands and thousands of people I do those conscious friends? Probably. Very few. Right? How do you how do you select those conscious friends? What are the criteria you use to evaluate your conscious friends.
Sylvia Benito 33:33
I have, like you said, I have a lot of friends. I’m a very social person. And I have a large network of conscious friends. Extremely few. And I treat them like treasures. I mean, they’re like, they’re like Golden Buddha statues. That’s how I treat them. So I think that, that when we have an intention to live an awakened life, they come You know, they’re the magic help us on the path. And, and the divine sends us those
CK LIN 34:04
how do you know out of the thousands that you meet every day, right?
Unknown Speaker 34:08
I think for me, the way that I know is somebody that when I’m speaking to them, I can’t bullshit. That’s a really good sign of a true friend. Like, that person has enough emotional resonance and depth in them that when you come to them, like let’s say, I was dating right now, okay. You know, which I’m not but let’s say I was, I went to my friend and I said, Oh, my God, I met this guy. He’s amazing. You know, he’s, I met him. I met him on Richard Branson’s. I was in Necker Island, and I met him and it was amazing. He’s got this job. And he’s so cool. And guess what? He’s really interested in spirituality. He really wants to be on the path. Yeah. So like a conscious friends gonna be like, like, Who are you lying to right now? Like, oh, okay, you, you want to do the same thing you already did? Again, like a question conscious friend has enough discernment. So maybe even when I show up in front, my conscious friends, I wouldn’t be able to lie. Like I couldn’t lie to myself, because their emotional bandwidth and resonance makes me more truthful with myself. They’re like tuning forks. And you can feel it, like Who are those people that you can be authentic with and be yourself around. And if you don’t have those people in your life, then you need to keep looking. They’re out there, you need to find them just like their true teachers, their true friends.
Unknown Speaker 35:31
One of the realization that I got from ceremony is that I have thousands and thousands of acquaintances, you know, hundreds of Facebook friends or whatever. But really just a handful of those friends who I can trust and how I know that is by if I were gone, who I can trust my children, my family with. Okay, so I have a handful of people can actually take that on not to say that I will, quote unquote, burden them with them. But at least that’s the mental model and the quick mental math that I do. Yeah. Willing to entrust them to these people.
Sylvia Benito 36:09
That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Yeah.
CK LIN 36:18
Thanks for sharing your story. No, I really appreciate that. So going back to….there’s a lot here. Were you always spiritual? Pretty much. Yeah. Do you feel like that gives you a deeper trust in your life trajectory, yes. Versus before spirituality, where you were just on your own. And then what you do is your own volition. And that’s that
Unknown Speaker 36:54
you my early awakenings, or when I still teenagers, it’s difficult for me to ever remember, even when I was a child, like I was kind of drawn to the divine, so I don’t have I don’t have a self that existed outside of spirituality. It was really a teenager when it really came into full focus in my life. But it was funny because when it really fully came into focus, when I had like a, like a profound awakening as a teenager, I was kind of pissed off about it. And because there’s like, Why I have a spiritual life, I don’t have a spiritual life. to me look like unhappy middle aged women who were doing Reiki I was like, I don’t like I don’t, it’s inconvenient. And there was actually a grieving for me, because there was some part of me that that really yearned for distraction. I wanted to be able to just, like, be distracted. And it was not like, wasn’t like a joyful thing for me, like, Oh, great, like, I have life of awakening. Because awakening really asks everything of us. It doesn’t ask everything on day one. Because nobody ever sign up for
CK LIN 38:03
Tell us a little bit more. Why did you say that?
Unknown Speaker 38:06
You know, like awakening is is not for sissies
CK LIN 38:11
I love that as a quotable quote.
Sylvia Benito 38:15
It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. So in the beginning, it’s kind of like, this is like kind of feels good. And it’s nice, and I feel some relief is kind of nice. But the truth is, is you go more and more and more down the path, it really does ask for everything to be given to its feet. Now in the end, what you’re putting at the feet of awakening is not of value. But it takes a while for you to figure out that it’s not of value. And so let’s go back to money for a second, there’s not of value, there’s been talk about money is the way of because because for so long, I wanted to hold on to money a separate from God. Like I better keep making sense money over here like, like, I’m definitely not. And the only way I could conceptualize that is like, I feel like people that look like they’re trying to have a spiritual life around money just look like dumb fucks to me. Like they were they look like they were lost or like they weren’t working or they were like poor like they just look messy. And I I just couldn’t conceive of what, what it would look like to surrender money to the feet of God. Honestly, it’s really only very, very recently that I’ve even begun to understand what that looks like that there’s there’s this just your your devotion to truth becomes so profound in your heart, that it begins to take everything else that you had as a false god. And money was the last false god for me to offer. And even though I’m still in the process of giving some of those pieces of the false god over. But when you talk about money being an energy of the Divine, the truth of the matter is that as I give over that false god of the kind of money I thought I need to make and create and protect, as I give that over more and more, which it’s not like I give it over. It’s just like that my devotion of God is just deepening and deepening and deepening. It consumes the fall god and burns it. And in its place, there really is this is this is the universe’s magical year magically abundant, magically abundant, it’s dying to support us. It wants to support us It wants our gifts are so much for all to share. And one of the things that I really struggled with was, you know, why are there so many poor people like like, these, if I’m living in Africa, on $1 a day can’t have a deep spiritual realization and become a millionaire. So like, how does that work? Like what’s going on there? Right. And Marianne Williamson actually speaks about this. And she’s the one who kind of drew some light on it for me. And she says that the the fact that there’s poverty is something we can solve, like we are capable of solving poverty. But that is the global shadow of not knowing that money is God. So there’s the personal shadow of not knowing that money is God. And then there’s the global shadow of not knowing that money is God. And that global shadow creates these tremendous pockets of mass suffering. So we can wake up to our own path with money, but really, it needs to be in service of waking up the path of money for everybody. Because if everybody were to wake up the path around money, we will solve the issues of this huge inequality of wealth in the world, not completely not that everyone can be a millionaire. But things can come into a deeper equilibrium. And if that makes sense, because it is it’s Maryann’s content not mine.
CK LIN 42:00
Yeah. So for someone who is on that path of awakening there, let’s actually focus on money since we’re talking about right. Where do I even begin. So on the path to, to know oneself to be the creator of abundance in an abundance, which is really available, right? It’s not something to be created, it’s already existed, you’re creating, you’re tapping into something that’s, that’s, that’s already there. Right? How do you actually tactically do that?
Unknown Speaker 42:37
by meeting your money fear? There’s no shortcut. There’s just literally no no shortcuts. So what does it mean to meet your money here? You know, everybody knows where their money fear is? How do you feel when you open up your bank statement? Do you pay attention to your investments? Or do you ignore them? Do like your work? You’re in love with your job? If you’re not, why don’t you leave it? Are you in a marriage because you’re afraid of what would happen financially because you leave, everybody knows where their money fear is, has to be confronted? You have to do the work.
CK LIN 43:14
I feel like almost there could be a seminar transformation weekend can be done in in this particular area. Because as you said, especially America, this is definitely the shadow right? You can ask about everything except what’s in your bank account. How dare you? Ask me about my sex life, everything political belief everything in your biases. Money, how dare you?
Sylvia Benito 43:45
Not at all? Am I rich? Am I not rich. So to opening that conversation around money is very important. And as you know, I work with people that have tremendous resources financially. And I have to say that I know a lot about the technical aspect of how to manage huge amounts of wealth. I know how them if somebody puts 300, which they do people put 300 million in my hands, I manage it, I do it. I know how to do it, right. But the truth is, is that the really important piece that’s missing from most people that are holding that kind of wealth is the consciousness piece, because nobody talks to them about it. And they are universally admired, and unquestioned because they’re so rich. So their shadow begins to be hidden in tremendous recesses. And in some of the deeper conversations I’ve had with families of truly astronomical wealth, you would be surprised how many of those people actually wish they didn’t have it, because they don’t know how to connect to the purpose of it. And it’s become burdensome for them. Because they really, this sounds like a cliche, they really don’t know if people like them or not.
Unknown Speaker 45:07
Right, because they don’t know if people like them for their money or for themselves.
Unknown Speaker 45:13
So it’s that that, like, you know, in my in my kind of ultimate fantasy of something that should be happening on this planet, people with tremendous resources should be coming together and ceremonial kinds of work with them that is set to to, because there’s nothing that humbles you the way that medicine does,
Unknown Speaker 45:34
it’s also not external. It’s not it’s not someone telling you something, because when it’s someone like a guru, or a teacher, or advisor, or a coach, or a friend even telling you something, how dare you, right? It’s ego against ego, it’s easily triggered, easily go into that direction. But when you do plant medicine, it’s from the inner knowing. It’s like, okay, that’s right. You do an inventory of all your beliefs, all of your journey, all of your events, things, you’re proud of things, you’re ashamed of things, you’re disappointed by things, your anger by everything, everything.
Sylvia Benito 46:11
Yeah, and it and it will specifically cleaning and direct energy and money. And we’ll look at the money is just pure energy. Medicine knows that it’s just energy. So it will look at the money through the framework. So in my work life, I take quite a bit of personal direction. Again, I’m not taking the kind of personal direction of like, you should be shorting the VIX right now or Facebook’s going down. It’s not that I mean, the divine is definitely not giving me instructions on how to treat with stock. But the divine is there through the plant medicine is saying to me, you need to come into a deeper integrity with your energy around this particular relationship around that particular, like that particular cluster of money, you need to have more, you know, personally, you need to clear your personal integrity with it before you can make decisions with it. I recently met a family who came it was just sold a company for a ridiculous amount of money, I mean, just ungodly amount of money. And they they met with me. And I think they were they were kind of expecting me to like put a pitch book in front of them. And like sell sell them. I don’t have a pitchbook like I really just wanted to meet with you and see you know, how you are like what’s happening for you and like, how do you feel about this? And that’s really, it’s really uncomfortable for people. But it’s the right thing to do. Like, if you’re given a tremendous gift financially on this earth, it’s my best advice is don’t do anything, do a lot inner work, and then say, and take your time with it. But that’s at the far end of the spectrum of people with too much. And you know, a lot of people are just like me, and I’m still working at the other end of the spectrum. I haven’t gotten what I want yet. And
CK LIN 48:14
Okay, so let’s let’s go there for a little bit. And then But before that, I want to share a quote with you. I can’t remember who said this, I think was I think it was Warren Buffett or Reid Hoffman. Anyway, they said, No, it was Kevin Kelly. It says money is all like gasoline. It’s very important to get you from point A to point B, but you don’t want to spend your entire life going for gasoline station. Gas Station. All right. Yeah. So So these people have a lot of gas and a lot of energy. Yeah. And they can utilize to manifest whatever it is they want to manifest in life, what they do with it? I think that in itself is a journey in a I’m very, they should be thankful for my point of view that they have someone I’d like you to ask them some critical questions. What do you actually want to do with all this gasoline? Other than getting more gasoline?
Unknown Speaker 49:09
it’s very hard for them to discern a voice like that, because they’re so used to everyone who sits in front of them wanting something from them. So that’s I’m seeing their their their pitfalls in four. There’s pitfalls around these questions. Because again, you end up with a lot of money, almost 99.9% of the people that are in front of you want something from you. So I can show up in front of them. And they may not even be able to see me because I just looked like another flavor of someone who’s selling something different to them. And they’re protecting themselves against everything because they don’t know what to trust.
CK LIN 49:45
So Elon Musk said something interesting. And I’m paraphrasing, he basically said solving problems are simple, actually. 90% of the effort is identifying the right question, right. And you had mentioned that facing the whatever you’re most afraid of specifically around money. But that’s hard to identify. Because you may feel something viscerally you don’t feel good. And the easiest thing to avoid that is let me turn on TV, Facebook, ice cream, or chocolate. Then I don’t need to look at my bank account. Right? I need to look at my budget. Right? Right. I am speaking from personal experience.
Unknown Speaker 50:49
yeah, or rescue fantasy, you know, to the rescue fantasy, like it’ll just take care of itself.
Unknown Speaker 50:54
Yeah. So but then how do you specifically identify that core? Sure, fear the shadow and bring light and intention to that.
Sylvia Benito 51:06
But I think that’s that’s a lot of what this meeting that we’re both attending has been about is where do you find the tools. So there are tools of presence and and you can say meditation, we have to be careful because meditation for some people can mean floating above the problems, but to really, if you have a meditation technique that is more about doing an inventory, quietly, of what’s really happening inside and naming it. So just that you’d have to develop some quality of presence. And you have to want that. So that’s the first step, it’s like to I want to have an awakened conscious life, yes, then I need to begin to develop presence in developing presence is a lifelong work. So you can develop the inner presence to really sit and say, you know, for example, typical feminine fear around money is I’m going to grow old, alone, and poor, like the most terrifying image for the, you know, white American woman in her mid 30s, maybe facing divorces, she’s going to end up being married with the shopping bags on the corner, begging for sandwiches, you know, people don’t want to admit it, these are the images that they have. Sure, that is the fear, I will be old and alone and poor. So you have to really face fear of abandonment, fear of not being loved, fear of being alone. But these are, these are fears that have spiritual power and spiritual transformation. And then all of those fears can be resolved through awakening is we are never alone. We’re never, we’re never abandoned. But you have to use your presence and your inquiry and your, your attention. to really see that for yourself. There’s nobody else can tell you that. So can happen that way. Or you can just do some plant medicine. And that’s just I’m just gonna like give it to you.
CK LIN 53:03
Okay, so all right. So yeah, I see that you got excited for. So how will One know that they’re ready for plant medicine from your point of view? yeah, let’s say they did, you know, they want to confront their fears and their fear in service in and really develop this capacity to generate wealth consciously, let’s say right, and plant medicine is one path, and how would they know that they are ready.
Unknown Speaker 53:34
If I was saying krim never tried anything. And I feel like I’m curious. The first thing is to know, are you a suitable candidate for plant medicine or not. And that’s just an important part of the discourse right now. So anybody with pre existing mental conditions of their family history, anything that anyone who has schizophrenia in the family, things like that, those kinds of that kind of discernment is needed to know that you are the kind of person who’s going to respond well, from a psychological standpoint to medicine. And I think that’s important to say, because I’ve actually seen people jump in and not have a great experience, because they didn’t do the proper sort of intake of their own family history first. But saying somebody says, you know, I’m pretty solid dude. And I think I, I’m ready, then the truth is, I really think you’re never ready. Just like I wasn’t ready for birth, I read lots of books on it, nothing prepared me for what it actually was. I don’t think anything will prepare you a proper medicine journey, nothing can really prepare you for it. And you will be surprised by the depth and by the intensity, and by the, the the complexity of the experience. And I think that that’s okay, because the truth is, is no matter what happens inside that journey, it’s safe. It’s safe, it’s really, it’s always no matter how intense that rides going to be. It’s a safe ride. So don’t know how you can prepare other than do your best.
Unknown Speaker 55:09
S o any other criteria in terms of selecting the right facilitator, the right peer group, the right, you know, timing, perhaps because I hear also a lot, and I want to do it, but now’s not the right time. Right? So what would you say to these considerations?
Unknown Speaker 55:23
So I was just on a call with someone today and was like, you know, what do you think about when you’re going to do medicine Next, the person was like, I’m in a period where I really need to integrate. And so I think that that’s a normal thing that happens in a human life, we have periods that are periods where we, we’re really, we’re feeling stagnant. And that stagnant time, you might really come into a plant medicine ceremony to stir things up and bring them up to the surface. And then there can be times when so much has been stirred up that you know, that you need to ground and integrate. And that’s, I think, the natural ebb and flow of the human life and the path with these kinds of medicines. That’s different for everybody. Everyone has a different capacity for holding these kinds of medicines to for some people, maybe they do it once in a lifetime. For some people, it’s once a month. So I think that you have to have that sense of whether you’re in the integration phase or in the phase where you’re stagnant.
Unknown Speaker 56:21
Any other so any considerations about making the right facilitators and my peer group?
Sylvia Benito 56:27
Well, I think just to be incredibly discerning, because the setting can give you a pretty adverse experience. So really, be super discerning in terms of the setting and make sure that you wait for a setting that’s going to feel like home to you. You know, it should feel like home, the facilitator should feel like home, where you’re going to do it that space should feel comfortable and like home to you wait for that home feeling there. I am particular pretty strict about who I will work with with two I’m almost fanatical about it. I would say particularly with ayahuasca, I really have a strong faith in lineages with iOS go because I think that quite quite a bit of energy can come up for people and and I was a journey and I would want to know that my facilitator is part of a lineage with tremendous experience. Because if you’re working with it within a lineage where say, you know, the taita has done 1000 ceremonies, they’ve seen everything, so he can track energetically, whatever is coming up for you. And can I share just one personal story? So during my marriage, I wasn’t doing any plant medicine because it was something that my my ex husband didn’t agree with. So I didn’t do any during that period of time. My first time coming back to it was like, two weeks after the divorce was when I went to go and work with with a taita a very beautiful taita and, and I, I kind of walked into the ceremony feeling prepared, like, you know, I’ve, I’ve done some things, you know, I’ve done some meditation, some yoga, and I mean, I’m good here. I know what I’m doing. I’ve done it before. And I sat down in the ceremony, and I drank and I was absolutely floored by the level of energy that came up for me. I was like, Whoa, like, it was way more than I thought I was like, whoa. And I raised my hand and the ceremony and this is like in the silent part of a ceremony. We’re kind of related as you are. But but it was funny just like a two hour silent period where everyone’s just basically like chill, like hanging out by the beginning of 44 different 45 minutes, like the first two hours where everyone else is like, easy breezy. know, me, I’m raising my. sights it comes over to me is like, you know, basically what’s wrong? I said, am I okay? Because so much energy. And this is the beauty is all that arrogance I had had coming in this taita of just mail to him it to me goes, let’s be straight man is go to your practices. Oh, wow. Good. Your practices, like I mean, were you just telling me earlier how you have all these great meditation practices and all these great yoga practices, introduce intense, go to your practices, ground yourself with your practices. And in that moment, I felt the medicine say to me, girl, you have no practices, you cute pictures on Instagram, doing yoga, you had no practice, you have abandoned your practices. And look where you are now. So I was like, so then that’s the importance of working the lineage because then the tides have brought other healers and shamans to work with me, and to heal me, you know, to really help me to process the intensity of that energy until I could hold it on my own. So that’s why for me, the fun facilitator and, and the lineage is so important, because they have to be able to track that moment where I couldn’t possibly integrate the energy, they brought me to the place where I could begin to integrate the energy through their work. So they let me scaffold on their practice, right? And then they left. And then I was alone. And I said, Okay, show me the way, where do we start, and the medicine was like, let’s start with the breath. Let’s just start with the breath, it’s a good place to start for you. And then that whole night, I just had to work with the breath. So this is really important that you can’t like if I had imagined I had been with some, like novice facilitator in a yoga studio in Manhattan. I mean, I could have really have been dislocated energetically for a really long time. And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten that profound lesson, which was, you used to have practices, they’re gone. Let’s start again. So I’m very, very cautious and discerning about who I will work with.
CK LIN 1:01:00
Yeah, that’s beautiful. And for everyone listening, please be discerning whoever facilitators you’re working with, of course, because this is on par to spiritual surgery.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:14
It is. Yeah, it’s a good way of putting it
Unknown Speaker 1:01:17
any as we cover a lot of different realms, any specific so for those that are listening right now, any actionable things, one actionable thing that you believe that they can take on as a way to cultivate their wealth consciousness
Sylvia Benito 1:01:33
with wealth consciousness? Yeah. I think that, that the first the first thing is, is just to bring into your awareness, the the parts that we all hide, that we are all ashamed of around money. And to begin to ask yourself the question, What am I compromising in my life in the name of money? What compromises Am I making? Where Where am I selling myself? Where what carries the energy of the prostitute in some way? Like the energy of the prostitute is a really good way to even frame it like in what way? Do I sell myself for money? subtly, where am i doing it and why?
CK LIN 1:02:22
I love that,
Sylvia Benito 1:02:23
be willing to, to confront that.
CK LIN 1:02:28
With that, thank you so much. Really appreciate having you here.
Sylvia Benito 1:02:31
Thank you for having me.
The post 030: How to Cultivate Wealth Consciousness? – Sylvia Benito appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Food is so much more than just about our appetite and desire to eat. When you look closely, you’ll find a spiritual connection to what we put inside our body. Richard Pauwels of Rich Nuts, LLC has found that realization and passion about food and what our connection to nature is through our food source. Having been born inside a prison, Richard sets out in life to move beyond labels and cages, inspiring him to create conscious shifts and transformations when it comes to perceiving things. For him, it is in that connection to nature through what we eat that he helps people cultivate that connection back and reimagine what it means to be rich. A fireman himself, Richard is also no stranger with the warrior spirit and he tells us how he used that to build a fire within him that turned his curiosity about food to interest and then to passion, which ultimately advocates for a better world.
The hero’s journey is often thought of as a personal quest. However, when you look deeply, you’ll realize that the hero is just as valuable as the people that allowed for things to succeed. Husband and wife pair of the ShiftIt Institute, Charlie Hartwell and Maureen Pelton, show how it is not only an important way to walk the hero’s path but how you can actually walk it together in union. They do that through enlightening us about the intersection between psychedelics technology and meditation, sharing how they invest in consciousness ventures and inspiring people to connect more deeply to themselves so they can live happier and healthier lives. In this episode, dive in deeper into the entire mental space together with the blossoming of their relationship and learn about creating better mental wellness in the midst of the tremendous suffering in the world.
There is so much from our past that has the power to heal us if only we remember and embrace them. Today’s guest, Dennis Notten, has quite the heroic journey that led him to commit learning and sharing ancient healing modalities with others who are on the same path of self-discovery. Having reinvented himself from being a professional musician to being an ayahuasca evangelist, Dennis shows how he is now bridging the cultures between the West and the Amazon tribe. He shares his own self-discovery that took him all over the world - from receiving the blessing from spiritual leaders to finding the beauty of micro-dosing. In a world that is becoming less and less connected, Dennis brings us back to the connection we’ve lost that empowers our general well-being into abundance and joy.
The hero’s journey is often thought of as a personal quest. However, when you look deeply, you’ll realize that the hero is just as valuable as the people that allowed for things to succeed. Husband and wife pair of the ShiftIt Institute, Charlie and Maureen Hartwell, show how it is not only an important way to walk the hero’s path but how you can actually walk it together in union. They do that through enlightening us about the intersection between psychedelics technology and meditation, sharing how they invest in consciousness ventures and inspiring people to connect more deeply to themselves so they can live happier and healthier lives. In this episode, dive in deeper into the entire mental space together with the blossoming of their relationship and learn about creating better mental wellness in the midst of the tremendous suffering in the world.
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Listen to the podcast here: The Intersection Between Psychedelics Technology And Meditation with Charlie Hartwell and Maureen Pelton I’m excited to have these two amazing people that I met at the Awakened Futures Summit, Charlie and Maureen. One of the things that immediately impressed me most about both of you is when you speak, you speak your own truth and you don’t shy away from the truth. The love that’s oozing between the two of you is quite inspiring. It’s not only an important way to walk the hero’s path but how you actually walk the heroes’ path in union together. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Charlie and Maureen.
Thank you for having us.
Why don’t we start from where we are and then we can drop into your story how that is in relevance to your own hero’s journey. We’re talking about the intersection between psychedelics technology and meditation. What brought you here and why are you here?
Maureen brought me here many years ago and she got me into the space that we’re not working in. What brought me here is I have a connection to Consciousness Hacking. I’m an advisor. I’ve known and advised that group for some period of time. The people who founded this conference are our friends and we want to support this work in the convergence of all three of those things.
I would add that we met Mikey before he started Consciousness Hacking. I felt such intense love for him and from him. We walked away and said, “We love him and what can we do to support him?” Charlie said, “They’re doing this and we could sponsor him.” I’m like, “Let’s do it.” It’s because of our love for Mikey.
Let’s talk a little bit about the origin of the story because you guys invest in consciousness ventures. Tell us a little bit about that. Why not ventures in general? Why specifically conscious ventures?
Our mission is all about inspiring consciousness, igniting human potential and creating paradigm shifts. The work that I do within that framework and within that organization that we cofounded is to invest in the mental wellness space through this group called the Bridge Builders Collaborative. A group of investors that are investing in the mental wellness space and an application that can help people connect more deeply to themselves so that they can live happier and healthier lives. The reason for investing in that space is because we see a great human need to create better mental wellness, this tremendous suffering that is in the world. As investors, we also see an opportunity because the need is so great. The opportunity for scale is significant. That’s why we’re investing specifically in that space.
Is there an origin story behind either mental suffering or mental wellness? Is there anything of your personal narrative that taps into that?
I would say that I am a social scientist who’s been committed to alleviating suffering and have done that in many different ways. I became involved and then invited Charlie into the Mind and Life Institute, which is founded by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and Adam Engle and Francisco Varela. They have so much science around contemplative practices and transformation that we were hungry for applications getting out into the world. In my work, people were changing some, but they didn’t have the tools they needed for the deep transformation. We saw mindfulness and meditation as a way to help with that. I originally got involved in mindfulness, yoga and meditation many years ago because I had a spontaneous mystical experience.
Tell us about that.
Briefly, I had to have back surgery. The night before surgery the physician came in and said, “You may not wake up, you may be paralyzed. All of these things could happen. Good night.” I was in the hospital bed sitting there. I was already very deeply spiritual in my life. I had this experience of saying, “I am completely powerless. I have no control. My only control and power are that I’m choosing to do this. I could choose not to do it.” I surrendered. This is not a word most people understand. They understand it intellectually, but not deeply embodied surrender. I said, “I surrender.” At that moment I went on a trip. I made the decision but I surrendered to it.
When I came back, I had no idea what happened. I had no context for it because I wasn’t meditating or doing yoga or I had never done drugs so I didn’t know what was happening, but I was in tremendous joy. I went right to sleep. They woke me up in the morning to prep me for surgery and I was in this static joy. They rolled me into the operating room. They’re like, “Are you okay? Did you take drugs?” I’m like, “No.” They’re like, “We’ve never had anyone like this before.” When I came out of the surgery, which went beautifully and my recovery was beautiful, I woke up in joy again and I recovered much more quickly than they had thought I would.
My intention at that point was to finish my senior year of college and go on to law school but that changed my life. I then went on this path of discovery. I went to graduate school instead and try to find context for what happened to me. That led me down the path of doing yoga, meditation and all different practices of modalities and it transformed my life. I transcended so much and I continued to have mystical experiences and continued to live multidimensionally without drugs. I believe in psychedelics to help people get there.
Thanks for sharing the journey. If you look at the hero’s journey framework, that was an inciting incident. That was pre-Charlie?
Yes, I had a whole other life. I can say a little bit about that with us. I wasn’t serviced after that point and I wasn’t surrendered to evolving. I started working in the world doing executive coaching and organizational development and bringing new ways and new modalities. I was talking about transformation years ago in the corporate world and that they thought it was a little bit odd. I got married, I had a child. I continued to do my own personal work and continued with my own awakening process and I left my marriage. I knew I wanted something more and I kept opening my heart. Several years later, Charlie came into my life.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about what happened? Was it manifested? Did you make a list or you showed up that way?
No, when I first met Maureen, it was actually through our kids who are in school together. We got to know each other as friends. We understood that we shared this common love of spirituality. We had a connection and we actually started thinking about doing a business together before the relationship turned into a romantic relationship. I was in a marriage that was not working and hadn’t been for some time. I wasn’t able to admit that to myself but at the same time I met Maureen and I was falling in love with Maureen. She had no idea that was happening because she had good boundaries. There was a point in time when I had left my marriage and we realized this divine connection that we have, which when we explored that, people ask us how long have we known each other. It’s like millions of years and multiple lifetimes and now here we are sharing the sacred union that we have in our life.
I would like to add. You forget your awakening.
I could talk about my own hero’s journey, which was later than Maureen’s. Maureen talked about hers, which was full of surrender. Mine was I was a little bit more stubborn. For me to get to that point where I needed to surrender it took a lot of death. My father and my grandfather died within two years of each other. They were my role models. My business had been successful and everything that I’d done in my business wasn’t working out and that was ending. My first marriage was practically dead for all sense of purposes, but I hadn’t admitted it to myself. For me, I had a dream one night that I’ve climbed in the World Trade Center and I knew what I was going to do when I got to the top. This is after the World Trade Center actually comes down. I woke up and I realized I needed help.
Did that moment scare you a little bit knowing this is what’s happening in my dream?
I was not going to take a step and commit suicide practically, but I need help. I was so stubborn to all of this at the universe actually had to create three different death experiences happening at the same time for me to wake up. Once I got to that point and had that dream that was my opportunity to say, “Something needs to change.” That was my beginning of reaching out, seeking help and going down in my own spiritual journey and path.
If you don’t mind going there a little bit more. How were you able to maintain your own sovereignty during that time? Three deaths, physical and metaphorical deaths are very challenging.
The moment of disagreement is when two egos collide.
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In going through the process, there are pieces of myself that I needed to take a look at and say, “This is an image that I had of myself,” and also that many other people had of me and projected onto me. How do I go and say it’s an image only? It’s not my true authentic self. I grew up in a society that was a wealthy society and you’re expected to do certain things. I had to begin to deconstruct all of the impression management. All of the image that you put out into the world and say, “All that matters is that I find out who I am and then act in that way and follow that path.” In that process of awakening for me, there was another piece where I had accumulated so many people in my life that I all thought were important. I came to recognize that many of those relationships were not built on authenticity.
I had to begin to let go of those relationships and find more authentic relationships, find what my purpose was and begin to act differently, not only in my business life but in my personal life. As a father, because in my first marriage, I had not been a good father. I show up differently for my two children and for my third child who was Maureen’s child. I needed a lot of help and support, which I found different people to support me through that journey.
Thank you both for sharing. Confucius had a mental model, which I come to later on in my life I appreciate. He said, “Self-mastery, family, country and world.” The way I interpreted it originally is this is too simple, let me skip a level. Later on, I got a little bit more mature and hopefully a little bit wiser. It was actually sequential but as I’m hearing going through my life, my own journey is actually fractal. It’s happening all at the same time. It’s like zoom in and zoom out all the time. As a part of the awakening process, I’d love to hear from you guys. You mentioned the awakening process, my reinterpretation and translation of this are deprogramming of ideas, beliefs, cultural things that are not of yours. Whether it be from your DNA, from your culture, from your parenting, from your environment and relationships. What are some of the key modalities that you came across that’s very effective for you two and deprogram those things that are not yours? If you can talk about that a little bit, that would be very helpful.
I’ve used a variety of modalities. Yoga and meditation for sure.
Any specific yoga or meditation?
Whatever works for you. It varies. Breathwork is one of my favorite modalities. It can be holotropic, there’s connected breath. Everything is always coming back to the breath. I am a lot about embodiment. It’s not an outward journey. Although as I live multi-dimensionally there are many layers it’s about bringing it here and being in my body with it. The embodiment piece is important and probably our favorite modality is play.
What kind of play?
We are extremely playful because I think this work is intense and we take it too seriously sometimes. For example, when we came together, there were some patterns he had from his past and I had. We played with them and had fun with them. Our kids at the time were pre-adolescent and they came together. They loved each other because they’d known each other. They watched us play with that. There’s never any stress or tension or fighting. We have disagreements, but it’s extremely playful and that helped us release a lot of our patterns and indoctrination. The kids caught on and started adding in. I remember a year or two into our relationship, our eldest Lucy said to her dad, “You are so stubborn.” He starts looking at, “How can I show up differently with her and not be so stubborn?” I can’t stress it enough. Even Tim Chang’s presentation plays such an important part of it. Because so much of what we’re doing is projecting out there anyways so if we can see that or be invited to see that and play with that, then it can shift. When we get defensive or we hold on or attach, it’s a little hard to shift.
We’d been married for ten years. We’ve been together for fourteen years, but we continue to do this work. It’s not like we’ve reached this state.
You haven’t arrived yet.
No, we haven’t arrived. My daughter said I was stubborn. I still have pieces of stubbornness and I still have idiosyncrasies. I am willing to look at them and do the work. Sometimes it’s funny how I do the work. Something hysterical happens and it happens faster and faster. The more you do the work. It’s like the universe is kicking me. I laugh at it and try to do the work the best I can to change the behaviors and then she’ll give me things about it. We’ll laugh hysterically, I’ll catch her doing something and we’ll have fun with it.
Consciousness Ventures: “Self-mastery, family, country, and world.” We’re talking about the play. I’m a very serious, intense person and that’s something that I do want to work on. Ultimately this is nothing but a dream life in general. Why be so serious all the time? In the moment of disagreement, when two egos collide, it’s challenging to bring the play to that because you have two opposing points of view. How do you bring that moment of play? To top this a little bit tactically, how did you create that environment? Is it an agreement? Is it a safe word? Is it a certain phrase or a certain touch? Share with us, how do you bring the play in one may say an intense moment of disagreement?
It’s probably the way we look at each other. I’m very animated so I’ll make a face and then he’ll start to laugh or we might touch each other and say, “Wait a minute.” We start to laugh. When we were outside I said, “Yes, I know,” and I leaned on him. We started laughing hysterically. There is a touch to it. I think there’s face making to it but I also think we live in joy. One of the most interesting things into our blending the families and living together, the eldest daughter, Lucy, Charlie’s daughter came up to me and she said, “You’re weird.” I’m like, “Yes, I know. What’s new?” I said, “Why do you say that?” She’s like, “It’s because you’re happy all the time.”
It startled me and I said, “What? Yes, I am. Aren’t you?” She’s like, “No.” There’s like, “Is your mom?” She’s like, “No.” I was like, “I want you to be and I want to give you permission to be.” I think even back then we’re holding space here for everyone to be happy and playful and joyful because why wouldn’t we. When we had a family meeting, we would have family meetings and I said, “Do you guys have anything you want to add?” The son, our youngest says, “Yes, dinners aren’t very good.” I started laughing hysterically because I don’t like to cook. When I cook, they’re not very good, “I will work on that and could I have your help?” The kids stepped up.
I notice a little bit something that you mentioned a couple of times. It’s almost that improv rule or law, “Yes, I am this way, aren’t I?” Then you continue to add on more. Are you conscious about that or was it more of a subconscious thing that you guys do?
It’s very conscious.
It’s cultivated. Anything you want to add?
The beautiful thing about being in relationship with Maureen is I would have tended to take myself seriously and she doesn’t. Though I have permission not to take myself seriously and at the same time, part of my nature is to be silly. Sometimes I do stupid things because I enjoy doing them and she was like, “What are you doing?” I’m silly and I’m enjoying it and I don’t care if anybody else does. Normally I’m trying not to do that in public, but when we’re at home. When I am falling into the negative patterns, you’ll probably point them out. Increasingly I’m like, “Where are those in my body? What part of my body is participating in that?” I find with my negative patterns that it’s not my whole self that’s doing that. It’s part of me.
I want to add, even Charlie’s very hard on himself. Even when I’ll get up in the morning and I’ll see him, he’s in the state of being hard on himself. I’ll look at him and I will say, “What’s going on?” He’s like, “Nothing.” I was like, “Did you make a mistake?” He’s like, “Yes.” We play with it and then he starts laughing. I’m like, “You are so terrible. You made a mistake.” We laugh and it’s over.
You make a joke out of it.
We are so hard on ourselves. I’m not going to join him on being hard on himself.
Do you guys coach each other? There are some conventional thoughts about this. Being in a relationship with one another is about protecting other entity, therefore people are into certain rules. You don’t want to play the role of a coach in a relationship because lovers are not coaches towards each other. That’s one school of thought. Another school of thought is we’re partnering this life together. When you do some stupid things, it’s not meeting my standards. Let’s talk about it. What’s your collective thought about this concept?
Being in a relationship with one another is about protecting an entity.
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We actively call each other out and we have the agreement to do that. I don’t know if I would call it coaching as much as holding space and the agreement to listen. One of my favorite examples is we were seeing his mom and I haven’t seen her in a while because she traveled a lot. We got in a car together to drive somewhere. I talked the entire time to her. We went to this event and I talked to her the entire time back and then she left and he says to me, “I didn’t get to say a word to my mom.” I started laughing hysterically. I’m like, “No, you didn’t. It’s because I haven’t seen her and you’ve seen her.” He’s like, “That doesn’t work for me.” I’m like, “That doesn’t work for me either.” Thank you for pointing that out. I’m going to look at that. We do that with each other in a very receptive, playful way. In a way, there’s some coaching going on but I wouldn’t call it that.
I’d call it our partnership. It’s part of our intention and our agreement and how we operate.
I wouldn’t call that coaching as a coach myself because that’s how you felt at the time. You gave each other feedback about how you felt. There was no directive. What do you think about the idea of marriage being the third entity?
I think of it as intimacy takes you where you can’t go alone. We have to honor that entity and protect it in some ways because it deepens us as individuals. Do you know the vesica piscis?
I do not.
This is one complete. This is one complete and when they come together, it’s the space that they overlap. My personal sovereignty, his personal sovereignty but this is our marriage. In that space, something greater than us comes through. It’s not just the two of us. We do protect that and see that as sacred.
Anything that you do as a way to protect that third entity from your point of view, Charlie?
I don’t know if I would say protect it. I’d say we try to live in it. I suppose in living that and being authentic to that, then that is protecting it. Protecting it is different than terminology than cherishing it or holding true to it. It is being real for us and if there’s protection, we’re not going to let anybody else mess with that.
I think I see this protection from the outside like our business isn’t in there with us.
There are times where the two egos have frictions around a relationship. Washing dishes, the laundry and the mundane stuff, I don’t particularly like doing them. Hence why we hire cleaners to do all that stuff. At the moment, in service of the third entity, I’m willing to say, “Ego be quiet. In service of that entity, do it.” You do it. I’m curious to know if either one of you does that?
In my case, my ego says I want to do the laundry because I want to be helpful and she won’t let me do the laundry because I don’t do it the way that she wants it to be done. To be true and fair, I have wrecked a few pieces of clothing because I’m not a detail-oriented person so I might stick something in that doesn’t belong. It took me a long time to be able to be in surrender to the place of not doing laundry. This is a serious point. I’m like, “I have to stick the stuff in there. I put the blacks with the blacks and the whites with the whites.” She’s like, “You forget to take this out of the dryer and you wreck this,” so I actually had a very different experience of having to confront my need to be helpful with her desire to do the laundry, which admittedly she does it better than I do.
Consciousness Ventures: Intimacy takes you where you can’t go alone. We have to honor that entity and protect it. Coming back to the grappling of the ego in service of the third entity, because it’s not about the laundry, it’s not about the dishes. How do you coexist and co-create the third entity together in spite of the nuanced difference at that moment? Grappling with the ego. I’m curious to know the internal grappling at that moment.
This is a good example because this was very early in the relationship and he did the laundry and ruined some things. I’m like, “I like doing laundry. Let me do it. You don’t have to do it. I have the time to do it.” He does other things. He was upset. He’s like, “I want to do it so let’s make a list and tell me how to do it.” I’m like, “I don’t think that’s going to work.” We tried it once and it didn’t work. I’m like, “Please let me do it.” He was like, “All right.” Literally, I was coming home one evening from teaching and I pulled in the driveway and the steam was coming out of the dryer. I was like very consciously, “He’s doing the laundry.” I caught myself and I laughed hysterically. I walked in the house laughing hysterically and like, “You’re doing the laundry.” He’s like, “How do you know?” I owned it and it’s hysterical that I’m so controlling around the laundry. He’s like, “I want to be helpful and I can’t be.” That’s hard for me, so looking at those patterns and having humor about them.
There’s a deeper piece to that, which is I have to look at this pattern of why do I need to be helpful? That went way beyond the laundry. What are the giving and the receiving? I had to look at a pattern of I was a giver and I didn’t allow things to be received. The laundry was only an invitation to look at a pattern that was a much bigger pattern.
If my clothes get ruined, I have to buy new clothes and that’s a money issue. I had to look at what I can afford, “If that gets ruined, I can afford to buy another one.”
Washing dishes, laundry, these type of things or house cleaning, these are household issues. It’s an opportunity to examine our identity. Going back got you, how did you deprogram or at least inventory your identity, your core beliefs and continuing to pull the thread to what empowers you, what disempowers you?
As an investor, I have looked at probably 800 companies over many years, maybe more, maybe less. Lots of companies, just about anybody that’s in the mental wellness space, I’ve gotten to know most of them. My natural inclination was to be helpful to everyone. I needed to set boundaries particularly early on. It was one thing when the space was developing and there were a few companies. It was easy to be more helpful. As things went along, it was a question of how much am I being helpful in service to what my real work is and how much am I helpful because it’s a pattern. I had to look at that pattern about how much of myself am I giving away as opposed to what’s the balance of being in service to a bigger industry that is co-creating and not always giving everyone because they ask? For me, it got to an unhealthy place of I was spending too much time doing that. I needed to set boundaries and Maureen provided some wisdom along the way at times to say, “Why are you doing that?” I had to ask the question and I had to get to this piece of my programming and my family system going way back to when I was little, I needed to be helpful. That was part of my identity. It was about part of my survival mechanism in the family I grew up with so I needed to deconstruct that.
Let’s talk about the deprogramming a little bit. What specific things did you do to help you identify, “This was a pattern. Sometimes it concerns me, a lot of times it doesn’t.” In Maureen’s cases, meditation, yoga and breathwork. In your case, how were you able to actually see the pattern?
In our relationship, Maureen is the wisdom and I am the method. I’m the person that takes. If you think of it like out in the ether, there’s this wisdom that comes down and let’s say it gets channeled through you or that’s who you are. If I’m listening, then my gift is I know how to take things and scale them in the grounded world of how do we build businesses. How do we build infrastructure? How do we launch things? How do we create change in the physical world that we live in? That’s my gift. That’s what I’m good at doing.
Part of this was listening to her. She’s observing my behavior and watching me continue to be helpful in different areas, whether it’s the dishes or whether it’s in my business. She points it out. I have a choice whether to listen to it. I can either listen to it defensively and stubbornly, which I did for some period of time and say, “I have to look at this.” To be open to doing the work and to get down to, “Where does that come from? Where’s the program that created that?” and letting that pattern go and operating differently.
In Chinese, there’s a phrase in literal translation, friction and harmony. They usually use that word during a relationship. It’s a process to harmonize the two egos coming together and serve as the third entity. I’m projecting a little bit. I speculate that you didn’t join together and like, “We’re right away in harmony.” There was a process involved in your relationship. Would you agree with that? Was it a process? Was it a journey? Was it, “We’re perfect for each other?”
Our experience is unique because it was harmony right away. The connection and the deep love for each other were right away and it was before we became involved with each other. He was married so I wouldn’t have anything to do with that level of connection. When he left his wife and that opened up, it was divine from the get-go. Where we had the tension or the friction was the outside world.
Being in tune to your heart is very important to the energy around.
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What does that mean?
He didn’t leave the marriage for me. He left the marriage and then we became involved and she became involved with someone else right away who she’s married to. For whatever reason, she created this narrative of punishing and blaming Charlie. It was terrible friction within the community we lived and most specifically for our children. It was painful for us, but we knew this wasn’t about us. It was her stuff. There was a lot of friction, it just wasn’t between us. We had some challenges with the new family she created with her husband and his four kids and for Charlie’s two kids who are my kids but I love them as my own. There’s a lot of friction there and having to show up and be present to them. It probably helped anchor our harmony and playfulness because we want it to them to be in an environment that was safe and life-giving when they were with us.
You had a higher purpose of coming together in service of the people who are dependent on you.
I think it would have happened anyway, but because of the kids that’s probably exacerbated it. I think that was naturally how we were going to be together.
I would say the only one moment of friction I remember was probably six months into the relationship when we had made an agreement to go kayaking with the killer whales in Canada and you weren’t committing to doing it. I booked my flight and scheduled myself to go. He comes home from work and I said, “I’m leaving on this date to go do this.” He was like, “What? You’re leaving?” I’m like, “Yes because you’re not committing.” It invited him into his therapist and it invited him to see that he wasn’t committing to this agreement with between the two of us to go on this journey because he was caretaking his kids. He came home from his therapist and said, “I see this pattern and is it okay if I come?” I’m like, “Yeah, if you can get a flight,” which he did and we went together.
Do you have any tips for people who are reading this as a way to prioritize? Let me share this a little bit of my own mental model. People usually say, “Yes, I prioritize.” Yes, when it’s easy. My integrity versus eating ice cream. It’s obvious integrity comes first. Oftentimes the challenges come when my kids versus a vacation with my spouse. They’re very right next to each other. Which one’s higher, which one’s lower? Do you have any rubric in a way to prioritize or think about when doing these challenging times, what is your higher priority?
We have to include the dog. Kids aren’t the problem, it’s the dog. This is the first time we’d been apart from our dog, Cookie, for some time because she is a priority. She’s like a child to us. I don’t know that we get together and talk about this. I don’t think we’re fixed about it. It’s situational and we’d say what our priority is. If it’s a priority for her but not for me, then we talk about it and we try to gain alignment, but I don’t know if we have, “This is our first, this is our second.” Life is part of our relationship. Our kids, our dog, our work, our vacations are a part of it and we’re in dialogue.
We’re in the flow and we’re checking in a lot and negotiating. Charlie will be like, “I’m going to Switzerland to this meeting. I want you to come.” I’m like, “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’m not going to go.” He’s like, “That’s a bummer.”
Our life is about flow even down to where we’re living.
Say more about that. What’s flow for you and how do you cultivate it?
Let’s talk about that in the context of where we’re living. We had made a decision from a priority perspective. Our kids have gone, they were in college. They weren’t going to be coming back home. They were living in other places and we determined that we wanted to no longer spend winters in Minneapolis. We determined to get a vacation home so we began an exploration. We went and lived in different places for three or four winters and we checked out different coasts of Florida. We checked out San Francisco, we checked out Hawaii, we checked all of these areas. For a few years, we’re in this process, but nothing is quite working out. Together, we continue to explore and the flow moment came from wisdom.
Consciousness Ventures: Our life is about flow, even down to where we’re living. My intuition is I said, “Have you ever been to Palm Springs?” He said, “No.” I said, “I haven’t either. Let’s go there for a week.” We flew in and we got off the airplane at that airport and we were like, “It’s so incredible.” We’re spending a week at a hotel. We left at the end of the week with a house.
We knew the community, but then the other piece was we were looking at houses in different areas and our realtor drove us past this one set of mountains and she started to cry. I said, “This is it.” I knew that was where we were going to be and we found a place within two miles of that.
To answer your question about flow, for 35 years, I’ve done all the things and studied all modalities and I’m studying one now and I’m constantly learning. My work has been about raising the vibratory rate of the body so I can channel, go into a trance and bring in energies. As I’ve done this and continue to do it, it was great because there would be this friction and then I’d have the breakthrough. What it would be as like, “This is too much and my life is chaotic because of it.” I’d have this breakthrough and they would be in this other place. What happened is my vibratory rate kept arising and staying there. It was interesting because I was talking to Rael Cahn about this and he totally got it. He’s a scientist. He’s like, “There’s more synchronicity in your life.” I’m like, “I can manifest just about anything.” I feel like I live in the flow most of the time. I think when I come out of it is when I need to take a break from being in it. I often say this material world can be hard sometimes. When I’m trying to live in the material world and get things done, it can be difficult. I have to take a little break from it and then I can deal with the materialistic things.
I want to follow up on that one. I’ll give Charlie a chance to talk about your definition of flow and how you manage your own flow?
Part of it for me is setting the intentions and a lot of times is listening as things come into my life and how do I get out of the way for the intention to manifest itself. I find it less so over a period of time, but as things come up, I’m expecting them to be a certain way because I set the intention. Then I think God or whatever laughs and says, “You think you know how that’s going to manifest?” Normally, the joke’s on me because something comes out of the left field that I wasn’t expecting and there within lies the answer but I’m sitting there saying, “That’s not what I expected.” A lot of times it’s Maureen who says, “Pay attention to that.” If I’m listening, I will pay attention to that. The flow is already there. I’m just getting in the way of the flow. It’s setting the intention and then watching what happens and paying attention to it and being open to it. From an ego perspective, I think this was a big part of letting go of the ego. It was like when I struggled that I couldn’t imagine what the answer was going to be or what the direction was going to be.
Every time I did that, the more I raised my own vibratory rate, the quicker the universe would send something to say, “You’re full of crap,” and I’d start laughing because I know the answer and you would say, “You’re dictatorial.” I’d be declarative. I know what’s going to happen because I went to Harvard Business School and we were taught to be in command and in control. We knew the answers and that’s the family system I was raised and you’re expected to that. It got to a point where it would be sometimes seconds after I said something declarative and then it would be proven wrong. It’s like how do you get your own self out of the way to let something bigger or more divine or more flow to allow it to come through?
One may misinterpret that as not setting the intention at all. Let me follow the flow and observe. I love the EN sign where there’s a little bit of black and there’s a little bit of white in the black. My own mental model is set an intention but hold it loosely and observe what’s around. I’m curious to know your point of view. How do you actually hold those two spaces together? I also want to come back to you about raising your own vibration. That’s a very juicy topic that a lot of people want to know. If you share a little bit about your own mental model, the intention and the flow or surrendering that would be amazing.
The intention is our choice to a certain extent. It’s here’s who I am, here’s what my intentions are for my life or my work or for whatever. I get to set those and those can change over a period of time, but we get to make those choices. I make those and sometimes we set those together for our relationship or for our work for our own mission, but they’re not fixed in stone. Our choice for my perspective is to set the intentions and then see what happens.
After you set it, you set it aside and observe what happens. Is that what you mean?
Correct.
We talked a lot about the curious inquiry and we’ve been doing this with our kids because they’re at that age where they’re starting out in their careers and we’re like, “You know what you intend, so be in curious inquiry about what shows up.” It’s essential.
Get your own self out of the way to let something bigger or more divine come through.
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One of the conventional ways of thinking, Joseph Campbell, “Follow your bliss or follow your passion.” When they imagine there’s so much pressure like, “I don’t know my passion. I don’t know what bliss looks like. Am I in bliss right now?” Curiosity is this low pressure. Pull the thread of curiosity. You may find bigger and bigger energy and then you call it passion. Bigger and bigger energy and call it bliss. Coming back, it’s a great segue to high vibration living. You were living in a really high vibration. How do you cultivate that high vibration in the body, in mind, in the environment and in the heart?
Very intentionally and I’m committed. I work a lot with subtle energy and we create space. One of the things I need is that our homes be our best sanctuary energetically. That’s why I’m crying when I saw the mountains and I’m like, “This is it.” It’s the mountains. The home is there. To be able to support that, I have to live in such a way in which I’m honoring that higher vibration and that space and I hold space a lot. I do that very intentionally. It’s hard to put into words. It’s very heart-centered. It’s coming from that static love. Not love as we define it but joyful love, which is why Lucy thought I was weird for being happy all the time.
It’s this place of compassion, forgiveness, kindness, unconditional love. That’s where I live. People will come into our home and say, “I could feel this.” People will say to me, “You’re loving.” They do feel it, they don’t quite understand it. We have an agreement that I’m in the background. I used to teach and work like crazy out in the world and I walked away from it all. I stand behind Charlie as he is the method. A lot of what I do is invisible to a lot of people, not to Charlie and to some others. I have the privilege and I feel blessed to be in that place and I prefer it over being out in the world. I used to be on stage. I don’t want to do that anymore. It evolved to this. I know others who have been on their journey and I’m not at the end of mine nor have I reached a state. I continue to keep doing my work, but I know others who feel the same way. I don’t want to be as engaged in the material world. It was a good ride when I was there, but I want to be in this space. I’m grateful I can be.
Space is very important and being in tune to your heart is very important and to the energy around. For the people who are reading, “I’m in. I want this.” Tactically, what can they do to take some steps to raise their own vibration? Do you have any suggestions for them?
I think any grounding exercise and breath work and the somatic embodiment and all of that. Instead of going out, it’s about creating the container that can bring it all in. It’s both, it’s deep within but it is expansive without that paradox. I would even call it dynamic stillness. It’s getting to that space where it’s here, which is why, for example, I’m good in crisis because I’m not out, I’m in here but I do understand that journey. When I used to teach, we would do grounding and the students are like, “This is uncomfortable. I feel heavy and I don’t like this.” I’m like, “Yes, that’s because you’ve been out most of the time.” It’s going to take a little while to get more deeply in and you’re going to feel that density. It’s not attractive to a lot of people but if you stay with it, the vibration of the body starts to shift.
Have you ever watched the movie, Being John Malkovich?
Yes, because I like John Malkovich.
He’s extremely talented. The thing that came to me, part of the movie there in his head, you can actually see it. It’s almost like they’re riding a robot and looking through his eyes. I would say a lot of my own journey is actually very much like that. I’m not all the way out here. I’m actually a little bit more distant. As I came more in the body, the lens comes closer. I actually had a psychedelic experience where I’m too much out here and I was at total unknown territory. I had no idea. It’s super overwhelming. It was super raw and super sensitive. I’m very curious about the steps one needs to take. I would love to be more in body but I don’t know how actually to take that step. Do you have any suggestions for people like me or me?
I think part of it is that we are so entrained to be out of our body. I call it living above the neck and quieting the mind and getting into your heart space is probably the right to start with most people. This was when I was doing executive coaching. These very successful men wanted to get from their heads to their hearts. Helping them to get there meant you have to examine some of your programmings and be courageous enough to change it and come from the heart. The heart is much more about connection and allowing, emerging and unfolding versus I know the way and this is what we have to do. Practicing that is important.
This was such a good example. We both got in the cab and we wanted to go to the ceremony and we got in and I knew right away we weren’t going to make it. I sat there calmly and said, “Breathe.” The driver was upset and Charlie was upset and they’re both men. I’m thinking, “If they could shift into the three of us our together. Be together and it will all be fine and we’ll get here and it will all be fine and it was.” That was a good example. The attachment to how we want things to be, which is coming from the head interferes with us being in our body.
Because it should be a certain way and it’s not this way. There must be a problem or something’s wrong and you have your anxiety, your anger, your fears and the survival instincts that pops up.
Consciousness Ventures: You have to examine some of your programming and be courageous enough to change it. Versus I’m just right here now and this is what it is.
Charlie, going back to you, do you have any specific tactical or any daily disciplines as a way to help you tap into higher vibration every day?
On this topic, I think you’re the one to defer to. I listened to your wisdom and I do have my own practices, but I don’t think this is my area, even though my last name is Hartwell. It’s a good last name. I tried to live in my heart. You embody that and I think you’re more the expert in that.
I don’t know that you’ve lived high vibrationally in which I’m grateful for because he’s my rock.
Can you say more about that? I’m curious. Let’s talk about that.
Here I am in the material world and I’m helping to bring organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, product services that are going to help all of us raise our vibrational rate if we choose to embrace them. I try to help in the grounded, practical, physical world. How do we get those in the healthcare systems? How do we get those into corporations? How do we get the FDA to pay attention and to reimburse things? How do I help an entrepreneur if they have a problem with their team? How do we price things? Those are not all things that if I was at a higher vibrational rate all the time, those would be practically irrelevant or not things that one would focus on. It’s my passion for the work that I do to be able to be in that place so that we can create more chances for humanity to live differently and so that our species can actually survive. There are times when you have said, “I’m so glad that you are my grounding force or the rock that helps to bring you back down sometimes from that.”
It’s not back down, it’s more of you’re an ingenious innovator. You just know how to laser the method. You know how to laser channel that into this material world and get it done and I have no interest in that.
I had an interesting conversation with my Lyft driver that’s may be interesting to this. He essentially says success is being able to achieve your vision and fulfillment is visioning what you achieve. I hear two sides of the same coin. You are about success, achieving all your visions. Set it, achieve it in this material world and you’re more focusing on wanting what you achieve.
We have a foundation called the Eagle and the Hawk. I’m the eagle, he’s the hawk because I soar above and have the vision. He actually listens and it goes down that path.
Talk a little bit about that journey from being very cerebral, HBS to heart-operated and then striking a harmonious balance. The harmony between the two in your own journey. That would be helpful because people like me who is on that journey will love to know your own journey.
I think the way that I framed this a little bit is being in touch with both the masculine and feminine side of myself. While that’s not necessarily the same as being in the head and the heart. Even when I’m in my head, I’m a kind and generous person. I always have been. It is my nature. That is a heart-centered activity, not a brain-centered activity. At the same time, I was trained at Ivy League universities. I worked on Wall Street. I’ve had all these other things that kept me in my head and my family system was very much about being in the head and how do you make sense of this world.
Success is being able to achieve your vision. Fulfillment is visioning what you achieve.
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There are times where in the business world I have to be in my head and make sense of things. At the same time, how to be in your heart and be kind and generous and use my gifts to increase the chance of success of something. Doing it from a place of generosity versus a place of greed. Doing it from a place of kindness versus I have to use you to get what I want to be done. Using it from a place of collaboration versus dominance and suppression, which is what they taught at Harvard Business School. When I went there, it was a dominant suppression model. I struggled to be there because that’s not the way I operate.
In the world that I live in, my play is how do we, I being part of it, co-create a new global industry around mental wellness. That’s not about me dominating. That’s me about unleashing and collaborating and being able to see different people’s gifts and to say to a certain extent it’s like, “You should connect with this person, this idea should connect with this capital, this idea should connect with this insurance system. This gift I have is to see on some other plane how to connect energies of people, ideas, products, services to distribution systems that help scale things.” A part of that is the knowledge that I have in my head and my learning and part of it are if I’m in my heart, it’s like, “This makes sense to connect this to this and who do we collaborate with to make this happen?” That’s my modus operandi on how I operate.
I want to add. He’s so empowering. It’s all about empowering the other. The way he works with his entrepreneurs or even the boards, they all love him because he’s kind and empowering. It’s never about Charlie.
For entrepreneurs, that’s reading this and there are a lot of them who want to operate from that bigger model. There’s also a lot of noise from the media, from our prior training, wherever they get it that you got to outcompete and you’ve got to force your way through this. You need to step on other people as a way to get to the top. It’s difficult because they’re birthing a new idea, a new product and new service into the world without actual evidence yet. There is that cognitive dissonance and to be a visionary, you got to hold that and continue to generate momentum towards that. At times, it’s a lonely journey. How do you have faith going towards your purpose, your mission, birthing the idea into the world? At the same time, everyone else is telling you got to out-compete. You got to be profit-driven. Any suggestions for them to continue to walk their own hero’s journey as entrepreneurs, as high impact leaders who are birthing this new model in the world without evidence yet?
In 1998, I met this woman who was the first woman that had ever crossed the ice to go to the North Pole. Her name’s Ann Bancroft. She’s the only woman in the world that ski both the North and South Pole. She’d come back and been financially unsuccessful, but it created such inspiration for girls and women. She sat down and talked about this expedition that she wanted to do to cross Antarctica. I had this professional emotional moment where she told me her vision and it was channeled. How do we do this? How do you cross this? How do you not go into debt? How do you create a global impact? She describes how after meeting me, her fax machine was like I had a business plan. I was writing it out and she decided to partner with me. We cofounded a company together, which turned out to be the first for-profit expedition in US history. What she wanted to do only made sense to me if we looked at making it bigger than it wasn’t doing it as a for-profit model.
It was her mission, but it became our mission. How do we inspire girls and women around the world through this incredible expedition? In order to do that, you’re facing elements of the actual expedition. It was about 90-days. It’s pulling 25-pound sleds across Antarctica. 1,700 miles are going from sea level to 10,000 feet. There are no other humans that they run into the entire time except at the South Pole. It’s minus 20 all the time. How do we do that and then how do we create a global movement about the empowerment of women and girls through that at a time when women’s sports were not what they are. The WNBA was starting and there was no sponsorship for girls or women. In order to do that, we could have a vision, but we needed a team. I needed to find people who were better than me at all of the areas that would create this global movement. We need to do it in a couple of years. I can’t ski across Antarctica, nor did I care too.
I only use my leadership gifts to go find the best people in certain areas of technology, marketing, sponsorship, to help take this expedition and create and find sponsors like Volvo, Motorola, Apple, the Girl Scouts, CNN and raise more money competing against the Olympics. We’ve found these sponsors and we created a global event that generated three billion media impressions. Three million kids from 65 countries were following along through an educational curriculum that we developed. When I look at that, I can’t do any of that but you find people who can help you. For entrepreneurs, what I’d say if you are the vision holder. You are the leader. Who do you go out and invest with that’s actually going to support you? As an investor, when I find somebody that says, “I want to find people that are better.” I may be an A-minus entrepreneur. I want to find A-plus people that are on my leadership team. That’s when I actually get more interested in investing in them. If it’s about the entrepreneur, you’re not going to go that far. You need to trust people that are better than you at the areas that are going to make your vision successful.
It’s definitely beautiful and there’s a phrase that goes if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. You illustrated that with your powerful narrative. Let’s use that example. When she came to you, did she have that vision crystallized or you helped her broaden that vision to inspire girls in sports and all these things? Did she have that powerful narrative?
She had a vision. My vision was how do we accomplish it and how do we make it bigger than you think it can be.
She had a glimpse of a vision. You helped her develop it.
She had a mission. She wanted to be the first all-women’s expedition across Antarctica. She knew she wanted to do that. She was a schoolteacher. She knew she wanted to empower girls. That’s what she had done for a living. This was actually her classroom. What she trusted me to do is actually say, “Let’s make that much bigger. Let’s use that event to make it much more scalable than you thought it was before we met.”
Consciousness Ventures: You need to trust people that are better than you at the areas that are going to make your vision successful. You helped to operationalize that vision with a business plan, with the team recruitment and all these other things.
I was talking to my daughter who is working for La Liga and to helping to bring Spanish soccer to North America. She’s developing sponsorships. I remembered back when we went out with this idea to sponsors. We’re sitting there talking to the CEO of Volvo and vice president of marketing at Apple. We were trying to create tangible things, but we were selling a vision. We not only had the passion that people believed in. For entrepreneurs, your vision is what people will believe in. The team that you hire will help you to make that. Investors, if you’re looking for them, they will come because of that. In doing that, I’ll never forget sitting down with the CEO of Volvo after the expedition, they paid us a good sum of money. They were our lead sponsor and I sat down and I dumped all the media on his desk. It was two feet high. The major articles. They’d been on David Letterman. He said it’s the highest return on investment of any sponsorship in Volvo’s history. That comes from a vision and then creating something that’s not there yet and all of a sudden it happens. It became bigger than we ever thought it could be.
How do we find more Charlie Hartwell and Maureen Hartwell? That would be a natural question. Get it, enroll. Do you want to go far? Find a confident team to help you develop your vision into an operationalizable way to make a change in the world.
You know your question of, “How do we find more of those?” I think it’s finding it within everyone. Everyone has this gift and it’s not our gifts. My gifts are not Maureen’s gifts and your gifts are not my gifts. How do you find your gifts? Whatever it is that you intend to do, that’s all inside you. I’d say everyone has this, not just different.
I’ll speak in terms of manifesting. I do think setting an intention and to get out of the way so it can manifest, it does also mean you’re going to be shown what needs to be changed within you for that to happen. Before we became a couple, I’ve been divorced for several years and I wanted a partner. I had set a very clear intention about wanting a partner who I could play with. He wasn’t descriptive. It wasn’t him. It was about me. How I wanted to feel in a relationship, free and playful and met. Charlie at the same time was married before we met. If I can share this, we had wanted more intimacy in my life thinking they would manifest with his wife. It did not, which is why he left his marriage.
I believe there are seven billion people on the planet. There has to be one partner out there for me. I didn’t know what he would look like. How we would show up, when it would be but I believed it and it happened and not exactly how I would have wanted it to happen. That commitment to the intention and the belief that it would happen. When it did, the first few months, I would say to Charlie weekly when we were dating, “I can’t do this, I’m too vulnerable.” I was like, “What’s up for me to get out of the way here is how strong I had been and not willing to be vulnerable.” I had to go down that path.
Meaning to your discomfort?
Yes and start going interdependence because I’ve been so independent and I had to do some work around that. If I hadn’t, I would have gotten in the way of the relationship.
You let your ego get out of the way in service of this new third entity that you’re doing together.
Every time I’d say, “I can’t do this, I’m too vulnerable,” he would laugh and go, “I love you,” which was helpful. I can’t say enough for the entrepreneurs. If they have a vision and an intention and they want to manifest it, they do you have to believe it can happen, but they also have to be observant of what is subconscious or unconscious in them that are getting in the way if it’s happening.
I love the ethos of this organization called EO, Entrepreneurs Organization. My understanding of their ethos is it’s never about the business. You want to change in business, change an entrepreneur. Change your internal lens on how you look at this reality. It starts from within. Going back to Confucius. It’s like self-mastery, family, countries and the world. We covered a lot. Thank you so much. I appreciate both of you being so generous with your wisdom, with your story, with your narrative. For someone that’s reading, what’s one actionable thing that they can take from all the different angles that we’ve covered? From self-mastery through relationship to building businesses. What’s one actionable tip that you would give them and say, “Do this, start here?”
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
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Do your own work. Set the intention, pay attention and then go after what shows up.
I would say always return to your breath in your body. Experiencing breath in your body.
Is there any specific technology that you come across or you bullish about? You’d look at 800 different things. Is there anything that will enable us to set your intention, get in the body and get out the way?
We’ve invested in several companies that can help with that. There are others here that also can help that. I think a great tool that we invested in is called Insight Timer. Insight Timer is a meditation app or a consciousness app that’s got 3,000 teachers from around the world teaching in their own native language. Maybe they’re musicians or they’re meditation teachers or maybe they’re scientists. With 350,000 people every day using it or maybe 1.8 million to 1.9 million people using it on a monthly basis. What I find is that tool can help people down this path because you find what works for you on the platform versus here’s our prescribed path for you. There’s a wealth of different teachers that you can find to meet you at the moment that you’re at. I think that’s a technology that we have found that I’m pretty excited about.
Since we are in the intersection between meditation and psychedelics and technology, we definitely need something like the Insight Timer for a psychedelic journey. What happens afterward? How do you actually integrate the peak experience into our daily lives? One thing that one may look at is to have an Insight Timer to help you integrate everything that you learn because everyone is different. People may resonate with me the way that integrates it, but they resonate with you the way you integrate things.
I have two technologies. If you’re wanting to connect more deeply to your body so that you can start checking in with it more, I think Muse. Ariel from InteraXon was talking about what she didn’t mention is that besides the brain waves, there’s heart rate variability, movement and breathe. If you’re starting to check-in and go in and be present to yourself and your body, you’re going to get data on all of those things. I don’t know why she didn’t mention those other things. It helps you to go, “I thought I was in that state and here’s what my body was doing.” I think that’s helpful for that embodiment piece. In terms of technology, if you want to transcend some of this subconscious belief and core drivers and negative patterns.
There’s this amazing technology that is about ten-years-old and there are only about 70 of us in the world who are certified in it called Quantum Neuro Reset Therapy. We use neurological testing with light and we use muscle testing. We use lasers and basically the body tells us what the subconscious imbalance in the brain, the belief in the body, and we do a reset to the emotional pathways in the nervous system that clears it. I’ve never seen anything like it in many years. I have been doing it and it’s mind-blowing. It’s 20 to 40 minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve never seen a change in people the way I have seen with this.
Have you experienced other modalities like transformational methodologies?
More than dozens.
We were joking, “After someone has used psychedelics coming through that and reintegrating their body is going to be in this place of processing, wouldn’t it be great to do Quantum Neuro Reset Therapy then?” Because what’s probably going to show up is what showed up in their experience, whatever that was that needs to be cleared. The thing I like about this is it’s clearing it on a biological, chemical and physical level. It’s quick and efficient.
Some of the stories that you have an instant shift and how it manifests itself are remarkable.
Thank you, both.
Thank you.
Important Links: * Consciousness Hacking * Bridge Builders Collaborative * Mind and Life Institute * Entrepreneurs Organization * Insight Timer * Muse * InteraXon
About Charlie Hartwell
Charlie is a change agent who shepherds ideas, resources and talent to drive sustainable growth. Passionate about transformation and innovation; he is a leader who ignites teams to accomplish remarkable results. He is a Harvard Business School graduate who has led, founded, run and worked in organizations in 16 different industries. He’s served in various organizations including corporate, small business, start-up, non-profit – and in leadership roles such as President, Chairman, board member, founder, consultant, coach, and trustee.
About Maureen Hartwell Maureen has a Masters of Science in Social Work degree. Her 30 years of professional experience includes integrative psychotherapy, coaching, consulting to over 150 organizations, training health care professionals, facilitating workshops, and leading spiritual retreats. She was the host of the Learning Well Talk Radio Show and taught courses at the Integrative Health Education Center at Normandale Community College. Maureen has created curricula and taught at the University of Minnesota through the Center for Spirituality and Healing. Maureen continues to expand her consciousness by integrating a variety of modalities, which include: Quantum Neurological Reset Therapy (QNRT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Touch for Health, Energy Medicine, Navigating the Soul’s Journey, Igniting the Creative Spirit, Professional Training with the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, HeartMath, Nonviolent Communication, Homeopathy, Yoga, and Meditation. She has been mentored in intuitive reading, energy healing, breath work and past-life regression facilitation.
The post 029: What Opportunities Are in the Intersection Between Psychedelics, Technology, And Meditation? – Charlie Hartwell and Maureen Pelton appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Food is so much more than just about our appetite and desire to eat. When you look closely, you’ll find a spiritual connection to what we put inside our body. Richard Pauwels of Rich Nuts, LLC has found that realization and passion about food and what our connection to nature is through our food source. Having been born inside a prison, Richard sets out in life to move beyond labels and cages, inspiring him to create conscious shifts and transformations when it comes to perceiving things. For him, it is in that connection to nature through what we eat that he helps people cultivate that connection back and reimagine what it means to be rich. A fireman himself, Richard is also no stranger with the warrior spirit and he tells us how he used that to build a fire within him that turned his curiosity about food to interest and then to passion, which ultimately advocates for a better world.
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Listen to the podcast here: How To Remain Calm Under Fire with Richard Pauwels I’m excited to have my friend, Rich, with me here on the show. We met at Burning Man. We came together at Camp Mystic and we also sat in the ceremony together. Right away, I felt an internal draw towards his presence because something that I truly admire in people is his ability to be fully present and to be playful under any circumstances including difficult ones like Burning Man. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me. It’s an honor to be here.
You have a compelling story of how you came to this world. Can you share with us a little bit?
Most people don’t know this about me. It’s uncommon knowledge. I was born in jail and since that point, I’ve been on a path to liberation. Maybe being born in a cage has inspired me to move beyond that cage to grow into a different existence.
Have you always been this playful and this present or were there some turning points where you had a woe is me moments to where you are right now full of joy and playfulness?
There have been several different turning points in life for me. Being born in jail was my first entry into the world. I was a child born into the world as this playful new being in the discovery of a new planet, a new place and a new body. Everything is new and exciting and inspiring. I’m in this period of discovery. I don’t know if it’s fortunate and unfortunate for me, but it was my path. I don’t want to put any judgment on it about whether it was or was not. I learned to read and do math at a very young age. Sometimes those things structure our brain in a way because we start to know things and label things. “This is number four. This is number five. This is six. This is math.” Once we start to put all those labels in and start to cage our being into knowing these different things, we start to restrict ourselves and we start to build our own prison of our own making, but also of different people’s making. Our society, our friends, our family and mostly our family in school at a young age put, “This is how you’re supposed to be. This is what a good person is. You want to be a good person, don’t you?” It starts to be all this pressure.
Once we start to form those patterns and relationships with the world and with ourselves, we start to restrict who we are because we’re no longer in the discovery of who we are. We have to be a certain way. We have to act a certain way. We have to do certain things. That’s when we started to grow up, which means we have all these preconceived notions that are fully loaded with different concepts that mean X, Y and Z. We’re no longer in discovery, we’re no longer playful and we’re no longer in the moment or thinking about what we have to do or be. It’s fascinating to think of things in that way.
Was there a turning moment for your life to realize that, “I’ve been deeply programmed to think about the outcome-driven life like, “When I have this, then I’ll be happy?” You say, “I win. Life is happening right now. Let me deprogram myself.”
There have been several points in my life where that has come about. As a child, I learned to read and write early. When I started kindergarten, I could already write and read and do the math. They moved me immediately to the first grade after the first couple of weeks. I skipped into the first grade and I got in a fight once a week because the first graders used to make fun of me. They tease me because I was smaller. They used to sing this song like, “Kindergarten baby born in the navy,” and some stuff like that. My response was always to punch the bully in the face. I got in a fight all the time once a week. At the end of first grade, they decided to hold me back in first grade again because I had “social problems.”
That was one of the first lessons in life that taught me that if you stand out, if you’re exceptional, if you excel, people are going to be afraid or they’re going to make fun of you. They’re going to pick on you and they’re going to try to bring you down to their level. My response at that time was to react violently because I didn’t know any better or maybe because that was the example I had at home. What I learned there was that it would be better for me and easier for me to dim my light and to get along being more normal or being more acceptable in society. I dimmed my light a bit. As far as schooling went, I did what I needed to do to pass and I stopped trying to excel because of my experience. That pattern ran subconsciously because I was five years old. That’s before I even start to think of things consciously. That pattern ran in my life until I was about sixteen. It was my year between sophomore and junior year of high school.
I had always been an athlete. I played football and I wrestled and I did track and all that stuff. I was good at it. I threw my energy and my effort into that because that was more of competition so you wanted to excel, you wanted to exceed and you wanted to be great. I did well there and it was always working for me. I only kept the grades I needed to be on the sports team. I kept a C or C plus or 2.2-grade point average in my first year of high school but then something clicked in me and I decided, “I think I want to go to college.” I told my parents that in the summer between sophomore and junior year and they were like, “Yeah and you’ve got 2.2.” I’m like, “We’ll see.” I clicked into high gear.
During school, even though I was smart and I would just pass all the tests very well, I wouldn’t do any homework because I was always interested in sports or playing or something. That’s why my grades would be a C because my homework would be an F and my test would be an A. At that point, I decided I want to go to college. I kicked it into high gear and during my first semester, I got a 3.9 or something. My parents are like, “What?” I had been sandbagging my whole life. That was the first time I realized that I could shift these patterns that have been running me as a child or that had formed me as a child and I can do something different with them.
That if you put in the effort, the results could be different?
Yeah and it wasn’t so much about the effort. I guess it was an effort because I did have to do my homework. That was the main shift and once I started engaging there, then my grades did well. The problem is it was a little bit late to pour on the gas. I ended up going to junior college and then transfer into UCLA after that. It’s interesting because you can look at those subtle but profound changes like dimming your light or hiding and that leads to a mediocre existence. My teachers always saw that too because I would always get that little check on the report card does not live up to full potential. It’s not meeting my full potential. They’ll have lots of examples of that.
There are some small ones. For instance, when I was about five years old, I tried avocado for the first time. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the taste, I didn’t like the smell, the texture and the whole thing. I made up my mind at five that I don’t like avocados. It was not until I was 35 that I realize, “Avocados are healthy for you. Everyone loves it. They say they taste good. Why don’t I just keep trying?” It took me a whole year. I started with guacamole and eventually, I worked my way up to eating avocados and now I love them. For 30 years, I made up this decision. I made up this subconscious programming, “This tastes gross. It smells bad.” It literally took me all that time to get past it.
That’s interesting programming you put yourself on. You put yourself on avocado adaptation program. Even though you didn’t like it, most people would stop at 35 or whatever, but you kept going. What was the commitment underneath that allowed you to overcome the natural repulse of the taste?
I don’t believe anything is impossible.
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I came to this point in my life where I was like, “I’m not going to let a five-year-old make decisions for me. I’m 35 years old.” It’s not as if I’m going to start smoking or something that was unhealthy for me or start doing cocaine or something. It was like, “This is a healthy thing for me. Everyone else says it tastes great. Why can’t I integrate it?” It’s because I made this decision when I was five years old.
You made a decision, “I want to integrate avocado into my daily nutritional ritual consciously. Even though I don’t like it, I’m going to spend a year to get to the point where I can like it and love it.”
When I saw that I could do that with that one small thing, I’m like, “I can change all the programming. It’s a matter of effort.” You have to try it. Sometimes it takes time and sometimes it’s instant. As soon as you see it, you can change it. Other times, it’s more of a process. The guacamole and avocado are more of a process.
Let’s jump around a bit. What are some of the other shifts that you have consciously made? Are there other examples of transformation or taste?
I call them subtle yet profound changes that you can make in your life that won’t cost you anything, but it can be liberating to you. If you think of your work or your job as something you have to do like, “I have to go to work,” as opposed to you get to go to work, there’s a little subtle change in the energy around that. One of them has an obligation and the other one is something that you get to do. Meaning you’re chasing your passion. What I would suggest to people is if you’re not necessarily chasing your passion, if your work feels like a chore, maybe you ought to try and reexamine that and see if there’s something else that you can do that will feel like you’re in your passion and it’s something that you get to do. When you’re doing that, you’re going to excel at that because you’re not even working. You’re out having fun. You’re doing your passion.
I spent many years as a firefighter and paramedic. I was great at it and it was easy for me. I felt good about doing it. At some point, my body started to break down because I was putting myself in harm for other people. I had some injuries that started wearing down on me, my knee and my back. I’m going to work and felt like a chore. I started to dread it. I started having this feeling of dread because I didn’t feel that I could show up for it physically anymore. I always had this since I was an athlete. I had a strong physical presence. I could walk in the room and people can see my presence and then I could also feel confident about that. I retired with a couple of injuries on my knee and back. I had been struggling in the past few years physically. It’s brought some emotional turmoil also. If your ego or your vision of yourself is tied up in one aspect of yourself, your physical prowess and you’ve done so well with that throughout life, at 45 years old or 44 years old, that’s going away from you. You have to rethink and reimagine who you are.
As that started to come through, it was challenging for me and I started to have to ask people for help, which I was never comfortable with. I was always like, “I can do it myself. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” That was something that my dad always pushed into me. That leads to a one-man show, which leads to breakdown, stress, frustration, anger and all these different emotions. As my body started to break down and I realize I couldn’t do it myself, it was fascinating because, at the same time, my business started to emerge. Rich Nuts is a sprouted organic nut company. Some people make jokes about getting my nuts in their mouth, but I just laugh at that. What we decided to do as a company instead of making a bunch of nut jokes is leave it open for other people to do, which has been beautiful. Sometimes if you make jokes like that, you can feel creepy or whatever and now I don’t have the energy because people make the jokes and then they have the same experience. They laugh about it and it’s fun. I allow them to make the jokes for me. That’s one way they can participate in our business model. We don’t have to do it. The whole concept of reimagining richness is exactly what I’m talking about. It was about these subtle and profound changes you have to get to.
As my body started to break down, work became an obligation. I have to do this because I need to make money to survive. Even though it’s not good for me physically, emotionally, I’m broken down and I can’t do it, I had to push myself for a long time. When the doctor is like, “I’m going to retire you on injuries,” I felt relieved in a way. I cried in the doctor’s office. It was a very emotional moment for me because, to be honest, being a firefighter is one of the last respectable jobs. Kids look up to you and everyone honors you for what you do and your integrity and all the stuff. It’s a bit of an ego-boosting. You’re a superhero. In a time of need, who do people call? They call the fire department. You come and you make things better. As that started to fade away, I developed this sprouting nut process, which I use in my product. I developed that for working as a firefighter because we can be out there six or eight hours fighting a fire, carrying hose up and down a hill, you have your brush pack on and you get tired.
Connection To Nature: When you’re chasing your passion, you’re going to excel because you’re not even working; you’re out having fun. I was eating a lot of trail mix at the time and what I realized was that it was giving me digestive issues. With some research online, I found that sprouting activates the nuts. Nuts and seeds have evolved over time to survive our digestive track. What we do when we sprout them is we mimic the natural process of germination. They go into a growth phase, they drop their defenses, they become more digestible and they are far more nutritious. I started doing that for myself and I found that some of my digestive issues are going away. The only problem was after you soak them, they were moist and they get moldy very fast and the texture sucks. You have to put it in the refrigerator so now they’re cold and mushy. I’m like, “Who wants to eat this?” I started to dehydrate them and season them and that’s how we came up with our final product. What I realized was I was becoming more and more passionate about food and about what we’re eating and about our connection to nature through our food source.
When I say reimagine richness, what I mean is the nature is all around us and it’s ready to receive us. It’s ready to teach us and we’re not paying attention to it, in general. We’re running around and doing our own thing trying to make money, trying to pay the bills and trying to compete with each other. When I talk about reimagining richness, if we can reimagine what it means to be rich in relationships, in friendships, rich in connection with nature, rich in being present and having everything you need through a network as opposed to, “I’ve got to buy this. I’ve to got to out-compete my neighbors. I’ve got to do.” You can just be comfortable with what you have and who you’re with and who you know. Spend your energy cultivating those relationships and growing and building from there.
One of the things that helped set up this paradigm of competition has been the way we play games, for instance Monopoly. This is one of the biggest games in the whole world. The goal of Monopoly is to raise the rent on your friends, your neighbors, the kids on your street, bankrupt them and that’s how you win. That fundamental paradigm setting concept of competition is built in from a very young age. We’d go out and we live our lives and we pushed that competition into the game of life and we have the world we see now.
If you look at the game of economics, what did the companies pay attention to? Revenue and profitability. What do the countries look at? GDP. Ultimately, it comes down to whoever has the biggest bank account and that is the metrics that we’ve been programmed in our whole life.
I’m into gaming and being creative. For instance, I created this game called Get Rich Nuts. It’s like an interactive Where’s Waldo. I played it at Lightning in a Bottle. I noticed there was this phenomenon of totems. Each group will make a stick and it has some light on top or something on the top that’s unique to that group. If you go to the bathroom and you want to come back and find your friends, you look for their totem. It could be a jellyfish or a rabbit or a carrot or whatever. I noticed that phenomenon and I was like, “What if there’s something we can create that will interact with that.” What I did was I created a totem that was a dream catcher and at the end of it says, “Get Rich Nuts.” I talked about it at my talk I gave at The Learning Kitchen on how to sprout and making nut milk. I also put it on my Instagram channel. When I do sampling at the event, I tell people about it.
If people run into me with it and I’m talking to them, I tell them, “Do you want to play a game?” they find me with the totem. It’s a win-win game. It’s a paradigm-shifting game. If they find me with the totem, they win a free bag of nuts. That’s what they win and what I win is I get to catch their wish for peace and hang it in my dream catcher. The way I do that is I have these laser-cut wooden feathers. They write on there their wish for peace and then we tie it up in the dream catcher. At the end of Burning Man, I put them all in the temple and they get ceremoniously burned and released into the ethers. The brand wins the content for all that. That’s a win for the brand, the win for the contest is the bag of nuts and the win for me is they sit down with these kids and get them the rightful pitch. I wish for peace and they usually have this authentic moment. It’s inspiring to me to see them connect with someone in their family and what they know about love or peace and share that. It’s beautiful. It’s very special.
Let’s talk a little bit about courage. You had quite a life. You were a high school athlete and you chose to be a firefighter. While most people will run the other way, you’ve run into the fire. One may say that’s extraordinary. What was the internal journey that you had to go through to fight the survival instinct? How did you cultivate it? How did you develop it? I call my readers the Noble Warrior. How do you cultivate that warrior spirit? Can you cultivate it? Is it birth and gift and natural? Is it either you have it or you don’t or you can cultivate it?”
My parents were heroin addicts and that’s how I ended up being born in jail. They separated after they got out. My mother couldn’t quit the habit so my father ended up taking care of me. I spent a lot of time with my grandmothers and my aunts and stuff, but my father was the main parent in my life. He was always like, “This is what we’re doing.” There’s no like, “I’m not doing this.” There’s no whining and no complaining. When I was five or six years old, we would go fishing in the Sierra’s and it was very simple. We’d wake up at 4:30 and get dressed. It’s freezing cold in our little tent. We’d blow it up with as much stuff as we can carry fishing gear and we’d walk two miles before the sun got up. It wasn’t like, “I’ll carry everything for you.” It’s like, “You’re carrying your fishing pole and you’re carrying your stuff.” I wasn’t loaded down like a mule or anything, but it was enough for me that it was a challenge.
Once we start to put all those labels, we start to restrict ourselves and build our own prison.
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It reminds me of Conan the Barbarian. When he first started, he was pushing that wheel and then he got super strong because he was working out with it. It was the way of being and there was no question that you’re doing this. It came up and it didn’t have that mothering balance. My stepmom didn’t come into the picture until I was around seven or something. That’s why it led to me being an athlete. I joined the Navy Reserve and then I was a fireman. It’s all very masculine stuff. That’s the way I’ve shown up in the world. I didn’t know anything different. There was no softening or babying or any of that stuff for me. I never remember being babied. I existed that way and no asking for help or any of that. Those were all being babied or something.
As I went into the fire service, there’s a lot of training involved when you go into the practice on these different fire scenarios and stuff. To me, it was exciting. It was more of doing sports. You have the right protective gear, you have the right training and you knew what to do. It never felt very scary to me even in the very beginning. This is where it got fascinating for me. As I was transitioning out of the fire department and into being an entrepreneur, that was scary to me because I had no experience in that. I felt like I was completely without a team. I was jumping into this realm of creating a business and trying to make a living from selling this product. I had no experience. I was more afraid of that than going into a fire, to be honest. Most people were like, “You do X, Y and Z.” I’m like, “It’s a totally different experience.” My masculine prowess was diminishing and I had to learn to come into balance with my feminine side, which is more about collaboration, building a team and not be in competition but like, “How can I find partners that will want to build this with me or want to build something special, something different and something unique?”
My whole take on business is to bring in more than just the bottom line. It’s the people, planet and profit to bring in balance and to bring in mindfulness with our business. What is the impact of our product on the world? How does it affect the people that make it? How does it affect the people that grow it? To bring all of those things in, it makes it a lot more difficult than just the bottom line because you’re accounting for all those externalities that most businesses don’t like pollution, carbon footprint, and all of those things. We’re working to reimagine a world where businesses think that way. We’re inspired by some businesses that are showing up that way and we’d like to continue that effort and grow that effort.
I’m going a little bit more on the journey from down packing that internal shift. From my point of view, I was raised by Pagan parents. They’re super masculine. If you don’t have an A, you’re nothing. This is not what they said, but that’s my interpretation of what they say. In hindsight looking back, I understand why I developed this very cynical and bitter view on life. If I don’t have the results, I’m not worth the love. That’s my internal viewpoint of life, in general. That turned me bitterer, that turned me more brittle as well because then I have to achieve this outcome, otherwise, I’m worth nothing. I’m very fragile in that way. I’m curious to know your point of view with your experience, how did you go from the very masculine environment and now more harmonized with the feminine, the collaboration and asking for help? That I’m sure is a journey in itself. It wasn’t natural, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t what you were trained to do. How were you able to do that and how were you able to do that successfully?
That’s been a process for sure.
Entrepreneurship to me is one of the ultimate transformational processes if you want it to be a transformational process.
It’s a path of personal discovery. It’s all perfect. It happened at the right time as my body was breaking down. The way it happened was I had no choice. Sometimes I couldn’t get out of bed and my back hurts so bad. Turning over and going to the bathroom was a challenge so I had to start learning to ask for help. With the business, what I realized is there’s so much stuff going on and it was some of the stuff I’m not good at and I don’t need to do so I had to ask people that were better at that to take that part on. Being physically incapable of doing some of that made it where it was completely necessary for me to ask people to help me. I cried a bunch. I did a lot of ayahuasca ceremonies.
Here’s a good realization that came out of an ayahuasca ceremony. Since I had never done any type of entrepreneurial work or sales, I didn’t know where to start. When I was first trying to sell, I was getting unnatural and I would try to force it. In the ceremony, the very clear insight came through to me. When I think of sales, my concept of sales is a used car salesperson. When I think of that, my body shuts down. I didn’t want to be that but that’s the concept that I had in my head of making sales. The guidance I received from the medicine was like, “Let’s look at this in a different way. What’s something that you love to do or something that you’re passionate about?” For me that was educating, informing and sharing. When I’m doing those things, I feel alive and I feel passionate. I feel like this is what I’m born to do. I was able to make that internal shift.
Connection To Nature: Entrepreneurship is one of the ultimate transformational processes. As soon as I made that internal shift and made it fun, then it became fun. The fun couldn’t help but happen because I was in my passion. I didn’t even have to make it fun. It became fun and then that reflects in work. Otherwise, I would get very robotic when I’m trying to sell to you and then people would sense that and be like, “No, I’m good,” and not buy. Once I made that shift, it was powerful. That was Friday night of the ceremony. On Saturday night, a friend of mine came to the ceremony and she was like, “Would you like to give a talk at the Do Lab? I run The Learning Kitchen and if you want to put on a presentation about sprouting nuts, it would be great.” I made the shift in my mind and I’m like, “I’m going to start educating more,” and the opportunity arose. I said yes. I gave a talk at The Learning Kitchen. I created that game, Get Rich Nuts. I had eleven winners and it’s eleven beautiful authentic real moments with people. Those to me are the gems of life and the gifts of life. You can’t ever have those unless you’re present in the moment. That was a big part of the transition for me. This is about education and information.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Toastmasters. About a few years ago, I was working as a firefighter and I had no reason to go to Toastmasters other than I thought it sounded interesting. I had some discomfort around speaking publicly or sharing my thoughts with people. I randomly went into Toastmasters. I loved it and I had a great time. I had no purpose of doing it. I wasn’t like, “I’m doing this for work because I have to make sales.” Some people go in there for a reason. The only thing that ever happened was a friend of mine at the fire department had told me about it. He had done it before. He got hired to practice for interviews and it sounded intriguing to me. I went and tried it and I loved it. I went for a few years with no plan on doing any talking or anything. It just came to me that I should go and I found it interesting. I was passionate about it and now it turns out that I’m doing public speaking and I’m doing your show. All those things that I was learning were for a reason. I had no idea why I was going there. There’s always a divine plan in place that starts to click in. By doing public speaking and putting on workshops, as far as my role in the brand, that’s going to be my role moving forward.
My goal is to connect people back to nature because we’ve lost that connection. With each of our products, I want to break down like, “These are the ingredients.” I don’t make this into a large commercial, but it’s important because it shows a lot about my concepts and my view of the world and how we can make this a better place for all of us and a better experience. Reconnecting people with nature through teaching and showing, not only just talking about or reading, but creating video content. I went to the maple syrup farm in Jackson Maine, which is about ten miles from Canada. It was super snowy and covered in snow by four feet deep. I learned how to get the sap out of the sugar bush and then they distill it down into maple syrup and it’s a whole process.
I went through that whole process because I think it’s important for people to know that and to have the transparency to where their food comes from. It’s not just the store, but there’s a whole story behind it and the transportation and the whole thing. What I want to do is be mindful of that and share that with people. For each ingredient, for each part of our process, for each product, there’s a whole rich story for me to tell there. Learning to speak and to communicate and to be articulate about these messages that have been coming into my sphere is part of what I’m here to do and I feel very passionate about it. That’s where it becomes fun.
Did you answer the question about cultivating a warrior spirit?
I felt like it was a choice for me. My dad instilled it in me at a very young age. He would let me cry when I had to cry or whatever. It wasn’t like, “Don’t cry,” or anything like that. It was always like, “Do or do not and no BS. This is what we’re doing. Get up and let’s go.”
It’s a very masculine way of caring. You also touch a few points that you just follow your curiosity and they, later on, turned to be helpful. The skills of public speaking, the sprouting, the tapping in and allowing yourself to cry and all these things. I’m going to use the word flow because you’re someone who seems based on your story arc and your narrative. It seems you tap into flow in a very natural way. Is it cultivated? Is it intentional or you just follow your curiosity and things happen effortlessly?
It’s all of the above. Sometimes I do it with intention. I do make an effort to make certain things happen. It is about the play and how important play is. The play is what we did as children. We went out and play. We didn’t have a goal or maybe we’re just hammering or play down the street with my friends. That’s what I used to say. That’s what I would tell my parents. When we’re in that state of play and discovery and we don’t have an agenda or a goal in mind, we’re able to be present with each other and cultivate relationships. I do have that sense of curiosity. That’s what keeps me childlike and that is what attracts people to me. I do have this strange magnetism and people tell me that all the time. They’re like, “I don’t know what it is about you, but I need to know you.” It happens to me all the time and I’m like, “I’m just a regular guy getting along. I’m not anything special.”
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What people find that special part is that I am curious and when I find something interesting and intriguing, I’ll share it with you. I’m not going to like, “You can’t have this. This is mine.” I’m not in a competitive state. I did compete a lot when I was doing sports and being very mad at my very masculine side, but I let all that side go. Even when I went into the fire department, I had already cut back from a lot of the competition. That environment is a very competitive masculine environment. The fire academy guys were always trying to compete with me. I was built at the time. I was muscular and strong. I’m shriveled up from them but on top of that, I was also fast. I could run well. The guys were always trying to compete me with running and there was only one guy that was faster than me. I always thought it was funny. A lot of times people are competing with me and I don’t even realize it. They come up to me and try to start some drama around competition. I was like, “I’m sorry, I came in second. Where did you come in?” They’d be like, “I came in tenth.” I was like, “Do you have something else to say?”
I’ve always had people competing with me on some level and I think that’s the masculine side of people and that underlying program of competition that’s been ingrained into most of us with the society that we’re living in. Un-programming that has been challenging. Anytime there’s a challenge, there’s an opportunity. I look at it like that. I love challenges. I love the opportunity. I love when someone says, “You can’t do that. That’s impossible.” I go, “You stay right there and watch.” That to me is like, “I’ll show you something cool.” I don’t believe that anything is impossible. If we stay in a state of curiosity and discovery and inflow, we can follow the natural currents, we can follow if we’re allowed to be in touch with that intuitive nature of ourselves and we can connect and find the answers to that. It may take some time and maybe you have to do something a certain way.
This is something that’s powerful that I’ve learned with people. Sometimes we have something we want to communicate with someone or behavior we’d like to see them change. We try to push and push our way and like, “This is the way you should do it.” Usually, it’s as if banging our head against a brick wall. What I found is if you can be a little bit more subtle and drop behind the ego, because if you tried to tell someone how to do something or what they should do to change, you usually inflame their ego. They get defensive and then you’re just talking to a wall. Everything shuts down and they’re not listening.
I learned that lesson many times from personal experience. Don’t do that. It’s not effective.
You may have to change your way of being or your messaging to find another way so that they can discover it themselves. You plant the seed or you bend yourself where you make yourself like water and then you sneak in under the ego and you can get your point across without having to be right and without making them wrong. Right and wrong are other dynamics. If I’m right, then that means you’re wrong and that is also a competition. That blocks the energy around growth. If you can make that a win-win or you can find another way to change your message or your way of presenting it so that they can hear it, they may have an opportunity to make that change and to integrate that change into their existence.
One of the ways that I reframe the whole idea of right and wrong is everyone has their internal frame of reference. They want to achieve something and whatever I say can enable power, advocate or what they want. They’ll be like, “Please help me,” versus someone who’s coming in with a very egotistical, “I’m smarter than you,” attitude and that, “Whatever you’re doing is wrong, do it my way,” kind of a thing. It’s the opposition rather than enabling. That’s my new mental model.
Building a team we both can win and collaborate.
You’re in the middle of your entrepreneurial journey. How are you attracting the right partner to join your team? For those people who are reading this who may be looking and they’re into getting to their next venture, how can they emulate what you’re doing?
Connection To Nature: Build a team we both can win and collaborate. Drop into what you think your role is in and where your passion lies and whatever business you want to create or whatever product or service you’re putting out. Focus on what you want to do and what you see your role in the future and what’s coming to you. For me, it was very intuitive. My role is going to be the brand and the voice. I envisioned myself when I create this content. I like to wear kilts and dressing in a military style theme because I believe in myself as a peace warrior. My message is a message of peace. If I’m a noble warrior, I’m a noble warrior for peace and I want to imbue that into our brand and into the culture of our business and into the culture of what we’re trying to create in reimagining richness.
My own take on it is like Steve Irwin. He used to share a lot about animals. I want to share about plants and about the beautiful properties of turmeric and what it can do for your body or maca or bee pollen. These are all the ingredients that we use and I don’t know everything about them. I’m not a botanist. I don’t have all this knowledge. It’s a curiosity in me and as I go and discover these processes of how they’re built, I want to share that with his world, with whoever wants to listen and whoever wants to know about their food. The role I envision is creating this content, traveling the world and getting down to the farmer’s levels. Not only having them relay their story for us, but also adding more value to their life by helping you create co-ops so that we can sit and listen to what they want or what they need to improve their life. I don’t want to feel as I’m an outsider or westerner and it’s like, “You guys all need water or shoes or education.” I want to sit there and create an opportunity for true listening where I can hear what they have to say and we have enough capital to make donations or to help to bring new things in. We can do that based on what we’ve heard from them. It’s as if building and cultivating a relationship and not just telling them what they want.
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Truly listening is going to take years to develop, but that’s exciting to me. Knowing what my role is, I felt like that’s my role. We’re big on supporting regenerative agriculture, which doesn’t have a commercial existence at this point, but it’s starting to come on. It’s a new movement. It’s based on the fact that it is sustainable. We’ve done so much damage to the ecosphere already, we’ve killed off so many species, acidified the ocean and put too much carbon into the air. I started working with this advocacy group called Kiss the Ground. It is all about regenerating the health of the soil. That means regenerating the microbes, the organic matter and the mycorrhiza fungi. Those things work in harmony with the roots to create more nutritious food for us. It’s more of a wild system and it’s not a monoculture. It doesn’t have toxins or poisons right into it and doesn’t till the land.
What happens is the plants put more carbon in the form of sugar into the ground three to seven times more per acre than traditional conventional agriculture. The reason is they bring that sugar down to feed the microbes and the mycorrhizal fungi. The mycorrhiza fungi and the bacteria bring in more nutrients, which go up into the food. It’s a win-win. It’s a collaboration, which I love. Part of my thing is to spread that message. Knowing clearly what my role is when I get right into my passion. I talk about that all the time. People are magnetized like, “How can I help you build this? This sounds interesting. It’s very different from what everyone else is doing. You’re not talking about the bottom line, you’re talking about people, planet, profit. You’re talking about balance and harmony.” People are naturally gravitated to that.
I have people come to me all the time wanting to get involved in my business. I haven’t been seeking out anyone. People have just been gravitating towards it. When you’re in your passion, when you’re in your flow, then those things just come into your world. I’m always like, “Everyone is on board.” That wasn’t part of something that I had to work on because I didn’t have enough discernment. I was happy that someone saw my idea and thought it was great. The first partner I had in the business, we weren’t in alignment with values, especially in integrity. It took me some time, but I realized that and I had to separate from him. Now I’m more mindful of that. When I bring a partner in or someone that’s going to collaborate with us, I suss out a little bit better, “Is this person in line with our values?” because that’s the first part.
How do you do that? What are some of the key questions or some criteria that you check box?
I ask a lot of questions about them like what experiences they’ve had in the past. I also maybe do some research on who they are and talk to some of the people that they’ve worked with before and enter the relationship more slowly like, “This is tentative. Let’s see what this looks like,” then do a lot of observation. Sometimes if you ask too many questions or point out to me things and you tip people off, then they’ll start acting in a different way.
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They know what you’re seeking. They behave according to who you’re looking for.
They may try to please you or to try and make it seem they’re a certain way. I figure if you let people do their thing and observe them, it’d be like, “I like the way they’re doing this.” You can bring some attention to it and you have to think holistically because we all have our flaws and our weaknesses. It’s not like if they make one mistake, they’re fired or something. It’s not that way. You have to evaluate over time and then you can give them some guidance and see how they deal with it. There’s still more coming around. You have to know when it’s time to separate because, for me, this is a personal thing. I felt super vulnerable when I was first bringing it into the world because I made a product and I was like, “Is anyone going to like it?” That comes down to love. Are they going to like it? If they don’t like it, does that mean they don’t like me? Does that I mean it’s not a good product? Do I feel validated? Do I feel loved?
All those questions started coming up because it’s creative. It’s as if I’m an artist and I’m creating food as my gift. Chefs are artists and musicians are artists. There are all different types of artists in creation. If you have a creation and you’re putting it out into the world, it’s a very vulnerable process. It could fail. Someone could not like it. Going through that vulnerable process and cultivating like, “Who else is connected with this and how do they reflect into the world and what are they showing about my business and about me?” I’ve been more mindful about who I’m bringing in and how we bring them in.
That’s what I call the cognitive dissonance, meaning that there is no evidence supporting this vision and this idea yet. The reality of life is catching up, the evidence and support. In the beginning, naturally you are going to hear nothing. When the idea, the birth, the story, the narrative, the technology, the product or whatever it may be that you’re birthing into the world. In the beginning aspect of it, there is nothing but through iteration and positive feedback, then you can generate that momentum. It sounds like you are generating momentum. If you can talk a little bit about that cognitive dissonance where you had that idea and even the prototype of sprouting nuts that was helping you, how did you navigate that space from nothing to one person? That’s the outer game aspect of it, but also the inner game. I don’t know if people are like this yet. I hope they do. If they turned down, the first person turning down give me any kind of criticism, natural reaction, trimmed back. It’s too hard. Whatever their rationalization is, it’s a survival instinct. Tell us a little bit more about that part.
That part was also very easy for me because when I first started making the first flavor, which is sage and rosemary, I didn’t intend to make a business or anything. I just sprouted the nuts, seasoned them and then dehydrated them. I was in flow in a point of discovery like, “I wonder what it would taste like if I dehydrate it.” That was my first a-ha moment. I’m like, “These are crunchy. These are not that tasty because they don’t have any flavor on them, but I liked the crunch. It’s different than anything else I’ve experienced.” That was my first a-ha moment. I was like, “Let me try putting some Bragg Liquid Amino on my first batch to give it a little bit of a salty flavor.” I put some sage and rosemary from the garden. I lived in Topanga at the time. I was in the flow and in curiosity. That first flavor, sage and rosemary, came out tasty.
I shared it with some friends and some family and they loved it. They kept asking me for more so I kept making more and more. After a while, I realized people were asking me for more all the time. I’m like, “You are going to have to start paying me because nuts are expensive. I’m making hundreds of pounds of nuts here and just giving them away for free.” They were like, “How much do you want?” I was like, “Maybe I have something here.” It was at that point that I said, “Maybe I have a business here.” I went to India on a trip with my ex and we went to the spice market. We found all these great curries and paprika. I came back and I created a curry flavored cashew, then a maple pecan and then a trail mix. As I started developing the flavors, I was doing a lot of experiments and in flow and curiosity and see what would come to me again.
I don’t feel that I forced anything or have this intentional path. I stayed open to that curiosity and that divine spark and where it was guiding me. I’m intuitively discovering what I find interesting and that’s exactly what I’m doing with our content creation. I’m like, I’m going to share what I find interesting.” Sometimes it’s mushrooms. I don’t have any mushroom products, but I find that mushrooms are intriguing and the medicinal properties and the food properties and all that stuff.
Let me recap a little bit. What you said is you didn’t have a divine plan from A to Z. Everything is figured out. I’m going to form a business. This is step one, two, three, four, five. You followed your curiosity. You generously share with your friends and family and they kept wanting it. You now say, “Help me make it sustainable. Pay me.” You followed the momentum and you kept going. You continued to follow your curiosity. I hear between the lines. You’re building that fire. You’re turning from curiosity to interest to now passion. Is that accurate from what I hear between the lines?
Connection To Nature: Staying in that state of play and childlike curiosity is where we’re staying in touch with our divinity. That’s accurate. It’s staying in the flow. Staying in that state of play of childlike curiosity is where we’re staying in touch with our divinity. I believe that each one of us has a piece of God in us. If we can stay in touch with that, what does that look like? How does that show up in the world? Usually, it shows up in the world as children because we are in the flow because we are present at the moment. We do not think like, “We’ve got to go to work, we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.” We’re like, “What is this? Look at this caterpillar,” and you take five minutes to look at a caterpillar. I still do stuff like that. I take pictures of flowers all the time. Half of my Instagram is flowers and mushrooms and all this crazy caterpillars and bugs and nature. I’m fascinated with nature.
One of the things too that I used to post a lot about is all these different flowers. I’d get right up in there and take these close shots. I would put #ProofOfGod. Someone goes, “That’s not proof of God.” They called me out on it one time on Instagram, which I thought was interesting. I was like, “I think this is proof of God.” They made me make some inquiry. It pushed me into introspection and into discovery and I was like, “Why does this feel like proof of God to me?” What I came to with that was that a flower is an aspect of God coming into the world manifest into form. It’s an expression of God and what is it doing? It wants to attract other aspects of God to itself so that it can continue to create life. A flower is an aspect of God, attracting God to itself so that life can continue. I was like, “It is a proof God to me.” When you look at it from that sense, I was able to go through that so I was happy that that person made that a little bit of a snide remark because it made me delve into it. The universe pushes you in that way if you’re open to listening instead of being, “Screw you,” or something like that.
Have you always been this spiritual? One may look at how you birth into the world and say, “God screwed me so I’m going to be focusing on anything of that sort.” Tell us a little bit of your spiritual journey.
I wouldn’t say that I was spiritual. My parents sometimes went to Christian churches and stuff, but they weren’t super religious. There were periods where my stepmother went through stuff like that. I always went to a Christian school after my kindergarten and first-grade experience. When they were going to hold me back into first grade, my dad took me out and put me into a private school, which was Christian and they practiced corporal punishment there so you would get swats and stuff like that if you misbehave. I always thought that was cool as a full-grown man giving a swat to a little kid. Being raised with all the Christian dogma and understanding it, there was so much hypocrisy in Christianity. The Catholic church and all the other churches are saying one thing and then they’re behaving in another way. Love is the answer but if you don’t believe in our God, we’re going to kill you. That never sat with me very well. Murder is wrong, but we’re going to kill you still because you don’t believe in our God. I was like, “You didn’t even follow your own rules. How can I believe what you’re saying?” They’re like, “This is the word of God.” I was like, “It was written by men.”
I never had that deep connection to it. I did go through periods or went to chapel and church and all that stuff. There was always something there and my spirituality started to develop after college. Not knowing my mother, I didn’t know that it affected me yet. When I went to college, I started drinking a lot and I was suppressing something. When I would get drunk, I would maybe get angry and get in a fight or something. I started to realize that maybe there was something there. I tried to start looking for my mother and I found out she had passed when I was eighteen. I felt some guilt around not looking for her earlier. I also felt some sadness and some anger towards her because I was like, “She couldn’t give up drugs to have a relationship with me.” In the end and through the ceremony and a lot of meditation, I found that I was able to come to the point of compassion for her. I know she was doing the best she could where she was and she had all this damage in her life that caused her to live that life and to struggle her whole life with drug addiction.
Having that relationship and having that suppressed anger and I am drinking a bunch and partying and my relationship with women. I was always very physically fit and attractive so girls were always coming to me. It was very easy for me to get sex. I never had a problem with that, but I never felt super connected. It felt like, “I’m just going to have sex. It’s fun and it’s exciting.” It’s physical but there wasn’t any deeper connection. I had this set mindset of when I get married, I’m going to date the girl for a certain amount of time. We were going to be engaged for a certain amount of time and then we’re going to have kids. It was this whole programming. I got married and it didn’t work out. I got divorced and that was a huge breakthrough for me. That helped me come into contact with my spiritual side. First, I let loose and traveled in Europe and party and that’s when the pink money came out.
I started partying a lot and then I went to Burning Man. That changed something for me. The two biggest things in that period of my life that brought change into the world is I learned Kriya Yoga, which is a type of meditation that Paramahansa Yogananda brought on. It’s interesting because we’re sitting at Lake Shrine, which was one of the first places he built in the US. It’s this beautiful sanctuary in Los Angeles. What I learned with meditation was sitting still and watching the thoughts that come up and then observing them and they keep flowing in. I’m like, “Where are these thoughts coming from? What is the basis of this thought? Taking the time to observe that, then you can start to see, “This is what my dad used to do. This is what my mom used to do. Is this serving me anymore? Do I need to keep doing this because it doesn’t feel right to me?”
Sitting and taking time to see those things and see where they come from and then root out the ones that are no longer serving you, that process has been super transformational for my existence. The last few years is when I got in touch with my spiritual side. It was through meditation and breath work. I also practiced the Wim Hof technique, which is a hyperventilation technique and cold water plunges. It’s very profound. You can have DMT visions from breathwork. It’s incredible. There’s holotropic breathwork. There are all these different types of practices that you can do to clear out emotional and physical trauma in your body. Another one is emotional freedom technique. All of these practices are spiritual, but they’re not dogmatic. No one is in control of them and no one is like, “You have to do it this way and you have to follow us.” There are certain sects of these things. For instance, we’re at the self-realization fellowship and they’re a little bit dogmatic in the way they teach their stuff. I use the technique outside of the self-realization fellowship and I have my own realizations and no one is in control of it and how it comes through.
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You are your own master. You are your own guru.
It’s a technique and you’re getting in touch with your own godlike energy within and how does that come forward. For me, it comes forward with the curiosity, with the passion and all of that stuff. That and then getting into the festival culture but it sounds a little weird or esoteric festival culture. One of the things about Burning Man that’s so great is that it’s an experiment in how we can create a new reality or a new way of being with each other that’s not based on competition. It’s based on inspiration so that when we see these art pieces that people create, were inspired to do our own artistic creation and we are able to share our own gift. Whether that’s food or art or music or talking, whatever that is and whatever comes through, you can get in touch with that and channel that and bring that into the world. That is a way of getting in touch with your spiritual side because you are getting in touch with spiritualities. You’re getting in touch with your own spirit and bringing that into the world.
Being inspired to bring your light, to have the courage to break the conventions, to not think about competition and not think about profit. Burning Man is not profit-motivated. People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more to build some of these art cars and these projects and what are they getting off it? They’re getting to have this incredible thing that is inspiring. I encourage people to continue to do that stuff and that’s the culture of festivals. There’s a lot of unconsciousness there too such as life. That’s how my spiritual connection was awoken from Burning Man and from meditation breathwork. That’s where I started getting in touch with my spirituality as opposed to a dogmatic religious type of experience.
Do you feel like your spiritual belief, your point of view around your place in the universe, your relationship with your own divine, your divinity helps you navigate the uncertainty of reinventing yourself from fireman to entrepreneur? From having this cool widget and sprouted nuts to forming which nuts to now wanting to provide a platform for all of the plants. Do you feel that having that spiritual belief is helpful?
Yes, I do because it’s fundamental to the way I show up. Now that I’m awake to it or at some degree, we’re all in the process of waking up to our divinity. I don’t feel that it’s a competition like, “I’m more awake than you or something like that.” Some people get caught up in that whole thing. It’s true. I’m more spiritual. There are this spiritual bypass and spiritual ego and all that stuff. I feel more awake to have been in this life because I continue to explore my consciousness curiously. I choose to dive deeper all the time and push myself in those ways. I do think that it reflects in my business. Whenever I eat, I say a prayer. I don’t speak it to any certain God or any specific source or anything. I say, “I give gratitude and love for this meal I’m about to receive. I’m so thankful for all that it took to get here from the fossil fuels, the people power, the water, the sunshine, the minerals, the vitamins of the Earth, the gases in the air, the wind, the things seen and unseen and the animal that gave its life. If I’m eating the plants, the microbes and all of it. I’m so grateful that it’s here and may it bless my mind, my body and my soul.”
Bringing that mindfulness into my product is only a reflection of who I am as a being and where I am in my development. I want to bring all of those aspects into it. I do give gratitude for fossil fuels because I do acknowledge that most of our food that comes from the store, it has fossil fuels all over it. Everything that we eat is dipped in fossil fuels. Maybe not literally, but transportation. We have to think about that. If we start to put that into our consciousness, then we’re going to start to think of ways to solve that problem. Maybe we need to start creating drone ships that are solar and wind power that can travel across the oceans. They don’t need people on them. We can redesign the whole thing. We can reimagine how that ship looks like if it doesn’t need people on it, it doesn’t need a huge fuel tank. It just needs solar power and wind. We can travel across the ocean without any fossil fuel. If you’re not thinking about that, if you’re just transporting without that mindset behind you, then you don’t ever think to address that issue.
My spirituality is directly reflected in the way of my business shows up. It has to be for me, otherwise I don’t want to do it so be mindful of that. My impact on these farming communities is another version of extractive capitalism. Right now, we’re such a small business and we’re not large enough to have an impact. Once we start to have the capital to make an impact, to start moving markets and to start changing markets, then it has to be about regenerative agriculture. I’m actively seeking out partners that are interested in building regenerative agriculture. There is a study that I read about regenerative agriculture that said that within three to seven times more carbon sequestered per acre depending on the crop if you’re using regenerative agriculture. They said that if the entire world shifted over to regenerative agriculture in a few years, we could avert the climate crisis and we’d get enough carbon in the ground to avert the crisis. That was the first thing that I had read that gave me any hope for the future of humanity. The reason Rich Nuts exists as a business is that we believe that the children of this generation and future generations deserve better Earth, greener Earth, cleaner Earth and a more just Earth. We stand behind all the change-makers and the rabble-rousers that are here to disrupt the paradigm and to create a new planet that’s better for all of us.
Is there anything else that you wanted to share with the audience who is being inspired by your story, by your vision and by the way you think about creating businesses?
Connection To Nature: If the entire world shifted over to regenerative agriculture in five years, we can avert the climate crisis and get enough carbon in the ground. I’m continuing to discover and to tell the story. Anyone that wants to follow my story and learn more about us, you can follow us on the Instagram channel. Follow me in general because I plan to really bust this thing. I was waiting for the retirement to be finalized with the fire department before I come out in a big way with all this stuff. I am ready to step out in the world in a bigger way and to build this story. I don’t have all the pieces of this story and I’m willing to admit that and I understand that I don’t. As I bring my parts forward, then I’m open to collaborating with people that are willing to help me build the rest of it that I don’t know about yet. It will be continuously a path of discovery and of learning and of growth for me personally, but also for our business and for other businesses. Bringing consciousness into capitalism because the businesses were driving our existence or the economy is driving the way people live and the way people show up. If we can shift that and we can get a different experience for all of us, that’s what I’m all about. Anyone that wants to collaborate with that, feel free to contact me.
One of the debates that I have with entrepreneurs is who operates from their principles and their purpose is that, on the one hand, your primary job as entrepreneurs, you made sure that the business succeed. Without lifeblood and revenue, the business dies and you don’t fulfill however beautiful the mission is. The other who also operates from purpose and core values so you don’t become money-chasing solos business like everyone else. Generally speaking, if entrepreneurs are too principle-driven, you’re putting a lot of blocks to navigate within that realm and that realm only. If you don’t put principles at all, you’ll end up chasing. How do you navigate that?
We realize that some of the stuff that we have to do now to get our business up and running is not necessarily in alignment with our values. We’re using plastic bags to pack it and we’re buying it from external suppliers. We don’t have the relationships that I’d like to build with the farmers and all that stuff. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get things going. Once you have the capacity and the capital and the presence to do those things and integrate them, then you start integrating them.
It’s not top of mind, but it’s still in your radar and then you make ends meet or whatever. When things are better, then you can lean towards the other.
I’m starting to integrate those things. Even on our website, we put sustainability meters. We put it on our website and we’re like, “These are the things we’ve accomplished so far. These are the goals we’d like to get. We’d like to someday be carbon-neutral instead of carbon sink.” We’re not there. We don’t even know how are we going to get to that point yet, but that’s the vision and that’s what we want to do. We put it on our website. This is the end goal. This is where we want to get to. This is where we are now. What’s our next step? Compostable packaging. In that way, we can be transparent with our customers.
We’re like, “This is what we want to do, this is where we’re going, and this is where we are.” Overpromising and under delivering, we don’t want to do that either. We want to be honest with where we are and we want to be clear about what we’d like to go. That way, you can inspire collaboration and maybe someone will be like, “I have an idea to help you get to point X.” When you get there, you can tell a story about that. This is how we became carbon neutral. We have a solar factory now. All of our goods are delivered by electric trucks and powered sailboats across the ocean or whatever. Transparency is key because it helps to go to the brand’s integrity. It’s coming on strong. I don’t watch the Super Bowl anymore, but I could see the commercials. One of the commercials was Ultra announced they have the first organic beer, which I was like, “Beer drinkers now are on organic beer.”
You were saying about training yourself to stay calm when the buildings are coming down. Say a little bit more about that.
Working as a fireman, one of the skills you learn is to remain completely laser-focused. Even though you have an awareness at all times about what’s going on around you, because conditions can be changing and getting more dangerous. You also have to stay super laser-focused on the job that you’re doing at hand so that you don’t make any mistakes. If you make a mistake, it can be costly. It may cost you your life or it may cost someone else’s life or an injury. Oftentimes, as a paramedic, it’s the same thing. Someone is dying and family members are freaking out. Cars are swerving by you on the highway and you have to stay laser focused on your job, but also being aware that conditions could be changing. You have to be aware of distractions but not let them affect your performance. What I find helpful are certain techniques like box breathing, which is slow controlled breathing.
When we're in the state of play and discovery without an agenda, we're able to be present with each other and cultivate relationships.
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It doesn’t matter what number you use, but say you breathe in and count to five and then you hold it there at five and then you breathe out for five. It’s a square breath inhale and exhales or the same amount of time as the hold at the top and the bottom. Certain techniques like that are what Navy SEALs use. It was in the book, Stealing Fire, which is a great book. I highly recommend it. Being able to be aware consciously of the conditions you’re in is super critical as a fireman. You could be in a building that’s getting ready to collapse. There are certain signs that you can see like the walls are starting to bow or you hear some creaking noises of the roof starting to crack. You have to be hyper-aware of those, but you also need to be focused. You don’t want to trip and fall on something sharp and stab yourself on a piece of furniture.
You have to be hyper-aware of what you’re doing. You also have to be aware and conscious of what’s going on around you. Laser-focused while also accounting for all the distractions. It is a skill that you learn and staying calm. If you move into a point of fear, you might rush or make a mistake. When you rush, then you happen to make mistakes because you’re in a hurry and then you have to repeat that process either again or you may get hurt and possibly die or someone else could die. It is a skill set to stay calm in the face of all hell breaking loose.
I started boxing and it’s a similar situation. How do I remain calm so I don’t make mistakes, otherwise I get punched in the face? It’s a beautiful journey because it’s one thing to have a lot of knowledge theoretically in my head, it’s another to get punched in the face like, “Don’t do that again.” Nonetheless, part of the learning process is getting punched in the face so they internalize their lessons. I also know that you hunt. That’s one conversation that we have. Would you say that would be a similar process where you had to remain calm no matter what’s going on in your surroundings? Say a little bit more about that.
It’s funny that you said that about boxing. It brings up one of the only quotes I know from Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face,” and then you’re not so tough anymore. With hunting, it’s a lot of buildups, a lot of excitement and a lot of planning goes into it. You can put a lot of pressure on yourself to make the shot and sometimes that rush of adrenaline comes through. The first time I was hunting a deer and I’m a pretty good shot, but I couldn’t hit the side of a barn. I shot seven or eight times and I didn’t hit the thing. I was bouncing around so much. There’s a name for it. It’s called deer fever or buck fever. It often happens because adrenaline comes into your body and you’re so excited that you can’t stop shaking. It doesn’t happen to me as much anymore because I’ve learned to control that.
Through the skill that I talked about as being a fireman to breathing through taking a second and not rushing your shot and waiting for the right shot with a rifle or a bow, you want to have a clean one shot kill that’s ideal. It doesn’t always happen that way, but that’s what your goal is. That might mean waiting or passing on an animal because it’s in the bushes or because of a tree between you. You have to have the patience and the knowledge to know that this may not be the ideal time. It does happen. You do get nervous because so much is building up for months to that point, all the preparation and the planning. Breathing slowly and deeply will help affect your state.
Do you feel that’s transferrable? If I meditate every day for hours and that cultivates my ability to fight boredom and does that translate you hunting or firefighting or boxing or one must go through that process of being too excited? You miss your shot and you get punched in the face. Hopefully, you don’t get stabbed, but you get stabbed or you’re doing firefighting or whatever to earn that calmness and peace of mind?
I definitely think it’s something you can cultivate. The more you access that place, the more it becomes accessible to you. You’ve been there before and you know how to get there, whether it’s breathwork or whether it’s mental practices. The more times you access that space, the more easily you can access it. It’s a state and the more you get there, the more you practice it and it does translate into different aspects of life because it’s about controlling your emotional state. If you’re getting too excited, then your body dumps a bunch of adrenaline and then you start to lose control of your function because you’re in the fight or flight mode. If you can learn to cultivate that through breath work, I find it to be the easiest way. Through mental practices or other ways, visualization techniques or even visualizing the hunt before where I’m like, “You’re going to have this shot and you’re going to wait for it. It’s going to be perfect and you’re going to take your time. You’re going to breathe and you’re going to shoot. The animal is going to drop right away and there’s not going to be any struggle and all that.”
You don’t visualize the naked team. They call it the anti-examples. It’s like, “What do you do when the deer is not in the perfect condition? What do you do when you’re being punched?” You don’t visualize that. You visualize the ideal situations.
I always idealize an ideal situation and I’ve done that with sports throughout my life and different scenarios. If you visualize the wrong scenario, then you might end up getting that. There have been times where I was like, “This thing is going to happen and it’s not going to be the way I wanted to.” Sure enough, it happens that way and I’m like, “I knew it.” It’s always a self-fulfilling prophecy so you want to visualize what you want to see. You want to see the thing you want to see and you want to bring that forth and visualizing is a good way to do that.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Important Links: * Richard Pauwels * Burning Man * Rich Nuts * Instagram – Rich Nuts * The Learning Kitchen * Toastmasters * Kiss the Ground * Stealing Fire
About Richard Pauwels
I started Rich Nuts because as a firefighter, I needed a protein-rich snack that could sustain me through my long shifts. I was determined to find a better option for myself and my crew. So I set out to create it with four goals in mind: it had to be nutritious, sustaining, delicious, and good for planet.
After I discovered that sprouting nuts made them more nutrient-dense and easier to digest, I started soaking nuts in water. However, this only made them soggy and unappetizing. So I worked to bring back their flavor and crunch by seasoning them with savory spices and dehydrating them at a low temperature. It was magic! The sprouted nuts were exceptionally crunchy and full of flavor.
During my breaks at the firehouse, I would make batch after batch, experimenting with different spice and nut combinations, and letting my fellow firefighters taste-test along the way. Soon I was getting orders from friends, family, and co-workers. It was then I decided I had to share them with the world and Rich Nuts was born.
To me, food is about more than nourishing the body, It’s about nourishing the land and farmers who grow it. From seed to shelf, my goal is to work closely to ensure every ingredient and every person along the supply chain is thought of and cared for. I hope you enjoy my sprouted snacks, and that my story inspires you to leave your own mark on the world.
The post 028: How To Remain Calm Under Fire? – Richard Pauwels appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
There is so much from our past that has the power to heal us if only we remember and embrace them. Today’s guest, Dennis Notten, has quite the heroic journey that led him to commit learning and sharing ancient healing modalities with others who are on the same path of self-discovery. Having reinvented himself from being a professional musician to being an ayahuasca ceremonialist, Dennis shows how he is now bridging the cultures between the West and the Amazon tribe. He shares his own self-discovery that took him all over the world – from receiving the blessing from spiritual leaders to finding the beauty of micro-dosing. In a world that is becoming less and less connected, Dennis brings us back to the connection we’ve lost that empowers our general well-being into abundance and joy.
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Listen to the podcast here: How To Bridge The Cultures Between The West And An Amazon Tribe with Dennis Notten Our guest has quite a hero journey. He reinvented himself on being a professional musician in some of the world’s leading orchestra before answering the call to be an Ayahuasca ceremonialist. His self-discovery journey took him all over the world: India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, New Zealand, Egypt, Brazil and finally Peru. In his journey of self-discovery, he has been trained with different healing modalities, meditation, Kundalini yoga, theta healing and Reiki. For the last few years, he has been learning the spiritual healing modality from the Yawanawá tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.
After receiving the blessing from the spiritual leaders of the Santo Daime to work with Ayahuasca medicine in an open and free way, Dennis has been on a mission to share these powerful ancient healing modalities with the West. It’s abundantly clear that he’s committed to learning and sharing healing modalities with others who are on the same path of self-discovery and on their own hero’s journey. Please help me welcome a modern healing arts ambassador between the Amazon tribes and the West, Dennis Notten. Why don’t we speak about that? Why micro-dosing? How did you end up developing that program?
In my own journey, going with plant medicines, I started to go with plant medicine in 2011. I went to Peru on an Ayahuasca retreat, three ceremonies in the Sacred Valley of Peru. It was a beautiful place. Those three ceremonies were a very beautiful and powerful experience. I came back to Amsterdam, where I was living at the time, I was a professional classical musician. It was very interesting to see what those experiences did to me because I expected it to be a once in a lifetime experience. That was my full understanding of it even when I came back. You don’t necessarily have to go back. You’re going to do these ceremonies one time. They’re going to be transformational and that’s it. I continue my life as it is and maybe some changes come from that. I will be very grateful for those changes. I was not suspecting in any way that it would become a bigger part of my life.
When I saw the impact that those experiences have had on my life, that started to change my perspective. I started to change my inner world. I started to shift the things I found important. I started to learn more about what are my true passions and what are my true passion always has been, but not acknowledging it or not understanding that. For example, the music. I thought it was my life mission to play in the world’s best orchestra and I did. I start to see, “Maybe this is not the way I’m supposed to share music or be connected to music.” We always sit in a suit and our tails on a concert stage and the people listening sit no lower in the public listening. There’s a disconnect I started to see between the people listening and the people playing music. I’m also seeing in classical music where there was quite in a way sometimes a harsh world of ego like sharp shoulders, pushing up and competing with each other.
When I start to see that more clearly, I was like, “Maybe this is not my world. Maybe there’s another way to connect with music.” When those kinds of transformations gently start happening inside myself, I had this realization of maybe slowly my journey as a classical musician is ending. It was like somebody had pulled the ground under my feet like, “What’s next?” My whole world started to shift. It was a long journey of two years that ended in me opening up a center in Peru for healing with plant medicines, diet, natural medicines, with other physical therapy like massage, colon hydrotherapy and emotional therapies. I’m working with people to get them closer to their destiny, their call, their heart, closer to the connection to their soul. That was a whole journey and when I started to study the journey deeper, then I started to offer plant medicines to people. I started to work with plant medicines and learn more about them. I started to dive deeper into that study of what they are and why they come out of the jungle, out of the indigenous tribes into the Western world in this time.
I saw clearly that the Western world is so different than the world of the indigenous people, because in a tribe, and I spend a lot of time with the Yawanawá tribe in Brazil, those people live in a small village with 80 to 120 people. There are several villages of Yawanawá like seven villages over one river. These people are very connected. Once they go into the ceremony and once they use the sacred medicine, they live in the tribe all the time. In the ceremony, they take those medicines and connect with the force of the medicines. The bigger ceremony that is happening, which I call daily life, it’s so connected because those people are together all the time. They talk about it. They go back into the ceremony. They see what it does. They take a break or go deeper into it but there’s guidance from the elders in that way. For us in the Western world, that container is not happening at all. We live in big cities with millions of people sometimes or even in smaller villages.
Even if people go into these transformational experiences not just with plant medicine, but even with yoga, meditation, transformational breath or any of those transformational practices, many times people missed the community to talk about it, to share about it, to ask questions about it and to own that experience. Some people hold back in sharing it with their colleagues, with their family, with their friends, because that space is not naturally there like it is in the tribe. Learning and seeing that further myself and how my friends, colleagues and family reacted to that and navigating that, I was looking for a way on how can we use these beautiful medicines in a container that’s held and manageable for people in the Western life with all the responsibilities that comes with life, the work, relationships and the householder life.
Over the years, I was looking for a way to do that. I learned that micro-dosing is such a beautiful way to do that and to connect with these plants in a very gentle way. Micro-dosing means to get a tiny dose or micro-dose of those substances without feeling any of its direct effects. On the longer term, then the benefits of these medicines come in. While you take that over the long term being in your daily life with all the responsibilities that are coming up, that’s a beautiful way to micro-dose medicines. That was finding a responsible way to share these very powerful medicines with people in the Western world.
We’re going to micro-dosing more, but if you can articulate what’s your grander vision or purpose to do the work that you do, how would you articulate it?
I hope to bring people closer to their destiny and not just people, but also be part of this shift that’s happening in humanity, which is calling in this new Earth, this new time, this new era, this new age that many people speak about. What is the new age movement, even decades ago? It was sad in a bit of a condensing way. What is the new age people, the hippies? Those are the people that brought these practices like yoga, meditations and medicines into the Western world in the ‘60s or the ‘70s. The Flower Power Movement, all those people are part of pioneering this stuff. What we’ve seen in this last decade is that all these modalities have become much more mainstream. Yoga is present in our culture. Half a century ago, that was completely different. Meditation is present in the Western world. Half a century ago, that was completely different.
The sacred medicines are coming out. Half a century ago, nobody would have heard about Ayahuasca or any of those medicines. Now that becomes much more mainstream with all the movements that are happening. You see all the rules on legalization that are changing in plant medicines. It’s a beautiful movement to watch, but that also comes with a huge responsibility of people that are bringing these people that are bringing these medicines and these modalities to the Western world, to find a way and to fine tune that way, to make them available in the Western society in a way that’s responsible, that fits in the world that we live in. In the bigger sense, it’s being part of the new Earth, the movement that’s happening.
Why do you think there’s such a yearning and hunger for something like this in the Western world specifically?
There are many ways to answer that question. On a deeper level, more and more people are starting to see, feel and notice that our environment are showing, the way we’re living is not sustainable. If we continue in this way or whatever way you look at that, all being the resources of the planet. We’re living in a world where people are not connecting with each other anymore. Sometimes we live in buildings of hundreds of people. A person dies and we find out weeks later that somebody has died. Nobody has missed this person. This much disconnection is happening in this time and people are yearning for that connection. They are yearning to be understood, to be seen and to be able to fully live their dreams and visions. We’ve got a society of mental illness or part of a society that our dreams and our visions are not true and that are not real. We have to fit in a certain belief system. People slowly feel that the dreams and visions are true and that is a possibility.
It’s there even in this life to manifest and for us to call it in. That comes to starting a new level of personal leadership where we start not to just look at governments or big companies or big organizations to make the shift, but for us as people to take the power back in a very positive way. Turn-off away all the systems, not rebelling against them or destroying them but calling in a new way in our own lives by taking different choices. That calling and transformation are happening inside more and more people. These plants and these transformational modalities are coming out to help with that transformation. That’s the big reason why many people feel called to these types of practices. We know that the world that’s much more beautiful and much more connected than the world that we live in now in Western society is possible.
My personal journey has been that what I was taught in our society is when you achieve “success,” whatever that means for you, whether it be money, accolades or prestige, then you’d be happy, then you made it. The reality is that at least from my personal journey point of view, those things are beautiful but is insufficient. There is still that deep yearning for connection to be seen and from a sovereign space, how do I create a life that I love and not the life that I think I should have. External versus internal and these medicines, meditation practices, yoga are beautiful ways for you to find what truly makes you come alive.
If we can look at the history of humanity, that stuff is the very natural stuff that’s happening. For example, my grandparents in Europe, I come from Holland, the Netherlands, they grew up in the time of war. My grandmother grew up in the time of war. She was part of the bombings, the poverty and the fear. The Second World War happening there had a big impact on her life and the life of all that generation of our grandparents. For them, she was like eleven to fourteen years old, in the last years of the war. She came into life after the war in 1945, not so long ago. It was about getting out of poverty, hunger, fear and destruction. It’s about building up a good career, having a good job, making sure that your family is fed, making sure that your family has housing, building that secure system around.
That was a big part of their life because of the time they came from. The generation of our parents goes up in that mindset. That was a generation that has been such a big part of creating the society that we’re in now, making money, being successful, having a good career, having a good house. It’s amazing that happened because that was necessary for our evolution as a species. We’re slowly coming to the point that we start to see when just a few people start to do that, imbalance starts to happen. It’s good to go back to a more balanced society where we still stand for abundance fully in all levels. Not just abundance to keep on a place of fear, but also from a balance to share, from a place to ask and knowing that there’s enough for all of us.
That segues nicely to some of the benefits that you’ve either experienced personally or you’ve witnessed with all your clients. What are some of the major benefits of micro-dosing especially Ayahuasca vine micro-dosing?
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The Ayahuasca vine, the indigenous people tell us that’s the grandmother of all plants, flowers and trees. I also call it Abuela Ayahuasca or grandmother Ayahuasca. Those indigenous people have such a connection with nature, the plants, the animals, the Earth, the sky, the sun and with each other. That connection is so much more there than in our Western world. For them, to connect with this grandmother energy is loving, caring and wise energy. It’s like a grandmother that’s holding their grandchildren and always been in their ears and also sometimes being a bit more stern like, “Why don’t you go to this direction?” Grandparents are so good at guiding grandchildren maybe much more than parents are.
This plant, Ayahuasca vine, that’s the grandmother energy comes into this time in a beautiful way, but also a powerful way to show us these new pathways that are slowly opening. What I’ve seen, where that energy is coming in and people are connecting with the energy in a very gentle way day-to-day in micro-dosing has been relaxing people. They are coming into a much more state of love, trust, abundance and going away from the space that’s much more fear, anxiety, disconnection. That general state of being that maybe are the foundation of who we are. Once we act from a state of fear, all our relationships are going to be influenced. All our work is going to be influenced. Every single decision that you make are going to be influenced by that energy.
When you shift that state of being to trust the Law of Abundance and stepping into your personal power in the positive sense of the world, not in a dominating sense of the world. It’s not forced. When you step into that and becoming you, then you take completely different decisions. You’re able to dribble into all your relationships, in your work, family and friends. That’s your general well-being. There’s a more general shift that I’ve seen in people. That’s going to result in many ways and in every person, that’s completely different.
From your personal point of view, as well as witnessing your clients, going through that journey from a very protective almost a survival and fear-based way of living, which is okay, we need that for survival, to a place of openness, to embracing the collective whole to love. Can you walk us through a little bit? What are some of the internal belief shifts that needed to happen to do that?
Maybe we can speak of it with my own journey. Once I started to feel the effect of this medicine, I totally felt the benefit of them. I felt a shift inside of me. I felt the different calling to start to share different things in my life. That came with a lot of many voices in my environment. I was in a different relationship then, different colleagues and they started to question all my steps and my path, “What are you doing? You’re playing in this orchestra. You have worked for maybe decades to get to that, practicing many hours. You went to school and got your Master of Music. This was your goal. You’re there where you always want to be and now you want to go somewhere else. What are you doing?”
I need to stop this and continue what’s happening. That feeling of security definitely built around that a safety net that comes from a place of survival. It was this very important mechanism that we have inside of us. I started to see that security isn’t real. I step more into the trust that if I follow my path, my calling, what some people would call my Dharma or my destiny, I will be taken care of. Things are going to come in my life to support that and to feel that trust. That was the way that I was able to stop working as a classical musician, let go of my salary, my life, my relationship. I step into a completely new chapter in my life where I had no clue what was going to happen and how that will unfold but in complete trust that was the only right thing that I could do.
You make it sound easy. Whereas as you said, “I was in survival mode, competing to be this world-class musician, to letting go to just trust.” It’s easy to articulate but that in itself is challenging. What I want to focus on this point specifically is the world is changing fast. The technology is disrupting different industries, geopolitical situations, the market conditions, everything. As you said, “In my mind, it’s easier to be in a monastery.” It’s a simple life. You chop wood, you carry water, you do your meditation, that’s that. As householders, there are different challenges. We do live in this realm. Money is part of the equation when you buy food, pay rent, all these things.
Walk us a little bit deeper of how did you foster that courage, listening to that inner voice and trust because you can speak for you. I speak for myself. That process in itself is challenging because essentially the transformation process, I needed to let go of these old programming and embrace the new belief that I have. Walk us a little bit deeper on how you navigate that water and in service of whoever is reading this as a path to reinvent themselves? As the macro environment changed very rapidly, people must need to or have to reinvent themselves over and over. Walk us a little bit in more details, play by play if you can.
You’re right, that process can be challenging. Two years between my first ceremonies plus opening the center in Peru was a very challenging time. I had moments where I felt lost and disconnected. I’m questioning the whole shift that was happening. I’m questioning all the modalities I was connecting to. Being in a place where I’ve felt depressed, anxiety or insecurity. I felt the judgment of people around me and I felt my own judgment. It was a very challenging time. The question of how to go through that time is a very important question. What I learned is trust comes from a place of feeling connected and fear comes from a place of feeling disconnected. That was for me a huge part of my journey.
Ancient Healing Modalities: More and more people are starting to see, feel, and notice that the environment we’re living now is not sustainable. Connection to what?
Being connected to that energy that’s all around us all the time. There’s this bigger field, some people call that spiritual energy. Some people might call that God or great spirit. From the scientific world, if you look at how the small tiny particles, atoms, electrons, neurons, there’s so much space between them, 99.999, I don’t know how many nines, it’s empty space. Still, we see this table as dense and we don’t see that open space in here, that space that’s in between that, that’s a certain force. That’s what all mystics, all religions, all spiritual traditions are speaking of that force. That force is your essence, that is my essence, that is the essence of all that is. To be connected with that, that’s a key. However you name that force is up to a person.
If you believe in higher force and are part of a religion or spiritual tradition, then that is a force to connect with. If you’re an atheist, then life is that force because that’s something that’s birthing us, that’s happening, that’s greater than us. Be connected with that and that comes on a smaller level to being connected to people that share your belief system, your values and your way of living. Being in a community of people that support you, to be connected even to one person that understands what you’re talking about. Finding connection is a big part of that. What was instrumental in my own journey was the same time I started that journey with these sacred medicines. I did my Kundalini yoga teacher training. That year of training, we’re going slowly in a daily spiritual practice doing yoga and some meditation every day.
The journey was a wobbly journey. It was something with full commitment and eight days it was doing yoga two hours a day. I didn’t do any yoga for two weeks and I was going up and down and back and forth. What’s slowly going into those practices is using my body in yoga to move those energies inside of me and strengthening my body in that way. Those practices are there to connect. All those practices are about connection. For me, building a daily spiritual practice has been the single biggest gift in my life that I could have given myself to go into that transformation. If I have not done that, I don’t think I would have found what you call courage to make those steps, those decisions and those shifts.
Even when I started and I started something very new without a lot of experience to go to those beginning steps, I still feel I’m very much at the beginning of this journey. Those practices helped me tremendously. Connecting with these very powerful plants, these very powerful medicines, I’ve seen it with many people. There are these huge transformational moments in the ceremony. Then I come out and in a few weeks, they lose that connection and then they go back. Sometimes when you go back, you’re on the worst state than you were before because you have seen what’s happening.
You’ve experienced truth more specifically, not the absolute truth per se but your personal truth. You’ve witnessed who you are in your essence.
The awareness comes in that you are not living in truth. The awareness of not living in truth is much more difficult than not having that awareness at all. People come back sometimes in a more challenging position. For me those practices like meditation, yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi, for some people that might be surfing, hiking and spending time in nature, whatever practice where you work while you use your body connecting with that spiritual force, that is a massive key to feel that connection and to go into that trust. If you look at indigenous people, our nervous system is such an important part of our body internally. The nervous system is the gateway or the highway of information between your brain and the muscles.
If you move, all go to the nervous system, those impulses but also that connection with a bigger field that’s your nervous system. The nervous system is the antenna to connect with those forces. If you live in the forest all the time like the indigenous people, that nervous system is so strong. They hunt, they fish, they built houses from cutting trees and falling them. They’re working hard and using their body in nature all the time. Their nervous system is super strong. We live in the Western world. We’re not connected to nature. We might take foods that are not completely without toxins. We don’t have those practices. Our nervous system is much weaker. We are naturally less connected. To go into these practices for some people are an amazing way to use these tools to feel more that connection.
What are some of your practices as a way to cultivate that antenna as you said?
Trust comes from a place of feeling connected. Fear comes from a place of feeling disconnected.
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Every morning, I do my Kundalini yoga and the meditation. When I do that, I feel more connected. The difficult thing is when I don’t do it for four to seven days, there will be massive shifts. It’s big learning because the impulse of us human beings is to feel good and feel great, we stopped those practices, then we go back.
I got it. I don’t need to do these things anymore. Let’s go a little bit more tactical here. Is there a specific time? Is there a specific meditation that you use?
That is different for every person. There are many different spiritual practices around and the reason for that is because there are many different human beings. The key is finding something that you enjoy because finding joy in the practice is such a key.
Joy is an indicator that this is the right path, that you continue to pull this thread.
It’s a huge indicator. For example, when I started to connect with yoga, I was living in Berlin at that time. I traveled for seven to eight years every summer to the east like India, Nepal, Tibet, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. In those countries, I connected with different modalities. When I went to Thailand, I did a juice fast and did yoga for the very first time. An American guy who was living in that juice fast center. I did my very first yoga class and he luckily knew six to eight different types of yoga very well. He showed all of them to me in that week. I went back to Berlin and he said, “Go find different teachers, go to different schools and see what you connect with.” He explained to me a few yogas.
At the time, I connected with Ashtanga yoga because his main practice was Ashtanga. That’s what I went to in Berlin but I’m quite tall. I learned that I’m not very flexible. At the time, I couldn’t even reach my toes with my fingers. I would bend down and bend my knees. I could maybe reach my knees. They were very stiff. Ashtanga yoga is very much working with your body. I start to feel a little bit of comparison and even shame like I’m way less flexible than all the people around me in the class. It didn’t give me so much joy and then when I did Kundalini for the first time, after the first class I was like, “This is my yoga.” That indication of joy I felt was for me a key. I have stuck to that practice since. I haven’t gone to a single different yoga class in the last few years because I know Kundalini yoga is my practice. For people that are at the beginning of the journey, find your practice and the same with the time of the day.
For me, it works what I learned over the years to do it first thing in the morning because once I go into my life, many things happen. Many things come, conversations, people, work, relationships, family, phone calls, emails and computer. Life just happens and then sometimes, I go to bed in the evening and I forget. The next morning, I wake up and I’m like, “I forgot.” I learned to do it first thing in the morning, otherwise I don’t do it. I know people who love doing both. They go to sleep and then they closed that day in that way. They sleep well. Some people like to do it in their afternoon break or when they come home at 5:00 PM. The time of day, I don’t think is important. People say it’s best to do it early morning because then also the world is much quieter. Those spirits are much easier to feel. I believe that’s true. For us householders, to meditate at 4:00, 5:00 in the morning, that’s very difficult.
Did you do the Sadhana thing? It’s beautiful at 4:00 AM.
I did a while the Sadhana. It’s amazing but I learned that playing at a concert and coming home at 11:30 in the evening and waking up at 4:00 on my yoga mat didn’t work for me. I would go to the rehearsal at 9:30, I would be exhausted. That was not serving me. That was not serving anybody. That was not serving the orchestra because I was not concentrating. I was sleepy. I found my own way and I think in this Western time, it’s beautiful to fine tune those practices that work for you. To do Sadhana at 4:00 AM as a monk living in a monastery, that’s amazing. As a householder for some people it might be easy, for some people, they’d like to sleep in regards to their work that extends late in the evening or late in the night. That might not be a possibility.
Ancient Healing Modalities: The awareness of not living in truth is much more difficult than not having that awareness at all. It’s not practical. I love that you emphasize on the point of saying do what works for you versus this is the doctrine, the 4:00 AM, the 5:00 AM or the Upasana, two hours per day. I don’t have two hours a day as a householder to do that. It’s impractical for me to live my householder life.
Sometimes it’s a pity because when those teachers come out so strong and these teachers are all doing Upasana several times. To do two times an hour a day of meditation in my life, especially how it was in Amsterdam, that was not a possibility. I believe the teaching that if you want to dive in that practice, it only works if you do two hours a day. That’s true but at the same time, it doesn’t work. Sometimes when these doctrines are pushed strongly, people feel guilty, “I want to meditate but if I don’t meditate two times an hour a day, then I’m not welcome. What’s this?” It brings shame, blame, fear and anxiety.
That’s exactly what we want to go away from. In that sense, it’s finding the right balance between honoring your practice, finding the practice that has a need for you, where you feel joy and the benefits coming. Honoring the practices as they are and go into the hoots of them and learning them. That balance is one of the beautiful challenges of this time for us people in the Western world to have the great gift of living in a time where all these practices are coming into the Western world. A century ago, that was not possible. We are the pioneers of bringing those practices in this busy Western world.
I can’t speak for you. I speak for myself. I don’t think that I ever feel that I’m looking forward to doing a difficult task, whether it be yoga or meditation because right away I experience boredom. Right away, I experience discontent. I also am very much aware of my internal state. The payoff of this difficult task, yoga, meditation, whatever it may be internally is a clarity, inner stillness and that quiet sense of joy. I choose to do my practices first thing in the morning because that’s when my willpower is strongest versus for the people that wait until the last thing they do before they go to sleep. I admire that, but that’s not me because by that time I just want to go to sleep and finished the day versus overcoming this internal hurdle of doing something that I know would take work. What would you say to that? Is it similar or different?
I see a lot of similarities in my own journey. I also sometimes don’t necessarily enjoy doing yoga and meditation in the morning, especially if there are a lot of things to do that day. I know that there are many tasks that are waiting for me. Sometimes I would love nothing more than to get going on them, whether it be going on my computer and doing a task or going to meetings or whatever is there. I know that resistance very much, but when I’ve done the practice and I come out with a much more feeling of being centered, calmness, joy, relax, much more concentrated, much more centered, that’s the joy I feel going to the day. What I learned is the joy in having a daily spiritual practice on the longer term is there but sometimes in the practice, I’m like, “Here we go again.”
That’s something that’s very connected to our Western society. We have learned so much that things have to be quick, things have to be now, things have to happen at this moment. With the whole social media and the whole technical realm that is coming more and more into our lives, that instant gratification is something that we get used to. These spiritual practices are not so much for instant gratification. It’s more for the long-term gratification and joy that comes from that. Spirituality does not happen at this moment, it’s a journey.
Let me bring back to micro-dosing. There’s a certain stigma that some people feel like with plant medicine, “I don’t want to be dependent on something to get me to a particular state.” I grapple with that myself at the beginning of it. I realized for me that I could reframe the concept of taking micro-dosing to taking vitamins. I drink coffee to get me to a certain state, to be more focused and to get me going. I take vitamins as a way to prime my brain and my body for the environment that is best conducive for me. Did you have to navigate that to educate and make your clients more aware of, “This is not something to shy away from?” I’m curious if you can navigate and share a little bit about your story of sharing even for yourself internally. How do you reframe the idea of taking this Ayahuasca vine as a way to prime for your best self to show up?
This is what I see with many people that are connecting with these plant medicines. Some people think, “If I go to a ceremony by Ayahuasca, for example, it will change my life completely.” I will come out transformed and healed. I’m a different person, not the same. In one layer, that can be true but at the same time, the indigenous people tell us that these plants are plant teachers. Plants teach us something. Unlike a teacher in a classroom, a teacher can point the way. They can show you where to go and give you a bigger picture of what’s possible and what’s out there. The teacher will not take the steps for you. The teacher will not shift the things inside of you.
What micro-dosing see is connecting with such a strong plant teacher, let’s say Ayahuasca, by taking a tiny amount each day. Will that shift your state of being? Maybe for most people, it does but if you don’t take different actions, if you don’t speak different words, if you don’t show up in your relationship in a different way, you’ll still be the same person. If you start to see that, it’s very empowering. To say, “These medicines are going to do the work for me. I will just lay back on the sofa and watch TV all day and wait for the shift to happen,” is very disempowering. I don’t think these plant medicines or any of these spiritual practices come into our life to disempower us. They come to empower us.
Spirituality does not happen in a moment; it’s a journey.
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If you connect with these plants and your state of being slowly started to shift, then it’s up to you to make those changes. The way I see it, micro-dosing is not the fuel to bring you in that state that you can maybe call the state of flow. I see this happen as we meet people that seem in alignment and we feel in a good space, let’s say that’s the state of flow. Micro-dosing is not a fuel to keep you in that movement. Micro-dosing as I see it is the kickstarter to get to your own journey, but then a daily spiritual practice like meditation, yoga, Tai Chi or whatever, that’s the fuel to keep you going. I see micro-dosing as kickstarting people into the next chapter of their lives, but also taking them out of micro-dosing, so they’re not dependent on that substance for the rest of their lives. It teaches them what it is to have a daily spiritual practice. It guides them to the process that I had myself of doing ten days of yoga, two hours a day and then losing it for a month. How can you build a daily spiritual practice slowly and easy so you can make it a habit and a part of the new you? This daily spiritual practice, that’s the fuel to keep the journey going. That’s how I see the use of these very powerful plant medicines.
It’s a very modern way of thinking that if I do this, then automatically I don’t even have to think or I don’t even need to make a choice. The reality, at least for my personal journey, is that you’re still the driver of this vehicle. You still need to, moment by moment, choose what’s workable and what’s best for you. You mentioned you have a music background and part of your journey is to empower people to shift their belief system, the operating system that’s inside their brain, the lens that they look at life, this reality. How have you used your musical training as a way to guide that journey from disempowering belief to empowering belief for yourself as well as for your client?
Music is such an amazing teacher in so many ways. I love music.
Music as a consumer or music as active playing?
Music in the biggest sense of the word. If you look at music, it can show many things, especially in classical music where it’s a big part of a big symphony orchestra. That’s the world I was in for many years. It’s harmony when people play different tones at the same moment you get a chord. When those chords are built up in a certain way that is in line with the laws of nature, as Pythagoras put that so amazingly in the system, then harmony can happen. If you have a chord that’s fully in harmony and a whole symphony orchestra that plays in harmony, that can be touching. A heart can start to open like, “This is beautiful. That’s such inspiring music.”
If you take that into daily lives, if people interact with each other and you see the actions and the words of people as tones that you played in a symphony orchestra, are those tones going to play harmony? Are those tones going to create this harmony? When there’s friction between people, it’s not in harmony? When you’re able to shift the vibration where you sing with your accent, your words, and create harmony. I think that’s beautiful. Music shows us that amazingly. When you’re playing the guitar and you put your fingers on the fret, on different strings in a certain way and you strum those things, you can get a beautiful chord. If you put them on different fret it can be horrible. It’s not harmony. It doesn’t sound well. Music brings people into harmony. That’s a beautiful thing to always look for.
Do you use music as part of your training or rituals to empower your clients to shift from disempowering beliefs to empowering beliefs in the moment’s notice?
Music is such an amazing tool for that. In retreats that we do, music is a big part of that. If you look at many movements, may that be churches that are using music in their worship. A couple of years ago, I went to a church that my sister visits and it was a church that I never visited, a certain lineage of Christianity and they were singing music in their mass or in their place of worship. I entered that space and I started to cry. I felt how much energy was there and how much it was touching people. I saw the transformation it had on my sister and I saw the transformation it had an all the people there. I was like, “How beautiful.” Even if you look at the Second World War, Adolf Hitler used music also in a powerful way to get people in certain states to do some things that they did. Music is an incredible force. If you go to a pop concert of Lady Gaga and people who connect with that type of music, people that are in such a space with tens of thousands of people and being in that space of the music and dancing are almost going into a trance. It’s amazing what music can bring and how it can shift our states. Music is incredible power for a vehicle to use in transformation.
Do you have a specific type of music that you listen to when you’re in a funk during the day-to-day or do you have any ritualistic type of music? For example, I love listening to cinematic music about superheroes when I wake up because right away I’m a superhero waking up, getting ready for the rest of my day. That’s very energizing and very empowering for me. Do you have anything like that? When you encounter some setback doing your day-to-day, it puts you right back to a resourceful and empowering state.
Ancient Healing Modalities: Micro-dosing is not a fuel to keep you in the movement. Micro-dosing is the Kickstarter to get to your own journey. That’s beautiful to use music in that way. One experience was maybe a few years ago when the new Star Wars movie came out. I went to see it in the very few days with a couple of good friends and the moment that tune that started the movie, the whole cinema was shouting. That piece of music had such a history and it makes people ride back to that place. It was amazing to feel that. I use music in that way as well. If I feel sad or I’ve been down, I put something that’s calming. One artist or a group of artists that I connected with is the Sacred Earth. It’s a couple from Australia. The woman sings and I’m not sure if it’s her husband or a man that plays the flute. She also plays keyboards and it’s relaxing, calm and a voice like an angel singing. The music calms me so much.
For example, when I was in the classical music world, I was going to auditions. I was feeling a bit of anxiety, stress and at the same time I needed to go on that stage and give all that I had to win that audition and to get that position in the orchestra, I would listen to the music of Wagner. That’s a big orchestra with a starting very soft overture music. It starts very softly and the whole orchestra builds this majestic and bombastic music that went to this state of feeling victory. That was my music to go into that. I’ve used music in many ways in many moments of my life to do that.
You do hold ceremonies as well outside of States. Do you have a preference to live musician versus recorded music? The reason I asked that question is that when I hear people saying, “I just play the MAPS playlist from ceremony music. It’s scientifically proven,” and in my mind I was like, “That’s a good place to start.” The pitfall of a fixed playlist is it’s not interactive. The facilitator doesn’t read into the energy of the room and play the appropriate music for their room. I’m curious to hear your perspective as a former professional musician, I don’t know if you still play music and also as a ceremonialist. What’s your point of view on that? Live musician, recorded music or a little bit of both? How do you navigate that?
Live music is something absolutely unique. When a facilitator is leading a ceremony that sings, that plays music and is fully tapped into the room and energy of what’s happening there and plays music on that energy or directs energy with the music, that’s something magical. That’s where the magic starts to happen. That’s where full transformation can start to happen because music is such a transformation. When people go to like a relief concert, they feel that transformation, they want to get into that trance state. Life music can do that and that’s what a good DJ does. Feel the room and feel the people, even on a wedding, playing dance music as a DJ. A good DJ listens to the room, sees the room and plays those songs that fit that crowd of people. It’s that fine-tuning with people. Good musicians may not be a DJ, a singer, instrumentalists, sound healer or anything, that’s such a key part of leading a ceremony or leading any type of ceremony. Live music in that sense is incomparable with any playlist.
At the same time, we live in this time where we have now access to a massive amount of music. There are different subscriptions that are readily available to the internet at this time, which is such a gift. What I learned coming back from the ceremonies in Peru, I thought it was a once in a lifetime experience but then five months later on social media, somebody posted a video of a guy from Venezuela that I had sat next to into my ceremony. The video was about him singing a song that he had sung in a very deep moment in my ceremony. When I listened back to that song, it brought me back to that experience almost immediately, tears were coming. I was almost back in that ceremony by just listening to music. In that sense, having a playlist with music that you have experienced in that transformational moments or concert that you resonate with or artists that you like, it’s such an amazing way to bring you back to those states. They both can be used in their own ways. I don’t think one is better than the other. Different tools and different moments, we use them.
You had plenty of experience with plant medicine. What are some of the criteria that you use that you experience as a way to discern who are great space holders? The ability to read the room and give what the space needs. What are some of the ways that you can recommend people reading this to evaluate their facilitator, their pajés or whoever?
I always like to go back to the tradition where a certain medicine comes from. Let’s talk about Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca comes from the indigenous people of the Amazon on their various tribes that have been working with Ayahuasca for thousands and thousands of years. That has happened to many different times. At times of great wars and starvation, at times where the missionaries came in and forbade indigenous people to use their medicines, speak their language, do their prayers, tell their stories, only be able to speak Portuguese or Spanish. Times where the rubber tappers came in and enslaved indigenous people to work for the rubber tappers plantations. Too many times these medicines have survived. They stood the test of time gloriously. The test of time is maybe the most difficult test to stand.
It’s good to go back to those traditions and to see what have those people learned over all that period of time, whether these to come into the place to hold a ceremony. I went to an indigenous tribe. I’ve met them in an amazing way. I’m grateful for the meeting and was blessed to spend until now a number of years with the Yawanawá. I was allowed to enter a ceremony. I asked them, “What does it take for somebody to lead a ceremony?” How can you get into the place to become a pajé or a shaman? What I learned over the years is that they have a very set path. The path with indigenous people is dieta. These are extended periods of time where you sometimes work with master plans or with other modalities, but they all happen in isolation in the jungle where you go away from society, just connecting with nature.
Normally, it takes complete long days of celibacy. Sometimes even not drinking water and drinking other liquids like the juice of the yucca that’s chewed by women. For example, not eating any sweets, just corn or green bananas. To take away all the desires of the body, sweets and sexuality is a tool based on desires. To take that away and then go to deep processes of transformation yourself to connect with those forces, to face them and to learn how to pay them because they told me, “Leading a ceremony, you’re going to face three major forces to work with, power, sexuality and money. Once you learn to work with them in a responsible way, then you’re more ready to lead the ceremony.”
If you don't take different actions, speak different words, and show up in a different way, you'll still be the same person.
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When those forces still have free rein inside of you, then you might act from a different space and then you might hold a ceremony with different intentions than to provide transformation or healing for people. They came up at these periods and then a version of the Yawanawá, it’s very specific. They’re beautiful to see how things moved because through and missionaries are coming in, through the rubber tappers coming in the last century or a centrally and a half, they almost lost a complete tradition. It happened in many tribes. Many tribes in this time in the Amazon have no connection anymore with that tradition. They don’t know the songs anymore. They don’t know how to use the medicines. They don’t know their stories. They don’t know the language. They completely went in speaking Portuguese and going into the Catholic Church, speaking Spanish and leaving the tradition over a few generations.
The Yawanawá in the year 2000 almost completely lost their tradition. There were a few elders that still had that knowledge inside of them. A few young people stood up and said, “We don’t want this anymore. We want to be Yawanawá again. We want the tradition back.” They stood up and they kicked out the missionaries of their land and stood for the tradition. They entered a one-year dieta of their most sacred plant called Mucca, which they say is the true preparation to be able to become a spiritual leader, a person that can hold ceremonies, a leader of a village, a healer, a medicine man and a teacher. That one-year dieta of Mucca is their big, major and a very clear step that has happened to many generations in the last centuries and millennia to come to that place.
Three people stood up and after 40 years of the dieta not happening, they did it again. Those three elders that are still present at the time started to teach them. They started to remember that and slowly that tradition came back. What happened five years after that, once they learn again how to use the medicines, it slowly starts all ceremonies, because there were no ceremonies for maybe over a decade or two decades, then Western people came and they came with many things. Money and gifts started to come to those people. They start to build bigger houses. They had started having different clothes. Their children had food. Maybe a few years ago, the people in the tribe said about those three men that were going to do that, “Why are you doing that? The time has passed. We are not those people anymore. Forget about it. Don’t go back to these practices. It’s gone.” Those people are drinking alcohol and listening to music on big speakers and having parties in the village. Those people stood for the tradition.
A few years later when they saw the benefits coming into these people that have done these dietas, then those people wanted the same benefits. What happened is some of those Indians start to put the feather crown on their head. They got the crown on a hand. They have a bottle of medicine in the hand and, “I’m a shaman. Come to me. I lead ceremonies. I’m an indigenous person. I will lead you to these ceremonies.” What the tribe told me is, “They are charlatans.” They have not done the work to come to the place to lead a ceremony. They’re just looking for that money. They’re looking for that recognition and that power. They’re looking maybe for sexuality with women that come to the ceremonies. That’s a very dangerous direction to watch, they told me. I saw that happening. I see that happening in the Western world. Many people are leading ceremony that might not have that preparation. Also many people luckily are leading ceremony that has done that preparation. The path is clearly carved out. This is the path that many people have walked before us in the last century, which is completely carved out and simple to walk.
It’s simple to know where the path is but it’s a big challenge to go to that path. I’ve done a year and two months of dieta until now and I will keep doing dieta in my life. It has been transformational and humbling. It’s a very difficult process sometimes. Indigenous people say that is the way to come into the place to lead a ceremony responsibly. To go back to the ancient traditions and there are also questions, “How will you get to the place to do that?” I think it’s a very good place to start then to take those steps and walk that path. That’s a very responsible way to go.
From all the ceremonies you’ve done, you have plenty of experience. What are some of the criteria that you use to find the perfect and the proper facilitator for those who are reading?
What’s good is to ask questions. Even before you ask some questions, what’s good to know about connecting with plant medicines. The indigenous people say working with plant medicine, you’re working with the spirit of the medicine like Ayahuasca, you’re working with the spirit like Abuela. This great being that’s behind the drink. This drink is almost as medicine, almost like a gateway to connect with her. They say this spirit is singing all the time. It’s like a calling that he sings out. First of all, it’s important to hear that calling. That calling is not the calling that you hear with the human ears.
It was a calling that comes to you and several ways by reading a book, hearing somebody talk about it, having a friend and having an experience like, “That’s something I would like to do one day.” That’s the calling of the medicine. Listen to that calling. If you don’t feel the calling, then the medicine isn’t for you. If you talk about it to other people and you feel the other person on that are calling, there’s no need to convince them or to pull them an experience. Let everyone have their own calling. The first step, see if you feel the calling to have the experience. Never go into the experience because your friends are going or your family or like it’s a business trip from your company or anything like that.
Someone is pressuring you into it. That’s exactly the total opposite of why you should go into the ceremony with.
Ancient Healing Modalities: Leading a ceremony, you’re going to face three major forces to work with – power, sexuality, and money. “Let’s do the next experience,” that’s not a good reason to go. Hear the calling of the medicine. If you’re reading this and you’re like, “I don’t know what that means,” then you have not heard the calling. The second is if you go, “Where can I do that?” There are many places in the world where you can do ceremonies and go to retreats. It’s sometimes difficult for people to find the place that’s in integrity. That’s why it’s held by people that know what they’re doing. At least they’re all certain amount. Ask questions and I think a few questions that are important to ask is like, “Are you connected to any tradition or any lineage?” In the medicine world, there are several traditions with Ayahuasca, for example. These are lineages with long traditions and the people that are there are holding those type of works. They went to several processes to get to their place. You can trust that. If there’s a lineage behind it, that’s a good guideline of knowing that the place is safe. That’s what happens.
“Maybe have you studied with a certain tradition? Have you spent time with an indigenous tribe? Have you done dietas? What’s your study? Where have you studied? Why have you learned this?” Those are good questions to ask because not everybody is connected to a tradition like that. Maybe they studied in the Amazon with other people and followed the certain paths to get to that place so that you know it’s not just somebody having a handful of ceremonies, learn ten songs, found some medicine and is holding a ceremony. Finding their background a little bit. Then the most important is to trust your intuition. Even when all your friends have gone there and had an amazing experience. You come to that place and you’re sitting in front of the facilitator. He or she offers you a cup of medicine and your whole body says, “No,” trust that intuition and step away.
Never go somewhere other than your own path. You don’t have to explain it to yourself or to other people, only at the ceremony when you fully trust the environment, when you fully trust the people that are holding you. If you go to deep places inside of yourself and if you don’t feel fully held, it’s going to be a very challenging experience. Wait until the next time and trust the timing because that will show you that the time is not now yet and just wait for next time because something better is waiting for you. Always follow your intuition. If your intuition says no, then don’t go into it. If the intuition saying no is something else, then get rid of fear. Resistance can come up naturally going to those places because the mind is very powerful. The mind wants to be controlled in going to these experiences. One of the first teachings of these medicines might be to let go of that control. Feel out the resistance because it’s sometimes good to go to a little bit of resistance. If the resistance is something else, then your intuition is telling you it’s these people that are holding the ceremony.
How do you discern the resistance versus the intuition? How would you advise someone to discern the fear, the resistance versus the inner calling of saying no?
For example after my first ceremony, I had a huge resistance because I did not have the experience that I want to. I thought, “I would never do this again.” I voiced that to the man that was holding the ceremonies. I listened to the answer. “I don’t think I want to go back to the second ceremony. This is not working for me. Maybe it’s even a scam. I didn’t get anything out of this first ceremony. I just want to go home.” He gave this beautiful smile with open eyes and the answer he gave me, it gave me so much trust in this person. There was not anything I felt from him. He didn’t go into anything like trying to shift my mind or feeling attacked or something like that.
He was seeing my resistance and he gave me a beautiful answer that will help me to go to it. Then I knew this is something inside of me. It’s not something inside of him. Ask questions and go into the conversation. Send an email before a ceremony like, “This is what’s coming up. How would you work with that?” Listen to the answer. If the answer comes from any place of feeling defensive from the facilitator, there you go. If it’s an answer that supports you come to that resistance, then you can see what’s happening inside of me. That could be one way to find it out.
One of the things I tell people is that going to the ceremony is similar to going into spiritual surgery. In some ways, it’s even more important than finding a doctor because in your ceremony work, you go into the deepest part of who you are, the subconscious, parts of you that you may have suppressed. Parts of you that you may have avoided looking at it. It’s super important that you find someone to have you feel safe and helped. Mixing analogy a little bit, it’s almost also like finding your spouse or your partner. There is someone perfect for you, but not everyone’s perfect for you. It’s like that. A lot of times it’s not just the training, the experience and the testimonials. A lot of it is a resonance level.
If you don’t resonate with that particular facilitator, that’s okay. There’s probably another circle or another facilitator that’s perfect for you, to each his own. Thank you so much for sharing your answer. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey doing dieta? I haven’t done dieta myself but I would imagine this. Plant medicine is a non-specific amplifier of who you are, your light and your shadow, from my personal mental model. What I’ve heard doing a dieta process is you’re going to drink the medicine every day yourself remotely.
In my mind I think it’s difficult enough to drink medicine with the groups’ pure support, with guidance. It’s super advanced me to do it along the dark by yourself in the remote part of the jungle. Walk us through a little bit about the dieta process mechanically. What’s the mechanics of the dieta process as well as what are some of your personal journey, the internal grappling of facing your internal light and shadow in the dark by yourself? This is my guess, my speculation. If you can tell us a little bit more from your personal experience, that will be useful.
Music is an incredible power and vehicle to use in transformation.
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First of all, the dietas in different traditions might be completely different. The dieta Mucca is very specific to the tradition of the Yawanawá. It’s a big step, one-year dieta. It’s a massive step and not many people have done that step. Other types might have different ways that they found in their history to do that. I can speak about the dieta of the Yawanawá. You go into a place outside of the village. I built a house outside of the village. It’s half an hour walking and people are taking care of me in the sense of making food and making the drink I could drink. They’re giving me the plants, the guidance and the teachings. It was not in complete isolation. The teachers and the guides that lead you to the dieta are guiding you.
In the ceremony, those people are not going to hold you in a sense as you might go as a participant to a ceremony where people will guide you, hold you and lead you to that process. One basic of holding space for other people is to learn to hold the space for yourself. There’s only one way to do it. It’s in those ways. That’s a learning curve because what they told me is it’s easy to say yes. When you are a spiritual leader, then I am responsible for my power. When I am a spiritual leader, then I will be responsible with my sexuality. When I am a spiritual leader, then I will be responsible for all the negative energy that will move inside of me. That’s not how it works. You start now and you work with those forces inside of yourself and once you learn to understand them, face them, integrate them, facing your own shadow, embracing your own shadow, stepping into the place of power of holding that, owning that, learning how to tame those forces. Then and only then they say you can slowly start to hold that space for other people. By experiencing that inside of yourself, you understand much more what’s happening inside of other people.
You’re supervised, just not supported in that way.
You’re supported in a way but in a certain way, much less supported like somebody holding your hand going to the ceremony.
I do a little sharing myself. I started boxing. In my mind, I can go into the ring. It’s easier to watch TV and make comments about the boxers in the ring. It’s very different. When you want to learn how to fight in a ring, similarly, you got to step into the ring and fight and is supervised. There are trainers around, give me guidance and everything. Nonetheless, I need to step into the ring and practice that practice. Can you share with us a little bit of the internal journey doing the dieta? What did you have to grapple with or face that you didn’t particularly like? What did you learn from that process?
What you say about boxing is beautiful. I think that might be a difference between having knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge can be just having inflammation, watching, seeing, reading, knowing in another way. If you combine that with experience, having gone to all and stepping inside the ring and knowing what it is to be in a fight, then knowledge plus experience becomes wisdom. Wisdom is something very precious which can only come from experience. You had to earn it. Let’s see what I can say about my dietas. My second long dieta was six months. I took the saliva of an Anaconda.
Is it toxic?
No, you don’t feel it. You don’t taste it. You don’t smell it. There are no psychoactive effects but it’s a big force to many things in your life. I went into that and at that time in the tribe, when it was just two months in my dieta, one of the elders started to end his life. He fell and went to a difficult process. He went to the hospital in the big city. They found some things and said they had nothing they could do. They flew him back in a helicopter to the tribe. I was there in the village, half an hour walking outside and the whole village was next to the bed of the elder taking care of him and guiding his passage that we call death. I was in the forest alone, not with people guiding me. I felt abandoned. I felt betrayed. I felt many things. Strong emotions came up and it was a challenging dieta to me. I lost twelve kilos of weight in a week. I had to walk half an hour to the village. I was exhausted. Many times, I stood up quick. I would be dizzy. I have to hold myself to something in order not to fall.
I went to many emotions and then it came to the realization like, “Am I doing this dieta to learn to help people and to support people through difficult processes?” There’s a difficult process I’m having here. It’s a very difficult process. One of the elders of the tribe and the most revered, one of the last two shamans is dying. The whole tribe was there. “What am I doing here, pitying myself, going into this stage of desperation and abandonment and many things?” That was a huge lesson for me.
Ancient Healing Modalities: By experiencing what is inside of yourself, you understand much more what’s happening inside of other people. What’s the lesson?
The lesson was to show up and do not let my own inner process of feeling abandoned and betrayed, all these things that were coming up guide me in my actions, my words and my judgments. To remember what was my intention of doing it. It’s to learn to help people. The whole time they needed help in so many ways with us. They went to one of the most difficult periods of the last decade. The relationship with my teacher was very challenging at this time because I felt that abandonment and betrayal. When I came back to that realization, I felt so sorry for the way I had shown up. I felt so sorry that I had gone completely in my own world and not been in support of what was happening there.
That opened beautiful conversations and I apologized deeply and he apologized deeply also for not honoring the commitment that we did have. It ended up with a whole new deeper level of a relationship. It took me out of those negative feelings and I went into compassion, I went into gratitude and seeing their journey as a huge gift and teaching, instead of seeing that journey as a time where I was lost and betrayed and left alone and abandoned. To go to that fall at three months, that was a big thing. Was it a difficult time? Absolutely, it was one of the most difficult times of my life but also many gifts came from that.
How are you taking that gift and that lesson into your everyday life? Especially as a space holder for others to go through that as well very easily because now the roles are flip. This person, whoever your students and clients are, they may be going through something deep and it’s very easy to blame you for not showing up for them or whatever it may be. Especially coach-client relationship as well. Now, the position is flipped. How are you able to take a very beautiful lesson in your everyday life?
One way to answer that is to always keep connecting with my intention of why I’m doing something. To know that once I enter an agreement with somebody, I’m responsible for what happens at that time of agreement until the end. I can’t abandon that before the end is there. To stand for that and whatever happens inside of me, that’s a secondary. That agreement that I entered by leading people to a process that’s a very sacred agreement that I always want to hold. I think that’s integrity.
It’s part of being professional.
That’s part of being a professional. You can say that and part of being a true professional is integrity. That the words you speak and the actions you put are in alignment, and the thoughts that you have and even ideas as well. Once that is all in alignment, then you have integrity. The dieta made much clearer to me now what it is to be in integrity. If something happens like let’s say something strong like that happens, it’s to open a full transparent communication to explain what’s happening and maybe to change an agreement or anything like that. It’s to be always open and transparent and not to just step away without open communication.
I always admire people who had taken the healer’s path. That’s one of my realizations in Ayahuasca ceremony. It’s difficult enough to live this human life. It’s even more difficult to take a healer’s path from my point of view, because not only you’re handling your own internal state, your own affairs, grappling with whatever is happening inside your head, now you’re taking on somebody else’s. I’ll expand the definition of the healer a little bit more. It’s more challenging to be a leader because now you’re responsible for someone else.
If you are an entrepreneur, if you’re a parent, if you are a friend in the deepest way, you’re now taking on someone else’s stuff. I’m curious to know your thoughts why did you pick this healer’s path? One may say, relatively speaking, it’s easier to go into an orchestra, play your thing and then you go home and you’re done. It’s another level up to now taking the healer’s path. Tell us a little bit about the journey from being a musician, employee, contractor to now healer, willingly taking on someone else’s pain, suffering or whatever they’re dealing with.
One basic thing about holding space for other people is to learn to hold the space for yourself.
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You touched on something beautiful and that’s very connected to the dietas. That’s exactly what the indigenous people told me. To come to the place, to be a leader in the biggest sense of the world, you have to go to several steps. The first step is to have personal leadership. To become the leader of yourself and those dietas is a big part of that to become the leader of yourself so you can control all the forces that move inside of you.
Can you control the forces inside of you?
It’s not about being 100% able to control them. It’s also not controlling in the sense of the word as with force and forcing somebody or yourself in a certain direction. It’s more having control, like if you have control of your hands. You can move your fingers when you decide to move. You cannot move your fingers when you don’t decide to move them. That’s the control you have over all the things you have in your body. We have certain control of our body. You can also have certain mastery over your internal process and learning to observe it, but not learning to be driven by those processes. That’s personal mastery. There’s a lot to do with all the body whole. The food you put in your mouth. The drinks you put in your mouth, the supplements you take, the words you listen to, the music you listen to, the things you would choose to see. All that is becoming holy in the true sense of the word is having full control over all your body whole.
That’s personal leadership. They told me it’s your first layer of leadership, personal leadership. You don’t have to be 100% master on that, but it’s the very first step you have to study. It’s a constant study. The second step is going to your friends, your family and becoming a leader in that sense or become an example in that sense for people, the living example of what’s possible so people get inspired. You have a conversation with people and things start to shift in your family, your relationships, your friends. That is the second layer of leadership. Only then, because let’s say there’s a bigger leadership to be like a spiritual leader or leader of a nation or leader of a tribe or whatever leadership you want to put there, can only be bestowed upon you something much bigger from the great spirit or whatever you say after you have reached a certain level of mastery in those two.
You can see now with many leaders in this world, we can call many examples that have personal leadership. They are in the place of being a bigger leader of countries, governments and big companies. They do not have the level of personal leadership. You see how messy it gets because they bring down so much stuff. They project and so those steps, personal leadership, stepping into the leadership of your family, then going to greater place of leadership and say that are the steps, the responsible steps, to get into that place where you will not be governed by those forces inside, which can be power, money and sexuality.
Confucius said, “Personal mastery, household, country and then the world.” That’s a factual relationship.
Many ancient traditions are something in that direction. It’s so beautiful to hear that.
I’m curious, in your coaching program, micro-dosing to be more specific. You don’t just give them this Ayahuasca vine and say, “Take this three times or take this once a day. Good luck.” What do you give them as part of the service, the transferring of knowledge to empower them to move through the different spaces? I’m assuming and what I’m projecting right now is, “Here’s the Ayahuasca, good luck.” There’s a lot more there. If you can share a little bit of the methodology that you use to guide them through the different spaces, that would be very useful.
The program as it is now and will keep evolving hopefully is there are a few components. One component is the micro-dosing, I’ll come back to that. What’s important, first of all when you enter the journey is where would you like the journey to take you? What’s your goal? What’s the direction that you want to go to? That’s setting out that they’re working for your journey, that setting very clear intentions of what you want to call it. The very first step of the program is to help people to get clear on their own intentions. What do you want? We guide them through that process. They have a workbook around that. How to set clear intentions, easy way, super easy steps. We come to a set of 20 to 25 intentions and they can happen in several aspects of your life. It can be your relationships, your health, your career, your wealth, abundance, your spirituality.
Ancient Healing Modalities: A bigger leadership can only be bestowed upon you from something much bigger. We have nine aspects of your life that we divided and you set intentions at each one of them or just in one or a few of them that you want to concentrate on. We guide people and we teach people how to set a clear set of intentions. We’re helping with that. We would give some comments and suggestions until we have that set in a beautiful way that people feel like, “This is what I want to call into my life.” That’s the very first step. The second step is that we help people to go on building and cultivating a daily spiritual practice. What’s the fuel that keeps your journey going? It’s to stay connected to this bigger field. That is having a daily spiritual practice. For me, that’s a key for anyone that wants to go on that path. Just taking sacred medicines will most probably not going to take you to the place that you want to take too.
It’s very disappointing, I’m sure, for some people to hear that.
They are very important. When you shift your perception around that, it’s not disappointing at all. It’s very empowering because it means you have the power to make the shift. If you come out of the journey and somebody else has to make the shift for you, you can feel, “Without that power, I’m not able to shift.” You’re your own teacher. You’re your own master. Nobody’s a master of you. The medicine as a teacher, come into that way. Building a daily spiritual practice is a big key on that own level of mastery, that own level of leadership.
We help people go into daily spiritual practice. First, it’s with a guided meditation. It’s super easy, connecting with love, trust, abundance, and slowly shift that state of being. From that place when you have a very clear intention, when you have slowly started a daily spiritual practice with all the hurdles that come with doing in the day, two days and missing a day, missing two days, life coming in, traveling, many things can happen. We are there and we’re guiding people. We’re coaching calls and all this email support. There’s a Facebook group. There’s a lot of support where a whole team, it’s not just me holding that department, it’s a whole team.
They’re beautiful people on the team that guide the participant to all that. Two to three weeks in, then the micro-dosing comes. People don’t start the micro-dosing. They wait a little bit to set the whole stage for the medicine to come. Two to three weeks in, we supply people with the vine only tea. It’s a very high quality, beautiful medicine made in the right way. We teach them how to micro-dose. The doses in micro-dosing are very important. If you take too much, it might be overwhelming for people. If you take too less, you might feel nothing. That sweet spot, that’s what we teach people how to get to that sweet spot. Micro-dosing is taking a small dose of a substance so you don’t feel its immediate effects. What many people are looking in this time for a micro-dose is to feel an effect immediately. That’s not what micro-dosing is. It’s basically doing a mini-ceremony. It’s something different. We guide people to find the right dosage in the micro-dosing.
How do you do that? How is one supposed to feel when they hit that sweet spot?
I would say for micro-dosing for the first two to six weeks, it depends how sensitive a person is, you should not feel anything. A very good guide is if you feel anything, it’s too much. When you go to the first phase of micro-dosing, let’s say a month, a bit more or less depending on the person, then that state of flow is coming in and that’s what we’re looking for. The first phase is letting the medicine come into your body. Your body is welcoming the medicine, accentuating your system and then going into that state of flow. We navigate people how to do that.
The second stage is when you’re in that state of flow, how you can keep that state of flow. We teach people to keep the micro-dosage going. At one point we teach them how to go off so that the daily spiritual practice can become the fuel to keep that journey going. We don’t teach people to be dependent on the medicine. We teach people to empower them and to do micro-dosing afterwards. After the program, people get a whole library of spiritual practices in videos so they can continue in that way by themselves.
The overall length of the program is 90 days. Why 90 days? Why not 60 days, 45 days, six months?
You’re your own master. Nobody's a master of you.
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90 days is a good time to establish a new habit. Why is that? What is happening in our physical body that’s carrying our state of being, that’s carrying our belief system? If you study that, your blood and especially your red blood cells are very important in that because your red blood cells carry a lot of oxygen into the body and carries a lot of toxins out of the body, but also that red blood cells as the yogi teachings tell us that carry your belief system. The moment that they had that cell born in the bone marrow, it carries their belief system at that moment. The life cycle of that cell is 90 days. If you go into that whole life cycle of a red blood cell with one practice, that’s a very secure way to build a new habit.
Going back to your intention setting. In my mind, 25 intentions are a lot of intentions. Do you help them to pick one and focus on for the 90 days? Do you pick one in each area and then focus on the 90 days?
We helped them to create a set of 20 to 25 intentions. For the people that are reading and are thinking, “I would love to have a set of intentions,” if they go to our website, AyaFlow.com, they can download for free as a gift the Intention Setting Workbook that I hope to help people go to the process. In that book, I described what are the nine areas of your life. You can choose one of those areas. You can choose all of them. You can choose a few of them, whatever you want to concentrate on. It’s easy steps on how to come to a place that you have such a list of intentions. Because the problem is 90 days and I know is a lifelong journey, 20 to 25 intentions have been proven to be a good amount. One intention can be good to go into a ceremony for example. It’s too much shorter experience, but 20 to 25 is a good amount to go to such a journey which is 90 days.
Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you wanted to cover in our time together?
I think that place of personal leadership I hope is something that people can take a formal conversation. Whatever governments are doing, whatever bigger companies are doing, whatever is happening in the world on a bigger level, your choices, words and actions matter. If we all make different choices, different accents, speak different words, that’s a beautiful way first of all to shift your world. Changing your world is not changing all the things outside of you. Changing the world is changing your world and that’s empowerment. I hope that’s what people can feel from that conversation. We all have that capacity to change our world. Trust that, believe that and know that all your dreams, all your visions are absolutely the truest things that you might ever find in your life. Trust them, follow them, take the steps to get there.
For those of you who are reading, I asked the question of what are some of the criteria that Dennis use to evaluate your teacher, your facilitator, your shaman, your pajé. A big part for me that you didn’t mention but you so much illustrated is the embodiment. For me, how you do one thing is how you do everything. If someone tells me, “Do this, do what I say,” but then they go out and start to not act accordingly, to me that’s a big red flag because then I can’t trust the wisdom because then it’s on a theoretical level. They’re sharing their knowledge level. They may be able to elicit some experiences from the ceremony or whatever but ultimately, what I’m looking for any guru teacher is the embodiment. Thank you so much for embodying everything that you share through your words, through your experience, but also I hope people hear the sincerity, the authenticity, the work that you have taken on, Dennis, to illustrate what it means to live in body life. I’m an engineer by training, so I operationalize everything that you learned. It’s not just empty words that you say. Thank you so much for being here on the show.
Thank you so much. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to be here. I’m very grateful for the invitation.
Important Links: * Dennis Notten * AyaFlow.com
About Dennis Notten Alright, today’s guest has quite a heroic journey. He reinvented himself from being a professional musician in some of the world’s leading orchestras before answering the call to be an ayahuasca evangelist.
His self-discovery journey took him all over the world: India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, New Zealand, Egypt, Brazil and finally Peru.
In his journey of self-discovery, he has been trained with different healing modalities: meditation, kundalini yoga, theta healing, reiki.
And for the past four years, he has been learning the spiritual healing modality from the Yawanawá tribe in the Brazilian Amazon. After receiving the blessing from the spiritual leaders of the Santo Daime to work with the ayahuasca medicine in an open and free way, Dennis has been on a mission to share these powerful ancient healing modalities with the West.
I think it’s abundantly clear that he is committed to learning and sharing healing modalities with others who are on the same path of self-discovery and their own hero’s journey.
Please help me welcome a modern healing arts ambassador between the Amazon tribes and the west, Dennis Notten.
The post 027: How To Bridge The Cultures Between The West And An Amazon Tribe ? – Dennis Notten appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
Rave Mehta a serial entrepreneur, investor, best selling author, concert pianist, and philanthropist. He truly is a modern day renaissance man.
We talked about:
- How he used muscle test to heal himself of Lyme disease and black mold infection
- How he uses inquiry as a tool to hack, neutralize, and release fears: skydiving, shark diving, etc
- The 3 pillars of fear: time, attachment, expectation
- How to increase your gravitational force: breath meditation (3-3-3 or 5-5-5), follow curiosity,
- The 3 levels of truth: personal truth, collective truth, universal truth,
- The path to truth: follow curiosity to compassion to trust to awareness to universal truth
- “what am I misperceiving?” As a tool to examine reality
- Pursue more freedom, pursue more flow. The more freedom you access the less fear you have. The more trust you have the less fear you have
- The optimal scope of challenge is 4% more than your current capacity
- Look at the economic foundation of industries for leverage pointsHow intermittent diet gave him more energy than ever
- and many more topics
Robert is a cloud technology leader, motivator, speaker, and innovator. Robert is a contributing writer for CIO magazine, is the Editor in Chief for The Doppler (the leader in cloud thought leadership) and the host of the popular Motive For Life Podcast.
We talked about:
- How intermittent diet gave him more energy than ever
- How he deals with his darker sides (with a daily dose of chocolate)
- His journey to befriend with his lower self
- How he overcame his victim mindset and victim status to empowered states
- How his guys earned the right to enter his inner world
- The 4,5,7 count breathing technique to calm his fight/flight response
- The willingness to ask for help is the first step
- His encounter with amazon’s ‘bar-raisers’
- How he got an offer with a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple billion dollar exits
- How he faced his upper limits( and faced with his little self sabotaging behaviors)
- How self-worth correlates to self-confidence (and how to increase self-worthiness)
- 3 things he found to effectively let things go (including a pound-of-flesh visualization to have forgiveness and peace of mind)
- The path to talk about self-worth
- His 1st Burning Man experience (and the bike miracle he experienced)
- and many more topics
David Bergeaud is an award-winning composer, poly instrumentalist and record producer. He records and performs on a variety of exotic instruments (200+) from the middle east and India. His music is inspired by three decades of international travels, his European classical roots, and a lifelong love of jazz.
Over the course of his career, David has composed music for numerous award winning film and television soundtracks, commercials, music for theater and stage performances.Tastefully weaving his classical background, world influences, love of jazz and fascination with technology driven urban sounds, David uniquely creates a tapestry of intricate sounds, rhythms and haunting melodies.
We talked about:
- Why questions are superior than answers
- The many experiments he did to uncouple the layers of “I”
- The overarching motivator of different decades of his life
- His path to fulfillment
- Why negative emotions are great teachers
- Why patience eventually happens regardless of one’s efforts
- The path to mastery
- His daily discipline
- How he has mastered 200+ exotic instruments (and how you too can learn a new instrument)
- How free-running and the path to wisdom are related
And many more
The post 024: How to Navigate the Path to Taste and Elegance? – David Bergeaud appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
David Bergeaud is an award-winning composer, poly instrumentalist and record producer. He records and performs on a variety of exotic instruments (200+) from the middle east and India. His music is inspired by three decades of international travels, his European classical roots, and a lifelong love of jazz.
Over the course of his career, David has composed music for numerous award-winning film and television soundtracks, commercials, music for theater and stage performances. Tastefully weaving his classical background, world influences, love of jazz and fascination with technology-driven urban sounds, David uniquely creates a tapestry of intricate sounds, rhythms, and haunting melodies.
We talked about:
- Why questions are superior to answers
- The many experiments he did to uncouple the layers of “I”
- The overarching motivator of different decades of his life
- His path to fulfillment
- Why negative emotions are great teachers
- Patience eventually happens regardless of one’s efforts
- The path to mastery
- His daily discipline
- How he has mastered 200+ exotic instruments (and how you too can learn a new instrument)
- How free-running and the path to wisdom are related
And many more
Yuval Ron is an Oscar-winning film composer, internationally renowned world music artist, educator, peace activist, and record producer.
We explored:
- How he uses organic methods (music and dance) to access non-ordinary states of consciousness to sharpen his mind
- The pivotal moments that led him to use music as his path to wisdom
- How he uses questions to be more intelligent
- How music makes us feel and think in cinema
- How to create a larger impact in the world through good intentions and humble expectations
- The rituals he uses to remain centered and grounded every day
And many more
We discussed:
+Buddhism as the spiritual path to love, kindness, and compassion
+Different modalities to unpack the transformation puzzles
+What’s the difference between impel and compel?
+How astrology helps him to connect with anyone?
+Fatalism vs. Free Will
+Use astro readings to raise your awareness and double check your blind spots
+His daily rituals to be grounded every day: vipassana meditation, Buddhist empowerments, yoga
+How his nutrition harmonize his chi/prana
+How tuning forks are best to disperse stagnant chi
+Conscious moving chi from denial to anger to sadness to depression to acceptance
+How to consciously amplify your attention outside yourself for relief
+Respect the feminine side to be a stronger man
+Yoga is a way to find where you are stuck in the body
+Recapping your day in an objective manner as a tool to make your sleep more fulfilling
+You’ll know you meet the right teacher when you can feel the resonance of their presence and words. Pay special attention to synchronicity when something shows up more than three times.
+Remember your aim: to keep yourself on track in spite of outside noise
+And many more
Quotable Quotes:
‘Our body is an expression of our energy/emotion we need; any excess or deficiency relative to emotions we need will show through the body.”
‘At the moment you were born a celestial chord is struck.”
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, you’ll call it fate”
“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may; Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do whatever you can to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”
“Free will plus universal will is the real aim”
“Being with the noise until the noise subsides”
“In the 4th Way, the end game is wakefulness of the mind, the heart, and the body”
CK LIN 0:00
Welcome to noble warrior you hear my friends because you believe that expanding your mindset in service of your highest purpose is what makes life meaningful. Our goal with the show is to introduce you to leaders and entrepreneurs and ideas that will accelerate your self actualization. So if you want to continue this conversation or ask any further questions go to noble warrior calm forward slash group. Alright, let’s get started.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 0:26
No peppermint tea everywhere. My hands my eyes, my know.
CK LIN 0:36
How was that? The scale one to 10
SUREN AVUNJIAN 0:39
I’d say maybe a to a to a two or three like that somewhere in between those. Feel the tingling, I like the madness of it actually cleared out my nose, which is generally clogged up. So that’s a nice tool to open it up. I feel my heart rate a little up. But I also feel calm at the same time. So I don’t know if you get those feelings yourself or not. But I felt my heart rate go up a little bit. Not too far.
CK LIN 1:28
So I’m really excited to have Soren with us today. Soren is a dear friend. One of the things I really admire Soren about his his joy for life. Anytime that I I talked to him, whether is during our friendly conversations, whether it’s conversations with other people around or whether it’s conversations when he’s employees around, I always feel that gentle enjoys way of being. So well. Welcome, Suren. And thanks for being here.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 2:01
Thank you, CK, I thank you for the compliments, and you really are super admiring super charming, and someone I look up to as well. I really respect the all the talents you have. So I want to share that with you.
CK LIN 2:17
Thank you. So let’s start with these question.
What were some pivotal moments in your childhood that made you the man that you are the person that you are, so that way people who are listening to this and get some relatedness,
Unknown Speaker 2:37
I had a pretty happy childhood, I would say, lived in a very safe city. So it was, you know, like, in the summers, we would stay up as, as a child, I remember till, you know, midnight 2am even sometimes rarely, but, you know, it was the it was all just fun and like you enjoyed with the neighborhood, all the kids are out kind of by the park. And that that’s like an early memories. I remember a lot that you know how incredible that experience was to grow up. And then I also remember that I pretty early on, I just felt the need to be very independent. So I wouldn’t let my parents you like from first grade, I wouldn’t let them help me with homework or even look at what I’m doing. I was and and interestingly, they both accepted. They both were like professors in school. So that was pretty cool to get that acceptance from them and not be kind of on my neck about it. And it really pushed me to prove that this I’d like the choice I made was the right one for me, because I can you know, bring the good grades, and have a fun life as well. Even as a child for some reason. I this is I guess this this shaped me for the rest of my life. I think.
CK LIN 4:11
So you were free range child. Oh, that’s so interesting, which is actually contrary to the way I was raised. I was raised by basically Tiger parents, right there very, there’s clear boundaries. Yeah, we have parameters, you do not go past that parameter. Otherwise there will be serious consequences. Yeah. So interesting. So they were really that trusting and then you just embrace it right
SUREN AVUNJIAN 4:37
I embraced it. And then I really early to I remember was like I was thanking them for put leaving that trust with me. Because that’s not necessarily how there is my sister. I guess, just because of our culture. You know, there was a little bit more boundaries around the girl. And probably another thing that comes to mind was early on going and visiting one of my uncle’s who was a physicist, and he took me, I think I was probably seven or eight. And he took me and I got to see my first computer in my life. And I just remember the moment there was there wasn’t even a computer. It was a mainframe. And he let me play a game on it. So there was, you know, just such a wonderous and mysterious moment like what how am I interacting with the machine? So that I think was a pretty big moment for me. I was like, wow, I was just so fascinated with technology at that point that think it just, I feel this was some sort of a switch that happened.
CK LIN 6:01
So let me ask you this without going to the more on the curiosity, because I am curious. And so let’s hold that for a moment. But because of how we met, in the context of how we made the impression that hat is, you know, no matter what situation that you’re in, you’re always joyous. Are you got you always bring some element of fun and humor? Indeed. So were you that way when you’re younger? Or do you was more of a cultivated journey?
Unknown Speaker 6:28
It was cultivated? Yeah, it was something. I had an experience. I left Armenia, because of an earthquake, which was very devastating for the entire city with like, maybe half the population was gone that day and a very big majority of my school, actually procrastinated.
CK LIN 6:56
So you actually saw death at that age.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 7:01
I mean, I remember very vividly, first of all, going through the experience being on the third floor of the building we lived in, literally watching the walls open up. And luckily, being the only building in the neighborhood that’s stayed up. When we came out, I was just, you know, it was a lot of tall buildings. We lived in the center of the city. And they look, my mom was like, literally, I remember she turned around to me. And she’s like, where did these one story houses come from? Like, it didn’t register this kind of devastation? Right away. So that was, you know, that was a pretty traumatic time, I would say, and it was I had my kind of darker days. Oh, yeah, of course, I think though, you know, seeing something like that, even though we were super lucky. And, you know, immediate family was okay. We lost a lot of relatives, but that, you know, seeing death on the streets, and just the trauma and the moving of in two different cities in a short span, definitely affected. I think it’s normal, anyone would get affected by that. But then the realization after that, I think is where I found these like, Oh, well, I stayed alive, I should be happy. And I think that I was, I would say, maybe 14, I was already here in us. And I remember, I went to my father. And I was like, you know, the, this earthquake. And my dad was, of course, for him, he came, you know, he was 35. And he came, you know, switch switch, he had an incredible life back there. In Soviet Union, that was just the time when you can start opening up your own businesses, like corporations. This is Gorbachev started. And he had my dad had lot of patents and a lot of ideas. So he started a shoe factory. And he had it had started going, it was really cool and innovative. And then he lost everything. So for someone, he came with a very negative kind of mindset, or, I mean, he, he made it positive, but internally, he had felt that, you know, he left everything had to come, he didn’t necessarily want to come to the States, even though most of his relatives were already here. But he’s up here. Yeah, he’s like, if I’m gonna have to start my life from zero, might as well started in the land of opportunity. So So I turned to him. And I told him that, you know, this earthquake was the best thing that probably happened to your kids.
CK LIN 9:45
And you said that when you were 14, Yeah, wow. So you say more about that? What did you mean?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 9:50
Well, I realized, I mean, it was it was very tough. For us in the beginning literally came to like a typical immigrant story. We came to us with like, nine hundred bucks in our pocket men, our first month rent was 750. So it’s a really quickly like, you know, both parents had to both learn English and work nonstop. So I was spending a lot of time alone at home with my sister, our age differences 10 years apart. So it was like both brother and sister and also parents and child. And also because I had to, like watch her during those periods. So I became more of a parent. So I think that helped me probably mature really quick. Just all the experiences accumulated together made that happen, I think. And so yeah, I had basically that realization of, well, if that didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be here we wouldn’t, you know, make a new life for ourselves would be because what happened after the earthquake? The city was basically with no lights, no, the lights would turn on at one time for one our at a random hour. It could be like four in the morning around, and you would get lights and water and the warm water. So the like, that’s how people lived for like, five, six years. Oh, wow. So the infrastructure was gone. It’s like going back a couple of thousand years, basically. Oh, man. So I knew that was happening too. So it was like, Oh, well, here’s great. We’re watching married with children. And you know, everything’s good with all the families in the air. So, yeah, it was just the realization, it wasn’t anything like super profound, it was just like, wow, like, I want to be grateful. Because if that didn’t happen, you know. And also, there was a war that Armenia was in as well. So that both those two things made like turn the country really,
CK LIN 11:51
infrastructure was gone. There was a war going on. and political stability.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 11:56
Just very draining. Yeah. So it was just a realized that it was a good time we came here. Okay, so now Yeah, no, then I should live my life. Right? Not like a victim of it. Yeah. But embracing it. Because I mean, it both because it’s a choice. You could choose to be the victim of it, or like, let me find a positive from this. So I didn’t even have a choice that let me put it that way. It was like the only way to go.
CK LIN 12:24
Well, but yes, you’re right. Simple to say. But it’s not actually common. because you can find victims everywhere. Whatever they income, whatever the economic you know, socio economic, you know, situation they’re in, you know, what woe is me. It’s part of being human. You know, so hence why I am. So there was literally it was like, like a switch you just like from now on? We’re gonna be grateful for everything. Yeah, that was it.
Unknown Speaker 12:57
Yeah. Because I feel like going into a negative direction is a first human reaction, right? It’s like, I feel like going into negative direction is the least resistance to the path. But and then, you know, you could choose to hop over that and turn your life to a more positive perspective.
CK LIN 13:22
Interesting. So recently, I was in my meditation retreat. That’s, that’s actually the thing that realize, in my mind, my mental model is Yeah, there’s the the ego, right, the humanistic animalistic reactions, being angry, being in fear, and being jealous, whatever. Those things actually requires zero effort on my part. It’s a natural reaction. I don’t need to input anything naturally. I’m just gonna feel that way. Yeah. And however, it actually takes more effort, conscientious choice, to be grateful to be generous, be be loving.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 14:00
Yeah. And that’s a it’s a practice, you know, it doesn’t just happen, like you do it once. Right? doesn’t mean you’re going to continue to do it. Right. But I think when you do it once, and you’re mindful of it, and you’re like, wow, this is actually so much better than going into a negative direction. So then, then it makes the path a little bit easier for someone to choose, like, oh, let me just put, like, let’s want Well, you know, let’s do one more push up. And then things will feel a little better. So you start taking in that practice, and when you were 14,
CK LIN 14:36
hence, why is now more effortless? So what are some of the actual practice you, I guess, conscientiously? Do I guess maybe you think back when you were younger, in your 20s and 30s. Or some of the, the path that you took to get to where you are right now.
Unknown Speaker 15:01
You know, I think the first thing I discovered was power of breathing. And I just found so much peace, just doing deep breaths, again, probably around the same age, if not earlier. And just, I guess it was a way of meditating, I would just sit, I didn’t even know what I was doing. I just knew it felt good. So I would just just do that over and over and over. And then it would just bring so much peace and light that it just, I would do it. And you know, sometimes my mom would be like, are you okay? I’m like, yeah, I’m great.
CK LIN 15:45
Did you share with your parents? Did you share with your family? I don’t think so. It was more just like a trick you figured out.
Unknown Speaker 15:50
Yeah. I just like I’m like, I just like I’m like, it feels good to do it. That’s, I’m just doing it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d like something you stumbled upon and like, felt great. So that was the one thing early I remember that I started and it was like, I felt you know, Now obviously, looking back, I realized that was somewhat meditating, doing breath work. And it just like, Lord, a lot of anxiety and just brought pieces should. And then later, like, once, you know, I got more exposed to life. I was like, and like all these religions that I felt like you had to pick one. So I started studying as many of them as possible.
CK LIN 16:35
Yeah. How old were you then?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 16:37
Actually, I remember pretty early, like, my parents got me an encyclopedia back in Armenia. And that was like, I wouldn’t I didn’t like reading, you know, just, we were stories. And to me, they felt like, yeah, they’re nice to read. But I’m not necessarily gaining. I wanted something like practical, right? So I just started like, a tactical you a tactical, exactly. So I was like, let’s just open up starting with letter A, and we’re going to read what’s in the encyclopedia, because I want to know what’s out there in the world. So that was that, you know, it kind of from there, then I got exposed to all the different religions. So I was like, oh, what’s all this about? Because my parents were not necessarily religious. They were. They were very, you know, they were Christian. But they weren’t necessarily practicing or anything like that. It was really, it was more tradition. Yeah, it was more tradition. So it was for me, it was very interesting. Like, oh, what else what other things are available? What? And then also, at the same time, I was like, well, maybe I can learn wisdom from all of them. So that explorations into that, I think, and seeing what’s congruent with me, that was looking for for that to
CK LIN 18:02
this so fascinating. So you were that curious about wisdom? backing when you were 1415? before the disaster. That’s interesting, huh? Hmm. So cool. Yeah. Yeah, same was all intuitive.
Unknown Speaker 18:25
It was and then there was a huge gap. You know, then then like, schooling here started and you know, just I kept myself busy. I tried to work and school, or you’re working? Oh, yeah, I started working pretty much like the first year I came here. at like, 13. We’re doing there was a program, our school had junior high school with fire department. And sometimes they would take us on to, like, slopes and steep hills to cut the brush to prevent fires. So that was the first john 325 an hour to 25 an hour. School? was a lot of money back then for sure. For a 13 year old back in the 19 $90.
CK LIN 19:21
Did you appreciate what you were doing? Actually, then were you just looking for that paycheck to come?
Unknown Speaker 19:28
I realized every job showed me like where they need to be doing. And I realized that wasn’t really made for manual labor. All right, you learn something I definitely learned everything got it was just a summer job. I stuck through it. I didn’t quit. Right. It was cool to be outdoors, too. But definitely, it was probably the last manual labor job.
CK LIN 19:54
Alright, so that’s interesting. So when did you so let’s go back to. You fell in love with technology? Did you then after pick up technology after that?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 20:01
No. After that, then there was a next year there was a job with a shoe store. So do during Christmas. So I tried that. And then I realized the retail isn’t my thing, either. Very quickly, I was like, Whoa, that was my first exposure to public like outside of family circles outside of school circles. It was like, just straight, you know, like a wave hitting you in the face, like right away, because it’s like Christmas time busy. You get the worst of people. And I didn’t know that about the world. And there was a very shocking experience. So that job was very short to
CK LIN 20:44
actually I had retail experience during the holiday season. I actually understand exactly what you felt. but I wasn’t self aware enough to know that it wasn’t for me. So I think I did a couple of summer.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 21:01
So but then I actually at home, when the first gift I got when I came to the States was a 286 computer my uncle gave me and I didn’t even have hard drive. It had two giant floppy, those five and a half quarter like five and a half, remember, and one had an operating system. And the other one had a programming language GW basic. Basically, I had to write software that I wanted. Oh, interesting. And what a gift. Yeah, that was a cool gift. And that I that’s where I started with, you know, my passion for software engineering. And my father also took software programming classes, because his brother was doing that. Interestingly, actually, half of my family is in medicine, and the other half is in computers. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And then we’ll get to that later of how my life ended up. I ended up doing both kind of now With what? With my software company? Yeah.
CK LIN 22:03
So what are some of the other pivotal moments in your life that made you as a man, I mean, you as a person?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 22:09
Well, I got a job. After that there was a program with my school with the JPL. So I ended up going there and work. They’re a little bit longer two years. My was very cool. We were working on a lot of projects, mostly like weather balloons and things like that, but also got to participate. With my boss, she was working on some, you know, very cool, far orbit projects Cassini project, I don’t know if you remember, they recently crashed it into Saturn, but I got to see touch it, watch the code in it, as it went, you know, across our solar system. So that was a very fascinating experience, too, because I had a passion and I still do in cosmology. So but then there, I realized, I don’t want to be in a very big organization. It’s too bureaucratic. There’s too many politics. So that was the reason I got out of there.
CK LIN 23:13
So hold on one second to the through line is the self awareness part. Will you really that clear about like, exactly the language? You said, This is too big, too bureaucratic? Like, I don’t like it. Really?
Unknown Speaker 23:26
Yeah. Not like from day one. But it was just like a slow… I mean, if, if you’re in a year, I don’t know if you’ve worked in a
CK LIN 23:34
I worked in two universities before?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 23:37
Yeah. So have you? Yeah, I think when you’re in it, you start realizing like, you know, there’s less, like more work could be done. And then there’s all these hurdles, you have to jump through to get anything done. Why is it so inefficient? I think then that became a little bit, I think it’s actually I had that I think early two, is this, like efficiency, everything needs to be more efficient, you know, I would go around at home and turn off the lights, like, you guys are leaving the lights off. I remember, like, early on, I was doing things like that. So that’s why I’m thinking like, I probably had this all along. But later, you know, I was like, you know, we need to, you know, figure out how to fight entropy, you know, that’s, you know, part part of the part of what the world needs. Fascinating. So just going through probably lots of different experiences like that. Here. Like with work at school, I feel like every day could be and should be pivotal for us. But those moments definitely have, you know, are the spikes, I would say that are clear in my head.
CK LIN 24:50
Yeah, cuz everyone will always make a choice. Right? I think, to go even little bit more grandiose. Some people are saying re speaking on cosmic. The study of the universe. Now there’s multiple universe happening even time based on each decisions that you make, you enter into new universe, right? So new possibilities, new rounds of possibilities happen. And so hence, why self awareness, self consciousness is so I believe so important. So you don’t just make decisions randomly. That’s okay, too. But I think, to be more conscientious about it, that I’ve learned in my life, it’s a very, very, very important thing.
Unknown Speaker 25:39
I have made a lot of decisions on a coin. flipping the coin. Did you? Yeah, a lot of decisions, too. Okay. So what was some of the decisions you made? Only my coins? Starting different businesses? kidding? Yeah, just the relationships. I, you know, flip a coin, flip a coin, go with this. First, I do it out of three, you have to do three have to give it three chances. And you will be surprised the best decisions that three times that it falls on are always the same. Like that’s what I know. That’s for sure. It’s between like, it’s not just what the winner is. It’s the frequency of the same.
CK LIN 26:17
the expected value of the particular decision.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 26:22
So it’s interesting. I don’t know what how that started. But I just one day decided to flip the coin and see which decision you know, I should take and then started but it became a little practice. Do you still do it today? Yeah. Now, I have my wife doing it too.
CK LIN 26:43
That was great. Now I know a little bit of the mental. So you don’t do like a spreadsheet with the expected
SUREN AVUNJIAN 26:50
No, no, it’s just easy. just three times. 50/50? And we’ll see where it goes.
CK LIN 26:57
Yeah, I mean, one of my mental models about this, ultimately, and you may be able to speak to this. Ultimately, if the end result the outcome is not catastrophic, then you can just make decisions quickly. Because you can always wind in reverse. Right. Take another path. It’s not I mean, I don’t know, what do you think about that?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 27:20
I agree. Yeah, they’re not, you know, life and death decisions, of course, but the they are significant ones. But also, sometimes I have full trust in the universe. So I feel like that’s, like a way it’s a bi directional communication with it. So it’s a way of telling me like, okay, maybe you should go this route. Because, you know, sometimes when it comes to choices, they’re binary. And like you said, if it’s not going to harm anybody, and you have a way of going back, then it’s a safe way. And it just makes the process of decision making easy, because my life has just become like one non stop decision making and you get tired of it sometimes. So I resort to this, I mean, it’s not very frequent. It’s maybe once once every few months, like every decision is made with it. But just for fun, sometimes when they can, when they become indecisive, actually, when they feel a little bit indecisive. That’s when I, you know, might go use that as a tool.
CK LIN 28:22
Well, okay, so let’s unpack that just a little bit. When you say when you feel undecisive, it’s like onset owners. Like I should I shouldn’t I right. I maybe I should. But what if I do that. The unsettle-ness? Is that
SUREN AVUNJIAN 28:35
Yeah, exactly. Because usually, like I when I get choices, I like know where to go. But then of course, the bite overthink it. And that’s something I’ve been working on getting rid of as well. Just this like, you know, and once once you start it’s like a rabbit hole, right? overthinking? It’s just that, and it only can go negative. So I tried to stop it with different tools. That by flipping coins, yeah, that’s interesting.
CK LIN 29:05
Yeah, the ego, the human mind, our brains evolved to help us not die. So therefore it’s very, very good. I come up with what if scenarios in and usually it’s like the worst. Right? But oftentimes, the words very rarely happens. It’s true. Yeah. So this is interesting. So let’s see, how do I ask my follow up question about that. What other mental models do you have to help you, you know, make decisions quickly or make this may make make the right decision.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 29:40
Just really trusting your instinct, more and more, which is tough in the beginning, because you’re not always, like confident with it. So that’s a little bit of a practice to, and then you start realizing, well, I had this instinct, but I didn’t listen to it. And now it’s too late. Or I had this sense thing, but then I convinced myself out of it. And they didn’t make the right decision. So then, you know, eventually, once you start becoming more and more aware of those moments, just like doing a little pathology, when it’s done, you know, just opening up the situation, the patient and seeing what happened there. And you know, lead back to well, you should have listened to your intuition, because it was telling you so sometimes, it doesn’t make sense or, but now I try to be more keen on capturing that.
CK LIN 30:36
So you’re big on trusting your intuition? Yeah. trusting your instincts. Mm hmm. Have you ever read the book, blink? Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. No. Okay. That’s that’s what the whole book is about? Yeah, I’ll have to check it out. Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s their basically, their, their whole assertion of the book is after, if you you’re an amateur, the instincts are inaccurate. But when you become an expert, like, let’s say an expert, driver or expert, surgeon, the decision they make within blink of a moment is accurate, because you’ve practiced so many times. Yeah. So it’s an interesting way to look at how do we actually make decisions? And how do we make decisions quickly and accurately?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 31:29
Yeah, definitely. Practice is important. That’s, that’s absolutely true. And I think, you know, analyzing your decisions, helps you see those threads and, you know, the all the different permutations that could have gone and what and remembering what your intuition was telling you, I think that maybe makes that process even faster to get to.
CK LIN 31:52
So you do a forecast, right? Yeah. Also do a post mortem. post mortem. Yeah. And you keep be iterating as a way to hone your own decision. Yeah. How do you apply that to all areas your life, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and, you know, relationships, business,
Unknown Speaker 32:12
probably relationships and business most than the vestments. Yeah, like seeing, for example, next waves of things coming and where to go, which path, kind of more strategic things. But then, of course, when it comes to tactical things, then I more try to, you know, study it almost more in a scientific way of doing it. But then when it comes to strategic, it’s more based on intuition.
CK LIN 32:40
And one of the things I realized too, is because I’m trained to be a scientist, right all my life, I wanted to be a scientist. So I tend to, but the problem with that approach is, there’s the infinite, the rabbit hole goes down forever. Now I’m paralyzed by everything under the sun that I can find. So I have to basically unlearn a lot of the habits that I have is some sometimes is good enough, then because you I’m never going to have perfect information by anything. Right? And therefore, just All right, so is roughly correct. trust myself, trust, you know, this instinct. And you know, so trust, the information I got, and just make the decision
SUREN AVUNJIAN 33:29
I’ll give you a lucky quarter. See how that works. So you had you had almost like the schooling boxes, that were keeping you almost like a prisoner?
CK LIN 33:46
Well, I mean, to be really frank, I mean, that’s the logical response. And the answer is yes. But also in the, the inner game was the fear of failure. Because if I fail, then I’m I am a failure is not the thing, or the task that it took on that that failed, experiment that fail, right? It was, my name is associated with it. And therefore, I became a failure. And there was a lot of fear around that. versus just, you know, an experiment. Right? Did it work? Did it not work? learn something from it? Take another experiment. And then and I don’t know, did you ever have that burden of fear of failure or fear of things not working out?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 34:34
A little bit, maybe probably a little bit less than, like, friends. I know who a lot of people seem to be I don’t know. I mean, I, I, there was a point A, they relate that a lot to perfectionism. I think it’s very, like when you’re a perfectionist, and I have a little bit of that, but it was just letting go of trying to be perfect. And no, you know, just appreciating that things can have faults. And that it was and I didn’t even maybe I was just lucky that I didn’t necessarily have too many, you know, falls or or maybe I just didn’t associate them as fault like, problem problem areas or mistakes. You know, I just got over it. I learned probably from a LIN that was, you know, forgot about it. I have a very good way of forgetting.
CK LIN 35:35
Once again, right, then that’s, that’s amazing. But is that cultivated? Or is just naturally you don’t remember things?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 35:42
or? Yeah, I think I just always like make room in the brain to like, pick up the next thing I want to learn and then I forget whatever I don’t use, like very easily. I feel like it’s a gift to be.
CK LIN 35:58
I mean, if you think about it, if you look at I don’t know if you ever doubt them, Vipassana know, or study Buddhism, or a bit yeah, the mechanics of enlightenment, right? They say that life is suffering and then the source of suffering is attachment. And roughly loosely, translators, you suffer because you hold on to things or your past. Yeah. Or you worry about the future. That hasn’t happened yet. So the gift of now remember everything, which I also have right now. Yeah. My wife tells me now all the time. You don’t remember anything? No, I really don’t.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 36:37
That’s why we have wives. I’ve worked. I think that part, but I definitely have the other one where I worry about the future. So I have that one. That’s kind of figure out how I’ve gotten better throughout the years, I think but definitely have suffered lot because that causes anxiety.
CK LIN 37:04
Well, before we I asked you the next question, you want to do a little hape, please. Okay, so we have a gentle hape, or the sharper hape?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 37:15
This is we’ve we’ve done this together on time. hape. Which, which one is hape? Okay, what is this going up? Okay. No, then we haven’t done because I remember Burning Man. We did. Alright, write that song. So now I’m doing something else. No. I feel like we did. We tried two different medicines. In that case that may be I don’t remember anything going up my nose.
CK LIN 37:39
In that case no. Here. Here’s a different one.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 37:45
They smell similar. They’re supposed to smell different. Slightly. Okay. Okay, yeah. your recommendation. So since I haven’t done it before,
CK LIN 38:23
It’s really intense for your nose. And the bodily sensation is very much like a hard, challenging workout. But then right afterwards, you may feel a little lightheaded or tingling your extremities and that you should be able to also feel the calmness after the workout. So I will invite you to set an intention. So that way you can fully take advantage of the silence. So the way you do it, same thing. And then if you want the nostrils ready for you. Okay breathe
SUREN AVUNJIAN 39:26
Wow. there was just water coming out. Wow now that was more so the other one is he was stronger or just refer sharper sharper
CK LIN 40:36
take as long as you need.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 40:37
Yeah, no, I’m good. I think I’m pretty good. Okay, yeah, it feels good. Okay, how was that I feel like the first one was stronger in the right side of my I can literally feel just like the right front side of my face. Just tingling. The second one maybe didn’t go as far up I didn’t get that and it was much more just in the nose. Very strong. So is an unbalanced a little bit but I feel this like strong kind of energy inside. Just expanding from the center upwards and Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. High almost half of it actually. A very like floaty. Yeah, this is non psychoactive.
CK LIN 42:01
Save legal and non psychoactive, non psychoactive.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 42:05
Well, is it vegan?
CK LIN 42:08
It is yes. Tobacco and tree ash. barks. tree barks. Oh, yeah, I see.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 42:18
All right. That was cool. Thank you. new experiences. Yeah, I love it. I love new experiences. I that that’s one of the Well, obviously because you asked me to I felt very honored. But I liked the format that you’re doing the sun. Cool. And it’s very exploratory.
CK LIN 42:40
Yeah. Actually, this thing is used before the Amazon warriors go out for hunt. Really? Yeah. As a way to bring that heightened awareness on the body. But also clear, the mind. I suppose they can function better? Obviously. I didn’t follow them into one. I don’t know what they do. Exactly. That’s what I’m told.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 43:02
That’s I heard the similar about mushrooms to magic mushrooms that people took it because an increase your vision. And people were using it, you know, back then to hunters? Well, maybe a lot of these medicine is probably for that. But maybe that’s why it’s warrior medicine. Right? Perhaps.
CK LIN 43:23
So you mentioned about so there’s actually a couple of points I want to ask you. Were you always this had that spiritual calling. Because you said you trust the universe, right things that’s outside of you. Were you always was kind of developed over the
SUREN AVUNJIAN 43:39
years, definitely developed over the years. But definitely, I would say probably the earthquake had a big shift for me to just realizing Well, if we’re alive, then we’re meant, you know, there’s a reason why we’re alive. So that was very cool to learn that at a really young age, I think that like really shaped a lot. This kind of realization like Wow, well, I stayed alive. That’s why, you know, and that kind of drove me to study like more into learn more about it. And just more self explore it than necessarily go to books or to a particular religion to study there is just more looking inwards.
CK LIN 44:24
Oh, interesting. So the old way of learning my way of learning, my default way of learning is always go to books, right? Because I wanted to see best quote unquote, best practices, right? People have done then over the years, I’ve learned to be trusting myself more and self explore, right, using that inner awareness to do it. So what was your path? Like?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 44:46
Like, it started, like, you know, with the, like I said, like really early starting to read the Second Peter like in first grade. But then prettier, like I would say, in after the age of maybe after college, I would say I just even even in college, I just started realizing that, you know, I, they’re all dancers are there, if you just look for it, you know, carefully. Not necessarily, you know, the books obviously have wisdom in it. And I tried to learn from other people’s mistakes or other people’s stories. So I watched a lot of my friends or family relatives and try to understand, you know, what brought everyone to the point that they are and what works and what doesn’t. So, really careful about trying to learn from people’s mistakes or, or correct choices in their life where how they ended up. So follow more that type of path. So more like an observer
CK LIN 45:53
where the empirical evidence Yeah, an interesting qualitative evidence. Yeah, man. So cool, very different learning style
SUREN AVUNJIAN 46:01
very, I because I guess I had to, I didn’t have my parents influence me on learning styles. And or the schools much I felt like school was just something you do, and you know, you do it. And you move on, I didn’t invest too much time. I would just more like, oh, let’s get, you know, like, I was with, get it over with and then there’s all these cool things to go do outside. That was more of the model. I think I had
CK LIN 46:31
I love it. Yeah. Do you feel that entrepreneurs tend to be that way? Since you have obviously a lot entrepreneur friends? And so to I’m curious know, your your observation about the entrepreneurial, cold type of people,
SUREN AVUNJIAN 46:43
probably I would say, that’s, that’s usual, that you could generally find that, in that the printers, people that they are hard to put in a box and limit themselves in particular ways. So they are just out, they’re more, they’re just very exploratory people. And for that, you just have to have a very kind of free mind.
CK LIN 47:13
So what’s your answer right now to that question, what does it all mean? Now your ally versus your friends or relatives,
SUREN AVUNJIAN 47:20
I feel like you will never know. It’s, it’s like, you know, it’s less of a destination, right? It’s more of like, the path that you keep exploring, because we changed so much every day, you’re never the same. So it all becomes like stories, and you
CK LIN 47:40
what’s your current story that you tell yourself? Like, why are you here?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 47:45
Yeah, I feel like my purpose is addressing, I feel like it’s to grow myself, to grow people around me to just have a little bit of, you know, shine, if I can help anyone, you know, whether it comes to an employee or to develop themselves in any way, or give them the opportunity to choose that, then I feel that’s my purpose
CK LIN 48:16
to is now like, some grand, you know, how, Steve Jobs, let’s make a dent in the universe and making computers or software hardware software slash software as a way to, to renewable people to do that. So this is not like some grand vision like that.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 48:33
That’s definitely a competitive side I have for sure, I definitely get off on that. But it’s not like the primary primary task I feel like is more to just, you know, grow every day, little by little, nothing super grandiose, learn something new. And then help. So London anyway. Like, I feel like just though and then from there, it translates into like, Okay, how can we scale help? How can we scale this? You know, that and then how do we, you know, fight entropy? How do we, you know, change, change the world a little bit better. And that’s where like, the businesses come, because that’s kind of the only way you can really scale yourself. Hmm. Interesting.
CK LIN 49:26
Yeah, actually, I have to unlearn that I love the mental model of the yin and the yang sign. Yang is intentionality, directionality, you know, goal, right? The end and the Yang is surrendering go with flow in this present moment. So my whole life academically, it’s all about future, the next goal, the next goal, the next goal in order to do the next the next thing, next thing, and from entrepreneurship, from all this extraordinary learning, transformative, and I had to unlearn a lot of those things and start to look at the Yang side of things in the present moment. So have gained so much more appreciation, basically have a goal, but still hold it loosely. Yeah. Because ultimately, all we have is this present moment, and the life will continue to unfold itself. Right? I can control the process. The sorry, the effort, but not the outcome is not guarantee. So cool.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 50:32
Yeah, I think we live in, at least on myself, and now I balance things through extremes. So like, you’ll have all this big purpose and got to do this, or just any anything I’ve noticed in my life that I find balance by doing extreme opposites.
CK LIN 50:53
Okay, so how do you want gauge that balance? And then also, how do you find the opposite of the this intentionality this this desire to?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 51:05
Yeah, I mean, it could be some something like, Yeah, I would just go and slave away, put in hours and try to do, you know, five conference calls in one day, and solve tons of problems. And you know, and I’ll do that maybe for two days, and then another day, I would just either do nothing, like zero, where I’m just disconnected LD, they’re going nature or, even worse, I’ll just stay home and just be complete, like introvert. And then I’ll the next few days, I’ll go in the opposite sex, like super communicative. And out there getting things done. So I do notice you that’s like, something very quickly that comes in mind. But I’ve like, self observed you going backwards? A lot on all these like, you know, I would, for example, had a was really deep into kind of the science piece, right? Doing computers, and studying at school, and so on. But then at the same time, I had, where I decided to start, like an events business. So I was doing parties. Oh, yeah. After University, basically, like at the end of university for about eight, nine years, I had an events business where we would bring in like flying DJ is from all over the world. I want to just put together crazy parties. Yeah. So and at the same time I had like, and then I’d like to computer consulting business where I was doing that works and teaching networking. And so it was like, complete two opposite lives. But I was finding a lot of peace in between those.
CK LIN 52:49
I love that. So how do you know when you’re out of balance? And by the way, I use a usually try to stay away from the word balance. Because balance implies, I mean, if you look at scale, you do this thing, but you give up this other thing, you do this thing, but you give up this other. Yeah. So I like to use the word harmony. But how do you strike that harmony? The middle way? Right, right. And Yang? say how did you How do you know you’re when you’re not harmonized?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 53:20
Just listening, I guess. So listening? Yeah. Like, I could catch myself. Like, for example, recently, I’ve taken on way too much I can bite, you know, so I know for sure. Like, I’ve just, you know, I have too much on my hands too much on my plate. So it’s been, but I also didn’t want to drop the ball on anything. So it’s so like, recently, it’s been pretty challenging, trying to juggle so many different things. But I, you know, I’ve I also, then forcefully, just make time for myself. So just like, I can feel the anxiety and the, the burden and the responsibility. And then also, at the same time, I know, to be able to be responsible and to do these things properly. I need to also clear my head, or else I’ll start making probably wrong decisions. All right. So
CK LIN 54:20
what I want to people who are listening to this get something not just inspiration, but something tactical. So what some of the tactics or discipline to use as a way to shut off that noise, right? anxiety or whatever.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 54:35
Okay. I have some unhealthy ones that I want to get into because…
CK LIN 54:43
so what are some of the healthy ones healthy that you’re willing to share? Yeah, can be healthy, unhealthy? Yeah. But the ones that you want to share?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 54:51
healthy ones, I would say, you know, meditating, for sure, is something I definitely should. It is, it seems like the harder path, but then the rewards are great from it, because then you could really listen to what what’s happening deeper inside, you almost like look at the engine. So that is definitely a very valuable skill
CK LIN 55:18
What kind of meditation. Because there are thousands there are Yeah,
SUREN AVUNJIAN 55:21
so I long time ago, I took a inner engineering, you know, EW, done that one, or is this with sub sub guru sat guru? Yeah, I haven’t done it. Okay, that was really cool. And I practice that two times a day. It’s like a 40 minute practice. For six months, I really like that really did a lot of had a lot of benefits. But then life and travel happens, and I wasn’t able to keep that practice. So sometimes I’ll return to that. And then at other times, just basic Bry breath, like I’ve always had that, like, as a kid, like, I that’s my go to super easy. You know, I can do that anytime in the middle of a meeting if I want to. Or, you know, of course, it’s much better at home, because you just, you know, filling in peace at home, and you can much more easily get into that space. So that’s, that’s probably my best tool, I would say. And not even for very long, like 1015 minutes. And I’m like, much in a much, much better space. Actually, before you came, I had a super stressful day. And I, you know, went to the bedroom and laid with Alina, and we just, you know, had a few nice breath together. And there was a great reset. It was almost like taking a quick power nap.
CK LIN 56:53
Would you say that as a pretty good relationship hack? Yeah, taking breath. Deep breaths together.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 56:59
Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. It’s, it’s my favorite thing is even when we’re, I did this practice recently with my employees actually did really cool. Yeah. So I’m exposing them now to like, these. Once a month, we’ll have a session with a coach. And it’s not anything I’m productivity, just mindfulness. And then we closed like, what was the last time they asked me? You know, I started talking a little bit about meditation. So they asked me to, like guide them on on one. And they’re all pretty new to it, if there’s a few guys who have been doing it, and have you been taking courses. So that was really cool. And then we made that almost like every after every session, we would i would do a guided meditation with them,
CK LIN 57:48
like a visualization or purely counting your breath.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 57:53
Every time differently just depends. You have a repertoire, just whatever it feels like I’ve never It was almost like, I think the first time I did a guided meditation was actually at your house. I think the first time we even met. Oh, yeah, we had little, like a meditation circle. Oh, yeah. And that’s right. That was actually that’s when we kind of went around and all the guided meditation of our own. And that was the first time I did it. And I really like that. So. So I tried to do a little bit more of it not not as much as you know, it would be awesome to do more. But yeah, then I was like, oh, let’s try this. It just, you know, life led to that moment where we, it was very recently where we did that with the employees and, and I asked them to try to be attentive to the rest of their day to see how that changed their day a little bit. And maybe that gives them a little bit of this buffer for them to be less reactive and more, and have that space to process things a little better. So it’s a practice I would love for, you know, people who want to do it, to continue to do so that’s something I’m really happy that is, you know, working out and people are really acceptance. accepting of it. I didn’t think people would be that accepting.
CK LIN 59:20
So yeah, as a business owner, I’m curious to know your perspective. Because as a business owner, you have fiduciary responsibilities to your investors, for your employees, your it yourself, right to make sure that the businesses Kwang. co productive, right. So a lot of business owners, they’re hesitant to share this new things, because it feels like a distraction to what people are supposed to do. So what is your what’s your point of view around introducing, because you’re obviously doing that in a very active way? Yeah. Right. So what do you see is the potential a payoff, ROI, reward these practices that may or may not have a very instantaneous payoff, right?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:00:12
Because I think that with employees, especially the way we try to run our business to not have, you know, turn of employees, because every employee, we invest so much time and the business we’re in the domain is so wide and deep, that it’s really important that they’re not just like an employee, they’re almost like a family relative. And then you also start realizing that, you know, you take care of the employees, and they take care of the business, because I’m not more or less on the day to day things that happen in the business, they are the ones running the business. So why not? Like if this work then helped me, maybe it might help someone else. And why not help, you know, some one that as close as someone you work with, and spend a lot of time and your day with. And so it’s there’s definitely selfishness to it, right? So then they take care of the business, right. But at the end, I think it’s also just, it makes them a better rounded person that, and if taking a look inside of their own thoughts, and have less self limiting thoughts, that’s always good for them, and then also for the business. So. So I think there’s, there’s very high ROI, it’s not necessarily, you know, the next day, but all my businesses, I never do it for like a quick turn around. And quick profit, it’s everything I’ve done is, like, if I look, it’s just like a decade of work to just bring it up. But then it’s, you know, it’s like a solid foundation, and it’s hard to topple that over. So I don’t do like the quick startup, let’s raise some money and then sell it off. It’s more like just, let’s build a good product that’s, you know, creates a huge barrier to entry. And, you know, so I don’t know why I’m more attracted to these kind of operations, I guess, long term investment. Yeah, I get it. Consistency, consistency. And I feel like, you know, I’ve definitely tried to do the quick, and I feel like, you know, it’s just the money part, if it comes in quick, it leaves very quick to, and you don’t savor it as much.
CK LIN 1:02:36
So part of it is the journey, you actually really enjoy building the the hustle? I like it. Okay, so so to the skeptics, because I’m obviously I’m a convert, right, I believe in what you’re saying and what we’re doing all of this. But for the skeptics, still, who are listening to this, are their businesses that’s not necessarily suitable for this type of introducing introduction of things that’s outside of the business realm. That lets us meditation to be more specific. Right. Right. other businesses who, whose people shouldn’t be introduced to meditation?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:03:20
I mean, corporations are people know. So I mean it to reframe that question is, is there a person that wouldn’t benefit from meditation? I would say no. So I think, yeah, that I think it’s critical for people and then businesses to start. And I think the world can only get better from it. I haven’t seen any harm comes from it. You know, it’s not like a waste of time. It’s actually it might feel like it because you’re sitting there in silence. But your company time. Yeah, company time. Exactly. And, but then the realizations you can have the, you know, can be so profound that you’re like, no, this is, this is great, because you could go 10 years of just, you know, with your monkey brain, and just live in this like, circular way and not ever come out of the shell. And like, who wants to live a life like that?
CK LIN 1:04:23
Hundred percent agree. Yeah. I am curious, whoever This is listening. If you guys think that Oh, yeah, I know, a business Who wouldn’t benefit from these? You know, inner game practices. I’m curious to know your point of view. Please send to me.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:04:41
Probably those big bureaucratic businesses can benefit from that just to keep the system going.
CK LIN 1:04:47
Don’t think because do what I tell you. Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I don’t know. I wonder about that. On that thought, would you like to do sananga
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:05:01
Does hape Give you like an appetite.
CK LIN 1:05:17
If you’d like to take a moment. So you had the gentle one at Burning Man. This is the more intense one.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:05:27
Jesus. Okay. I don’t remember. I just trusted you whatever. But that was I was struggling for like a good five minutes was Burning Man. I
CK LIN 1:05:42
Lean your head back as far as you can. Same thing with an intention. Close your eyes. Even more format.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:05:52
eyes open or closed.
CK LIN 1:06:01
with the intention, and then you can open your eyes. And then I run around a little bit.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:07:05
This wasn’t that bad. Maybe I got used to it. I don’t know. Or does it come in waves? No, that’s it. That’s it? No, I would say this was easier. Maybe? I don’t know. Or maybe it was just all the all the dust on the sand Burning Man. That the struggle was much more real back then. Are you just want these young men? put a few drops?
CK LIN 1:07:48
Ready? Yeah. How was that? scale one to 10?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:07:52
Actually, this was a much, much much I would say maybe about a four? or five? Yeah, the hape was around like, seven eight range. Okay. Yeah. All right. different feeling. Yeah, this one that was more braced. For worse, I guess. From my lot of my first time over doing so. Yeah. And yeah, this one was probably 10 15% of that experience. I remember the other one. I was rolling around a little. He probably was because it was so novel. Me ever had pain that areas of your body. Could we in your eyes before? Yeah. So I was more so ready for a shock. I knew what to expect. knew what to expect. That’s awesome. Yeah, maybe with the happen next time, I’ll be mindful to see how I feel. Because that one was just like, totally new feelings, like feeling the right side of your entire face.
CK LIN 1:08:58
Different kind of hape do. Okay, thank you similar to tobacco with a different kind of interest. They are all different. Yeah. So different ones in the future.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:09:08
Okay. Okay. Nice.
CK LIN 1:09:11
That’s that’s kind of look ahead a little bit. I’m curious. And then and then we’ll wrap with the use of technology actually came back from trans tech. Right, where Alina actually goes quite a bit is the intersection between spirituality and technology. Right. So the whole contention is that, yeah, you can meditate for decades and achieve a certain state of bliss or inner peace. By you can use technology to kind of help you get there faster, and more predictably. Because that’s what technology and science is good for predictability, right. repeatability. Yep. What’s your point of view on that? You feel that, suppose there’s a ultrasound device that can get you to a blissful state? In 10 minutes? Do you feel like yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t earn it? Or do you feel like hell? Yeah, let’s do it. Like a bio hacker type?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:10:13
Yeah, no, I’m all about toys and technologies. But I do feel, you know, something like that. I think what works great in spirituality, pro taking shortcuts? Because I think they’re very good at showing you what you can achieve without them. And then that way you like it shines a little bit of a light on path. Like, oh, I could be there is temporary. Same thing with like, drugs, right? It might open up something. And then you have gives you direction. I feel like so yeah, I’m I believe in that too. Like a benchmark? benchmark? Yeah.
CK LIN 1:11:00
How do you then what’s the line? right between using as a benchmark? versus like an in self indulgence? Then it becomes an addiction. I must have my coffee, right? Don’t talk to me until I have my coffee. Right? Right. Or, don’t talk to me until I meditate or wherever you start, kind of lose that middle ground. So what what is the middle ground? For your point of view?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:11:26
That’s a good question. I probably would say, again, you know, being just self observing to see where you are, whether it’s something you’re craving, or you’re using it as a tool, like every decision, like, before, you are going to do something you will you kind of look in the words and say, What am I using this for? is this? Is this just just to do it? Or am I and then also being observant of how often you’re doing it too, if this is like you’re using this tool more than once a month, then maybe you’re using it too much you’re becoming dependent on it. Or it’s just, you know, or it’s just like in your arsenal of things you have. So that’s how I interpret whether this is something I’m overdoing it or, you know, I need to tone it up or tone it down, like this harmony that you’re talking about, with with things with tools with five.
CK LIN 1:12:35
Yeah, one of the guests that I spoke to recently, he is the managing director of this longevity project. In his own contention, the longevity longevity project is how do you increase your capacity for homeostasis. And basically range his his his whole family is it’s not about sticking with your rituals every day. Because that keeps you a very specific range. It’s not about depriving yourself from something every day or eating McDonald’s every day. His whole thing, his whole premises actually do it all. So then create, stress your body fast. You know, do the bulletproof, whatever, but just don’t do it forever. Right. That way, your body’s used to that range of things very much on par with what you spoke about. You see your the extremes, right, very stressful five conference call day in doing nothing per day. Right. Right. And by speaking of that, it’s I personally find it to be difficult to if I don’t have it on my schedule, I just won’t do it. Right. So I have to schedule it. Do you have so I want to make sure that people are listening to this are inspired by your point of view. They want to live a more extreme life as a way to push their rage, right? What kind of disciplines you have to ensure that you you do it, right versus just like I don’t know, that’s in flow. And
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:14:20
definitely the it’s, it’s a good mix of those two, I of course have my calendar. It’s mainly business related. I do try to have certain practices that I’ll do throughout my day to for example, you wake up and like do 10 push ups or 20 push ups or 30 push ups depends how you feel that they and so I have some constant things that I might you know, my actually get more specific concrete, is it because,
CK LIN 1:14:51
you know, people are like, Oh, I want to Yeah, I want to emulate Suren. So, tell them what they should do.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:14:57
Well, that that’s that’s probably like it. That’s one way I like to wake up and then I’ll take a shower normal. And then but then I’ll turn it to cold. So I always end my showers with cold water. Make sure like head to toe. I’m covered. And now try to do that. As long as I can take it. Way better than coffee. I like coffee too. But this is like if I don’t do this, like I don’t feel my day doesn’t start properly cold shower. Yeah, cold shower. So in the morning, that’s probably a practice I’ll have and then I’ll also start my mornings, generally, like my favorite ways to start it is with music, finding new music. So probably this is where, you know, I go into like this mode of getting a thrill out of finding something new.
CK LIN 1:15:50
What a thrill out of finding something. Digging, I call it digging for music. So you allocate half an hour an hour just to dig for an music. Yeah.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:16:01
Yeah. All right, start with that. And I’ll take a shower with music on as well. All right, like listening to new tracks that are out, right. So that that, you know, I’ve always had this like exploratory side, I think that it’s just a spirit, I think it’s probably you can develop it as well, I’m guessing, but it’s also something you probably need to have as well. So then that opens it up, you know, and then when you tune into flow, then you start discovered, like spending your day almost. And week, tomorrow, you know, keep going macro. And just using that flow of things to find new things in your life, new people, new influences. So that is a mode I have throughout the day. Just try to never have the same day. basically try like always different things. I have some projects that I’ll try to just divide and work on a little bit that if I just did that project that would drive me crazy. So I definitely multitask one to another. And I’ll just have the same day. On the same day, I’ll have like three, four long term projects that I need to work on. I do work on those. And then I mix it up with just the media things, whether it’s some emails or just going around and talking to everybody a little bit, just to mix it up. Just I’m not in the same load or it I love variety. Yeah, exactly. All right, couldn’t have said it better. And then when I come home, you know spend spend time and catch up and relax, obviously at home. And kind of back to a practice. I might do like the little a little bit of my breath work. And it could be anywhere. It could be just walking around the house. If I’m extra stressed. I like to like clean.
CK LIN 1:17:59
I see…restore disorder.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:18:01
Yeah, exactly. I that brings me a lot of calm and relaxation. And that has a benefit. Because you get some you get you get a nice, shiny house and organize something like something I’ve been wanting to organize, I’ll just start organizing things. And maybe it’s a little bit of an OCD. And then I like to one thing I got exposed really early on to is like Alan Watts. And I love I love going to bed with him. Helps you fall asleep. It helps me Yeah, it helps me fall asleep. It helps me like center and ground myself and remember all the things you know. And he has he speaks so incredibly well. And so why’s that it’s definitely it’s been a good practice. It’s like almost like a medic stayed with him while he’s talking. And it’s just a really good way to go to sleep. I feel like because his voice is like monotone and just very calm. And you know, he has a lot of pauses. And like that would be my average routine. Week.
CK LIN 1:19:21
A specific Alan Watts.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:19:24
No, I’ll just go to I tried to listen to different why he’s whoever is listening. Well, what which one, which out? Me he has a lot. There’s a lot. So I’ll just which one should they start with? It really doesn’t matter. It really anything does anything. They’re all they all have carry so much wisdom in it that I I love I love them all
CK LIN 1:19:45
What’s wisdom. Actually, let’s define that for a moment.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:19:48
Wisdom is just for me. It’s just a lot of experience and knowledge rolled in together. That’s just there. And it’s like the right path.
CK LIN 1:19:58
A lot of knowledge rolled into the right path. pointed to the right path. Yeah, I see. Okay,
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:20:04
that I guess that’s that if I had to define it, quick way that would come to mind.
CK LIN 1:20:10
Actually, I do have a few other questions for you. Because I said it was last question that I do have a few other questions. So I will see you doing cool stuff in hang around with cool people. What? What are your criteria that you use to keep the people around you one, and also for the events that you go to? Because you mentioned that you wanted to do extremes and cool events or activities? Right? You really I from my point of view, something that helps you be more alive? So I’m curious to know, what kind of criteria do you use to keep the people around you to do the things that you do?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:20:49
Hmm, good question. I haven’t really thought about it, honestly. You know, I think just looking for the variety is really important to me.
CK LIN 1:21:02
So you have regular like friends, right? Where they hang out with five people if I know,
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:21:08
I have friends that like I’ve had, I have a friend for example, that we’ve been friends from high school, and we just love to debate together. So like I’ll and I just love to have friends of all social classes. I love artists. You know, just because I just love differences in people. I guess that’s, I really appreciate that. And then it’s also such an opportunity to learn from everyone. I feel like a chameleon to with I remember from early on my mom would know which friend I’m talking to on the phone. Because she was like your you would email you would talk like them. I didn’t even realize that. So that’s a baby a crater like things I want to learn. And I think you learned something from everyone too. So I use every experience with people to learn something from them.
CK LIN 1:22:01
Yeah, the same guy that was speaking about earlier Joon, he said that he loves talking to people who, who’s really who, who loves a specific thing, because then he can see the world through their lens. Yeah, for example, someone who loves UC Berkeley, say, Please show me the Berkeley that, you know, then as a whole, they say it’s very intoxicating. It sounds like you do that. Yeah, as well. You’d like to hang out with people who was passionate was Larry loves what they do. And then you’re like, please show me the is that?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:22:34
Yeah, I don’t necessarily ask them for something, it just through osmosis try to it’s not it’s not very conscious, I think it’s just being around them, I feel like just pushes my limits and, you know, really appreciate either the talents they have, or the perspective that they have, you know, kind of along the same journey said mentioned? Yeah. What resonated with when you said that, like, when I travel, I intentionally Get lost. I like to just get lost to that way in either interact or have to figure yourself out of a particular situation. That’s a practice I love doing when I’m traveling. And I get to see the world from a different perspective, or, you know, you meet someone and see see things, you know, it’s almost like, like a virgin with their, with their eyes and how, how the world looks for them, or if someone is going through an experience you haven’t been to, but it’s their first time. That’s very intriguing to for me. Because I yeah, you could really relate them like, it’s it’s a very emotional experience. For
CK LIN 1:23:42
It’s a beautiful way to live. Yeah. Always seeing the world through new eyes. Yeah, yeah. That’s so cool. Well, one last question, which is the whole premise of this whole podcast, right? What does it mean to be a man in modern times? I know that we touch a little bits and pieces every where, but for the people that are listening, what do you think? Is Java man? I guess, responsibility? What was it like? And what is the role? Right, being a man in modern times?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:24:15
I think a big role would be is to cultivate courage. And because it all starts from there, like when we started talking about, right, going, choosing between positive or negative, what is the courage that shift shifts you and makes you do like one little bit extra to get to the positive side? Right? So it all starts, I think, from there. So the more you build that into yourself, and inspire others to have courage to move forward with situations and not be down on themselves? I think the the, and I feel like that’s the responsibility of men to do because maybe it comes a little bit more naturally for men. And yeah, that’s, that’s something that that just kind of comes up.
CK LIN 1:25:18
So tactically, I want to make sure that people are inspired by your story or your narrative, but also they can try set something on themselves. Right. So what will be a tactic that someone can try on to be more courageous?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:25:33
I think that awareness of it is definitely knowing about it is very useful. And really evaluating when you’re when you’re making a choice, whether Is this the courageous path, or is this not the greatest path? I might? And you know, very easily we choose the, you know, the least, the least resistance path is definitely been a up mindful of it, it’s usually not the most courageous path. So that is probably a tactical is just as you’re making decisions throughout the day. to, to maybe bring that forward, I’d like is this the courageous path or not?
CK LIN 1:26:18
I mean, actually, one thing we didn’t really talk about, I don’t know if you want to kind of our edit in later. So one thing we didn’t talk about is entrepreneurship, especially the American dream, right? People want to be business owners, people look up to people who build companies and have employees and knowing what you know, now, having run how many businesses you have built before.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:26:44
Oh, man, it’s hard to keep track. But right now I’m running like four businesses. Right?
CK LIN 1:26:48
So okay, so historically, run probably many more, right by running right now you’re running for. So they have this romanticized, you know, idea was I like to be entrepreneurship, maybe you can be knowing what you know, now, maybe you can give them a little bit of a glimpse. Yeah, what is the real deal? Because, from my point of view, you live a joyous life. from their point of view, conventionally, it’s you gotta sacrifice everything, you know, sacrifice your house, sacrifice your relationship, sacrifice your friends, sacrifice your hobbies.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:27:25
There’s definitely a lot of sacrifice
CK LIN 1:27:26
So share with us, right? How do you have it all? worked out?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:27:39
Yeah. Right. I mean, the first thing is passion. You got to have passion for anything, something everybody has a passion, I think, whether they’ve discovered it or not everyone has some talent, something that it could be the least productive thing in their mind. But finding that nurturing it practice, this thing is getting better. At that is super important. And then looking for a niche, you can apply that to something where it’s not super, at least this is my, my, my process. And then applying that to niche, and sticking through it, not giving up, the beginning part is like heavy sacrifice heavy, then usually, it’s about it from, from the way I’ve practiced, like the business piece, I would say, it’s usually like the first two, three years, you have to have only sacrifice and just roll with the punches. But then every day, you just do something to move that forward, something that the next day, you would look back, and thank yourself for doing that. So every day, you just put one break, then the next day, make sure there’s another brick, and you just practice that without looking at all the punches that are coming along your way. So that first few years is like the heavy sacrifices, then after that, if you didn’t give up, that’s when there’s like this opening that happens. And it starts things start working out in your favor more and more and more and more. And it’s then, you know, it’s it’s becomes more about going with the flow and not having too far of a direction where you need to go. You know, understanding maybe what the customer needs, because they change all the time. So you can’t just be going and creating something in a black box. And then three years or five years later, you come like, hey, look at what I built, you know, the world has changed by then differently. So then it’s more like every day you pick up, you kind of tune in, you have to be super to then to see what the world wants at that point. And you kind of work on that little by little every day.
CK LIN 1:30:07
So and he actually asked a follow up question there because conceptually, agree hundred percent. And when you go from zero to one, a lot of times there’s not a whole lot of feedback coming your way though. Yeah, right. Eva Mas, cause it not everyone’s your mice, number one, but he calls it eating glass staring into the abyss. Right? It, it’s pretty lonely during that time. I would use this podcast as an example. This is my second podcast, my first podcast, I did eight episodes, there I stop, right? Because there was no feedback, then I figured people are not interested in it. And I had a whole totally different context, hence why I stopped. Hmm. So then there is a line between Yes, you know, continue to build that brick after brick every day, then you’ll see new reap the rewards two years from whatever, right. But then there’s also Alright, so there’s no feedback. If you guys not positive, whatever I’m building, there’s no, the market. Yeah, appreciating it. So where is the once again, where does that line,
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:31:15
it’s your like you that’s where you have you have your passion that is just driving you like I don’t care whether I have feedback or not. I this is something like I need to do. It’s that drive, you have a drive from that. And then your vision too, because you can’t you know, build something in one day you can’t it’s impossible. So you, you have to go toward you’ll never reach your ultimate vision. But you know, you gotta have it. Because that’s, that’s at least for me, that’s what keeps me going. Because I know like, I’m going to reach it one day, or I’m going to get really close to it. But it’s not going to be an easy necessarily short path to it.
CK LIN 1:32:00
You go in knowing that. you go in knowing that
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:32:03
Yeah, you go in knowing, I guess because I’ve done it now a few times. Now I know that and I don’t have a personality to give up fast. I like sticking through it just like you enjoy the very stubborn Yeah, I do. I like that I like pain actually. So I can be very sad. I used to be super stubborn actually used to be I think cast has its Yeah, I realized that it was a big weakness actually being stubborn. But But I know how to go back to it at least like use it more like a tool. Yeah, I can channel it. And that’s where I’ve like tried to use it in a more positive way than just to be an asshole.
CK LIN 1:32:44
So you weren’t always this nice know your side at some point? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:32:49
Absolutely.
CK LIN 1:32:51
Growth process Yeah, I’m glad we’re here now.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:32:54
Yeah, no, I you know, you have to go to dark places to be able to appreciate like, the bright places.
CK LIN 1:33:00
Okay, says, follow up question. Do you believe that? That’s a inevitable growth developmental process?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:33:08
For me, yeah. That’s just how it worked out for me. So I don’t know what it’s like for other people. But for me, you know, being really challenged or being really, you know, in dark places, new you just know now not to go there. Like now it’s like more clear, like, Okay, this is good. This is bad. You know, just the choices become very bad, like the tree rights, multiple universes, we’re talking about you quickly, if you know, you know, the this path leads, you know, this little action can continue to leading towards this darkness. You can cut that stem really quickly and choose to grow in this direction. Yeah.
CK LIN 1:33:59
Yeah, I agree. Hundred percent. It’s all about developing that, you know, awareness. Know. For me, the life of darkness is filled with anger, fear, resentment. What was me victim? I’m not worthy. Whatever. Been down that road?
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:34:19
Yeah, not fun. No, there is no, there’s nothing that you can gain from it other than just continuing in your downward spiral.
CK LIN 1:34:26
Well, so let me I mean, so so my point of view, the initial part is satisfying. Yeah. victim, like, I’m a victim, therefore, I don’t need to take responsibility. Yep. Right, because that’s the payoff, but the afterwards is terrible. It is. But the the if you flip it actually one of the guests, Paul said, it’s easy to go down the path of fear and anger, because you don’t need to do any work. Yeah. And but then the later cost is so much higher. But then if you keep your heart open, it takes effort to keep your heart open moment. But the payoff is almost immediate. Yeah. as well. Just a little bit longer. And then just, there’s that path, and you can take
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:35:09
very articulate. Yeah, yeah, exactly. how I feel. I appreciate this.
CK LIN 1:35:15
Thanks, my friend. Yeah. Very cool.
Yeah. so much. Thank you. Hey, sorry, I really acknowledge you for sharing everything you share. I got to know you a little bit better. Mission accomplished. Thank you. And also just want a story. So intuitive. Very, very different path than my own path. But nonetheless, here we are.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:35:41
Thank you. That was that was beautiful. I feel great. All these things we got to try. And you got so much out too. Yeah, for myself and for you think Yeah, that was beautiful. Yeah, I appreciate it. I’m a big fan.
CK LIN 1:35:57
Thank you. So guys, go out and take some actions and like what Suren was saying. Try something new. Yeah, develop that awareness for courage. And then beautiful. So today.
SUREN AVUNJIAN 1:36:13
Thank you.
CK LIN 1:36:14
All right, listeners. Thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions about what we discussed, anything that needs to be answered, please go to noblewarrior.com/group we will be happy to answer those questions there. Take care now. Bye.
The post 021: How to Find Flow and Savor the Journey Everyday? – Suren Avunjian appeared first on Noble Warrior with CK Lin.
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CEO of VideoAmp, CrossFit athlete, conscious entrepreneur, Forbes 30 under 30
ROSS MCCRAY 0:02
it’s a good way to start. I think for me, I don’t I don’t know if I can attribute one or two different types of key events. To me, it’s more them how I look at my past is more of these, this kind of continuum of different phases and worldviews, maybe even. And I think, when I was when I was probably, you know, a to 13, very much, taking my mothers and fathers worldviews on the thing is more natural, until I hit about that 1314, where I really started to take some of the base foundation of which they shared and started to really go out on my own and question my reality. And I think for me, that was, I don’t know, if there was a individual event that happened, just more of this culmination. And for me, the big thing that I took from them from my mother was definitely the passion and the and the, give it your all extremism and what you believe and kind of go all in and from my father more of the grounded, ask questions around yourself, and don’t really be affected by your environment and and try to take things and take things as data. And rather than taking things as personal, right, and that’s something that, for me, is how I look at my life in these phases. And when I hit about 1716, maybe when I started to really go to UCLA and start really going to university, and I was really, my mind was exposed to a lot of people that were more universal, different countries, different, different worldviews. And I think that was a very good exposure for me, because coming from South Orange County is normally the biggest lot of shared the world view.
CK LIN 4:14
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, let’s not go too fast, I want to kind of rewind just a little bit, because a lot of people grew up. So a lot of people started listen to the parents wholesale. Yeah, the ideas in wholesale, right, I love this idea I actually got from Burning Man. Kids are essentially time capsules, of their parents. And whatever is in the time capsules are the ideas that means that want between the parents. And then obviously, most people grew up taking their the means from the parents hotel, then starting at 1213, whatever, they start to identify their own developed identity. How did you I guess, talking to you for a long time, I know you for a long time, you effectively run your life like meaning experiments. Yeah, they’re different phases that you go through. Yeah, but you end but then you’re very conscientious about the choices that you make speak of that, because you skip actually quite a number of experiments. You did? Yeah. Sure. Just share a little bit. So people know. Yeah, some more context.
ROSS MCCRAY 5:16
Yeah. Man, it’s hard. I’m trying to try to summarize that is challenging. I really think, you know, let me, let me I think one thing comes to mind now after you kind of phrased it in that way, and probably a better way to answer your original question. So I’ll try to tie it to the two together. So there was a time I’m not sure if I should have stood the test might have or at least a long time ago, there was a in my freshman year, about 13. When I went to high school and my zero period, English class, one of the first classes that I went to, it was set up in the sense where there was these pods of desks, like for afford for, for for his old groups. And this was a science eating, so teacher set, and it was me. And these three girls, and over the, over the couple months, you know, I thought we were gaining really, you know, a friendly relationship and just kind of a collegiate relationship. So I, at the time, I said, one to one, like, you know, Africa class, hey, one day, we should hang out and go see a movie or something like that. And I remember that I got the response of them pretty much laughing and saying, you know, the only reason why we talked to you because you want to cheat off of your, your, your answers your tests. And I thought that was remarkable. And I thought that made a lot of sense to me. Right? Yeah, it makes sense.
CK LIN 6:43
Oh, it didn’t traumatize you actually. Yeah.
ROSS MCCRAY 6:45
Yeah, it made sense. And then I think I shared that with, like, a friend of mine at the time. And he took that a lot differently than I did, right. And was like, What is going on here? Right? Like, like, why would you take that? And then my thought was, I don’t really care about what people think, or whatever the case is, you know, it is what it is. And he said, Well, I bet I bet you if you wanted to learn how to, let’s say, become friends or learn how to play the social game, and and, and, and, and try to add value and maybe an artificial or, or just an active way versus being to myself and just focusing on me versus what’s around me. But you could really figure it out. And probably could, I can, you know, deduce how to interact. And at that point, I just was bored. So I said, fuck it, I’ll just start to look around the world and start to try to analyze what’s happening. So I would just literally look around the room. And I would see people speaking to each other and body language and what some people would do to one another. And I basically cohort people out from different types of personas and different types of ways they speak, what words they use, and what body language they present themselves, and ultimate, everything they do what they’re representing. And I really started to just take in all the data in that way to try to create a worldview, or even a mental model. And then I started to try to AB test that and replicate it consistently. So taking on this kind of chameleon, if you will, trying different things and seeing how I can, rather than just being me for the sake of it, if I wanted to turn switch, and then I wanted to go out and give it give out. So given output to someone that will receive that in a certain way. That is I’m intending for them to receive myself. social engineering. Yeah, for sure.
CK LIN 8:38
12, 13 is the time we started to social engineer, you know, study this? Yeah, the science of social engineering, and how did that impact your worldview going forward?
Unknown Speaker 8:48
It changed differently, because, because when I started to, to when I started to try this, it was pretty exponential, in regards to different types of social engineering that I could get out to becoming, and then probably within a year, I’d say, more actively looking and taking it and trying things, I was able to go into a different type of group and, and, and assimilate from the jocks to the kind of the more popular, you know, duche crew to, to the academic crew, to the nerdy crew, to the musician, crew, I mean, I really figured out a way, right even to the different kind of multicultural groups that were there. different sports groups, I mean, I was kind of all over the place. And I had, I mean, I was I went from not really having an identity to be a part of two different sports groups, and a dance team to the APIB, which was like the advanced kind of, you know, crew to running like nerdy game crews to music group. So I kind of went around the horn, if you will. And, and I started to realize that I can manipulate a situation to to to really get a high probability of achieving an outcome by just understanding when people how they how how they receive things, and how well they respond to certain stimulus. And, and I think that got me on dangerous path, frankly, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, fast forward, maybe a few years, I became very, I think I did well, socially in high school. And then when I went to university, I started to really use this the skills, if you will, in my opinion, for the wrong purposes. And how I look at that is, for me, personally, I look at the light, say, Yang Yang, as an example, or light and dark differently than some, whereas I think some people look at good and evil, as the same as light and dark, let’s say, Now, I don’t right. So I think there are tactics and intention, so maybe social engineering or manipulating or becoming going to someone and understanding how a few very aggressive and you speak in this way that they may not respond well versus sizing them up and literally judging someone and saying, how would I have to be to get the highest probability of an of a desired outcome, which I really think is manipulating and with an intention is some would say that’s a very dark tactic, not authentic tactic, or whatever you some we know, people can call it whatever you want. And I would use that, in my opinion, for I didn’t understand what my purpose was, and have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. So it was kind of a loose cannon, I just been doing this, I’ve been waiting and kind of lost my identity started to just kind of float around and just do things that I didn’t realize, you realize, you know, why I was doing it, and just essentially assimilating and, and creating an identity of myself that wasn’t really and having attention for it. And then all of a sudden, I had this image, which took me a few years to figure out why I who I am and like why I’m this way, and I don’t think it was constructive. It wasn’t building anything. It wasn’t giving back to certain people it was just kind of a very vain lifestyle that got kind of got caught up in the wrong the kind of the wrong crowd of people.
CK LIN 12:24
So you had a basically a wake up moment.
ROSS MCCRAY 12:27
Yeah, I did. Took was a few years. was it? It was a New Year’s party. 2010-11 New Years, where I’m just kind of looking around, and it was just a fucking like a punch in the face, like, what am I doing here? You know, and by all means, in regards to the what I had in kind of social point of view, and the people a lot of people will look at that as Oh, like this, this is a very successful party successful event and being a part of it. I was like, What am I doing? What value Am I giving back to people and and it kind of made me think about, you know, the difference was the joy that I thought I was given to myself being part of this decorate crew and people and kind of celebrities and you know, high networth individuals and just kind of people just like, with no real like, why are you here? And what are you doing with your time? and switching that to? What joy Have I given to people today?
CK LIN 13:41
So all in one day? All in only in one moment?
ROSS MCCRAY 13:45
Yeah. I’m just kind of looking around. And it’s like, what am I? Why am I here? You know, like, I think I was talking to a bunch of people. And then I’m just like, kind of going to get water or whatever. And then I’m just like, so what do I do now? I use that conscious, like, manipulative, like who do I want to go talk to what am i i’m very conscious, you know, and it’s like, I’m not just going into the water and just standing by and just smiling and looking around, you know, like, I’m literally thinking every minute now what now what now what happened and it’s always an outcome, there’s always a desired outcome that I’m putting on every minute. And I’m trying to optimize to get the to get that outcome. I want to go talk to this person, I want to get this person to be involved in this. I want to be able to this, you know, there’s always something
CK LIN 14:27
and you were 18 at the time.
ROSS MCCRAY 14:29
Yeah, I mean, 1819
CK LIN 14:33
how are you able to? So let me actually back back pedal a little bit. Yeah. How are you able to maintain that high level of awareness? Because when things are good, yeah, it’s easy to get drowned out by the noise. Right people coming at you people want to something from you, you know, you’re you have something going on, you have a lot of relationships just very noisy, right. But how were you able to maintain a high level of work is such that you actually watching everything going rather than just,
ROSS MCCRAY 15:06
I think it’s just practice, I think it comes down to that moment of just I bet you I can social engineer situations, and then doing it and just taking it more data and just and just, it’s kind of an addictive thing, right? It’s like, you start to do it, and you start to think about it. And then it’s just like walking, you get better at it over doing and doing it. So I think my level of awareness just got better over the years and my and how efficient I was at engineering situations to kind of get to an outcome just got better and better. So I don’t know, if I it’s just, it’s not like, Oh, I’m tired. Now I’m gonna stop doing that it just kind of an always on thing, right?
CK LIN 15:44
But I don’t mean external awareness of the outside. I’m talking about internal awareness like, hey, this doesn’t work for me anymore. Like, how did you maintain that high level awareness?
ROSS MCCRAY 15:54
I don’t know if I always did, and I think that was the problem. So I think giving like another example, I was always aware of like, okay, I want to go get this person. This person has a lot of influence runs this business has this is a second degree relationship with so and so which I could, you know, has a lot of influence, or could be an investor or something like this, right. And I would just say, I want to try to get that person in my circle. So that if I ever needed something for everyone to tap into this, then I could. And it was essentially that all over the place. And it was trying to build this network for the what if moment, or like, Oh, I could eventually tap into someone, whatever, right? Could be athletes can be, again, celebrities, or investors or CEO, or someone that would you know, some sort of influence. And I would just try to collect this, like collectibles. For the purpose of just because of like, one day, why not? Yeah. And then and then I think, to your point of the question of the internal. That was the switch, like, why am I collecting these relationships? You know, looking at like a card game, why do I have all these people, you just kind of get lost in the motion of just you’re doing it, you’re doing it, you’re doing it, you’re doing it? Okay, I’m all this person, I don’t know this person, I’m gonna go introduce myself, I’m gonna try to add value to them. And just try to Oh, you know, hey, let’s stay in touch security moment. But why, again? Why? And then all of a sudden, you have 1000 people that are in your sphere of influence. But what are you doing with that? What is the purpose of that? And I focus so much on just building up disruptor, you know, this kind of repertoire. But I never had, I never figured out a reason why I needed it. So that was really the switch was. So why don’t I go talk to this person? Think what am I the the the outcome, that from the outcome of getting them to be in network, to switching that to? What What am I going to do with this person in my network? And I had no idea. I think that comes with a lack of clarity of your purpose. And not knowing what you’re trying to do, I didn’t have an idea. I think it was kind of this proxy mechanism to stay busy, and instead of asking yourself the tough questions of why are you alive. And that was really the switch was I didn’t know that. So I think to you, so I don’t think I had that high level of internal awareness is what I’m saying. And that is what I try to now bring to the table, maybe call it the phase that I’m in now is I try to check into this as much as I can. I don’t have like a mechanism of a reminder on my calendar, like rethink why you’re alive. I think I just try to have more conversations like we’re having in this moment, and try to have deeper level of discussions. And I think that’s why I’ve always appreciated Our friendship is that there’s value there, because by having more conscientious conversations, you’re tapping into this muscle more, and you’re able to kind of sharpen your worldview while learning things with one another.
CK LIN 19:16
So a lot of people, especially in their 20s, especially after college, actually, yeah, they asked this question, what is my purpose? Yeah. And they asked that question, probably, again, they get to their 40s. Right, right. Their middle career somewhere? Probably. Right. Right, probably. And then they’ll ask that question again, after they about to retire. Yeah, that’s the typical times when they ask these questions. So do you think that purpose is like a one static answer? Or do you think that is a continuously unfolding?
ROSS MCCRAY 19:45
No, it’s always unfolding? For sure. Yeah. For sure. I mean, if you’d have a static purpose of it, you’re in a dangerous place. I mean, how could How could you? Every day, you’re receiving more data, you’re building a model, you’re testing your assumptions, you’re learning new things, hopefully. And if that’s not changing your view on things, and there’s a problem.
CK LIN 20:12
So So tell us a little bit about this unfolding of your clarify your own?
ROSS MCCRAY 20:15
Yeah,
CK LIN 20:16
for sure. what it was before?
ROSS MCCRAY 20:18
Yeah, it was an 18. Year, probably when we started meeting, right. And it was, it was this, I want to have global impact. What does that mean? Why do I want to have global impact? So I think it started off with like, I I think I can have impact. And we know that we’re met really. And then it started to go into, you know, in this evolution, maybe the second phase of this to, I want to add value, because shifting the word impact to value, I think, because to me, impact could be negatively positive could be impactful, right? Could be disruptive, impactful, potentially, by adding value is more of a clear word for me. You know, value is is is really what I’ve been trying to get into. Okay, so how do I add as much value as possible? And then I started to think, Okay, well, why do they want to add value to someone? What, what’s the purpose of adding value to someone? And I think, where that went to became digging deeper and saying, Well, if I could make someone happier, if I can make someone suffer less in their day to day, then that’s the type of value I want to bring to someone just having value. And I can bring value maybe to someone’s career to make them an extra dollar. But if that dollar isn’t necessarily Why do you want you know, money isn’t is a vehicle to achieve something. So going deeper, I got the point where we’re more where I am today, is I want to to reduce human suffering. And ultimately, that’s the value. That’s the impact. You want to go up a little bit to why why I want to why I want to impact and add value people’s life is so that I could have less suffering in that and to have them have a more joyful, fulfilled purpose.
CK LIN 22:33
Well, first acknowledge you for having that clarity. It’s a very noble purpose. Thank you. Yeah.
ROSS MCCRAY 22:39
And you know, that’s a whole nother place. We can go and say noble, we can say it’s vain as well. selfish. I think ultimate it’s selfish.
CK LIN 22:49
Okay, let’s talk about that for a moment. Do you believe in altruism?
ROSS MCCRAY 22:53
No, I don’t I think ultimately, why I’m choosing to reduce suffering, because that’s going to make me feel that I’m to make you feel better. Giving back to someone makes me feel good. doesn’t make me feel bad, right. If I felt bad for it, then I you know, I wouldn’t do it. So but look, I think, I don’t know if it’s a zero sum game. I don’t know if it’s, I feel good. when i’m giving back. So, um, you know, shame on me. It’s like, why not? Great. Right. Win win. You know,
CK LIN 23:26
I think it’s a philosophical discussion about this whole nature of altruism. I think it’s kind of you know, it’s kind of a stupid question really, to me, right. Who cares? Who cares? Yeah. Because ultimately is about net net. Right? If the intention is, to me if I feel good doing this, who cares what the come from is?
ROSS MCCRAY 23:46
Yeah, who cares? If it’s it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
CK LIN 23:49
Ultimately, I’m giving to somebody else. That’s right. Because of the actions that I take.
ROSS MCCRAY 23:54
So call that whatever you want. Altruism. not altruism. That’s great. Set positive. That net is what we want. As much as possible.
CK LIN 24:04
Cool. I’m okay. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. All right. Great. Continue, then. So. So then, how do you? You are also the CEO of a company, right, yeah. And then you have fiduciary responsibilities, you have you know, your responsibilities to the people in your life? Really, let’s actually just be more generalized that way. Sure. When it comes to reducing suffering, do you see if I can ask this question in more in a way that that that, that that’s that’s productive? Is it other people first, and then then you or you first and other people? And let me actually unpack it a little bit. Because people that have “noble” purposes in life. Yeah. The pitfall of that is they want to give so much. And yet they had nothing else left for themselves. Yeah, they usually sacrifice their health, usually sacrifices, their sleep, usually sacrifice their nutrition or whatever. All the time. And and that’s a very unsustainable way to do that. Right. And but flip it around, if someone is always focusing, and let me focus on me, right. And then it’s all about them.
ROSS MCCRAY 25:31
well, I think this is what I’m good at. It’s like, what’s the outcome? And how would you engineer backwards, ultimately, if you’re trying to focus on giving back, because that’s what makes you feel good. And then I would say, what is the most effective and efficient way for you to try to maximize your ability to give back, so I think it’s your start with give back, and then you optimize your tactics. And you should be thinking about maximizing value over the lifetime. And to do that, you have to have sustained throughput. You can’t have crashes, you can’t have lack of energy, you can’t have things come up. And you know, you have to look at it over a longer lens time. Because ultimately, value is over a period of time, you could have one year of a lot of value, but then if the rest of your life, you’re not adding value, then the lifetime value of what you’ve done is less than someone who had less than, you know, a more sustained method, say. So I think it’s ultimately what’s it going to take to maximize it. And I have not seen any individual that focuses and has a very value driven individual that just focuses on short term gains or getting through this crunches. So to get it back into what the people that don’t take care of the health. People who don’t make sure they’re mentally healthy people who don’t spend enough time with their own personal self and their responsibilities, whether it be family or whether it be personal health or personal mental health, spiritual health, then you are going to be affected in the longer term. So set right balance, because then again, I see a lot of people to on the other end, I see both sides, people that just focus all day on the output. And they’re all behind on work, and you continue to be in this rat race forever. And you’re never able to just go to one more deadline, one more this, get this out, get this out. And you’re in that rut for 10 years, and has people on the other side who just try to just focus on philosophical, I’m going to build my base up and you know, I’m going to keep working on myself and I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready to go and start a business. I’m not ready to to become a founder. I got it this this and that you’re never ready.
CK LIN 27:54
Yeah, I mean, that’s actually the thing to remember. Because as I’m academically trained, yeah. Right. So and you know me well enough. Yeah, my tendency is to want to align everything right, all the ducks in a row. Yeah,
ROSS MCCRAY 28:05
it is.
CK LIN 28:06
And then, then I’ll do something but it never happens. That’s right. You know, even if it happens, you know, what happens when a nanosecond and and all the ducks would be off and
ROSS MCCRAY 28:14
you use the framework, it’s, well, there’s a certain level of call it everyone’s different how they learn. For you, you’re definitely a more of academical, you get a lot of value in preparation. Right. And I necessarily am not that way. And but there’s value in the preparation, there’s value of failure, trying something failing, wanting from you’re trying it again, and I’m on that camp pretty aggressively. So I think everyone’s different. And I think, you know, if I never prepare it, if I never learned how to take a step back, and I look at other things, and I think that’s a pitfall for me. And I think for you, it’s you can get, you know, analysis paralysis. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
CK LIN 28:56
Okay, so let’s get it get down to tactical, yes, I don’t want to just a philosophical conversation, and people are inspired by your narrative. But I also want people to not only get inspired, but in learn specific tactics that you do to strike that balance. Right, that harmony. So what are some of the disciplines that you have? Or the habits that you have as a way to both do and also think, like set of your day for sustainable throughput
ROSS MCCRAY 29:24
Yeah, I think it’s about creating habits. And it’s about discipline. That’s the underlying tactics that I use to go about everything that I do. And you have to choose a couple things, focus, discipline habits, right. Those are the things that I really probably best describe my tactics and how I approached my life. So what’s the focus, they only focus on a few things. For me, health is one of them. So I unpack health, which with it, being energy being your diet, being your physical activity, your spiritual mental health, all that I kind of put into the bucket and tactics that I do for that is waking up at the same time, every day early, having a routine, finding something a physical activity that you can build skills upon. So not just oh, I’m going to run today and bike today and climate day and do a class today, because you’re not really building skill sets. I like to build to focus on something that I could build and be competitive with, which is kind of killing two birds with one stone. So you can go do something active every day. But if you’re not bettering yourself in something, then you kind of lose something in my opinion. So personally, I’ve been doing CrossFit and olympic lifting as my focus
CK LIN 30:47
What did you pick that? Because you have many, many options?
ROSS MCCRAY 30:50
Yeah, well, I think inherently I like those two, because especially the CrossFit side, because it brings in a lot of variety already. And it’s very measurable, very competitive and very intense. So workouts are measurable holds certain weights or times certain number of reps, you have to do that you can compare yourself against other people. And then you can track your progress. So it’s very ROI driven, and it’s measurable and and if you’re able to measure how your physical output is, then you’ll take that habit, and that kind of will, it will correlate to everything else that you do. So there’s these added benefits of not just kind of think of it like of health as a vertical pillar, the the intensity, and the measure, everything you do is a horizontal tenet that will go across other things like my professional life. So if I’m honing in, on on the discipline, and I’m honing in on the measurability and the intensity, then when I go and I finished my morning routine, and I go to the professional life, and I’m able to I’ve already sharpen those skills, and I’m going to want to reuse that and measure my own self worth measure my teams and way measure our output and our mission and to be able to have the intensity and the wherewithal to do what’s necessary. And to be able to use that as a competitive edge in the marketplace against your competition. And to use that as a tool to inspire others is something that I also get out of it. So I can go and do some yoga, that which I love. But something that is there’s all kinds of different Yoga means but more of the traditional, more meditative, slower paced yoga, the more as that’s going to give you a lot of things more like mindfulness and more things like mobility, which is very important part of my life as well. But you won’t, to me that’s less valuable, or less attributable, also into your work life. And other things. For me, the competitiveness, the intensity, and the measurability that you get from CrossFit is very valuable in professional career,
CK LIN 32:57
what other tactics, whether disciplines do you have.
ROSS MCCRAY 33:00
So I like to minimize the number of decisions that I make every day. So I call that the decision fatigue of people call me an asshole for even talking about concept of decision fatigue, I find it funny, but it’s true, right. And it’s I when you make a lot of decisions, micro decisions, I’ve seen how that has added tax to my life. And that’s something that drags down my energy level is very important to me. So the decision fatigue is what am I going to eat today, what am I going to wear today? You know, where am I going to go for lunch is when I see all the time people once I don’t really care about that. For me, I look at food as fuel, I look at what I’m wearing should be practical, to be comfortable to to to just have that be a decision that I don’t want to think about what I’m wearing or what I’m eating and where I’m going and to have that be automated is very important. So I subscribe to meal plans for their be a service or finding someone that you can have more cooking for yourself from doing that on Sunday or subscribing to a services all kinds of ways to do that. Having it delivered to the office and looking at it right now my food in my refrigerator. That’s a great tactic to just kind of focus on worrying less things and I buy in bulk and if I enjoy a T shirt and notice by 10 of them and I don’t want to have the hundred different things that I’m wearing and focusing on that what value Am I generating from from that? I don’t I don’t see any incremental value of focusing on fashion to me is very, very vain concept.
CK LIN 34:39
How interesting. Huh? I know that you’ve been trying to tell me about getting my own food prep meal service for a long time. Yeah, for a long time. I kept saying no because of various reason the cost, the time. it’s always uses you ever tried it? And holy crap. It’s such such a gift. such a blessing.
Yes. Anytime I am hungry it’s is right there. Within three minutes on my food. Now is it maximize in terms of nutrition or taste. It’s not maximize. However, it’s optimized. Because if I need it is right there.
ROSS MCCRAY 35:20
Well, I think max realizes is a I don’t know if I agree with you. Because it’s what are you maximizing? Right comes down to Why do you look at what is your purpose of food? If you’re maximizing how tasty it is. And when you’re chewing for optimizing mouth pleasure. Yeah, maybe not. I mean, some are actually driving an hour to go to lunch to some random ass place, you know, in LA far away, sitting in traffic to go into the for an hour having a food coma, driving back another hour, take three hours in a coma later. But you got that mouth pleasure.
CK LIN 36:05
Is it worth it? Right?
ROSS MCCRAY 36:07
Well, I mean, it’s up to the individual. Right? Not to me.
CK LIN 36:11
Yeah, same here. So after what was that celebrity chef who committed suicide? He had a show.
ROSS MCCRAY 36:22
Anthony Bourdain.
CK LIN 36:26
So after his passing, I started watching his show just as a way to like, hey, what makes this guy special, right? I was inspired by him. But as a result of that, I also drove an hour to try out some of the restaurants and I realize the payoff the mouth pleasure didn’t warrant whatever time effort
ROSS MCCRAY 36:45
There is time and place for everything, you know, I mean, special occasions and experience you with certain kind of people. That’s one thing, the experience with people around something that it versus routine is very different. So yeah, yeah.
CK LIN 37:04
Any other disciplines that you wanted to share? That gave you a really high ROI for the level of throughput? Use your word.
ROSS MCCRAY 37:16
Yeah, I think I think making sure you look at how you’re spending your time has been something that I’ve done in the very beginning. And it’s a funny one, because when, frankly, when I when you ask me these questions, it’s not easy for me to the most impactful, highest ROI habits that I think I have are so ingrained in me that is just like air, right? Like, for me the food concept. Is, is so just, I forget about, it’s like I forget the know, not everyone does that, right. And like this hit me with the health thing. So some of these things that I do, are just so common, like putting on your underwear or putting on socks. It’s like, I don’t think about it. It’s just important. So that’s why I kind of pause. But I would say the time thing is one of those where I put everything in my calendar, and I make I make everything measurable. So that on a weekly level, usually on Sundays, I’ll look at my last week, and I’ll see how I spent my time and I’ll see how that attributes to what I’m trying to get done. And then I will try to better plan my following week. And I probably remove so many meetings and distractions that has been slotted just because it was slotted two weeks ago, three weeks ago, is this important for me to do either move those or cancel those or adding a new things that come about so that I can really plan on a week to week level, versus being so reactive on a daily or even hourly level of what it going to do and have that discipline to be thinking about those intentions, be more purpose driven and thoughtful regarding how you’re spending your time on a weekly level. And looking in doing a little bit of a retrospective and how your last week went. And then planning forward and had something that I’ve done very for probably 10 years. And one of the things that I’ve always found to share with people. Not what not really in my circle, but 10 years ago when I was starting to do this. And when I started asking around and everyone has the the intention or not everyone but most people want to be let’s call it successful. They want to have financial security, they want whatever goals they have. Yeah, I mean, it’s everywhere. I want to be rich, I want to have a lot of money. I want to have a company I want to have I want to being an influencer, I want social media followers, all this crazy shit. And then Okay, let’s let’s just let’s just fancy them for a second. And I’ll say so how would you spend your day yesterday? And like, what do you mean? Let’s break it down. What time do you wake up? I woke up at nine and I went to breakfast. Drove somewhere for some food. And then I came back and watch some TV. And then I went to work my shift from 10 to Five, and you know, whatever it is some some new some whatever their day job is. And then I came home and then I played some games, and I went on social media. And then I went and I met up with a friend and I went to happy hour. It’s like, and then I’ll add that I go to bed late. So Wait, so what did you do in that day to go against everything you said, which was what your goals are. And it’s funny because it’s so discrepant. And it’s sad, because it’s delusional. Oh, I mean, let’s just take these example of trying to become a founder of a company. You say that’s a goal. Yeah. And then you ask someone how they spend their time and It’s very sad. Because they don’t have the consciousness to understand that they’re not doing anything towards those goals. And they’ll have this goal for 30 years. And I see people in their 40s and 50s. They just become very bitter of like, what did I do with my life? It’s like, well, you just had a day that I just described, right? a more practical example of that is, is I woke up at 5am. And I spent an hour to work out, I and then I got to work, you know, I figured out a job that I can do to pay the bills from 7am, or 8am to four or five. And then I figured out a way to maintain my energy level by being healthy and eating the right way. And then I started my second shift from five to 10 11, my second seven or eight hours a day into something that’s very deliberate towards building towards my dreams, you’re not hanging, you’re not going to happy hour, you’re not playing video games, you’re not on Facebook for an hour, you’re not driving around and get lunch, these things add up and you have an entire second part of your day that you can be really building towards your vision, and that this makes a difference. How you spend your weekend time is very important. It just takes time. It takes 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week, to be able to do any of what most people have as a goal. And they don’t spend the time to do it. And it’s discrepant, and then they get sad. And then they suffer. To get to the point of the mission that we’re discussing. They suffer. They add suffering to their life because they get upset. Oh I am not making progress. Oh, five years goes by and then they wonder what they’re doing. And they get these crises and they suffer and it’s sad to see them suffer. And especially because they’re throwing away their time. They are mismanaging it.
CK LIN 43:04
Yeah, I feel you. I also feel them, right.
ROSS MCCRAY 43:06
Yeah, I do. I want the best for them. My opinion is you either need to reorient yourself and come to reality that you don’t want to start a company. You just saying this because you are vain and desire to be successful. Because it’s just been ingrained in you in this Western society. Let it go, what you’re saying is you want to just be on Facebook, you want to go have mouth pleasure, you want to play video games, and you want to be working a mindless job. That’s fine. If that’s what you just don’t be discrepant. Own up to it and say, This is what I want to do with my time. Great good for you. You need to align your tactics with your intentions. And that’s the point. Just have a conscientious to understand this is what you want to do. You want to go party every night. Okay, it’s up to you. If that’s how you want to spend your time just but don’t. Don’t lie yourself. All you have is your integrity with yourself. You know?
CK LIN 44:09
I mean, what you just said, it’s, it’s true. Have integrity with with yourself. First and foremost.
ROSS MCCRAY 44:17
And yes, and that’s the problem is that most people and look it’s not that they’re not trying to, it’s because they’re not aware it’s a simple exercise. ask someone what they want, what their intention is, what their goals are, which are career, wherever they are. And how they spend their time today. do that and plot it. This is unbelievable. There is a lot time in a day.
CK LIN 44:39
For sure. If you look at so one of the easiest way to to see what people are truly committed to right is look at their time. Yes, their calendar and also look at their their spending habits, their credit card statement for sure. Because that’s what we have. The limited resource that we have.
ROSS MCCRAY 44:55
We can get more complex and look at energy. But this is an easier framework.
CK LIN 45:05
Okay, so let me actually ask you a separate question, because you hang around with a lot of achievement oriented people. Yeah. Right. Do you feel that actually achieving your goals makes one more happy? Or because there is a phrase that sometimes more grief is caused by answered prayers than unanswered ones. Right. Sometimes you grasp the goal so tightly that if you don’t achieve it, your life turns to shit. Because I didn’t achieve.
ROSS MCCRAY 45:38
For sure. I’ll give you a concrete example. Okay. I had a financial goal when I was 16, 15, whatever, that I hit when I was 22. And when I hit it, it was the most disappointing thing ever.
CK LIN 46:01
So say more about that. Why is that?
ROSS MCCRAY 46:02
Yeah, I mean, look, it was just this, it was a vanity metric. It was a vanity goal. Right? It was, yeah, I want this. And to me, this is what success can look like. And it just has nothing of that. It was such a letdown. And it was like, again to the Why do you want to have these series of numbers in your bank account? Okay, is it for securities for this, but ultimately that’s not what I optimize for. Again, what I always had deep inside and was at the time, when I was 21, or two, it was still it was exponential impact and, and then it went to the value. And then it went into the suffering, right to reduce suffering, which is where I’m at today. And that goal did not achieve anything directly correlated to reducing suffering. Look, it takes some assets to help you get there. Don’t get me wrong. But that is a proxy. And it wasn’t activated. It was just again, it was like this, the kind of the same idea of getting to have someone in your network. But if you’re not activating, you’re not realizing any value. What does it matter? You can know the most important influential person in the world. But if you’re not generating any value from that, it’s the worst.
CK LIN 47:16
You have a lot of cards stacked for you.
ROSS MCCRAY 47:19
It’s actually the worst, right? It’s the worst feeling in the world. It’s just the worst. Because it’s better to have no assets or it’s like you have all this potential that’s unrealized. That’s the point. You realize you have these assets, these potentials, and unrealizing it to me personally is the worst.
CK LIN 47:41
It’s one thing to strive for something. Right. There’s a hope. Right? Once I get it, then I’ll be able to activate that now that you have it.
ROSS MCCRAY 47:51
It’s vanity, it’s again, you got to get to understanding what you’re really trying to do. It is hard. Don’t get me wrong. You can always go wide and figure out what you want. And as five WHYS, oh, I want to make this Why? Because of Okay, why, why? Why? Why? Just go deep as you can. And then try to try to stay there. And there’s always other levels. There’s always deeper levels, and he’s always unpacking levels and getting clarity. But that’s that’s the best thing you can do in my opinion.
CK LIN 48:16
Yeah, I mean, to me, that’s what makes life beautiful. There’s ultimately once you figure out quote, unquote, the answer you have everything that you need. There’s no more questions, right? It is boring. Yep. Would you want a life no questions. Yep. To me. I’m big on questions. I’m so curious about, about what’s the what’s the next level? So on that note, what kind of actually asked a broader question, because you not only do it personally, you also have a circle of people around you. You also have you know, staff or employees who works for you. A social structure. Yeah, I was going to ask you. Oh, what makes your best friends your best friends? So, all right, coming back to the question. Yeah. So you’re not just responsible for yourself, you’re responsible for your family, right? You’re responsible for your your friends, you’re responsible for your employees? Well, let’s start off with this question. What makes your best friends your best friends?
ROSS MCCRAY 49:15
So, to me, what I appreciate the most with friends, is number one, the level of communication. So when you’re talking about any concept, how deep can you go? And how fast? How fast? Can you get to that level? So when you’re getting into a philosophical question, and you’re having a conversation of value of say, ultimately, like the framework is, if we have half an hour discussion, we spend a half an hour together in leaving that discussion. What was the net net value that we generated? Can we take anything, because there any breakthroughs or discoveries that you can take to add on to yourself to change your world views or to add value to a new new tactic or new question to ask yourself are anything that can add value to the way that you interpret the world? from both sides, right? Again, it’s not just it’s the net, net, and both sides. So if just if it’s just a one directional coaching, coaching, coaching, it’s like, there’s some benefit there. But if we can bounce ideas off each other and and get to that point of net net value, add that that’s very impactful for me, and I really appreciate that. And then the question is, how fast can you get there? Because some people could spend 10 hours and come up with one discovery. But how deep can you get the shared understanding the verbiage. And when you’re talking about something and be able to link things in the passion, the attention to detail, you’re talking about thing that’s very fleeting, or very, like, whoo, whoo. Right? And it’s like, can you grasp these concepts? So there and you create these, these archetypes and these symbolisms? Can you have a shared consciousness? How quickly can you get there? And how quickly can you generate and challenge each other and add value to these questions? To me, that’s where I look at my greatest friendships. It comes from that.
CK LIN 51:14
And it’s one of the reason why I started this podcast. Yes, I enjoyed this type of conversation. That’s great. I like long for them. And not everyone’s ready to dance with me this way.
ROSS MCCRAY 51:23
Especially your. Yeah, no, I agree.
CK LIN 51:27
Especially me. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so so socially speaking, though, do you have I suppose different pockets of friends? Or do they all know each other? Or do they all complement each other?
ROSS MCCRAY 51:40
Yeah, there’s there’s pockets, but it’s not intended to be like, compartmentalizing. I think it’s just it just happens, right? I would say I have to be honest, I mean, I’ve had different friends over the years, especially. And I think, as most relationships happen, some relationships grow apart. And just there’s different values on there’s different intentions and different goals. And, and that’s fine. And for me, I think some people have different opinions here. Some people I’ve seen judge this in certain ways, and but if you’re having a friendship for, you know, your childhood friendship, or 10 years ago, best friend or whatever, and it just starts to go another way. And they will bring on different habits, and they’ll do different things and different your values start to tear apart, there’s some level of repair some level of, of effort you want to put into to that. But for me, I’m not someone who’s going to throw the kitchen sink at trying to rehabilitate a relationship, if it’s not organic anymore, if it’s not authentic, and you have to do all this work, and there’s no net net benefit. So, so I think that’s what happened with the social circles is that some people will grow away from each other. And that’s fine. I don’t have any issue with that. Personally, I wish the best for them people, but I don’t continue to bring people through it’s kind of part of life, there’s different periods of times in which you’ll go through and I, I’ve had a lot of close friends over the years, and they’re in different places, and I’m in different places, and may stay in touch once a year or something like that. And that’s great. That’s more of a kind of a touching base. But you know, I don’t I don’t go out of my way to spend time into that if I don’t think there’s mutual value generation to the same point of how I defined my closest friends.
CK LIN 53:31
Okay, so how do you translate this to running a company? Because a lot of people are very purposeful in their personal life? Yeah. And they want to bring this into the business life. And you’re very intentional about bringing this purpose moments into the business, can you kind of break it down for the people who are listening to this? How do you translate this?
ROSS MCCRAY 53:49
It’s changed over stages to okay, right? When you’re bringing inyour founding team members to when you’re getting to 20 people to, to you to 50, to 100, to 150 plus, right, growing more than that. And in the, in the very early days, at least how we went about it, it was finding people that have very strong shared sense of values and mission and very much a shared worldview. And there, and there’s benefits to that. Whereas very quickly to make decisions you’re on on the same page, there’s no dilution and communication. And there’s, it becomes a very powerful small, elite SEAL team that can generate something that is very impactful, and that throughput is very high. Now, in my personal opinion, I’ve seen at least even ourselves, our ability with eight, like eight to 15 people, the throughput that you can generate, and just from the lack of dilution and just a very shared of, say, a lack of diverse worldviews, and this can be very effective in delivering a very simple, focused mission. And at least in our company, I saw that throughput of that small team be able to probably generate more throughput, then when we got to 40 or 50, even. But the investment to go there was to reorient ourselves and to create a different Foundation, whereas we could take on 10 X the customer base, so that group of eight to 15, maybe the most effective at delivering just compartmentalize it to say, we use customers, as an example, get 25 enterprise customers, it started to break down when we got to say 50. So we had to be a little bit less efficient on the unit economics, if you wanted to get to 100. So it’s an investment for the future. So that’s kind of how I saw our company grow in these in these tranches, and becomes very different operational, you’re bringing in middle management and bringing in more process you bringing in different diverse views, different approaches, and that’s something that we did, and it was a big learning experience for me because I go from this very intense, everyone thinks about the world in the same way to how you scale a business, you need to bring in diversity, you need to bring in different types of worldviews, and you need to have that be less, you know, it’s more about risk management as you grow. And as you get more customers and how you bring in more process and other stuff, the culture, I had to start to find cultural champions, that leaders that still sharing a common foundation of values and missions, you know, so say we had say there’s 10 core ways look at the world and having a 10 out of 10 have what are the real core five? What are the things that we always want to have, and then have each leader and bring in additional couple extra points that they localize, for maybe engineering their own flavor. So rather than making it so much of a cesspool of thinking, you need to have a still a common ground. So you don’t have to say non culture, yeah, but you need to make the tough decisions. And what you’re really willing to say we this is, this is what we stand for. And now let’s say now it gets to even less than 10 to five, the three, you know, I think that’s how you scale. And that’s kind of where I’ve personally can say at least video has gone.
CK LIN 57:31
Can you tell us a little bit about your personal kind of growth process in when you scaling the company? And did you have to grow personally?
ROSS MCCRAY 57:39
Yeah. Yeah. And it was always delayed. Yeah, i think i’ve heard this I’ve had people tell me these things, but it just didn’t collect, it just always was three or six months later, until I realized the stage that we’re in. So the company has been growing pretty quickly, thankfully, and faster than I realized how that’s that’s kind of where it is. And then all of a sudden, things are going great. And then just like one week, things are not and things are dropping, and the more clients we can support and the assumptions of the unit economics of one, one part of this can support three customers all of a sudden, now can’t anymore, because the customer base is very different. And you know, things like that just happens. And it’s it’s hard to stay ahead of everything. So there’s been some reactive phases, where as I need to look at the data, and and reflect what’s my role in organization for it, I can’t dive in and solve all these problems. I can’t be in every client meeting, I can’t make every product decision. And those are the things that you learn that you have to figure out when’s the right time to scale, when was the right time to give more control and to give more ownership to other people in the company? And what are the things you need to keep still what what decisions do you have to make? And then what decisions can you empower others to make? And those are the things you have to check in on. And I don’t think I’ve made all the right calls over the years, I think it’s developed and I’ve tried to look at certain things and I make bets. And maybe sometimes they work sometimes they don’t. And you have to refactor and you just look at the data and you got to be open minded. Look at the right KPIs in the company. What are the important metrics you want to look at see other trending have open conversation about why they’re not and reassess? Maybe I should have made those know those practices, mafybe I should have longer time decided the roadmap, but I should have given up sales meetings earlier. So it wasn’t a bottleneck there. Or maybe we should have figured out a way to change our client services versus this and that, you know,
CK LIN 59:38
so Okay, so you, you said a lot of terminologies, right? So that maybe not everyone would be able to understand that, can you compromise that just a little bit, just demonstrate one example of where you had to shift your mindset about, for example, control, right, as a CEO of a company, this is your baby, as this, you know, this, you had let go of some control, whether it be product decisions, or
ROSS MCCRAY 1:00:04
I mean, I think the product was easy to give an example. So from the beginning, you know, phase one, whereas you’re literally in a room and you’re making one main product with a couple main experiences and screens, or you’re deciding how the user interacts and what buttons you press and the screen flow of you press this button and you go here in the software, and then you press this button, and you go here in the software, and no, no. But to answer these questions, let’s make a graph look like a bar chart versus this line graph, have this kind of experience, this kind of right, even though the colors to then maybe a phase two have, okay, I don’t decide the color scheme anymore, I can empower designer to make that call, and give him the values and the values in regards to what we want and then to be empowered to then to not get in the way to get into the next stage of saying, Okay, now you have multiple products. So you need to talk about the right questions, these products need to answer and you can’t even wireframe it, you can’t talk about the screen you need to say. In this quarter, we need to have these products on these features, rather do this. So I want a better one a better experience to manage permissions if you’re an enterprise software, and it should look like this. And these features have ability to have read only here, write only here to be able to have enterprise controls, and they can’t see this they can see this screen from different levels of organization as an example. And it should answer these questions. It’s creating use cases and user stories in regards to what features they should ask as call it a phase 2 to versus actually wire framing out. Right, exactly the thing
CK LIN 1:01:37
focus on the the the forest rather than a specific tree.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:01:41
And then you go to the phase three, whereas now you have to just talk about the product and say, Hey, in the sprint in this in this quarter, the product needs to be able to support hundred customers, you know, 10 times the amount of customers that needs to be able to add more value and save your clients money, for example, then then then having the team be able to figure out which features and then what what what features, what questions, we should have to answer what they do. And then the wire framing and the color palette to then even going further talking about the entire portfolio from a revenue perspective. So that so this is an example of going from making a decision of the color all the way to a company goal and empowering and SVP to a VP director to a manager to the team to make those individualized decisions.
CK LIN 1:02:28
So let me actually ask a more and more of an internal game question because you’re you’re very hands on CEO you can get down to the trenches. Yeah, with the guys easily the right colors and deadline. Y’all know that with a specific engineering choices right on that, right? So my, my guess would be how does it? How do you cultivate this trust in your team? Because you may be able to say to yourself, like, Hey, I could have done that even better? Why did you make that choice? Right? So then so then but but part of the your mental game that needs to be changed is well, then I delegated
ROSS MCCRAY 1:03:09
So that’s exactly what that’s the last question like two or three questions ago. That’s exactly the challenge that i’m saying is hard to do. You never know, at which point you want to delegate and hold them accountable versus saying I want to make the so let me just answer the question with a question. And there’s no one size fit all. So don’t ask, it’s just you have to every time try. And there’s no framework that I’ve come across to solve this. But when when anything comes up, you have to make a decision, either entrust my team, give them as much context and set up what success looks like. And let them go out and do that, when you may have a probability of what that’s going to look like. And it’s going to be successful or failure. Versus saying I’m gonna have to make the call, do it my way versus do it their way. And there’s a lot of pros and cons, but simply said, the the the, let’s say the pro of making your own call, may be that you have a higher chance of success in that individual one time discovery, this feature maybe better this particular function, maybe if you’re if you’re truly are more qualified, right, versus letting your team take stab at it. And let’s just say you have as individual was the founder, CEO, you may have 90%, because you know, the customer better, you’ve been doing this longer or whatever, versus you team as a 65% chance of success for this individual function. That 65% if you continue to make your own call, your team will never be able to learn from their own mistakes, and reorient that which is very powerful. So maybe that 65% goes to failure, you saw that you could have stopped it but you decided not to so that that team can learn. And then the next time it goes to 70-75%. And you have the right framework and measurement of success and accountability, where you checking in on a weekly basis and say, Well, what happened here, right? What did you learn from this? How do you make this better? And you have to hold them accountable to that process? And sometimes, there are decisions where are too risky, that are too and that are how do you make call because the benefit of your team learning from a very big fuck up is very valuable if they learn from it.
CK LIN 1:05:29
It’s not a fuck up if they learn something from it
ROSS MCCRAY 1:05:31
well, right, but what are what are the lethal fuck ups and what are fuck ups that you can take a hit from? And what’s that continuum. And every single decision you make is different. And then you don’t even know what can be lethal, something that you thought wouldn’t be lethal, they can, they can screw up some other thing that you didn’t know could happen. And it could be a big fuck up. So you have to make a gut check. With all the data you have is a risk call, say long term versus we can’t afford to do this. And, and that’s the bit in my opinion, that’s a very large burden of any leader is you have to know when to entrust your team and when you make the call. Because you can’t always make the call. And sometimes there is just too much on the line to have it be a learning exercise.
CK LIN 1:06:24
so one of the angel investors that I talked to, and he’s a super Angel and he recommend to entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs to think probabilistically. And I think everything you just said actually demonstrated really well 65% chance of winning 30 percent etc. So how does one go about training oneself to think probabilistically?
ROSS MCCRAY 1:06:48
Well, it’s just trial and error yourself. It’s like 94 to 65. But how do you know of right percentages versus it being hit? you can go the other way. I’ve seen other people that think they’re 90. And they’re really at 40 and their team that 70. But then they have all this ego in the way, or they think they’re making the right call. It’s like no, you’re not you’re not you don’t know what you’re talking about. And you see that and you have teams everywhere in the world, where their manager, they don’t trust the manager, they don’t make the right calls. And you know, they they don’t they don’t believe in it, the CEO get so far removed from what’s actually, you know, in reality of what the actual is going on the business and I’ve seen, you get so much complaints about that. So it just depends. So before that, like the probability is you have to just have self awareness, and you have to let your ego go away. And you have to go looking at the hundred decisions that happened in the last two weeks, and make a model. And every day orient yourself. Just risk management, trial and error.
CK LIN 1:07:46
How do you not let your ego get in the way because you’re obviously a very confident person, you believe in yourself, you believe in the people that you surround yourself with?
ROSS MCCRAY 1:07:53
it’s very easy. Easy, it’s very easy. Okay, need to set up measurable goals, and you AB test. Bottom line, what does success look like? you draw it out. You write it down? You try it two ways, you come back and you see what works better. If your ego is more successful every time then great. Let your ego get in the way. Who cares? If you’re egotistical? If you’re driving those values and you’re adding more value to the customer? What’s your goal? In optimize the input? Set the output optimize the input?
CK LIN 1:08:34
Okay, so let’s let’s talk about perhaps maybe not in the business sense.
Maybe on the personal sense when you deal with your, your loved ones? Sure, your wife, your parents, right? These are, you know, people say you think you’re enlightened, and spend a weekend with your parents as an example. How do you make sure that you personally, your egos are not engaged when you’re especially interacting with people that who are really important for you?
ROSS MCCRAY 1:09:03
Well, so I mean, when I say let your ego get in the way, what I’m really more saying is, let the best tactic win. When I am referring to ego is your opinions, right? When people say egos getting in the way is when you’re truly are optimizing for your personal self gratitude over the best outcome. That’s how I see it. I see. So the point is the fact of measuring and output and being measurable driven, I see is the is how you get that out. Because ego gets in the way, when you make a decision that truly isn’t the best outcome I see for some other alternative reason your feel good. I see. So if it’s not your idea, and it’s someone else’s idea, but it’s been achieved, the better desired outcome, then you’d have to go with that input.
CK LIN 1:10:02
I see. So let me let me make sure I understand what you say. So basically, you said you’re running experiments had a clear defined outcome that you’re looking for. And then option A option B, whichever, whether it’s coming from your selfish intentions, or other people’s input or whatever, right? Whatever hit that the outcome that you’re looking for, right? That is the right focus
ROSS MCCRAY 1:10:23
Focus on the output and choose the right input, and do that. And that’s the point, when ego gets in the way, you’re bringing some of the input into the formula. Well, this was my input. So even though is less of an output. I’m going to still choose mine, because it’s my idea, right? Because this is how I feel or this is because it makes me feel better. Like who cares? It just depends if someone’s focusing on the input or the output, and you have a clear defined, desired outcome that you’re trying to achieve. So it’s a it’s a mindset. Do you go into the situation thinking about the tactics or the outcome? Do you say, Oh, I’m trying to do this? I’m trying to go into more time with my family, for example, right? Why do you want to spend more time with your family, that’s that that is a so I’m going to spend, I’m going to come to work, I’m going to leave work an hour earlier day, to spend two extra hours of my family or whatever, three to two extra hours or two hours to get two hours. That’s a tactic. If your family tells you leave work. come early. Spend more time with me. And you go, I gotta some more time, my family that is a tactic that’s an input, right? What are they trying to deliver? You’re trying to get in, I’m going to give an example. What I think is very common. People get people thinking about time, as it turns an input, the output is relatedness, it’s experiences. It’s a shared clinic quality. You know, bonding with time, mindfulness with your family, something that you can really special, you know, there’s always those dinners where you’re just quiet, no one’s talking and you’re just eating and you go as mother phone, you’re watching TV, it’s like you left work two hours early for what did you get out of that, that if anything that’s a negative, like, the more time you spend with people that is it really valuable and isn’t really impactful or deliberate is not only not adding the value you want, but could be seen as a negative, right? You’re getting desensitized. Versus, I’m going to spend every minute very deliberate, and I’m going to be present and not going to be on my phone and not gonna be taking your call. And when I’m home home. And I’m going to give it my all and I’ve seen very successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, women and men that are very busy. and are able to say no to the the the easy inputs. And are saying but you know, look, maybe I’m just using time as an example. And it’s not always the way it is. But it’s easy to it’s easy. One of my pain to articulate. I’m going to stay late Friday night, to get out all the stuff done, because I know it’s going to pop up on a Saturday or Sunday, or I’m going to come to work early on a Saturday. So I can spend the second half Saturday and all day Sunday as an example. Or where I’m going to do a work trip that I get home late Saturday. So I can be you know, home on Sunday versus spending Saturday and Sunday, and you go to your kids game and you’re on the phone and you’re not really watching. You’re not engaging, you’re not coaching or you get emails coming in, you got to take fires out, you’re leaving. That is you’re there. But are you really there, right? You’re there but You’re not there. Right. So to me, I’d rather spend five hours of quality. Like you remember that weekend? Yeah, you remember that weekend and there was an out desired outcome of building a bond building a relationship. learning together, having an experience together is to me it’s memorable that you hold dearly to yourself versus having 10 hours of just a mindless activity or not really, truly being present.
CK LIN 1:14:07
What are some of the hacks or the tips to really help? You know, let’s say let’s use that family as an example. To help make those shared moments memorable with their spouse with their children
ROSS MCCRAY 1:14:20
to me, It’s the same thing. what are you trying to do with your family, have a real have a conversation with your significant other and understand what you guys are trying to do? You go home and you put on Netflix for three hours, four hours, okay? If that’s the intention is to sit physically, next to each other, and to not speak to each other and to be silent and to just be watching a TV screen without moving and just ingesting information, if that’s your outcome, and that’s how you want a relationship, great. Define that and go spend all the time TV together.
CK LIN 1:14:59
I got you.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:15:00
If your desired outcome is I want to have a meaningful spiritual relationship, I want to be able to build something together, I want to give back I want to give charity to someone, I want to be physically, you know, healthy with you, I want to be healthy together. I want to grow each other. I want to build something, either a business or charity or a foundation together. I want to teach children together. What is the purpose of your family time again, it’s the output, then optimize to that same concept.
CK LIN 1:15:34
To you and your spouse have regular conversation about this?
ROSS MCCRAY 1:15:38
Yeah, yeah. Is it? Yeah. Is it? Is it a monthly, weekly quarterly? Or is it just kind of happens? It happens. It’s a mindset, right? It’s not a it’s not a scheduled routine up? It’s the 28th? Talking about it? No, not at all? No, yeah, we don’t want to make a transactional business oriented. But you want to always be there. And you want to ask yourself, What are you spending your time? And again, it comes to the same part with, you know, with your friends, and how you value your friendships? How fast can you get to that shared understanding? And how quickly can you get to be mutually adding value together? If you go to if you gotta sit down for 10 hours and say, Okay, let’s, let’s talk about everything. Let’s talk about outputs and inputs our time together, and that gets tiring, you know, you can invest in it, do it. But I hope that you have a relationship that you don’t need to do that every week, or every month, hopefully, you can spend 40 hours, 80 hours building a foundation and having a shared understanding. And then you’re spending time optimizing towards it. So it’s getting to a understanding of why you’re doing what you’re doing is purpose driven. Intentional output focus vs. input.
CK LIN 1:17:01
Let me use this example. You know, I used to play the piano. So in the beginning of learning piano, I learned very mechanically, you know, the keys. And hopefully right after some time, you get to really use it as an instrument. So you can now effortlessly use it as a way to express your emotion. So maybe I’m asserting you tell me this is the mental model. What it takes aspirationally is to go in flow and have conversation and mutual understanding very quickly. Yeah. But perhaps in the beginning is the scheduling. I think so. Right? I think so. Then Then once you find your cadence and simpatico all together, then it becomes a lot more I think, some mutual understanding. Change of topic: what do you thing is like to be a man in modern times? Let’s bring that in, you know, a little bit more about the purpose of this podcast, because most of the audience members going to be men.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:17:59
Yeah. You know, it’s a it’s a, it’s an interesting one. It’s an interesting one. I don’t know if I have a strong opinion from a gender point of view. Okay. I personally do not have clarity on it. And I struggle with this concept. So I’m not going to give you my opinion, because they have long opinions. But if I don’t have one, then you know, I don’t have clarity here. So I’ll, I’ll, what I will do is I will respond to your questions with why I’m confused.
CK LIN 1:18:35
Okay. Sure.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:18:38
So the concept of diversity, the concept of equality, I don’t see it out there. Right. I see a lot of discrepancies in this concept. Whereas people talk about equality, but they really don’t want equality. People talk about diversity, but then they don’t really act on diversity. And, and sometimes it just gets taken too far. And there’s certainly there are differences and genders, and you have to respect that. But there’s also it’s like, where do you draw that line of equality? Like I saw a group of men rioting or whatever, recently in LA, i was driving by talking incredible about how it’s not, they were very upset that they couldn’t give birth. But yes. And they were talking about how there’s no equality, they were fighting for equality. And they were very upset, and they cannot experience this beautiful relationship of giving birth. I mean, they seem pretty serious. Wow. So it’s interesting, right? So let’s, let’s just take that interesting point of view. So clearly, there’s no equality, man, female, there’s a biological difference there. Correct. So but when you’re fighting for equality, what is equality? Right? But equal? want equality across all gender? We want equality. Well, what where do you draw the line of what is eligible for equality, and what is not eligible for equality? And that’s where I’m confused. And that’s where I’m confused, where it’s like, people want you to speak to the same people, the same way woman speak to women very differently. Whereas women speak to men. In groups, not not always the case. But I’m saying in general, men, I can tell you from experience, speak very differently to men than women speaking to a woman. Is that equality? Can you talk very manly, bro-like, and whatever the case, you know? So one should say, Okay, well, then you shouldn’t do that women shouldn’t speak to men differently. And I’ll use stereotypes they shouldn’t gossip about people very differently. men shouldn’t be talking bro like in the locker rooms together? And that, you know, you shouldn’t have that differences. And you should all speak about the same thing. But like, that’s where I’m confused is, what is the difference? Where do you draw the line? Where don’t you draw the line? To me when I think about just even being conscious about a gender, and even thinking about, oh, you’re a male, you’re a female, let me change. That’s where I don’t like that. The fact that you know, and like say a diversity thing at the company, the fact that some programs, they say you need to have more diversity, say on a more females and leadership and more people in the board, stuff like that. Whereas I agree, you should have more diversity. And it shouldn’t be a boys club, these kind of things hundred percent, I’m aligned. But the tactic says, now go fire, a team of people if they were most qualified, potentially with that, and to bring on arbitrary gender distribution, just because we need to artificially force diversity. And it’s not because the best intention, right? I struggle with. But then you have this concept of Well, there’s so much unintended bias is so much subconscious bias that happens. So in theory, that sounds great Ross, but I’ll never happen. Look at what’s been going on. So you have to bring in these artificial things. So it just for me, I don’t I don’t want to, I don’t want to have to deal with the situation differently. Given the gender. I don’t see a reason why you should. I think that it, I think that thinking is what actually causes the problem. But on the flip side, I get how that’s happened over the last hundred 220 years. And we’re here because of that level of thinking. So again, I don’t have an opinion. I don’t know the answer to this, I struggle with what it means to be a modern man or what it is to be a female and the differences and what is eligible for that. And what is not.
CK LIN 1:22:53
Yeah, the whole point of this conversation really, is to inquire about what that is, and for us to heightened awareness. And from that, you know, we grapple with these questions individually, then from that, then we can make decisions, hopefully, right from our highest self the way we articulated
ROSS MCCRAY 1:23:10
Yeah, for me, I think it’s I also think that’s a tactic I think, don’t try to bring in bias. Don’t try to separate genders, or even worse, you know, races into certain things, and the combination of gender race, and you know that all these aggregations, try much as possible to just think about the outcome and the best intention and will let whatever happens happens, that means all female, that means or male, that means a 5050 split exactly, just, I’m hoping by putting the best intention forward and not being biased that over time it will become, it will become more balanced, integrated in a healthier relationship.
CK LIN 1:23:53
So let’s do a little forward looking for a moment. You’re a technologist. Yeah, right. You run a companies, you start companies. Yeah. You have a life purpose of alleviating human suffering. Yeah. Right. So how do you see the the role of technology to help with that? Because to me, technology is a multiplier. Whatever the intention.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:24:12
Yeah, so here’s how I think about it. I’ll give you an example of how technology, I think there are some ways where it becomes an enabler and some things it becomes inhibitor. And we’re going down a very risky road, in my opinion. So let me give you this example. So a few years ago, I went to Tokyo, Japan, and other places in Japan. And at the time, there wasn’t a Yelp. So I’m very used to, I’m hungry, I’m looking for certain type of cuisine, I’m going to go on Yelp, rank it by most commented, and then look at the places and then to find them area and listen to GPS, and I’m going to do an Uber driver. It’s incredible, what a time to be alive. From a technology, friends, I can find the best restaurant without talking to anyone I can, I can call car to compete me up with a minute to the every location that I’m in taking me there. And you know, it’s like magic, right? And it’s automated. And you don’t have to say a word to anyone, you don’t got to think about anything, just boom, boom, boom. And look that’s incredible for its own for its own purposes, and I’m a power user of stuff. But so when I went to Japan, when I didn’t have that I had a panic and like 60 seconds, what what, how the fuck do I find where to go? Like, what do I do? How do I know? Some of them? like, Well, fuck, I guess I gotta have to just talk to someone. I gotta ask around. Yeah. And then when I asked someone, it was like, hey, just go down, turn right, turn left, and go explore all the restaurants a bunch. It’s like, Whoa, what a call after half and look around. And that took me on an interesting journey. because it allowed me to look around, it allowed me to speak to people, it allowed me to look around my environment, and to be headed to bring in more senses, to be thinking about interacting with other humans and nature. And I started bringing more attention to like the beautiful trees around me because I’m looking at not just dialing and falling, turn left, go right, do this, and I’m just on autopilot, I’m gonna go on my email and send an email out. And you’re just in your focused on the interaction in you that and you and you speak and people and you have small talk, and you have this banter. And there’s some value in that human interaction that face to face person in person interaction, the exploratory of looking around the world and going in a way. And that was that really stood out to me. And that was because I didn’t have technology. Right? So that exists. So I want to bring back to your question. And for me, technology has a choice. You can you can engineer your design technology to either say, stream like eliminate human interaction elimiate, just automate, and obviously can trust me, you know, me, I love this shit. More, more than most people talk about automating all these foods like that, but you but you have to also understand the cost of what you’re giving up. And I don’t think we think about it often as a society. I don’t think you think about the cost of what this is like. Some there’s been some discussions around AI and how there’s a million times more investment towards developing AI than it is thinking about the societal regulations, and what it can mean to us protections that it can bring on a downside that kind of ebbs and flows, checks and balances, and it’s out of whack and the investment. So point is, I think technology in the future, hopefully will become more of an enabler to allow you to have a better human experience. And not just I think they did the years of just focusing on automation, like, can you automate a better user a better experience? Can you say you go through turn to left, and if you want to explorers is a great place, talk to people? You know, I think that’s an example of where I see technology, hopefully.
CK LIN 1:28:03
Yeah, there’s a lot of design choices we could make. To enhance, you know, once again, going back to that is the maximum is the optimal, right. And it’s in the design is the minds of designers to make that choice. Right. Right. Cool, man. Well, thank you. So one last question. Okay. So would be people who are listening to this, yeah, will be one thing they could do tactically, if they’re inspired by your worldview, is they’re inspired by your narrative to become a better man, better husband, better CEO, better entrepreneur, better human being.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:28:43
Yeah, I think just I think summarizing, some as I was talking about, I don’t need to throw out a new concept. Sure. I would say have have it write down and have clarity on why you are alive and whatever you think it is, asked yourself five WHYs deeper to why your life, write down and ask yourself, why isn’t this and then broaden your answer, and then ask why is that in all the ways five times. And that would be, I would say, one tactic that I would do. And the second is going to be looking at how you spend your last week, break it down, and see how many hours that you spent against that fifth why, right? And then see how many and then and then verticalize, your other hours, and see how it was spent. So you look at how much of your time and energy you’re spending towards while you’re alive versus other things. And then after you have that clarity archetype, some tactics and outputs that you’re trying to get maybe it’s a shift 20 hours more into my mission or eliminate these hours these ways and write those measurable goals check in every Sunday night and see how did we start with those three things?
CK LIN 1:30:03
It was a really acknowledge you for sharing everything you shared, you know, you did not disappoint. You always, always always a pleasure talking to us. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I hope the people who are discerning really learn a lot from you know, Ross’s mindset and he’s so generously share these tactics, how he managed his own lifestyle in order for him to be so productive at such a such a young age. So go take some action and follow Ross this week.
ROSS MCCRAY 1:30:30
Alright guys, thanks. All right.
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Joyous chiropractor, husband, father, adventurer
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President of a $2.4B healthcare hedge fund, trustee of the Salk Institute, Burner for the last 20 years. Joon and his wife Kimberly also launched the $1 million Palo Alto Longevity Prize.
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Relationship educator | Father | Husband | Founder of Exquisite Love Coaching
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Sierra Leone Born | LA Based Actor. | Father. | Nurse. | Humanist.
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Actor, father, musician, adventurer
CK LIN 0:00
I’m sitting here with Paul Greene. And I met Paul through my meditation retreat this past weekend. And the I immediately gravitated towards his way of being, his musicianship, his way of being who he is as a father. And I wanted to just get to know him a little bit more. Professionally, though, Paul, if you don’t mind sharing a little bit about what’s exciting in your world what makes you come alive, I think give you some people a little bit more context. That’d be really great.
PAUL GREENE 0:33
For sure. So, uh, professionally, I’m an actor. I’ve been at it for 20 years, from a small farm in Canada, and I watched Bloodsport, and I knew I had to, I kept waking up in the movies with John Claude Van Damme. And I was like, all right, this is a problem. Like I was on this farm doing chores, and I was waking up in movies. So at 16, as soon as I got my license, I put myself in acting school. So I am in a always knew I wanted to act from from them. And I’ve now 20 years later, it’s a it’s a career that I do every day, I’m on a TV show called when Calls the Heart that that’s in our season six right now. And we also, it’s on Netflix, my character comes in and season four. I love music. I play piano guitar, and I like to sing. And I also am a pilot, I love flying my dad got there’s 14 pilots my family allow. So I grew up around birds, those kind of birds. I am very curious spiritual person. I’m very, very in love with my life. I’m a father, I have a beautiful partner named Kate. And I’m passionate about helping find a cure for ALS. My dad died from als a few years ago. So that’s something I’m very passionate about, to having my life make a difference for others is is what I’m creating my life as beautiful. And
CK LIN 2:07
it is the theme. from what I gather from our conversation theme of our conversation. We primarily talked about how do we go from fear, to love.
PAUL GREENE 2:20
That’s right. And that fear to love is is the album that I’m writing, I’m working on an album and that’s going to be the journey of the album. And that’s I did a documentary in the Himalayas called the highest pass. And that was where that was birthed. We were on motorbikes for a month in India to Tibet, and I was a part of a documentary. And I had my son on the gas tank, his picture there, because I was constantly afraid of being maimed and hit by trucks. And we saw so many people get hurt and killed. And I was in fear. And it was not a very good rider. And at one point, I just, I felt God just say, fear makes you dumb, and stiff, and a bad rider and love will make you liquid and smooth and a good rider. So I put a picture of my son there. Whenever I felt tension, I just like all right, let’s let’s move to love. And I would see the picture of my son and it made me a more creative rider on the motorcycle less rigid and less fearful. So that’s where the fear to love was born. It was in the Himalayas in India,
CK LIN 3:28
what a lesson. I’m really excited to talk to you today, Mainly, because when I first met you in our meditation retreat that was immediately gravitated to your point of view on life. Mainly because how you spoke about the allure of like having lots of money, versus what ultimately matters, spending time with family, as per your value system. So I’m excited to kind of explore that with you a little bit further. But before we dive deep in those topics, this is the question I always ask everyone. That is what are some of the pivotal moments in your life that made you the person the man that you are today?
PAUL GREENE 4:21
Well, being raised in on a farm really has made a big difference. It was like a working acreage so we had a lot of different work to do with chores and learning how to work hard as a young person. And knowing that my weekends didn’t really belong to me they belong to the farm like that was just what we did and and we didn’t and we had an easy like we didn’t have a lot of animals we just had big land to take care of. So that was a big piece to my life was working with soil and having my bare feet in my hands for my whole childhood in the earth and the garden then learning the value of nature and hard work and playing too we had a full force that my dad built test dojo to to fight each other on and throwing stars My dad was a welder so and nunchucks and other kid Yeah, and tree forts and learning how to build them ourselves and learning how to fix our motorcycles ourselves. And, and then that was big foundation. And I think along that that the religion I grew up in, which was a very strict Christianity, like a, but it was the kind of Christianity that was kind of fun, like it was Pentecostal. So people were getting healed and their hands were raised and people would speak in tongues. And it was very, it was a version of Christianity that was like, seemed to me like the most exciting as a kid because you just watch the old people in church talk weird and you’re like, What is going on? And I was around the music. I grew up in music and I wanted to be a drummer. So I practiced with a teacher that taught me rhythm, and he was a really great jazz drummer. And I was a drummer in a church. And I did drama in church and I fell in love with with music and drama, but I was so in love with sports that it was they were always in opposition to each other. They never really worked well together. Because I hanging out with the athletes down at the drama dorks at school. They were always smoking and listening to heavy metal. So it was like how do I relate to arts but also love physically moving my body which as a kid, I had to like I was climbing everything played every sport hockey, baseball, basketball, volleyball. Volleyball is what eventually took me to college on a scholarship was volleyball just fell in love with it. But pivotal moments along the way was my relationship to God and my relationship with my father. And because my dad was an amazing father, my dad was gone a lot. He was in the oil and gas industry. So he traveled a lot. But when I had my dad, he was amazing. He’s very present and steady. And later in life, I would learn what a what a real man was in terms of holding space for a woman. My dad did that for my mom, my dad had a deep listening from my mom. And so he watching my dad. And how adventurous My dad was because he rode motorcycles and flew airplanes. And my dad’s The reason that I got into airplanes and motorcycles, and then I got my pilot’s license really young, so that I could connect with my dad and, and be with him. And so I think that relationship with dad was so such a pivotal, pivotal thing. And I think there was an age when I was seven or eight tonight, I watched my brother get sexually abused by a babysitter. And I think that was one of the biggest moments that kind of set a path of, of healing, like
CK LIN 8:17
for you or as a healer,
PAUL GREENE 8:18
as for me as a human being to watch my brother have something happened and not being able to do anything about it. And being angry about it. And not knowing how to express the anger. I realized later in life. How important that moment was, especially for my brother, but but me not being able to help him not been able to because I was younger than him. That really shaped kind of the sexual journey of my life too, because I became really promiscuous from 15 to 18, like brutally promiscuous, just trying to figure out what to do with that what I witnessed, and parents wouldn’t believe us that something happened. And that that moment, of witnessing sexual abuse and not knowing how to help or not knowing how to defend my brother also just stirred up like this kind of inner rage that I’ve now as an adult got access to as a tool, but also as a as a point of going, something is wrong, something happened. And I made it me in a bunch of things, and kind of shaped my life around it as a sexual human being. And at 18, I met a model who was really beautiful. I mean, that sort of, we’re jumping ahead of it. But that really shifted my path was volleyball scholarship. In college, somebody saw me in a bar, said you should model and I went to meet the agent. And the day after I met the agent, I met a beautiful Christian girl
at the agency. And she was like the real deal. Like she was like, she had a guitar and she had a Bible and she loved Jesus. And she was hot. And I was at that point, nowhere near a relationship with God, even though I grew up in it and had Jesus camps every summer where I got fully on fire for God every summer would only last about a week in school. And this girl, Jenny really showed me a relationship with god that was attractive, that that was actually about a relationship, not religion. And she, that’s when I started playing guitar, reading the Bible, and I became celibate. At that moment, at eight, the moment I met her, I was like, if I’m ever going to be with someone like you, I’m going to wait till my wedding night. So at the same time, I was discovered for modeling. So I quit my volleyball scholarship, and quit university or college and traveled the world as a model. But born again, like no parties, no drugs, no girls, just my Bible, my guitar and my pilot’s license. And I had took all that sexual energy, and turned it into studying and investing, like I took my money I made from modeling and bought real estate rental properties at 1920 2122. Had I not been to Jesus had I not had that commitment to God, I would have probably done like all my friends did in their 20s. in their teens, this is just drugs, girls, spend the money. Live, blow out your life, right. But I had the structure, this incredible discipline that came, I would love to take credit from it. But it was, it was something bigger, it was a life path like it was. I didn’t really have much saying it I really felt like my life was I was chosen to dive deep into the mythology of the Bible at the time, I didn’t have that language around it. But like I just was like, consumed the Bible, like the stories and over and over again. And I share Jesus with everyone. Like, I played my guitar all over the world on trains and buses in every country and gave out little pieces of paper that told people how they could find Jesus like little tracks that would like if you want to know how to get to heaven moves is how you get to heaven. And I was committed and with no fear, like I just had no fear of people turning me down or rejecting anything. And it was quite a dichotomy. I had one of the most successful male modeling careers of anybody in terms of income stature, the clients I worked with. And I credited it all to God because I had a built in tithing system where 10% of my money I gave to church and to charity ever. Never were missed it. My dad used to say, pardon to this day to this day never stopped, right.
CK LIN 9:57
at agency
So you share a lot. And there’s so many points I want to follow. And I know that it’s not over yet. But there’s so many things I wanted to ask you. So what I hear a few things. One is you won the genetic genetic lottery, in some respect, right? You were born into a family where there’s a strong male figure, right? who embodies to you masculine being and what that looks like, you were encouraged to be physical, right, that provided in the environment, the space, the activity, the tree climbing, and then a ninja stars and all that stuff. And you were involved in athletics you were surrounding yourself with. But you also had the interesting, I guess, twist would be the word where you experience your brother’s sexual abuse. You shifted your life in particular way. And then there’s a lot of things I can follow up with. So knowing what you know, now, what do you think? Because you are a father now, right? Yeah. Do you feel like you bring the similar flavor of parenting that your father did? As in in terms of the physical activities in terms of the all this adventurous, the curiosity that your father instilled in you? And do you pass it down to your son, as well?
PAUL GREENE 14:40
Yes, I mean, it’s the my relationship to my son is obviously different. Because my dad didn’t have the communication that I have learned. My dad’s responsibility was to provide and to protect, there wasn’t the emotional expectation. It seemed Oh, my dad to be able to talk about his feelings with us, you know, or to ask us really how we’re feeling it didn’t never really that it the relationship to my son is very different than the relationships that I had with my dad. But it does have those aspects that you talked about. There’s a lot of adventure, a lot of physical play, my son and I play every day something volleyball, basketball, we wrestle, we play darts we are very active. And some of you are really involved in his life. Very, yeah. And I have the I don’t really have the luxury of taking him for granted because I have them a week at a time. His I separated from his mom 15 years ago, so when he was, well, he was only a year and a half. So 13 and a half years ago as mom and I separated when Oliver was really really young. And so I’ve had him a week at a time for his whole life. One week one week off in that week I have them is full on like very present very deep connection and the week I don’t I get a bit of reflection time on what I did with him was I present? did I make them wrong, like so I think a dad who has a kid 20 473 65 every day has a harder job than I have because I have the week of space to first focus on my dreams, my goals when I’m after and a reflection time of how how my time is spent with my son. And then when I have them it’s like Christmas time I’m It is like 100% game on like play fun, dive deep adventure, camping the whole thing. So it’s more than a silver lining. It is the life that we created for him and that he created called in for himself and he has a really unique life.
CK LIN 17:03
Is that almost sound like it’s better than the traditional 24/7.
PAUL GREENE 17:07
I mean, I’m sure if you asked him. He most kids would have the romantic dream that their parents would be together. And I’m not sure if he would say was better. But I think possibly later on in his life, he’ll looking to like look at this diverse I had two dads because he has his dad is also very involved is his step dad is also very involved in his life. And he has the perspective of Katie who’s my my love and my partner who’s just like a super coach and like super wise and highly intuitive. And then his mom, which who’s just like a rock star in every sense. So he has four mentors, giving him four unique lenses on how to look at things. So I think it’s better but I also the family, like you said, and then this question of what is to be a dad in modern times, the traditional family, there’s something so strong and so beautiful about that I’m not I’m no way am I assuming that it’s better to have a broken home or split home or shared home. But there are some really cool benefits that I’ve experienced from my own perspective about it.
CK LIN 18:23
Yeah, I mean, my friends and I, we we talked about this a little bit, obviously, I am not a parent yet. So this is all I’m imagining what it’s like to to have a you know, someone who was totally dependent on you, right. But to me, as an imperfect human being who’s perfectly imperfect. It’s kind of crazy to me that we expect to we’re expected to pass on our ideas, these means to the next generation, because that’s so limited in perspective. Traditionally, tribally, we do have this community of elders that, you know, kids can pick and choose different points of view or so and so as an expert in something right trade, or like building what work or art or martial arts or whatever it may be. But these days, they’re very, very limited. It’s almost as if the more connected we are via technology, the more insulated. Now the kids are solely dependent on the parents, who are living in boxes, basically on top of one of those little apartments. Yeah, and I think that there is such a missing so when I do have my own children, my desire is to have these multiple perspectives, whatever it may call it, hopefully not in a shared home situation, but in a but you know, in a in a tribe of elders where they can listen, I’m curious to know your thoughts about that.
PAUL GREENE 19:57
So there’s a gentleman named Joseph Campbell, who I’m sure you’ve heard of the he wrote the hero’s journey here with 1000 faces, and he’s the biggest mythologise that we have, who passed away. He’s responsible for the Matrix and for Star Wars, and you know, even the, the hero’s journey, the classic hero’s journey, and he said that our society began to fall apart when we stopped living in tribes. And because the elders were my grandma and grandpa would take care of the young kid, while the young couple who are like 1817, or 15 year olds, they’re, they’re able to develop the craft and their love for each other. Their full responsibility was never the kids, the elders took care of the kids. And there’s something about that that’s really, really powerful, and really, really incredible. Now, as you said, we’re these individuals, but we found tribe, again, my, from my perspective through the internet, like the internet. And our, the way we connect through technology is bringing tribe back around in a way where we have all the tools that we would have from elders at our fingertips by by a quick search, we can gain a lot of wisdom, not the same as if it was from our grandparents, or our parents, in the sense but I feel our desire for tribe is being actualize through technology.
CK LIN 21:26
so you’re technology optimist,
PAUL GREENE 21:29
I’m an optimist. I love that through my phone, I can absolutely time travel and do anything that I can think of within a split second, I think the dangers are obvious that we stare at the screen, like narcissian into the pond that our own reflection and where we can, the tendency is to really lose everything that’s out in front of us, right? The beauty is it’s a transformational portal into doing anything you want. And it’s like sugar or or croissants, it requires discipline. It requires How do you have it add value to your life and not diminish your life?
CK LIN 22:12
It’s so important to remember that framework how to, but it’s such an easy way also because the ego is tricky, right? You can justify rationalize anything. Yeah, what would be a good example: “Oh, I deserve to eat the sugar because I work so hard all this week.” It’s a way to rationalize. I mean, there’s some variation of that for anything about our addiction, right? Maybe so but without getting more philosophical. I was curious to know if you wanted to say anything more about your pivotal moments that kind of shaped you as a man as a father, as a as a human being, as an entrepreneur, as a lover, anything that you want to share like pivotal moments that shaped your worldview.
PAUL GREENE 23:01
Yeah, well going on that path of Christianity I did wait till my wedding night to have sex six and a half years later. So I was celebrated from 18 and changed to 24 and change
CK LIN 23:14
actually on that note curious to know your thoughts. sorry to interrupt. one may say it’s really challenging to navigate the holding that sexual energy right so you can go crazy with it as you said earlier, the promiscuity right? Then you lose your purpose. But you can also on the flip side of that gets all controlled by the side absolutely no, no. Right. And then but this energy had nowhere to go you couldn’t really channel it then you have the also the kind of like the unhealthy way of expressing this sexual energy using point the Catholic Church and all these other things, right. So how were you able to come in from a very one end of the spectrum coming to the middle where your sounds like able to harmonize in a very healthy way for your career for who you are for the path that you took on?
PAUL GREENE 24:17
It was a natural, I understand the question it in the there’s a lot of repression. And there seems like on any extreme of these things, there’s a lot of dysfunction. But I channel the sexual energy into learning and into finances and into music and into learning how to cook and learning how to speak languages and like building this life That was so fun, that the sexual stuff, it didn’t even feel like I was repressing it I just I was busy and so
CK LIN 24:46
many other things happening.
PAUL GREENE 24:47
And sexual energy is creative energy. And it’s it’s your I just turned the tap on in another area. And I think that even now, as a 44 year old men, I when I go away from my love Kate and I’m in Vancouver, I have to channel that into songwriting and into the gym and into my art and into contributing to other people’s lives. Not get self absorbed and, and get dangerously addicted to any pornography or masturbation or all it like it’s Yes, it’s a it is a discipline, but it’s not one of lack. It’s of abundance of findings, an abundance of fun things to do that you can channel that energy into. that you’re not even it’s not even the word temptation isn’t even in the conversation, because that creates polarity, right? It’s not like abstaining from something, it is just doing everything. And that one thing isn’t going to make your life better, isn’t serving you. So you decide not to add that in for the moment. not gone forever. It’s just not going to work with what you’re creating your life at this point in time. And it just takes to remember that perspective. I knew I was going to get married and he was going to have a wedding night. I knew I was going to have sex again. But it wasn’t I wouldn’t feed the the Black Wolf. Like I wouldn’t stare at a girl’s ass as she walked by. Like I wasn’t looking at pornography. I wasn’t hanging out with people that were doing drugs and partying I hung out with elders of like giants, real estate giants, God music giants, spiritual giants and I learned aviation gurus like I just I got so much out of not running my sexual chi all over the planet for those pivotal years. Some would look at it as repair repression. But I never saw it that way. I still don’t see it that way. I see it as just like a training for martial arts. It was just another discipline.
CK LIN 26:59
Yeah, no, what I hear you saying between the lines in in also in words to explicitly is that your life is just so full. It wasn’t a missing if you didn’t have this aspect of your life. There’s so many other avenues for you to continue to grow and enrich your life, in real estate in, in modeling and all these other ventures that you can spirituality that you can take on such as missing this aspect is not something that you would need to obsess over. Now you need to kind of hide in a repressed by like having these like very rigid control.
PAUL GREENE 27:37
Know, because that’s an addiction that becomes the brain it probably hits the exact same part of your brain. It’s like ooh, yummy, I get a new thing to be an addict over which is the abstinence of that thing. Like it’s still checking the same boxes up there with your dopamine, serotonin all that because you’re getting some kind of a payoff, which is I’m this disciplined, controlled. Amazing human. I never I didn’t have time to observe myself and go oh, look at I’m abstaining from sex. I was just having fun. And I was in love with learning. And that’s a little bit who I am. Like, I’ve always been a little bit like that I’ve really enjoyed new things and taking on new things and learning
CK LIN 28:20
Did you need to cultivate that curiosity which was naturally always this curious and you didn’t need any kind of cultivation, just the just like, following like pulling that thread up curiosity or wherever you go?
PAUL GREENE 28:31
Yeah, I was very curious. I needed discipline. I only needed discipline, I needed a structure to the chaos, I had plenty of chaos as a kid. Like, if I was always jumping off of buildings, like I had that kind of energy, like in the literally literally jumping, I would look for the highest thing and go and jump never broke a bone and built like a Viking and 220 pounds. And even as like a kid my, my, my Norwegian, Dutch and and in my bones were I never broke a bone. But I made I have no idea how because of the you know, when I see the things we jumped off of his kids on the high jump off of the barn, it was like 30 feet. But it’s a I needed structure to the chaos and I always got in trouble and I was really challenging young person but God when I found God at that time, it gave me that structure and it gave me the channel for all that sexual energy to be put some good use into and I was doing good for others to it wasn’t just about me
CK LIN 29:36
say more about that structure like so tactically in terms of discipline in terms of tactical like structure. How did Christianity Bible, this church that you go to provide that for you?
PAUL GREENE 29:50
principles, you know, studying, that’s why I was digging through the Bible looking for examples of people that failed miserably like, but also loved God, like King David was one of those in the Bible that God he was after God’s heart yet the guy went after but Sheba had his wife killed, he like had he made more mistakes than anybody his heart was right for God. So I, I think that’s why I read the Bible so much, because I was looking for these stories and these, these examples of, of how to live life in a way and you know, the principles that the Bible put forward, I just kind of absorb them through through mythology. And through stories, and I surrounded myself with really powerful men,
CK LIN 30:38
what maks them powerful
PAUL GREENE 30:40
their ability to share their tools with me, and their way to communicate well, how they got what they got, for example, my friend, Steve foot who his family owns a bank, in Manhattan, and in Pennsylvania, like, and it’s a family thing. And he had like, eight kids, and I was in there, his kids were impeccable. Like, I was like, and I went to him and I said, Why are your kids like this, like, they’re so fun to be around you, you say x and they do X, but they’re not afraid of you, they love you. And he goes here read this book, it was called baby wise and baby wise and just like a parent directed style of parenting that’s pretty controversial. And, and also incredibly amazing. And he shared that book with me. And I’ve given that book to like, probably 30 men in my life, who are about to have a baby, and, and things like that. So the men that I’ve chosen Michael Guido, along my life, he was the one of the youth pastor that traveled with rock musicians. And I’ve just, I’ve really surrounded myself with Titans like men that had a lot of integrity. And that’s what made them. So lets get tactical, right? So for anyone that’s listening, how would you recommend? What is an indicators for integrity? of integrity? Is everyone would say, Yeah, I have integrity, right? I don’t I don’t think I’ve met anyone who’s like, I don’t know about integrity, like, Hey, I have integrity, but the variation of embodiments where you know, it’s different. So like, how do you tell when somebody’s integrity or versus not?
Where they do what they say they’re going to do. Like they say something and that then they do that thing you do very rarely. And I was trained with my son when I say no, I don’t change my mind. Now that he older, I’m open more for inquiry. And if he’s like, Dad, I don’t understand why you said no, then I’ll be likable. Let’s go into that. And if his argument is strong enough, I’ll change my mind. But now that he’s older, but when he was young, no meant no. And yes, meant Yes.
CK LIN 32:49
And I think the given that structure,
PAUL GREENE 32:51
I gave him the structure, immovable, I was never counting to three going 123 On the count of three, it was like all over, let’s go. And if you didn’t, I would go over get down on my knee and look them right in the eye. And I’d be like, you hear me, right? I’m talking to you, right? He’s like, Yeah, and I would get down on his level. And I would never bully him with fear. Oliver had tons of structure my son, but it was guided by love, not fear. And that’s the difference. I was raised with a little bit of fear. And the religion was a little bit of fear of going to burn in hell forever. If you don’t accept Jesus as your Savior, like that’s in my head, if I could sum up my entire pivotal, pivotal moment in my life was the journey from fear, to love having my life be governed by fear and then governed by love and, and I’ve taken that into my parenting. And that’s, that is what I look for in the mentors have chosen as well, if they have a lot of integrity, but they’re living their life as terrorists, like tormenting the people around them with their fear. They’re not, it’s not just integrity I look for in my friends or in myself as an attribute. It’s love. And it’s it’s loving in a in a way that my teacher Kathy, who’s taught me everything, she whe Oliver was really young. She we were camping in Big Sur, and she noticed a way that Oliver was reacting to me. And she goes, you know, he’s only obeying you because of fear. This is what she said to me. My son was about four at the time. I was like, You talking about just like he’s, he’s afraid of you. And she goes, when is he ever come up to you and just like, snuggled and she goes, you have a tapping foot, you’re restless, and you’re angry. And he is afraid of you. And this was that for I think my teacher came into my life when she did this is Kathy. And so she goes get really present Paul, take a deep breath, and we around the fire in Big Sur and ground yourself. Stop tapping your foot and get present. And Oliver was running around like in his behavior was crazy. And she and and she goes instead of trying to bully him with your energy. Get down on one knee and share with him the way you’re acting. Oliver doesn’t work around the fire where we are, we want you to be here. And we love you. But if you’re going to act crazy like that, you gotta go in the tent, zip it up and go nuts, created structure to the chaos. She taught me that all in the same moment. So Oliver went in the tent, and he just went nuts in attendance. And he loved it was like a wild animal. which didn’t work where we are. It’s dangerous with a fire and we were trying to have a good conversation and he was crazy. But I was able because of her getting present, then. And I was like Oliver, are you ready to come out of the tent? And he’s like, not yet. He went nuts a little bit longer. And then he gassed himself out and he comes out. He came over into the first time I think in his life he came, laid his head right on my lap. And I’m looking at the fire and it was almost sun setting and Kathy’s there and and I just I’ll never forget the moment I learned to connect with my son in a way where he’s not afraid of me where it’s coming from love.
CK LIN 36:20
I’m so moved by what you share. Thank you so much. That was a very special moment. Thank you so much for sharing with me for the people that are listening to this.
PAUL GREENE 36:32
I don’t know if you speak-text, but that’s the only way I text. You just push the you push this button here. Hey, buddy, how’s everything going? Question mark. It’s a way of having technology not own you, you get to own it a little bit. That’s how I feel. I feel like when I’m typing in my cell phone with my thumb’s that my technology is owning me. And when I speak it, I feel like I’m owning it. It’s an interesting thing, because I’m able to be a little bit more present to with the my surroundings.
CK LIN 37:14
I love it. Thank you for sharing that.
PAUL GREENE 37:15
Yeah, I got that own concept from Aubrey Marcus book on the day on your life? Have you read it? There’s a few things in that book that as I gotta borrow that, at least that concept of owning your day, not letting your day own you or don’t borrow from tomorrow, by drinking heavy tonight, if you do, you’re not owning the day you’re having your your alcohol owning you another structure to the chaos, you know, I’m always looking for that I’m always looking for an order to the chaos, like how do I add a container so that my creative feminine side can be playful. But I can still highly function as a responsible man and be enough of a structure that my woman I can have the feminine space to be playful and fully expressed or angry and not be reactive to it that I can be a container for my woman in the same way. And another book is David data is the way of the superior man beautiful book. Fortunately, 12 years ago, that book came to me and it’s kind of been my Bible through my my this my 30s I’d read a chapter a day and integrate it and then I would and I worked with David David David was one of his assistants are kidding, haha, amazing. In Miami, so I got to be one of the male assistants and got some coaching through him. And I’m there’s a lot of things that I really, really love about David’s work. There’s some things I disagree with. But that’s that’s what having a an objective, sane mind is is questioning and to I don’t never take I don’t take anything without questioning and a little bit.
CK LIN 39:03
Yeah, that’s beautiful. That’s actually a really key. It’s still have curiosity, at the same time not to be buying everything wholesale. Right, whatever it may be any mentors, any kind of ideas? I always, I think I can’t remember who said this, but I think is like God’s Will or something like that, where God wants you to question everything, because that’s within your that’s what consciousness is. Because otherwise, we’ll just be automatons, you know, just doing, you know, robotic work, following everything. So,
PAUL GREENE 39:39
yeah, I agree. And then there’s a there’s a limit to questioning to where you become in resistance to everything, right? You it’s a such a fine balance of questioning to a point that you only that it’s make serving your life and making your life work. If you become a very resistant questioning person to a point where your life doesn’t work, then you’ve taken that too far. Yeah. And you can be in resistance or in creation. Right. Yeah. And which is a distinction that I love from the work that I’m currently doing. And in that, I think being curious, like you said is a is maybe a more powerful way to describe questioning everything because questioning everything has quite a bit of resistance. And resistance only gets you so far.
CK LIN 40:25
Yeah, I love the Yang, the older I get the the the the more I appreciate the yin-yan sign. To me, everything is a spectrum. And the idea is to find a harmonious point, it’s not a balance point, because balance implies giving up something and then letting something else go right. Whereas harmony, it’s have everything work. And then in the black, there’s a little bit of white in the way, there’s a little bit of black, you know, so everything to me, is the key point is to find the internal compass, internal harmonious point. But you actually dropped a few gems, I want to go back to this real quick, in terms of, and this is all in the overall journey of going from fear to love, in terms of holding space for your woman, for your son. Say, can you say a little bit more about the work that you actually take? Whether it be from reading, whether it be from studying with, you know, master teachers like David data as an example. How do you embody that? How do you integrate that? Because it’s easy to read. Oh, I understand it, therefore I am it. That’s not how it works, right? It’s the integration work, it’s so much more important. Say a little bit more about that.
PAUL GREENE 41:54
It’s a challenge because especially how the stars aligned when I was born, I’m a Gemini, which means I’m outrageously curious. And I just try everything. So for me discipline. Take it is a challenge to stay with one discipline for to master it. Like, I have to find a way to make it fun. Because fun is kind of the flag that floats my ship. Like that is what moves my ship is fun. And if it isn’t fun, I won’t stay with it. So whether it comes practicing the guitar, meditation, exercise, cooking, like any discipline that I try to master and get really, really good at if it’s not fun, I won’t stay with it. So I had a part of me making something becoming a master, so to speak, or becoming talented at something, I have to find a way to make it fun.
CK LIN 42:47
How do you do that? Because I want to do that. I hear you. Yeah. Because I’m in the kind of guy who I see the goal, I’m going after it start to lose this, like, you know, I don’t know how to say like, this joie de vie this je ne sais quoi. Yeah, this like joy instead of a chore and then burdensome. And then. So when I meet people who’s alive and enjoy, Joy is and it’s like, okay, I want to know how you do it.
PAUL GREENE 43:16
How do I make things fun? A big part of it, is who I am. From birth. I mean, I was the guy that would put just everything had to be fun for me to learn how to have fun, as an adult, how I keep things fun is I, I have a lot of variety. So I don’t, for me, if I just studied say, jeet kune do, like one type of martial arts or Cali screamer, I wouldn’t, I would get bored so quickly. I have to find a type of martial arts that allows me to do it all. And then I go, go go, and I’m like, Okay, I’m going to set that aside for a bit. And then I’m going to play with that I am not the kind of person that will probably be 20 years in one discipline, and just not. And I know that about myself, and I accept that about myself and even love that about myself. I still know that discipline equals freedom, in the sense that the more structure and as I get older, it gets easier. As I get older I I’m learning to be and do what I say I’m going to be into more meaning I say I’m going to do something and I do it as and I and I’ve but it but it’s been training like I’m I’m in landmark training now, which is a adult education, sort of like a tool for I call it like a blind spot. It helps me find the areas of my life that I didn’t know that I didn’t know. And so I’m always in that. And I’m diving deep into this current work where I have a lot of accountabilities, and I’m responsible for a lot of people. And but I still have to find a way to make it enjoyable. And I think a way to make it fun is to measure it, meaning putting things in existence in my calendar. So I know when I’m winning, or like keeping a journal so I can like, have a little bit of an observance of it and not be so engulfed in it that I lose perspective on that I’m having an Am I enjoying it? And I think just bringing the distinction. Is it fun around keeping that question around? Am I having fun, not just me, like the people around you have to be having fun,
CK LIN 45:33
the way of being that you bring to, you know, to everyone that you touch?
PAUL GREENE 45:37
Yeah. And it’s in making sure other people are having fun before you is it access to this way of having fun. It’s not just about me having fun. It’s the environment around me. Are people experiencing aliveness and play? Are they experiencing accomplishment? Not you know, enjoy. And so that’s it’s, it’s a great measure to know you’re doing it are the people around you enjoying being around you because I used to have fun. And then other people weren’t having fun. Like as a kid, my teachers weren’t enjoying how much fun I was having at school.
Unknown Speaker 46:15
You know,
CK LIN 46:16
you’re caught you’re the troublemaker who causes ruckus in the classroom.
PAUL GREENE 46:21
I really was until until one coach saw who I was. Larry FBA, God rest his soul he just passed a year ago. And sometimes it only takes one. And he was my one. He saw me for more than all the other teachers saw me and he took me aside and he said, If I see your car parked at Donnie wheels house, you’re not starting on my volleyball team. He was my coach. And he was the vice principal of my school. And I was like, I’m going to play volleyball I’m not gonna go hang out at Donnies where there was all kinds of dangerous things going on, and he knew it. But he I’m very aware that I may be that one for some kid or for someone for another adult or a friend. And sometimes it just takes that one person to just really believe in you. And he did change the whole course of my entire life was this one coach. And until even 10 years later, I was having a hard time. Sorry, 10 years ago, when my son was two years old. And he was bullying someone at school not to he was in grade. He was in kindergarten, and I didn’t know what to do. So I called Larry, my coach. And I says, This is what’s happening with my behavior with all of our at school is he’s kind of bullying and he’s and he’s frustrated. And he was probably feeling the divorce. Like he was probably feeling the pull. who knows. And Larry said, Let me tell you a story. I was brought to Kenya because he was a he’s a principal of international schools. And he said, they asked me to be a shepherd over the school for one year, but they said don’t change anything in the school. And he’s like, no rules, no principles, nothing. Just take watch the school for a year. And he’s like, okay, but he got there. And kids were being expelled and people were being suspended. And every kids were being made wrong. And the grades were terrible. And Larry’s like, Nope, I know, I said that, but I have to change one thing. And he invoked a principle that we’re all the kids had to come up with their own consequences when they made a mistake. So he gave the kids the responsibility to take full responsibility for their actions. And he turned that school around in three months, there was no suspension no expels, the GPA shot right up. And in one year, he transformed every one of those hundred and 50 kids lives through that one thing they did, he took away the resistance, the rebellion, he said, You are responsible for your actions, and you have to come up with your own solution, your consequence for your action. So I he didn’t tell me what to do with my son, he just told me that story. He goes, try it, if it works for you, it’ll work for you. If not, there’s a good story. He’s just a beautiful human being he taught me how to play volleyball as well. So I took that to my son, and right up even that young, kindergarten, grade one, I said, Oliver, that didn’t work, what you’re doing, let’s put into place your own solution, your own consequence, and he was young not to understand those words. And even at that age, his consequence was so much harder. It’s like, going to bed without supper, and no skateboarding and you can take away my Legos. And I’m like, he, his consequences are way harder than mine is like, let’s bring it back. Let’s bring it back. And he’s like, Okay. And, and, and he got so much pleasure and joy out of coming up with his own solution. For, to, for the thing that wasn’t working, that he didn’t really want to be bullying. He didn’t, but he didn’t know how to, to create the answer. And through this, through this discovery through Larry, I learned that tool. And to this day, at 15 years old, he if something’s not working in his life, I’m like, okay, you get to come up with a way to solve this problem, your own consequence for yourself, and it works like a charm. It inspires him, it inspires him to be a better human being and to to, to be the kind of person where life works for everyone around him. And it makes him responsible for his actions.
CK LIN 50:34
I love that that’s like that way of being is you speaking to your coach or your son, you’re speaking to them as if they’re someone with full sovereignty of who they are. And that’s a higher state that I don’t care who you are, everyone wants to be to be that right to be responsible for one’s action to be rewarding and search to also have the same concept versus external force imposing punishment or consequences or whatever it may be, that what you resist persists, then the natural reaction would be like f you for trying to tell me how to live my life. But in this case, they actually come up with their own consequences. all beautiful way to elicit that sovereignty.
PAUL GREENE 51:28
And teaches them discipline teaches him to create his own order to his own chaos a little bit, it gives him the tools and then just makes him into a highly functioning part of humanity, where he’s adding value. He’s not taking away he was making life miserable. And my experience of parenting him has been so joyful. And so pleasure like he it’s just been and I’ve definitely along the way been given these huge nothing get so these tools that I’m like, I’m that have made parenting and being a father, just just a discovery and so joyful. Yeah,
CK LIN 52:12
beautiful, thanks for sharing actually inspire me to consider like, what kind of my one of my own Thank you. Because for me not having a child and I’ve been children that it’s like, concerns like, I don’t want to be irresponsible with this is this responsibility, but through your lens, you show me a different way of like the come from place. Like, hey, this is a different place that you can come from, it’s a joyful discovery process for all parties involved versus this responsibility like heaviness light that comes with it. So thank you for sharing that, you’re welcome to really, really appreciate it.
PAUL GREENE 52:54
Yeah, and to not make him wrong. In that’s a distinction I’ve learned lately, the word being a bit to take away the guilt and the shame from from him is such a gift. And it allows them to really enjoy life when they’re not made wrong for their mistakes. And to not be coming from fear or guilt or shame or blame. But to actually be coming from a place that is loving, and not making them wrong for their actions is just, it could transform the whole planet, I feel.
CK LIN 53:28
So on that note, me ask you this question. So one of the epiphany that I have during our meditation retreat is, is that we have effectively, the the ego, and then we have the higher self, in my mind is this my mental model. And it’s easy to follow the animalistic desire to be selfish, to care about the self to worry about survival to have anxiousness or to follow anger, all these other things right now, it takes no effort. right to do that. It takes to me effort, to choose to be compassionate, to choose to be forgiving, to choose to be generous to choose to be loving all these other things. So the journey of going from fear to love. This is my personal journey. I feel like having these realizations epiphany and awareness, allow me to see to to broaden that space between stimulus and response. And then to have options to pick, I don’t have to default to this reaction, default to this animalistic instinct, to be selfish to do all these things. But nonetheless, still difficult, even though I see the options, I don’t always choose. Right. But it seems to me based on the way you speak, is effortless. So can you say a little bit more about that? Is it is it as simple as you from the outside perspective make it seem? Because you have that space? You are now aware of the options that you have? Yeah. And is it as easy as effortless as it? I perceive from the outsider’s point of view to pick the higher path? Right? Is it always, it was actually a conscious effortful choice.
PAUL GREENE 55:29
choice. Yeah, I understand. I understand what you’re saying. And, and it is as easy or as hard as it is to go to the gym and train your muscles meaning at first, it’s dreadful. And and it’s in it feels like a lot of effort and a lot of conscious thought and a lot of this but you start to feel so good from going to the gym, then after a while or training or yoga or martial arts, whatever, at first. Learning to be really conscious with your kid and raising them in a way that is from love and not fear and is is a challenge. But it’s harder for me to be angry, fearful, the in the animal that that other side that you’re talking about, because the payoff of that is violent, and it’s the feeling from being angry, or frustrated or impatient or judgmental. The I don’t think that’s easy at all they might be might be a little bit more like you said instinctual in some way but easy is like where life works like like the the My first thought was the gym. Once you start Master, once you start going to the gym, it becomes enjoyable. And then you’re like, how did I ever not do this? And is it it’s a pretty once you see the results from parenting or from the gym. The momentum starts to make it feel a little bit more effortless, then f it’s not a constant effort. It’s a constant awareness. And when a trigger comes up where I’m triggered, it’s just about learning why what as an access to what’s triggering me and why it’s triggering me, but I don’t I don’t feel it’s hard. But it but it’s like you watch somebody with martial arts who’s been training for 10 years, they make it look really effortless, right? Or somebody who can play guitar for just with flow. You’re like, Oh, that’s so easy, but no, they they’ve, they’ve put in the work and now it’s effortless. I think the same goes for any any habit that you’re trying to transform, or any practice it takes work, but it’s it’s it’s worth it, man. It is worth it. Especially when your measure or your barometer is having an enjoyable fun life that works like it’s harder for me to have a life that has chaos and anger and and unforgiveness or resent all of that feels to me way harder than the effort it takes to cultivate love and opening my heart when my heart feels like closing like that is hard work. Right? Like the tendency when you’re hurt, or somebody does you wrong is to tighten your chest and close, right, defend, defend it take it’s the hardest thing to do is to open when you feel like closing. But it doesn’t take too long before you the payoff for opening your heart is right there and the reward is right there. It you feel good pretty quick. closing your heart and protecting and shutting down feels awful. It’s so it’s it’s just I guess it just depends on the angle that you’re looking at it from whether it’s hard or it’s easy compared to what it’s it’s hard. Little bit but it’s but it’s a lot harder to to to be in pain.
CK LIN 59:06
So what I hear is this like short term payoff, there it is right to be to follow that animalistic instinct. Short term payoff is fast, like you don’t need to feel the pain or whatever long term you pay long term resentment, anger, whatever it may be. And then the other way around short term, open your heart takes a little bit more effort to be forgiving. Yeah, but long term payoff, you get that peace of mind. That inner peace, stillness,
PAUL GREENE 59:37
right and the lie is that life should be easy. Life isn’t it’s not meant to be easy like easy. Life Life. When you don’t build muscle by by not like tearing apart the muscle like you don’t like the people feel we all including myself self good. Forget that life’s like easy is not the goal.
CK LIN 1:00:04
So what is the goal?
PAUL GREENE 1:00:07
I think the goal is joy and enjoyment. And and fun. Like I think the goal, I think the goal is to enjoy even the no matter what your your your circumstances are, whether they’re favorable or unfavorable, you find a way to allow it, I think the goal is allowing, allowing, if my son comes in in a bad mood, if I can find a way to allow his bad mood, it takes away that resistance. So I yeah, we’re covering a lot of topics. But for me, I find that with, especially in parenting. It’s there’s so much pleasure that I’ve found in parenting that it’s worth that the short term, quote unquote, hard work of not doing just what comes easy, you know, like, yeah,
CK LIN 1:01:08
beautiful. Yeah. So let’s get a little bit more tactical, I wanted people to kind of emulate like, let’s say they’re inspired by your story, by you’re inspired by your worldview inspired by how you show up as a man, how you show up as a leader, how you show up as a parent, how you show up as a, as a musician? What are some that tactical things that they can try on? You mentioned a few books, are there other disciplines that you have, that will allow them to access? The centeredness? So they can be their full self?
PAUL GREENE 1:01:44
Yeah, I feel having a morning practice of some kind is crucial that, that you stay away from your technology in the morning, whether you go for a walk right away, or you have meditation right away? Are you doing your own yoga, something that you just start the day where you’re really committed to yourself and your body and, and or journaling? And I think a morning practice that you start to cultivate that turns into a into a tradition is really important. It’s like an anchor for your day. And whether that involves coffee, there’s something that you do that that helps anchor yourself into going, Okay, I’ve arrived at this putting a stake in the ground. And I’m a stand for this right now. And it can change over time. But you absolutely have to find a practice of some kind. So what are your practice? I have practice meditation. Okay. So vipassanna meditation is where you go away and do 10 days I did mine in Joshua Tree. And I learned type of a meditation from that where you move energy around, and that’s a long one mine and mine that I do is is is around 15 or 20 minutes. And there’s a there’s a foundation training I do, which is for my back through Dr. Eric Goodman, which is pretty much every day I do a form of it. That is for he works with Laird Hamilton, the big wave surfer and a lot of triathletes Lance Armstrong, and a few a bunch of triathletes. And it’s, it trains your entire posterior chain and that’s about 11 minutes and that’s a series of movements that’s to turn on your glutes to turn on your mid back and you’re in to bring your so look for the foundation train Dr. Goodman, it’s one of my favorite, right and feel so good and it’s one of those at the end of the video it’s 11 minutes of video you have to start with the shorter one. So start with the three and a half minute one for about a week or two before you do the 11 minute one because you’ll burn out too quick you have to end it’s online if you just and I recommend his programs everything he’s an amazing teacher Eric Goodman foundation training for for prioritizing your your posterior chain in your spine like to keep you in and takes into at the end of the video. He says do this every day. No back pain ever. It’s just easy anyway, that’s something I do very very consistently my own yoga where I do a series of sun salutations and I hold down dog forever and because I have tight or hips and hamstrings and and I’m always working to get my hips open and my my hamstrings looser so my own yoga flow depends where I am to in Vancouver I have a different routine because I don’t have any responsibilities I film a TV series every year for about four months and when I’m alone there then I like then it’s kind of like I go for a walk right away or I go to the gym right like I find some way to to put myself as a priority first. And in over the years it’s changed I never meditation so has had has become one of those things that I there’s some Wim Hof breathing techniques. Are you familiar with Wim Hof? Yeah. That when I go to Topanga to be with my buddy Johan, we do these three rounds of like 70 breaths and we’re then we start our meditate and that’s a 40 minute meditation. That’s how we did that yesterday. And that was something else man. If you Wim Hof is another teacher I did a course with him and brought him here and we had these brought my bathtub to tango, we filled it with ice and this was before he became really well known my friend rich who you met rich brought Wim Hof in and we had a weekend with him. Yeah, personalized. Yeah. Yeah, before he was already The Iceman. But it’s before he became you know, he’s become I have that that’s, it just depends really, where I’m at, in the world to the meditations is very, very important. And when I’m not meditating, I feel it really, really quickly. Because I go into doing and not being. So looking for practices that that ground me and my being this, because we’re in a world of just doing like, I gotta do that, I gotta do that. And it becomes this endless spin of doing doing doing, that doesn’t bring a lot of accomplishment. And I find being this can bring a lot of accomplishment, we
CK LIN 1:06:36
say more about that, actually. Yeah,
PAUL GREENE 1:06:38
so doing, like doing it can easily be related to being a father to like, you can do the role of a father right. And, and, but when you’re being a father is a different thing, it’s a distinction of, of doing this is is for me comes from a place where your identity is at stake. If I’m not busy, doo, doo, doo doo doo, then I’m not seeing as a very productive human being. We’re being this has a lot of stillness in it, but it also is your your, your, what’s giving you the measurement of your success is who you’re being not what you’re doing. Someone who’s been a certain way, will just naturally do certain things, but someone who’s out doing a bunch of things, it doesn’t really work in the reverse, they’re there, it’s you don’t do that. Let me let me try to explain. So if I am running around, trying to do a bunch of things for my son, like to do like the role of dad, like, take him to the park and take him to skateboarding, and take him and make him you know, make him a great dinner, take them to the beach, and like doing all these things, but I’m not being present. like not being actually with him, I’m just thinking that doing all those things is going to make me something, it’s almost it’s backwards, it’s it’s the being this, and then the doing this, and then you get to have it, it’s it’s almost like we have it backwards, where we wake up. And we’re what we’re What do we have to do, and we get so busy that we get so stressed out. And I feel like when you’re operating from a place of being like being it takes away a lot of the anxiety and a lot of the stress and there’s a so much more accomplishment and joy that comes from and that could just be simply that taking the 10 minutes to meditate or 15 minutes to slow down and look at your hands and just actually be in this body for a minute. We were so driven to accomplish and to do things that we forget who we are sometimes. And we get so defined by the things that we do that we actually don’t get to create who we want to be or who we are being. And with as being a father, the stakes are really high. Because you know, you there’s a lot of dads that probably do a lot of great things for their kids, but they never really, really are. They’re being with their kids. Like last night, my son was having a hard time for vault with volleyball practice. And I just came in here, and I just laid down next to him and put my hand up and he kind of put his hand into my hand and I I he just needed me to be there with him not to try and philosophically solve all his problems. And he and then I was getting up to go and he’s like, Can you just stay for one more minute. And he’s 15 like this is? This is the, for me, the greatest accomplishment of my life to have that kind of relationship with my son.
CK LIN 1:10:02
It’s beautiful. It’s very inspiring. Yeah. Now, we had a conversation in our meditation retreat where you talked about career versus being a father. I don’t know if you remember that conversation I’d love for you do to talk a little more. When you handed a million dollars versus being able to spend time with people that you truly love? Yeah. Right. So if you can speak a little bit more about because this is, as fathers or even just parents in general, it’s challenging your heart wants to? Is there for your family? But then there’s also some practical, yeah, financial constraints or concerns that dream, that dream that you have for your family for your kids. So there’s a trade off? Yeah. So then then how do you make the best choice where you can be there, for your children, for your family, and the same time still, again, goes back to that harmony, right can still have that harmonious environment would have both versus, eithre or.
PAUL GREENE 1:11:20
yeah, I’m still trying to figure that one out. Because there’s the pull of this career, my career is really taking off and acting is working 20 years at acting, and now it’s happening, but it takes me away. So there I am in Vancouver filming, going, wait a minute, I am not there picking my son up from volleyball practice. And that’s what life is about. But then I’m going okay, but this allows me to send them to good university, this allows I’m fulfilling on what I my dreams. And so it’s not. There’s a lot of dads that are away from their kids a lot. And it’s like, it is not easy. Because I mean, my dad was gone a ton, he’s an oil, he’d be home for two weeks, and then home for a week and then gone for two weeks and at home per week. And that was my life. I’m looking for a way to, to find peace with it. And or just create something here in LA where I don’t have to be away from my son at all. And because I only have three more summers to lose 18. Right. That’s it. I mean, you get 18 summers with your kid and that’s it, then that goes fast. So being a parent, it’s it’s it is something man, because you will never love. Like you love a kid, your son, your daughter, you will never you love your parents, but not the same way your parents if they’re acting nuts you’d be like, I need a break from right. You know, like, let’s just I’ll catch you later for bed thank you for you know, your kids, you’re just like, there’s your heart. It’s you it is you like it is actually physically you there. And it would you can’t. I mean, some parents obviously do treat their children in ways that they were probably treated, or that they treat themselves like with abuse. It’s amazing how that gets passed down. But in for when I look at my son, he’s me in a lot of ways, and looking back at me, and I get another chance at nurturing that inner child. And that’s the biggest gift that they don’t tell you what having a kid is you get another shot at nurturing your inner child. And I’m fiercely after that, that with him where I I’m not going to destroy his inner child because he I get another shot at nurturing my inner child by just having a kid. It’s so incredible.
CK LIN 1:13:50
It’s beautiful. Thanks for sharing that mental model. Yeah. What about tactical things around formulating community, formulating a council of men or whichever way they really support your life? What tactical advice or even ideas can you give to the listeners so that they can have this very strong as you said, mentors or teachers or brothers or you know, that they can call upon when they need to solve their you know, life circumstances
PAUL GREENE 1:14:32
will you was very helpful. Just look at the people you’re surrounded with. And you are the average of the five people you spend time with financially, relationship wise, career wise, or spiritually, you are will be the average of the five people you surround yourself with. So choose wisely. I would. The tactical advice is be really honest with your circle, like who are you spending time with? And who are you being like an insult instead of just cutting people off from your life? It’s like how do you elevate your your circle. And knowing that the people you surround yourself with are going to heavily influence who you are like in the best of ways and in the worst of ways for sure. So that’s it very tactical ways to take inventory of, of your team who you’re going through this life with like who you’re journeying with, and who’s around you. And if it if it’s not making your life better, then it’s time to make hard changes. It really is. And it’s it means sometimes making really painful choices to probably spend some time alone and get clear through something like vipassanna on which is a little intense, but getting to know who you are and then really building your tribe because it might. life has a beautiful way like I don’t know if it’s tactical, but life has a way of providing what’s necessary for you. And these teachers. I didn’t tactically go looking for them. They didn’t know my coach saw me for who I was my, the other coaches, the other people along the way. I saw something in them that I valued and I got curious and I asked them questions. So a tactical maybe an access would be to be very curious and ask a lot of questions. Really, that that’s helped me is to find people that that I see how their life is working. And I’m like what are you doing that makes your life seems like it works really, really well? What is it and then quite often they’ll give me a book or they’ll give me something like that. But being really really curious. I’m constantly reading or listening to audiobooks or listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos. I mean, when my entertainment is study that’s entertaining like I would I just love learning and I think that if you get really really curious life has a really magical way of providing you what you need.
CK LIN 1:17:07
Beautiful. Any specific podcast they should start off?
PAUL GREENE 1:17:11
I like Joe Rogan’s because I like three hours like I love how they dive deep and I like I’ll start at the beginning judging someone and by the end of it I’m like oh my goodness like I I’m such a dick like what like cuz it just shows me that if you stay with a human being long enough you can you can discover something beautiful about anyone like and I love that I love the longer podcast because I get to totally transform my point of view and and Joe Rogan seems to and pretty a lot of the comedians I don’t really know them so I don’t listen to those but some of his like Jordan Peterson is a conservative ish thinker. Maybe he’s in the middle, but he’s like, he’s like psychology clinical psychologist that. A lot of people people don’t like and some do like but when you hear him for three hours, you actually get to know who he is. So Joe Rogan’s podcast I’ve learned I’ve listened to a lot of them Tim Ferriss, I’ve listened to a lot of Yeah, I’ve really I really liked Tim Ferriss, there’s like a lot of the ones like radio lab where they produce little like, they have actors and they live sound effects and they like my son and I sometimes listen to radio lab in the morning in the car. But then there’s like health and fitness people I listened to like Thomas de Lauer who has like a ketogenic intermittent fasting, like intermittent fasting is something that I intermittently do. When I, I’m not sure if the listeners have heard about a bit, probably and look at intermittent fasting has some incredible longevity, and especially for men. bodybuilding, like your muscles when you fast. I sometimes do longer fast too with just water and that found that’s a really quick way to get used to water. I’ve done the idea of five day water fast this year, setting up for an eight hour Mongolian bodywork session with Michael Strickland, he was in Vancouver, he says it was an eight hour the most painful body work I’ve ever had. So two hours,
CK LIN 1:19:21
we ate our body what a straight
PAUL GREENE 1:19:24
was. So two hours, but we’re talking tear the the ancestral armor off of your heart type of work where he’s in your chest bone with your elbow. And he said that I had this huge armor here that it took them almost four hours to get off. And but we’re talking is like deep sternum, the deep jaw into the stomach deep, but two hours, and then I can do a cold shower with a scrub. And then I stand in the sun for about five minutes. And then I get back on the table for another two hours. And it was eight hours total. But I trained with him for about a year prior. With two hour sessions to our sessions getting ready for this we will have the deepest body work of all other than my teacher, Kathy,
CK LIN 1:20:11
this is just another year as though so
PAUL GREENE 1:20:13
yeah, she’s similar type where it’s Let’s peel off every layer of your resistance until your heart is so open that you can actually feel and see who you really are and who God is without your projection. But if it’s just ugly, well, it is such deep, deep, deep work. And I’m actually really curious if you don’t mind sharing about that, because more and more I study, like what it means to be a human being. I used to be just as my body was just a stick holding up my head. I was a walking head, right? Then I discovered my body as I Oh, ok. So there’s actually a huge transference, right? The body and the mind in our heart and everything is, is an integrated system. It’s not just one thing. So for one and have the optimal lifestyle, optimal human being, I need to focus on the whole thing. Then I discovered spirituality is like, oh, there’s this other thing that I even know about. Interesting, fascinating. So the more I study what it means to be a human being and my realize my body is just not functioning as optimally as I would like, especially about the thing, the very thing that you said earlier accessing the heart. Right? How do I actually do that in a way? So I’m curious to know, with body work like this, what is the effect of, as you said, dig into that armor? Yeah. Right, because I can feel the body tension. So I know what that is like, but I don’t know what that’s like to to, to not have this tension. Curious.
Totally. My, my teacher, Kathy, she said to me, You don’t have to die to get to heaven, you just have to learn how to let go. And so in this type of body work, when they’re pushing into your muscle, you feel every nerve pain going, and then you find a way to sort of like let go into it. And then it’s almost becomes like a portal into another dimension through your muscle through your trauma through other in through layers and layers and layers of pain and in shame and guilt and punishment that it’s almost like the if they’re that type of body worker, they can go right through it to a point where you surrender, and you completely get to the other side. And there is just an incredible I mean, it takes it takes layers and layers. I mean it is it is like scraping. So it takes it’s not something that you can go to quickly because you can create more trauma,
CK LIN 1:22:53
right? You buy tense up, like what is this pain? Yes, it is.
PAUL GREENE 1:22:59
But like what going back to the heart, I don’t know if you could sum up spirituality any different than opening your heart when it feels like closing so when someone hurts you, spirituality from my perspective is how do you open when you feel like closing like and then finding tools to make that a reality like the heart when you’re hurt or when someone wrongs you. The tendency is to protect so if you’re really learning in your spiritual practice, he will be opening when you feel like closing and I that type of body work is something that I’ve attracted or that vibrating foam roller from Viper though Sonia bites come Viper ice, that thing vibrates so deep that I’ll put it there and just kind of like let my body surrender into it until the that that the tightness opens. And it’s um, I don’t know, I think that opening our bodies up is is a is the is such a worthy adventure is to not be rigid and stiff, that’s death. That’s rigor mortis. That’s, you know, you’re dead, to find things to do that keep you pliable and soft, both both in your structure of your thought. And in your body is something that I’m really interested in. Yeah, and I’m at 44 I just keep discovering these new tools, and then I get really curious and, and keep bringing them in and and keep discovering new ways to open.
CK LIN 1:24:32
Yeah, in Chinese medicine, the framework is that our body is the vessel for spirit. So when your body is so stiff, it becomes brittle. It breaks easily. Right? Right. I don’t know if you ever had experience where you hurt your back or you know your leg and they just like All you think about is the pain versus if you actually maintain it so as as pliable so it’s like you know, strong and pliable at the same time then can do so much more because then you don’t need to worry about there’s a psychological safety is gone. You can do like I can do anything. Yeah, any kind of movement or Yeah, energize my body myself and through my disposal that I have so
PAUL GREENE 1:25:17
I’m so curious. I love to meet Kathy Wendy Cathy’s amazing Michael’s amazing there’s a Kathy Valerie’s amazing I have Yeah, I guess as we journey through life, like I said before life provides these beautiful teachers and these beautiful and I add value back to their life that’s what I’m not to try to get something from them. I’m trying to like how do I how do I add the value back so that it’s equally beneficial and I think that’s where you’re living your life to is is is really adding value if you want to get paid more money find a way to add value if you want to have relationships that work had make sure you’re continuing to add value to others. Thank you.
CK LIN 1:26:00
Hey, I know that we before we start the podcast you wanted to share some gift with us yeah, and if you don’t mind sharing I I don’t bless us with your music
PAUL GREENE 1:26:10
well this this isn’t this is a song that kind of covers the journey that I’ve been talking about the old ways and for me this is from a movie that’s out right now the stars born the The song is about letting the old ways die and what’s so interesting about the first time I heard it I was like oh that’s sad. He’s letting like old traditions die But then I thought the more I played it and the more I learned it I’m like oh no no no this is this is like things that aren’t serving you let those die away and and then in here is my journey from fear to love for sure in the lyrics and I just this is musical maybe it’s time
maybe it’s time to let the old ways to die maybe it’s time old ways die takes a lot change man take some a lot try.
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die
nobody knows what awaits for the dead.
Nobody knows what awaits for the dead.
Some folks just believe in things they heard in the things they read
maybe it’s time let the old ways die.
I’m glad I can go back to where I came from.
I’m glad those days have gone gone for good
if I could take spirits from my past and bring here you know Wow.
You know i would
nobody speaks to God these days.
nobody speaks to God these days
I’d liked think he is looking down laughing at our ways. nobody speaks these days.
when i was a child they tried to fool me
said a worldly man was lost and hell was real.
But I’ve seen hell in Reno. This world is one big old Catherine spinning wheel.
Maybe it’s time the lead to always buy. Maybe it’s time to let the ways die. hell, it takes a lot change plans and a train to change your mind. Maybe it’s time that led to the old ways die. Oh, maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.
CK LIN 1:30:19
So good.
PAUL GREENE 1:30:23
Yeah, that song It just keeps speaking to me on different. It’s not when you first hear that and it hits you one way. And then I listened to it again. I’m like, ah, like I can’t let things in the past that the old ways I let them die. At first I looked at it as a bad thing. I’m like no, no way.
CK LIN 1:30:41
I think that any song is like any tool depends on
PAUL GREENE 1:30:45
how you use the tool,
CK LIN 1:30:47
through your voice to who you are, through your way of being and really felt the depth of who you are. And really felt the depth of who you are as a man we as a as a father, we us as a brother. Thank you so much for sharing this so generously. I want to acknowledge you for just how you show up in this podcast as well. I really felt the warmth of your character, you know the warmth of your being. So thank you.
PAUL GREENE 1:31:15
Yeah,
CK LIN 1:31:17
it’s a lot on this. Thank you so much.
PAUL GREENE 1:31:20
Me too. I mean, I want to acknowledge your listening as well. You ask the questions in a way and then you’re clearing and your listening for something new to come out that I haven’t shared in that way before. So it’s a joy to be able to, to unpack some of those things. And you brought structure to even some of the chaos meaning sometimes you just have your way your life works. But when someone starts to ask you questions, you start to define some structure to it as to Oh, I’m like, Oh, that’s why I do that. And that. So it’s actually very insightful. Your questions and you’re listening as well.
CK LIN 1:31:57
You discover something new about yourself.
PAUL GREENE 1:32:01
Yeah, for sure in your listening and is if you were a different person across from me, this conversation would have gone incredibly different.
CK LIN 1:32:12
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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Here is a link to his Men’s Tribute Weekend: https://www.forremarkablemen.com/the-tribute.html
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