Success Beyond Money: Joe Hudson | Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

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People who are just like, I'm just in it for the money, they're never hyper successful and they're never long -term successful.

They might get the money, no doubt, but their process of getting to that money is incredibly hard.

What you're about to hear is an interview that I've just wrapped with the incredible Joe Hudson.

Now Joe is a former venture capitalist turned philanthropist who is now the executive coach to some of Silicon Valley's most famous and rich executives and CEOs.

The search for purpose assumes that you weren't born with it.

And so it chases it away.

So emotional decision -making is, it's actually what drives us.

We're all having emotions all the time.

There is no waking moment where an emotion isn't happening.

The question is, are we conscious of the emotion?

So in the conversation we talk about the relationship between success, money, fulfillment.

We turn into talking about emotions and how to feel emotions and emotional fluidity.

We do a little bit of kind of therapy for me around like my fear of reading negative reviews of my book and seeing negative comments and what that says about feelings and emotions and ego and all that fun stuff.

We talk a little bit about parenting, which is kind of interesting.

And we end with some thoughts about what are the key differences between people who are successful and happy versus people who are successful and unhappy.

We only get triggered at the stuff that we actually think is true about ourselves.

Oh, yeah. Being able to take an attack and learn to keep an open heart destroys the ego.

Joe Hudson, welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing? I'm doing well.

Good to see you again.

Likewise. Thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, of course. For people who might not know who you are, how do you describe what you do for work?

That's an incredibly challenging question for when you really get into it.

But the short answer is that I coach some of the most famous CEOs in Silicon Valley and executives across the country.

Yeah. Nice. So what does that mean?

So for someone who doesn't know what coach means, like how would you describe how you work with them and what sort of companies are these?

What sort of CEOs? Yeah.

So the way that I do the work is that, well, I was a venture capitalist for years.

And so I will work on business things with them.

But oftentimes the thing that's holding them back from business is holding them back in other parts of their life.

And so we're going to dig into what that is and solve the underlying problems, not just the top -level problems of the business.

Got it. So typically, if I can see somebody who is having a problem in one part of their business, you can usually find something in their personal life that corresponds to it, something that happened in their childhood that corresponds to it.

And when you can tie that pattern together and undo it, then the business frees up, and then they free up, and they're more fulfilled happier.

How does that link work?

Because you would assume, let's say someone like Elon Musk, maybe he's got problems in his personal life, but his businesses are flourishing.

So how do problems in a CEO's personal life end up manifesting in the business?

I mean, there's every dozens of ways.

And so, yes, so you can be absolutely miserable and have a successful career, for sure.

But what typically happens, and there's some hyper -successful people where this is slightly different, but what typically happens is that at some point, they wake up at 40 years old, they're like, oh, I have a billion dollars, and I'm fucking miserable.

And I'm getting divorced, and it's very public, and I'm getting lots of money taken from me, from my wife, or I'm losing half my fortune, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the board doesn't like me, and now they're trying to find another CEO, and all that stuff kind of falls apart for them.

That's clearly not for all of them, but that's a typical thing, where they have gotten the success, and then they realize they got everything they wanted, but they didn't actually get what they needed.

Okay. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about in this episode was how do you get worldly success, but at the same time, while also being emotionally, and spiritually, and personally, and relationally fulfilled.

Yeah. And it sounds like that's the sort of thing you kind of help these ridiculously rich, massive companies CEOs with.

That's correct. Or it's in some cases I help people grow massively successful companies.

So some of them I've worked with when they're smaller, and then they've grown into something amazing, and sometimes it's I'm working with somebody who's already doing something amazing.

So generally, I think about it like this.

In like the 1970s, you could either be a businessman, or you could be an environmentalist, and you couldn't be both.

And somewhere in the 90s, Walmart as an example said, oh hey, we can actually help the environment, and still be like a great successful company.

And Lee Scott, who was the CEO of the time, said when he did it, it was like sweeping thousand dollar bills off the floor.

And so an example that he gave, which I loved, was he we asked the employees, hey, how do we help the environment?

Some kid in a break room said, hey, I have an idea.

Why don't you take the lights out of the Coke machines in the break rooms at Walmart.

Savings to Walmart was 1 .5 million dollars a year at the time, but electricity prices is probably more like 3 million now.

So that's an example of where that transition happened, where you can either be a businessman, or an environmentalist, to where you can actually be both.

And I think the same transition is happening in our society now.

You can be a successful businessman, and not be fulfilled, and do things that just feel horrible to you, but at least you have the success that you think is going to make you happy, or you can do both.

And if you're going to do both, what you find out is it actually makes you more successful.

It's like sweeping thousand dollar bills off the floor.

So it's the exact same thing when you really figure it out.

So an example of this is, if you focus, say, on your own enjoyment in a company, where you say, oh, how do I sell, not just to be effective, but so that I can enjoy it and be effective, then you're going to be a better salesperson and then if you're just thinking about being effective.

Yeah. And so it's an amazing thing where, you know, I am thinking 1C0, in particular right now, where it's this beautiful thought process.

He's like, I don't know, can you be happy and run a company?

And I was like, you thought it was possible to build like a 10 billion dollar company, and you can't like conceive of the fact that you can do it while you're happy, which is really more about their upbringing typically than it is about what reality is.

Yeah. So I love this concept of, you know, there was a line you threw out of this retreat a couple of days ago, which is enjoyment is efficiency.

Yes. And I thought that was super interesting.

So my book is literally called Feel Good Productivity, and it's about this exact thing about how actually, by focusing on enjoying the process and finding ways to have fun, you actually become more productive, more creative, less stressed.

And we dove into some of the research around that.

Correct. But even as someone who literally has it on my...

I literally have an iPhone wallpaper that says, what would this look like if it were fun?

I still don't take the idea itself that seriously.

Because in my mind, there's always the sense of like, well, I could do the thing that's fun, or I could do the thing that makes money.

Right. And that often takes me in like, or puts me in this weird like fork in the road where I then have to think, okay, so if I...

I have to be okay with leaving money on the table then in order to enjoy my YouTube channel.

And yeah, I guess I'm okay with a couple of million a year and profit.

But like, if I grow the business, then it's going to make things less fun for me.

And I have all this narrative around surely success, and like worldly success and money can't actually come from enjoyment, even though I've literally like written the book about it.

And I'm like, it's kind of weird.

So, a couple of things to think about.

The metaphor I love is that I had a girlfriend in college and she used to play tennis, and she would serve and hit very well.

And the coach put out the basket that you collect balls in, and she said serve and hit it.

And so she would serve and hit it, and she hit it four out of five times.

And then he took the basket away, he put a quarter in the middle, and he said serve and hit it.

And she didn't hit the quarter once, but if you put the basket on top of it, she would have hit it five out of five times.

And so, highly successful people, none of them are in it to make a billion dollars.

None of them are in it to make a billion dollars.

They're in it maybe to prove that they're smarter than everybody to win a game, to save the world, to better the world, to get to space, whatever it is.

They have some vision about how they're gonna do something that's really, that isn't about the money.

And the money is like the pigment that a painter would use, or an instrument that a guitar player would use.

It is the means to an end.

And so, if you think about that for a second, that people who are just like, I'm just in it for the money, they're never hyper successful, and they're never long -term successful.

And they might get the money, no doubt, but their process of getting to that money is incredibly hard.

And so, if you just look like Bill Gates, it wasn't like I wanna be the richest guy in the world.

It was, I wanted to build this, I wanted to win, blah, blah, blah.

So, it's a similar deal with enjoyment.

If you have a goal that's beyond the making of money, that is how you actually become hyper successful.

That is the quarter in the middle of the basket.

So, then when you serve, you hit it.

Because typically, the way that humans work is when they get to the goal, they feel good for a moment.

They don't feel good because they hit their goal.

They feel good because there's nothing that they have to want for a moment, so they can just actually enjoy the moment.

They're like, oh, okay.

And then immediately, this new goal comes in.

And so, getting to goal actually creates a lot of anxiety for people.

So, oh my, I gotta get to a goal.

I gotta get to a goal.

There's anxiety there.

And then it's like, and so you can, if you ever play like a sport like tennis or anything like that, it's like game point.

All of a sudden, there's more pressure and you don't play quite as well.

You get in your head, it's that same thing.

So, if you create the goal beyond money, and it's actually your true goal, then the money kinda is part of getting to the actual goal, which is far beyond it.

And you don't have that anxiety of like, oh my god, the money's gonna go away.

Oh my god, I gotta have the money.

That pushes money away.

Just like if I was with you, if I was like, oh my god, you're gonna go away.

Oh my god, I don't know.

If I have to keep you here, like what do I have to say?

All of a sudden, you don't wanna be around me.

That would just fucking suck.

So, it's the same thing in our life.

Okay, so let's say someone's listening to this and we have a lot of, let's say, people in their mid to late 20s who are maybe kind of fairly early on in their career.

Yes. And they realized that they hate their job and therefore, they discover Ali Abdaal on YouTube or the Deep Dive podcast and they're like, oh, there's this path that you can start a business to make money and then you can quit your job one day, which was sort of what I did in a somewhat roundabout way with medicine.

And a lot of content on YouTube is focused on the money goal, how to make your first 10 ,000 a month.

A lot of the videos that we title, because we A, B, test titles and we realize that when you put how to make $10 ,000 a month as the title, people click on it.

Yes. Whereas if you put how to build a business you enjoy, no one's gonna click on that.

We actually tried that.

We tried a video which was all about how to have a business you enjoy and absolutely tanked.

And we just changed the title to how to make your first 10k and boom, something went viral.

Right, right, right.

So a lot of people are focused on the goal of making money.

Which is why a lot of people are poor.

Oh, tell me more. It's just that.

Like if you really want to be rich, go read Berkshire Hathaway books and study how the people became very wealthy, became wealthy.

Like that's how, like 10 ,000, how to make $10 ,000 in video.

Like in general what that means is I want to want to be rich.

I don't actually want to be rich.

I've identified with the wanting to be rich.

Oh, one day I'll be able to make it.

One day I'll get my dad's love.

One day I'll be able to feel safe.

But you're actually identified in the grasping of it.

You're not identified in the having of it.

What if I don't have the thing?

How can I identify in the having of the thing without having the thing?

Yeah, so this is a great, great example.

So one of the tricks that I will teach people about getting like stuff in their life that is so they're like, I don't have stuff.

I'm poor. I need stuff.

That's what they're thinking they are.

And then that's what they are.

Whereas if they do gratitude every day for all the crap that they do have, like look at everything that I mean, wow, I can go out and eat.

I can get a cup of coffee.

I have like the ability to go to the school or I have blah, blah, blah.

And you start identifying yourself as somebody who has stuff.

And if you do that on a regular basis, like a deep gratitude practice where you emotionally feel it, everybody I've ever seen who does that with some discipline, they start accumulating wealth.

Because they identify as the person with something instead of as the person who doesn't have something.

Yeah, one of the things I've often heard from successful entrepreneurs on this podcast is that if you focus on being of service and providing value to others, the money just sort of takes care of itself.

And people who haven't been through that process just will think that that's total BS.

Correct. Because we still have this narrative of like, I can either do good or I can make money.

Right. That's the quarter in the middle of the basket for them.

Being of service is a great quarter.

It feels really good.

It allows you to feel like fulfilled.

For most people, it makes them feel fulfilled.

But some people, their quarter is just winning or their quarter is going to space or whatever it is.

But the money just takes care of itself when you have a focus beyond making the money.

So how would you go about identifying what that true goal is?

Yeah, so that's a really interesting thing.

The search for purpose, which is something that happens for a lot of people in their 20s, particularly like 27 to like 30, there's like this crazy search for purpose that happens.

The search for purpose assumes that you weren't born with it.

And so it chases it away.

It's like being a jealous lover, right?

If I'm a jealous lover at one thing, I'm like, I want you, I want you, I want you.

I'm also pushing you away because I'm being a dick.

Right? So like, this is the movement.

It's the same movement when trying to find a purpose.

If you're like, oh, I have to search for a purpose.

You're actually pushing it away rather than saying, oh, I'm living my purpose naturally.

If you just naturally look with the books you read, if you just naturally look at the things that turn you on that excite you.

Purpose is kind of, someone thinks purpose is like a career often.

But purpose is how you do stuff as much as what you do.

I can find purpose in a lot of things.

Anything where I feel like I'm contributing to humans, feeling, getting to know themselves, understanding themselves, becoming more authentic is incredibly fulfilling for me.

And so I can do that working at the post office or I can do that doing what I do.

Obviously, I'm going to be more fulfilled doing what I do because I get to do more of it.

But you can find your purpose just in any interaction.

What's the interaction?

How are you doing this interaction?

What's important to you about the interaction that's in your purpose?

But to go out and search for it, it basically has no faith in it and it pushes it away.

One thing I've heard from a lot of people is, around this idea of, hey, one approach to the purpose thing is like, oh, let me go out there and find it.

The other approach is maybe what you're talking about is, what are the things I find myself naturally drawn to and naturally doing that feel fulfilling?

Sometimes I'll say this because I've heard other people say and I'll say in like a video or a Q &A or something.

And the response will be something like, but what if I'm 25, I've got my job, I hate my job, and all I do in the evenings is watch Netflix.

And I don't feel like I have the thing that all these other people seem to have that draws them towards this purpose.

I would say, oh, so when you were 15 years old, all you had was parents that you didn't want to have to deal with and all you had was Netflix and you're just recreating that with your job.

That's what I would say to them.

I would say that typically when somebody's like, oh, I hate my job or I hate authority or I hate the fact that I'm oppressed by this economic blah, blah, blah.

Typically, that is a reflection of the relationship with their parents.

So as an example, for me, my personal story in this, I remember I was a venture capitalist.

And I wasn't particularly successful at the moment.

I was young in my career and I was reading this story about a guy who is like a peer of mine who'd become a billionaire off of a single, like the venture capital company didn't want to make the investment.

He made the investment as one of the most successful things ever to hit Silicon Valley, became a billionaire two years later, boom.

And I felt like a kick in my stomach, just cool.

And I was like, what is that?

So I felt it and then I just let my body tell me when the first time I felt that was.

And I was like, oh, that's the feeling I had, like trying to obtain my dad's love, which I wasn't able to do.

And I was like, oh, my relationship with money is a lot like my relationship with dad.

It's like I just transplanted a relationship because my dad wasn't around anymore.

It's like, boom, we're just going to put money onto that thing.

And so oftentimes money, for me, it was dad, but oftentimes money is a projection of something that happened in your childhood.

Something that you needed that you had to be like, there's some people like, in like a lot of investment bankers, it was like, if I perform, then I will get love.

And so it's like, if I perform, then I will get money.

And then there's the people who's like, I can't do anything to get the love.

I can't do anything to get the money.

Some people is like, I'm oppressed by that person's love.

And so oppressed by the money.

And so a lot of times money is just the projection that we put onto it.

It's not actually what we think it is.

Yeah, because I guess, you know, a few years ago, if I'd have known the financial position I'd be in now, I would be like, oh, my goodness, like, you never have to work again.

You're so rich and stuff.

But now I'm thinking, well, how do we grow our business from 5 million to 10 million?

And this part of me that feels...

This part of me that's like the reason I want to do that is just for fun because I enjoy the game of entrepreneurship.

But there is a part of me that's like, oh, but I feel like I still don't quite have enough.

And I kind of still feel like I need a bit more.

But then I speak to people who have like 250 million in the back.

And they also feel that thing that they need a bit more.

What's going on there?

Yeah, so my story was somewhat similar.

I was like interacting with a couple of billionaires at this time.

And I was driving a car and I wasn't interacting with them as a coach.

It was like very early in my life.

And I was driving a car and I was thinking about all the shit that I didn't have and how much more I needed.

And I was like, you know, the billionaires I know, they think the same way.

I'm having the same experiences as a billionaire.

And it was like this moment where I kind of saw through the veil for a minute of like, oh, there's no way that this satisfies me.

There's no way that this can satisfy me.

And when I recognize that, that's actually when money started flooding into my world.

Now, there's a lot of ways to get money to flood into your world.

But it flooded into my world in a way that was like incredibly enjoyable and not something like I was striving to get so that one day I could be happy.

And I think that's the main thing, is that it's a carrot on a stick that never actually fulfills.

But being fulfilled actually gets you money.

Because people want to be around people who are fulfilled.

Let's say you're a salesperson and you feel fulfilled.

Like the people around who you're selling to are like, oh, I want to be around that person because he feels fulfilled.

Or whatever it is you're doing.

So it's actually a superpower and it helps you make money instead of the reverse, which is one day once I get it, I can.

Yeah. This is what often doesn't sit right with me about some of the content I see on YouTube around how to make money, which is like, hey, it's 2024, AI is a thing.

So do an AI, whatever.

Or it's 2021, start a social media marketing agency.

And I'm always like, the goal, like for people who, like I see this a lot in people who try starting YouTube channels for money.

It's never going to work if you start a YouTube channel for the money.

But weirdly, if you start a YouTube channel to share a passion of yours that can add value to other people's lives, the money is more likely to follow.

You can't guarantee how much money it is.

But you know, a spieler often give to people is if you make a video every week for two years, enjoy the process along the way and try and get a little bit better each time.

I guarantee it'll change your life.

I can't put numbers on it.

But trust me, it's going to change your life.

And I do not know a single person who has actually done that for two years whose life hasn't been changed.

Right, exactly. But then it's like, because the, I guess because it's uncertain and there isn't a clear cause and effect, like direct relationship, especially for people who, you know, like I grew up in a very sort of academic chasing kind of environment where it's like, I should only do a thing if it's

good for the CV. Right.

And then that approach.

It's like, you can't see directly how focusing on enjoyment or focusing on building a business you love is going to translate to financial success.

And therefore, you think it's not possible.

Okay, so let's just end.

So there's a lot of myth there.

So I wanted to spell like a couple of ways to dispel that myth.

The first one is if you go to a high -end real estate agent and you say, who are your clientele?

They're going to tell you the same thing that the economist is going to tell you.

It's like 15 % of them are doctors, lawyers, high -paid people working for somebody.

CEOs, executives, something like that.

The rest of them are entrepreneurs.

So CVs, it's like, right, best case scenario, you're going to be like a lawyer who's going to make less than you make as a YouTuber.

So the entrepreneurs are the wealth creators.

I mean, even the inheritance, it's like the inheritance worldwide is something like 15 % or 10 % and the rest of it is entrepreneurs.

And so it does like the whole CV thing.

It's just a like, how do I stay safe?

It's just a fricking question of like, can I stay safe?

Can my kid be safe?

Is everybody safe? Like that's all that really is a question of it's not.

And especially in the world of AI, I would call it just the opposite, which is like how many lawyers are going to be needed in when AI develops by five or doctors or right?

So there's like stocks and bonds.

Stocks feel like they're scary because they go up and down quickly.

Bonds don't feel scary, but then they just crash and you get like a massive recession.

So I feel like it's that it's just a way of looking at risk.

But the other piece that I would say is, like you can look out any window anywhere and you can see thousands of ways that people made money.

The window itself, the argon gas inside the window, the glass making company, the fuel that made the glass, the electricity that you're seeing out the road sign, that every one of those things, somebody made money doing it.

Most of them, multiple people made money.

There's a person who installed the road sign.

There was a person who made the steel.

There was a person who painted the roadside.

There's all those companies.

So the idea that money is scarce is ridiculous.

It is all over the place.

It is just the thinking that is constricted.

It is not like some shortage of it.

And so how to make money, when somebody says to me, here's how you make money doing this specific thing, nine times out of 10, they're making money on me by training me to do that specific thing.

It's not actually, and there may be a way to make money doing that and they might have done it.

They might actually want to share, but there's also a way for them to be making money doing it.

But there is a way to make money doing anything in the world.

And so money is doing business and entrepreneurship for me is far more of an art form than it is.

So if you're playing, we talked about this for a second, but if you're playing music, then you have to have notes.

You can do anything.

You can plant trees as an entrepreneur.

You can cut them down as an entrepreneur.

You can take guns off the street as an entrepreneur.

You can manufacture guns as an entrepreneur.

Anything you want to do, you get to do.

It's an expression of who you are.

And when you align that, when you say, oh, making money isn't something I have to do to be me, making money is an expression of me, then things smooth out considerably.

Oh, nice. Nice, that's good.

So you've got an 18 -year -old daughter who's just going off to college very shortly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you thinking about the whole balance between, you know, let's say she wanted to study, I don't know, history.

A lot of parents will be like, well, you can't do anything with a history degree other than be a history teacher and like… Yeah, that's what she wants.

Oh, right. It's not history, but she's at liberal arts college.

Yeah. So how do you think about this balance between, I want my daughter to have a financial safety net, assuming you weren't rich, and like, I want her to follow her passion, kind of thing.

That's a great question.

So my daughter, this is a great story, and I give it to any entrepreneur.

I'm going to tell it in a long way.

The first one is I had a barber, and the barber was a painter, and he was not able to sell his paintings, and I said, what's the problem?

He goes, I don't like getting rejected.

I said, I'll tell you what, I'll give you $2 ,000 if you can get rejected 50 times in six months.

And now I'm the only person who hair he cuts because he sells paintings.

And it was just switching the idea that rejection was bad to rejection is good.

So I was sitting with my daughter one day.

She was a junior in high school.

She's now a senior just about to graduate.

And I said, hey, I noticed that you're really avoiding rejection.

And she said, yeah, I am.

I don't like the feeling.

I was like, great. So I'll give you $2 ,000 if you get 50 rejections.

She's like, rejection of what?

I'm like, I don't know.

What do you want to do?

She's like, I want to go to Panama this summer, or I want to go to some place speaking Spanish this summer, and I want to study science.

I'm like, cool, like somewhere in the environment.

So I'm like, cool. So that's what I'll do.

You get 50 rejections.

So she started writing letters.

She wrote other letters.

And everything happened.

And she got this job in Panama on an island.

She got an apartment, like she made the job.

And by getting rejected tons of times, and she was going to go out for like two months, and except for the paperwork didn't come through.

And she's like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'm like, how many rejections have you had?

And she's like, oh, I've only had, you know, whatever it was 30.

I was like, well, you're not you didn't make the $2 ,000.

And she like thought about it for a minute.

And so she ended up going to Sacramento, sitting on the steps of like the Capitol building, or one of the buildings there though.

She needed the paperwork and asked every person with a suit if they could help her get the paperwork done.

She got the rejections.

And she also got the signature that she needed.

And she ended up in Panama.

So what do I think about what college she goes to?

I don't think it matters at all.

That's what matters.

What matters is that she is willing to face that and be in herself while she faces rejection and goes after what she wants.

That's what's going to be successful.

It's not going to be a resume.

And I can how many entrepreneurs who didn't finish college?

Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, I mean, Matt Mullenwick, there's just tons of them.

Nice. That's a great story.

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And let's get back to the conversation.

So coming back down to this idea of how to be successful and fulfilled at the same time.

One thing that I know you talk about in your podcast and in your videos is emotions.

Yeah. Now, I was hoping we could take a bit of a left turn into emotions because emotions are something that I've...

I think I sort of struggled with and I was sort of life coached on your podcast, which is also on this podcast channel, wherever people are watching or listening to this.

And I still don't really get the whole like, yeah, I don't really get the whole emotions thing.

And I don't even know what I mean by that.

But okay, what I think I mean by that is that there are some people in my life who seem to feel a lot of things.

And then there's me and a small number of other people in my life who don't seem to not really feel things.

And when someone asks me how I'm feeling, I kind of go a bit blank and I'm like, I'm fine, I guess.

And I did one of these like positive, negative affect score thingies.

And I basically scored zero on propensity to feel negative emotions.

But I also scored fairly low on propensity to feel positive emotions.

And this was in the book that Oprah co -wrote with Arthur Brooks, I think.

And it was sort of, they called it the judge archetype.

Someone who has like low negative affect, but also low positive, low ish positive affect.

And so pretty tranquil most of the time, good vibes.

What am I missing about like what people are feeling with emotions?

And is it possible for someone who doesn't really feel emotions very strongly to stop them feeling emotions?

Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff.

And I want to transition with a story about money and emotions, which I look.

So my wife and I, we do these really intense executive retreats.

Those for like 12 people, it is really intense, a lot of emotional movement.

And we say no to a lot of people because of the intensity of it.

And when we're doing that, we're working from 7 30 in the morning till about 10 30 at night, seven days.

It's exhausting. People are crying, getting angry, all this stuff's happening.

And we're at the end of it.

We're tired. And my wife and I were talking about how there was this trade that we could have made 10 years back that would have basically amounted for like $70 million.

And we're like, Oh, well, what would life have been like?

We're just kind of contemplating it for a minute.

And we're like, Oh, that would have been bad.

Like we would have, we would have stayed married, I'm sure of it because of like our dedication there, but we might not have started this business.

Like the coaching and the trainings and the facilitation, the classes and everything.

And so then I asked her, I said, Hey, if somebody offered us a billion dollars for this business right now, and the only caveat was that we couldn't compete, we couldn't do anything in this field anymore, would you take it?

And we both thought about it.

And then we both went and then we both looked at each other like, Yeah, no, we wouldn't do it.

Came home, told my youngest daughter about the story.

Three days later, she comes over to me.

She's like, I've been thinking about my billion dollar idea.

I'm like, Oh, cool.

You want to make a billion dollars?

She's like, No, no, no.

I want an idea so good that I wouldn't sell it for a billion dollars.

Oh, man. That's good.

That's good. I couldn't.

That's not a head decision.

That's an emotional decision.

That feeling of like, Oh, my gosh, like my head was like, No, of course, sell it for a billion dollars, right?

The emotion. And so the reality is neurologically speaking, that if I took the emotional center out of your brain, you would like almost cease to make emotions.

Your IQ would stay the same.

You could take an IQ test would be great.

But to take a long time to decide what color pen to use would take you a long time to decide where to have lunch to the point where your life would completely fall apart.

So we actually don't make logical decisions.

We use logic to decide what we think the emotional response of the situation will be.

We use logic to decide what we think the emotional response is.

Yeah. If we do this, are we going to feel happy?

If we do this, are we going to feel sad?

So think about like, how much have you done to feel safe?

How much have you done to feel loved?

How much have you done not to feel like a failure?

How much have you done not to guilt your mom?

How much? Right. How many?

Exactly. So that's actually how we make decisions.

And logic is just being used to determine how we're going to feel.

And the way to think about this is like, hey, I'm going to tell you're going to be homeless.

As it turns out, you're going to be homeless.

The good news is, you're going to fucking love it.

It's going to feel so good every day.

You're going to be like, this is the most amazing experience of my entire life.

I'm so grateful. All of a sudden, homeless doesn't sound so scary.

So we're avoiding the emotional experience.

We're trying not to have them.

We're deciding to get to an emotional experience.

That's how our neurology works.

It's how our system works.

And so emotional decision making is actually what drives us.

So we're all having emotions all the time.

There is no waking moment where an emotion isn't happening.

The question is, are we conscious of the emotion or are we not conscious of the emotion?

In my case, I think I'm very not conscious of all a lot of these emotions.

Because when you phrased it that way, it's like, oh yeah, of course, I started my first business to feel more safe.

And of course, the YouTube channel was an outlet of that.

And of course, there's some aspect of it.

Some aspect of feeling loved that I get from nice comments and people coming up to me saying you changed my life.

And it's like, all of these are feelings that I'm like, the feeling is almost the goal.

And the thing that I do to get to the feeling happens to be the YouTube channel, or the podcast, or the whatever thing is.

Exactly. So when you think about it that way, so if you take a kid and you've been physically abused as an adult, you put a quarter in one hand and a key in another hand, they won't be able to tell you which one is which, even though you and I would, because we haven't been physically beaten.

So the way it works is that we stop feeling the stuff that hurts too much.

That's the way the neurology goes.

And so if it was really hard to feel emotions, if emotions weren't safe, if love was removed, if you were ostracized for emotion, we just stopped feeling them and we started to contain them.

It requires musculature, holding.

It requires different things to happen to the body.

It's uncomfortable.

And so there is a natural progress of like, how do we start to learn to feel our emotions again?

And then how do we express those emotions?

And then how do we get to fluidity with those emotions?

And that process is amazingly useful in life.

It's like a big part of everything that I do when I'm coaching folks is to help them get through that process.

So as an example, somebody gets super overwhelmed.

Oh my God, I'm overwhelmed because I got so much busy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's like, that's just a stuck emotion.

It's a stuck emotion.

Stuck emotion. What do you mean by stuck emotion?

It means they have an emotion that is too intense for them, so they're compartmentalizing it.

They're saying, no, I can't feel that right now because if I feel that, everything's going to go crazy.

So they try to compact it, push it down, and then that's the overwhelm.

And so whether they slow down enough to be able to integrate it or they express it, which is a far quicker way to get there.

So I've seen people in this, I can't solve the problem, I don't know what to do.

Go, go, go, go, go.

They have an expression of anger and then boom, clarity.

Oh, I know what to do now.

And so logic works like this.

It goes A plus B equals C and then therefore A minus C equals B and emotions work like this.

Oh, I got it. Okay, so what are the, what's the roadmap here?

If like I would like to get to emotional fluidity, whatever the hell that means, like from my starting point right now.

Like what's the roadmap?

And I guess what are some of the starting steps that I or someone listening to this who feels in that position where they're like, yeah, I don't really feel my emotions particularly well.

Like, how do we, how do we do that?

So emotions are, so emotions come in where we have them and we go, oh, that's uncomfortable or that's comfortable.

I want it or I don't want it.

And so you're kind of making these decisions.

The end of emotional fluidity is I love having every emotional experience and they move through me with ease, but I don't feel controlled by them.

Oh, okay. Yeah, nice.

So that's basically how it works.

But typically happens somewhere in the middle is somebody has an experience of someone who's really angry or really sad, guilt tripping them or scared all the time and they feel oppressed by that emotional experience and they're like, I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to control the emotion, which is kind of the middle of the journey.

So the first part of the journey is, okay, I have these emotions.

They're relatively fluid except for they cause me pain in some way.

And so I start trying to manage, repress, compartmentalize, push down these emotional experiences because that's how I'm going to be happy.

That's like, then at some point you're like, oh, wait a second.

This isn't working.

This is giving me cancer or this is making me depressed because I haven't released my anger or whatever it is.

And then once you're there, then you're like, okay, I'm going to start to learn how to feel and express these feelings.

The feeling part can be done in a lot of ways.

Meditation can be a way to do it.

Meditation can also be a way to repress emotions.

So you can use it either way.

Breath work is a great way to start feeling some of the emotions.

Mm -hmm. I did it a horrible way.

So like, so my personal story on this was I was, when I was young, my parents thought me crying meant they were bad parents.

So what they did was they made fun of me when I cried so that I wouldn't cry.

So they wouldn't have to feel that stuff.

And so they took pictures of me crying and then they put the photograph in an album.

And when I was like 24 years old, I was flipping through an album.

For those younger, we used to take photographs and put them in albums.

And I was like, oh, oh, shit.

That's probably why I haven't cried in so long.

So I took it out, put it on my desk, I'm gonna learn how to cry.

Six months later, three months later, whatever it was, I hadn't cried.

I was like, oh, shit.

So I guess I'm gonna have to fake it.

This is my thinking.

I had no guide on this.

So I lived in Los Angeles.

I went up to like 10 ,000 feet and I took a trail and then I went off trail so that nobody could hear me crying because it was so shameful.

And I would fake crying once or twice a week.

And then one day, I just started crying and it was actual tears.

And I actually cried and I cried for four days.

I could have stopped but I didn't want to.

For four days. Four days.

Four days, just. And holy crap was my life so much better after crying for four days.

So like just the wait just like for anybody who's listening to this.

Here's an experience you can do.

Stop feeling right now.

Take, yeah, no, you don't think you have an emotion but there's some emotion.

Do anything you can to stop feeling right now.

You have to constrict a muscle.

Your eyes literally when you got out.

Yeah, exactly. That takes fucking energy.

And if you do that habitually, you're constantly in that place.

And so to actually feel the emotion releases all that stuff because you don't have to hold back to do it.

And you get a lot of clarity because it used to be I would do stuff to avoid sadness.

So I would make a business decision to avoid sadness.

Now I'm like sadness is great.

I love sadness. I cry.

I feel better. This is fantastic.

Why would I ever avoid feeling sad?

And now I have a business decision.

Oh, there's 50 % chance sad but it's the right thing to do.

I'm going to take it.

Before 50 % shit sad it's the right thing to do.

I'm not going to take it.

Okay, nice. So this is reminding me of a podcast episode I did with my brother like four years ago.

And so my brother and I like outside of this podcast, we have another one that we just chat every now and then.

And I had discovered that week that there was a forum thread on some celebrity gossip forum about me.

Where people were saying mean things about me.

Oh, and so I'm so sorry.

That sucks. Yeah. Oh well.

So it was interesting because I thought, hey, what a perfect chance for me to practice my stoicism chops.

And started reading through this thread.

And I was so excited by this that in this podcast episode I was like, I said to my brother, Hey, team, let's go through some of these comments.

And we started reading some of the comments.

And he was like, how do you feel right now?

And I was like, I feel fine.

He was like, because you literally look like you're about to cry.

And I was like, hmm, well, fine.

I will grant that I'm feeling a little bit of maybe something, but like, I didn't want to admit to myself that I was feeling sad or hurt by these comments from these fucking strangers on the internet and stuff.

And we ended up clipping that thing.

And it has gone like 50 ,000 views.

This conversation between me and my brother.

And a lot of the comments are like, whoa, yeah, it's clear that Ali is really feeling something but is just completely refusing to acknowledge the feeling of these emotions.

That's right. And now, and then so fast forward four years later, like two days ago, you and I and a couple of other friends were chatting over dinner.

And this friend Kelly asked, oh, how are you feeling about the book?

And I said, yeah, I don't really know.

I haven't read any of the reviews.

Because I've heard from authors that you shouldn't read the reviews.

And with you and Kelly suggested that in a gentle way that reading negative reviews can be a very sort of spiritually enlivening and it's good for the soul kind of thing.

Yeah, if it's done with the right stance towards it for sure.

And so like, if you're looking to disintegrate your ego, trolls on the internet are fucking fantastic.

So it's almost like I'm avoiding reading reviews.

I mean, I made the mistake of just before the book came out looking at goodreads and we'd sent out the advanced reader copies.

And they're more critical than the standard readers.

And I saw some two and three star reviews and goodreads.

And I was like, and then I was like, okay, I can see why these authors gave me the advice of never to read reviews.

And then I started avoiding them to the point that now, if anyone almost like put springs up the Amazon page, I almost don't want to see how many stars there are and how many reviews there are because I want to avoid some kind of feeling.

Yeah, that's right.

And it was only like two days ago when you and Kelly both mentioned this.

I was like, oh, shit, I'm thinking I'm trying to avoid some kind of feeling.

So where am I in this like levels of emotional fluidity in this specific context, I guess?

Well, in that specific context, you are, you have not learned to enjoy the emotional experiences that are coming up.

And this is the hardest part for people to grok.

You mean I can enjoy helplessness?

Yes. On the backside of helplessness is the feeling of empowerment.

On the backside of sadness is the feeling of relief.

On the backside of anger is a feeling of clarity.

And so, and then this has been known for a while.

Like in traditional Chinese medicine, they talk about it.

In Tibetan texts, they talk about how they call them like the five poisons equal to five virtues and how they basically… the way I look at it is this.

You have a tube and that tube, let's call that tube anger.

And you twist it this way and it's I'm not angry.

And you twist it this way and it's like you son of a… And you twist it this way, it's nice dress.

But untwisted, it is Gandhi.

It is Martin Luther King.

It is Mother Teresa.

It is a clear boundary with love.

No, that's not. Because we don't get angry at anything unless we care about it.

There's always care and anger, there's always love and anger and there's always a boundary and anger.

And so, when it's unconstricted, that's what it ends up being.

And so, but if you're trying to resist it, it kinks and then something else happens.

Avoidance or whatever.

And so, that's how I see it is that tube, all your job is to do is not constrict it.

When you don't constrict it, it gets fluid.

That's the fluidity part of it.

And then it actually feels different.

So, think about it this way.

If you went to a party and everybody didn't want you there, you would act one way.

And if you went to the party and everybody wanted you there, you would act a different way.

Your emotions are the same.

Your emotions show up and you want them, they're gonna act one way.

Your emotions show up and you don't want them, they're gonna act another way.

Is this this, was it on your podcast that I heard this like Joy is the matriarch or some… Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like, yeah, what's that idea?

Yeah, so Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions.

And she won't come into a house unless her children are welcome, basically.

And so, what it means is that if you are trying to repress anger, you are not making, there's no room for Joy.

So, Joy is just kind of the natural state.

Joy and love, they're the natural state.

And as long as you're not containing some emotion, there's room for them and they show up.

And so, you see that all the time in our retreats when people move their emotions, all of a sudden, they're just more joyful, just like I was after I cried for four days.

I was like, oh goodness gracious.

And by move their emotions, what do you mean by move their emotions?

I mean like get it out of their muscles, so express their emotions.

And it is really important to express them the right way is strong.

But so, you can express your emotions in such a way that creates shame and then that's not gonna be very helpful.

So, expressing your emotions by like yelling at somebody or being sad at somebody or being scared at somebody, which means trying to control them with your emotions, you're gonna create shame, it's not gonna actually move your emotion.

Whereas, oh, I'm gonna get angry and then I'm actually gonna find a place where I'm loved after my anger, so it's not like I'm, there's a shame thing, that's the best possible way.

So, you're moving the anger, you're yelling, you're doing whatever you have to do, but nobody, no you're not hurting anybody with your words.

You might be having them, but you're not doing it at somebody.

That emotional expression is the thing that allows you to start falling in love with the emotional experiences.

So, is it sort of like, you know, how kids with anger management problems, you tell them to get a pillow and punch it in the garden or something like that sort of idea?

Yeah, so there's the interesting thing, there's been a tremendous amount of research.

So, somebody's gonna geek out and go, let me go look do the research.

So, there's a tremendous amount of research that shows if you start moving anger, you're gonna get angry more often.

And that's absolutely the case, just like when I got sad, I got sad more often.

But what happens is that a lot of it has been piled up and then it moves out and then all of a sudden there's just less anger, less passive aggression.

So, when you repress something like anger, it leads to a lot of depression, passive aggression, feelings of stuckness.

So, if you're listening to this, you're like, I feel stuck.

Nope, you're just not moving your anger cleanly.

Oh, I feel depressed.

Nope, you're just not moving your anger cleanly.

Passive aggressive, no, you're just not drawing your boundaries and moving your anger.

So, as you start moving them, it just kind of, for a while it gets, and then it starts calming down and then all of a sudden then you have this emotional fluidity, it's like riding a river, it's not like being controlled, being thrown over the rapids.

Where does the idea of chemical imbalances in the brain fit into this model?

Because the thing that you just said, well, if you have depression, almost certainly imagine there are people listening to this, they're like, whoa, depression is chemical imbalance.

Hang on. SSRIs work.

This guy's full of shit.

Fuck you, Joe Hudson.

Okay, you did a lot of things there.

SSR, fuck you, Joe Hudson.

Thank you for it. I like that.

SSRIs, they don't actually work 100 % of the time.

There's plenty of research that shows that that's not the case.

Also, yes, there are chemical imbalances that this is not all forms of depression.

I would call this more in the dystymia, low -level depression realm.

What I can tell you is I do know a lot of folks who I've worked with who have, and I'm not diagnosing anybody, but there's a lot of people I've worked with where they've had depression and that depression has been relieved, but it's not just from anger.

So the way I look at consciousness generally is there's the head, the heart, the gut that's a metaphor.

But when you approach healing, if you approach it in that way, it's usually far more effective.

So the head is intellect, the heart is the emotional, and the gut is the nervous system.

Or you could call it roughly for those who are neuroscientists out there.

The prefrontal cortex of the head is like the human brain.

The mammalian brain is the heart, and the gut is more of the nervous system, reptilian brain.

If you hit them on all three levels, you're going to have much more transformation.

So you want to hit them on all three levels.

And so depression, I would say the head is the negative self -talk, which is actually how it's defined in the DSM.

It dystymia anyways, and it's like constant or increased negative self.

Basically, I would call self -abuse.

So you want to change that the way that you talk in that, which can't be done by trying to change it, but there's a whole bunch of tricks on how to change that.

And then there is the heart, which is the emotion, which is the release of anger, sometimes sadness, but often anger.

And then the gut part of it is about feeling safe.

It's because anxiety and depression go hand in hand.

So you wear out your adrenal glands and then depression ensues.

So it's a three -part thing.

If I'm working with someone who's depressed, that's my approach.

And it's not 100 % effective, but it's very effective a lot of the time.

Okay, so it's like.

And just by the way on that one, you have to go into a lot more detail to figure that one out.

But I do have a podcast on it that like you can actually get into all the details.

Oh, perfect. We will link that in the show notes or the video description wherever people are watching or listening.

So it sounds like in this model, there are a bunch of different emotions and these emotions are almost like pipes.

Yes. And for certain people, the pipes are kinked to the point that they don't identify or they don't consciously feel when this emotion is chilling in the pipes.

Yes. Or they twist the pipe in a way that makes them, that convinces themselves that the emotion doesn't exist.

Yes. And a lot of the goal of emotional fluidity is to unkink the pipes and then ideally start to enjoy the process of the emotion flowing through the pipes.

You can't unkink the pipes without enjoying the...

Okay, so enjoyment happens first.

The enjoyment is the thing.

And so, yeah, so typically, the way I would think of those stages is first, you know, the identification that the emotions are having, then there's the management.

There's often a management stage.

Sometimes you need to learn how to label them depending on the particular thing.

And then there's the expression of them and then there's the place where you fall in love with them and that creates fluidity.

So, okay. So you in my tangible example of I'm afraid to read book reviews or I see negative comments written about me on the internet.

Right. How might I approach becoming more comfortable or loving those sensations or whatever?

The very best possible way and this is gonna sound...

But like, we had a good relationship and I was coaching you, what I would say is I would have your girlfriend hold you, literally physically like hold you and then you read the negative reviews.

And I wouldn't have her try to make you feel better.

It's really important.

So you don't want like someone to be like, it's okay.

It's gonna be all right.

Because basically what you're saying is I mean, you're invalidating the emotions or you're saying your emotions are making me uncomfortable.

Stop it. Oh, okay. So you don't want that, but you want just someone who's totally with you in the experience and saying, right, I love you.

You can be sad, I love you.

You can be upset, I love you.

You can be angry, I love you.

And just actually just someone who's sitting there loving you as you're having the emotional experiences.

And then your job is to make sure that you're breathing so that you're not constricting the muscles and stopping the emotion.

And in your particular case, like I would watch out for like jaw, like holding the jaw or holding the throat tightly, which is where a lot of the emotions get held.

Hmm. Yeah, I did a breath work thing for the first time this morning.

Yeah. Here just in the space behind us.

And I felt a lot of like vibration in the jaw.

Yeah. And also like in the ulnar nerve position of the fingers and stuff.

But like there was a lot in the jaw.

And also sort of just under the rib cage on one side.

And I was like, huh.

Because I've listened to some of your podcasts.

And I was like, okay, is this the whole like jaw tension thing?

Yeah, is there any relationship between like breath work and this emotion stuff?

Yeah, like when we do the in -person retreats that are off, you know, we don't advertise them or anything like that.

When we do those, we do breath work and emotional release work.

On the note of, okay, so I'm gonna try this thing with my girlfriend, the whole holding as we read negative reviews.

And then feel whatever feels.

But like it's like a kid or as the person today in the coffee shop said like the swan, it's like, so the emotion starts to arise.

The mind starts to tell you things like they're not rational.

Yep, you're right. It's not rational.

Or the mind will tell you if I'm sad, I'll be sad forever.

If I'm angry, I'm going to destroy my world.

If I'm scared, I'm going to be incapable.

Hmm. And the job is to say, like, oh, I've been listening to you for 30 years or so.

I'm just gonna listen to the emotions for 20 minutes.

Hmm. Nice. And then allow yourself to just feel the emotional experience that's happening.

Okay, so if anyone's listening to this, I'm going to go in a bit of a matter when reading negative Amazon reviews, but I would appreciate the positive ones as well.

So if you haven't yet reviewed the book on the note of, okay, so one thing that I really struggled with and continue to struggle with to an extent in my relationship is.

I want to say one thing.

Back up on one thing, but also just like don't over blow your nervous system.

So do it into a point where you're just like, don't go out of regulation to do it.

I have done that many times, you will recover, but it's a far quicker process to feel it into a point where you're like, okay, that's enough.

And then go back to it.

Okay, so small doses rather than like a mega dose.

It may be small, maybe just depends on your system, just don't blow yourself out.

Okay, nice. One thing that I've struggled with and still do is the idea of like how to emotionally support my partner.

Oh, yeah. And you mentioned like, it's like, I don't really have any good models for this.

I didn't have a dad growing up.

And like, I don't and so it is weird for me to think, how would like a 30 year old dude offer emotional support in like, like, what does that even look like?

And in the sort of a thing in my head was always going to be okay.

It's all right. Like you see the stuff in the movies.

Yeah. How do I emotionally support my partner?

So, the way I did with you, and you actually felt it.

So, if you go like back on the tape or the podcast, you said, Oh, I got these terrible views.

And I said, Oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm right here with you.

I'm empathetic. Yeah.

I'm not trying to fix you.

And I'm just right here with you.

Yeah. So, you wouldn't say, Oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm sure the book is actually good and all that kind of stuff.

It's like, yeah, I'm just just empathetically being with somebody is all that's really required.

Okay. Not wanting them to change.

Just literally I can sit in loving attention of you and your emotional experience.

And especially men in America, especially men in western civilization, man, we have got to go in there and fix it.

But it's really not required.

And it often makes people feel very unseen.

Because what you're telling them is like, you're wrong for feeling this.

It needs to be fixed instead of like, Oh, I love you.

And you can feel this no problem.

Yeah. What if? What if, it might say, okay, what if the spouse is upset because of something that I have done?

Same thing. Okay. So just like sit in loving attention.

Yeah. Just be like, oh, I really if you want to go big, this works, but it can be really hard.

Is, oh, I hear that you're really upset with me.

I want to hear all about it.

Tell me what's bothering you.

Yeah. How do you want to handle this?

What's going on? Like, what do you want from me?

I'm not gonna sit here and agree to whatever you want from me, but I want to hear about it.

I want to like, and what you'll notice is typically when somebody is given that space, they'll like explain.

Actually, I think it's just I need this.

Because it's the emotion that's stuck that's actually causing the problems.

It's not. If people are allowed to have that movement, then typically they get to a much more.

Yeah. And it's unbelievable.

If you can do that in a marriage, it's like a like, like such a cool superpower.

Because I guess the temptation there is to defend ourselves.

Correct. Be like, oh, but like, I didn't mean that.

Come on, like, Which is basically two people, one person feels like they've been attacked.

This person defends themselves.

They feel like they're defending themselves, but this person feels attacked by the defense.

And so that's all that's happening is both people in a fight typically in a marriage.

It's like both people feel like they're defending themselves and both people feel like the other person's attacking them.

So yeah, the dropping of the defense absolutely like.

Okay, I'm gonna try this.

This is good. I need to remember the dropping of the defense.

It's not unlike reading the bad reviews.

Okay, yeah, nice. Being able to sit with a negative emotion.

Yeah, exactly. And sit with the negative emotion and allow it to the point where it actually becomes quite enjoyable.

Oh, okay. It cleans out.

It like it cleans you out.

It's an amazing experience.

Okay, and what about if.

Let's say the partner is upset because something at work, she thinks she did something badly.

Yes. And I look at the thing and I'm like, no, it's actually really good.

Yes. And I want to offer reassurance that like, the fact that she thinks is bad is actually, it's not actually, but it's actually really good.

Yes. And like, there's all this like perfectionism and foster center that she's feeling about the thing.

Yes. And I kind of want to reassure her that like, no, the thing is actually good.

Right. I feel like this is counterproductive.

Yes. Totally, totally counterproductive.

I mean, it's not counterproductive to say it once to say, oh, actually, my opinion is that it's quite good.

But to try to chase her into her happiness or to try to push her into her happiness.

So there's a great story about this.

There's like, it was, he was a Quaker man and he suffered like this big depression.

And I love this story.

And he had a great community of people and everybody showed up and they said, here's what you should do to not be depressed.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

One person came every Tuesday and just washed his feet.

And he said, that did more for me than anything else because everybody else was agreeing with me that I was broken.

The person who was washing my feet was the only person who was saying to me, you're not broken.

You're complete just as you are.

And that was the message that I actually needed.

And so chasing someone to feel better is more of an expression about you not wanting to feel that way.

It's more of an expression of, oh, I don't want to feel that uncertainty.

I don't want to feel that like, uh, and so then it is about them.

And so it's far better to just be like, yeah, like, cool.

You feel like, ah, yeah, you feel like you didn't do good enough.

That sucks. Nice. And also energetically, like in a relationship, like one person holds one side of the, one side of the emotional experience and someone holds the other.

So like, typically I've seen this tons in companies and in relationships, one person is really worried about money.

One person is not worried about money.

And then all of a sudden one person's like, oh, I'll start worrying about money.

And then the other person's like, oh, come on, relax about the money.

Like that we hold these roles.

So if you want to hold the role of the optimist, everything is good and there's no other place for her to be, but in the, oh, wait, is it going to be good enough?

Is it good enough? And being in the doubt.

And so drop that role.

And it kind of insists that she can drop the other role.

This reminds me of a story, a story in like the world of, uh, in the world of, uh, customer success or customer support in that.

If a customer comes to you with a complaint, there are two chips in your hand.

One chip is this is a big fucking deal.

The other chip is this is not a big deal and the chip that you take, the customer has to have the other one.

So if you take the chip of this is not a big deal, the customer has to take the chip of this is a big fucking deal.

Whereas if you take the, if you take, oh my goodness, I'm so, I know this is a huge deal.

Like you must feel absolutely terrible.

Then the customer has to be like, it's, you know, it's not that bad.

Like calm down kind of thing.

That's right. That's absolutely right.

Okay. So in my quest to help my partner feel less imposter syndrome and perfectionism by reassuring her that her work is good, she almost, I almost forced her to take the position that no, my work is actually shit.

Yeah. Yeah. By especially if it's pushing, if it's like a one -time, Oh, actually, I think it's great.

I remember one time I did this experiment.

I had a long time ago, I had an employee was like, this is shit.

And I was like chasing.

I'm like, no, this is good.

This is what I want from you.

And it wasn't working.

And so I kind of basically took like a completely different position and they're like, it's shit.

And I was like, I was like, yeah.

And then they started to defend themselves and started to say why it was so good.

I was like, yeah, so you knew it was good.

And they're nice. It's a good mind trick.

One of the things you said earlier on is that you enjoy or like get a lot of fulfillment out of helping other people express their authenticity or what's the effect?

I wouldn't use the word help.

Maybe I did, but I would try not to.

But I would say, yeah, anyway, I'm of service to that.

Great. Okay, why not the word help?

Because again, it says that they're not capable of it without me.

Cool. Yeah. I often can mean that in people's minds.

The word itself isn't a problem.

It's just the way people interpret it.

Okay, nice. On the note of authenticity, one thing that I sort of brought up to you slightly earlier this week is that one issue that I have is, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have this as well, they get a lot of emails about it, is wanting to be authentic to oneself makes a parent upset

in some way or another.

Yes. Yeah. How does one deal with this?

So there's a couple of ways to look at it.

One thing that if anybody's really, really working on this, there's this weird show on Netflix, maybe you can find it in LinkedIn, the show notes.

There's a weird show on Netflix called Magic for Humans.

And there's this, I think it's episode three or something like that, where he does an episode on Guilt and he's got all these moms around the table and all the moms, they're just like, oh, yeah, I'm really good at guilt.

Guilt is like the coolest thing.

Like, oh, I like, yeah, I can really get him to do what I want when I do guilt.

So if you have a mom like that, you're like, you should watch that because it makes you see that it's like, whoa, oh, you know, I thought she was really sad, but is she like, what's going on there?

But generally, the thing about guilt is that it creates an emotional eddy, guilt, shame, judgment, they basically make the emotions kind of run in place.

So you don't actually get the fluidity.

So they're an emotion that kind of like that create an eddy of the emotional experience.

So one of the greatest things to do is if you couldn't feel guilt, what would you have to feel?

If I couldn't feel guilt, what I have to feel?

Yeah. So your mom wants you to be a doctor, like stay being a doctor, stay being a doctor.

She's actually like for the record, she has this used to be a problem in the past, she's now chill with me being a YouTuber.

Let's just use that as an example.

Because I think a lot of people have this where the parent wants them to do career X, and they actually want to do the liberal arts version of career X, and the parents are like, oh my God, like it's terrible.

Exactly. Okay, who wants you to be a doctor and if you couldn't feel guilt, what would you have to feel?

So the idea is that we're feeling guilt because of that.

But if you said that's just not on the table, not possible.

Guilt is not on the table.

So what would I have to feel?

Shame? Same. Same. Okay, fine.

I can't feel guilt or shame.

So what would I have to feel?

I would have to feel selfish.

Comes to mind. Selfish and shame are really close to each other.

Like so guilt would be, I feel guilty for doing this thing.

Shame is I'm feeling guilty for being myself or I feel like I'm wrong when it's something I've done is wrong.

What is I'm wrong? They get very confused.

Selfish. Selfish we could go off on forever because selfish just means you're not doing what your mom wants you to do, generally or whoever.

Yeah, sure. When parents call kids selfish, that's generally what it means.

But I'm just saying like if you couldn't feel that selfish as a shame, like what's the key emotion underneath that you would have to feel if you couldn't feel like you were wrong for bad for not doing the thing?

Maybe acceptance. That comes to mind.

Like acceptance that my mom feels sad about this thing and I'm okay with that.

Exactly. Where does the phrase I'm sorry come into this if I'm, let's say, having this conversation with my mom.

I feel like I'm sorry is like, I'm sorry you feel that way, but then that comes across as it authentic and it's like I'm sorry is also a bit of an admission of culpability on my part.

It's like, how do you feel about the phrase?

I'm sorry. I love the phrase, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry is such a great phrase because it's actually one of the most successful transformational tools that you can use.

So if you can do an upright, what I would call an upright apology and we have like all sorts of documentation on how to do an upright apology on the website and whatnot, if you can do an upright apology, which means I am not leaving myself.

I'm not feeling bad about myself.

I'm just actually don't want, I don't want to be like this in the future.

I don't want this to happen to you in the future.

And you're just like, that's where you come from.

It is one of the best ways for you to stop a behavior.

So anyway, what do you mean?

Yeah. So if you can say to somebody like, oh, I'm so sorry that I treated that I yelled at you right there.

Not with shame, but just like, oh, I'm so sorry I yelled at you.

And I can do that three or four times, I will stop yelling.

So if you do a really upright apology and you really feel it and you allow the field, but if soon as you go into shame, then you get the stagnation like guilt and then you're gonna keep on doing it over and over and over again.

But in the sense of I'm so sorry that I quit being a doctor or whatever the thing might be.

Yeah. So in that particular case, then the question is this, I said to you earlier, like, oh, I'm sorry that they did that.

I'm not responsible.

That makes me sad that that happened.

That sucks. That's all it is.

And so it's just like, yeah, I'm sorry.

It could be, I'm sorry that I can't be inauthentic to make you happy right now.

And I understand that that stinks or that's probably not quite right.

But something to the effect.

I'm sorry that my choices are hurting you.

I really do not want you to hurt.

Okay, nice. And if the response says, well, if you were really sorry, you would stop doing it.

Yeah. And my response would be, no, that would be doing something that doesn't feel aligned for me to stop you from hurting.

I don't want you to hurt, but I don't want to have to do something that's not authentic for me to have you not hurt.

So it sounds like you're just selfish, then?

Absolutely. I'm absolutely selfish.

I'm, yeah, I want to take care of myself.

I also want you to take care of yourself and whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, given the choice I'm making, I want to support you in it, even if it hurts me.

How did you get so good at this?

What's the training program for this sort of thing?

The big training program is to realize the thing that you're defending isn't there.

The thing that you're defending isn't there.

Yeah. So if you're defending yourself, no, but I'm really, I do, it means that you actually think there's something bad in you.

Okay. There isn't. Okay.

So if someone said to me, Ali, you've got a really slow typing speed.

I wouldn't defend myself because I knew objectively that my typing is really fucking faster.

It's just, okay, kind of thing.

But if someone said to me, Ali, you're selfish, prick, or like, you can't feel your emotions.

Yeah. Yeah. This wouldn't be a problem if you could feel your emotions.

Yeah. That would make you.

Exactly. Where I'm like, yeah, you're right.

I can't feel my emotion.

Right. Maybe it's something I need to work on.

Right. We only get triggered at the stuff that we actually think is true about ourselves.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And so this is why reading negative reviews is kind of like ego destruction.

Yeah, exactly. That's right.

And I'll give you a great example of this.

I'm like, we were just hiking at the end.

I was on that hike with a friend.

And he's like, Joe, you're a dick.

And I was like, no, I'm not.

You know, this was years ago.

No, I'm not. He's like, Jesus, why defend it?

You're just a dick.

Like, take pride in the fact that you're a dick.

What's the problem?

And I was like, yeah.

Okay. Let me relax into that for a moment.

I'm like, yeah, I can see ways that I'm a dick.

Yeah. Okay. I'm a dick.

And in that non -defensiveness, the non -defending of being a dick, I just stopped being a dick.

Like, it just like reduced.

Like, I had a behavior where there was definitely a way like I would push to get something that I wanted.

And that just that went away because I wasn't defending it anymore.

So the thing that we resist persists.

You've heard this before.

This is the resistance.

The defense is the resistance.

So there's like, yeah, we're all selfish.

Yes, I'm selfish. Why would I defend that?

I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna.

There's nothing. I don't think there's some bad part of me that I have to prove is good.

So what's to defend?

And yeah, the being able to take an attack and learn to keep an open heart destroys the ego.

Take an attack and keep an open heart.

The troll says the thing and you keep an open heart while reading it.

Yeah. And that'll create a ton of emotional fluidity.

It'll move a lot. And it'll, it just destroys the ego because the ego has to defend itself.

I'm excited to read these negative reviews now.

In small doses. Okay, I have so many things.

Okay, let's start with this.

What is enlightenment?

And would you say that you are enlightened?

Okay, so I mean, there's so many different versions of what enlightenment is.

And you know, there are, even within Buddhism there is, which is where the term and some Hinduism, where the term enlightenment showed up, I think Christ consciousness is another example.

So there's a lot of things.

I take a slightly more western psychological view of enlightenment.

And so in the human development domains, and so the way I think about and so maybe in Buddhism, this might be considered awakening, some people would call it enlightenment, blah, blah, blah, but the way I look at it is there's three ways to do it.

We'll just do two of them.

One is a sense of self.

So your little kid, your sense of self is very solid.

And we know that because if I say to a little kid, what do you want for Christmas?

They say GI Joe with a Kung Fu grip.

You're like, what do I want for Christmas?

GI Joe with a Kung Fu group, they can't really discern themselves from the world.

Okay. And then as they get a little bit older, they can discern themselves from the world.

They're like, I want a GI Joe with a Kung Fu grip.

But mom wants a Tesla.

Dad wants a tie or whatever.

And so our sense of self moves from that to, oh, I am the family.

I am the tribe. I am the nation.

I am humanity. I am the ecosystem.

So as we develop, we start seeing our sense of self as everything like and so people who are like, I want to take care of the environment because I see the environment as them and that there's an interdependence and it's not like something that's separate.

Okay. At some point, at some point, the sense of self becomes universal again.

And it actually feels like a memory.

It's like, oh, I remember this.

That sense of self becoming universal again, where you're like, I am everything and everything is me.

And there's some distinction, you can go further on where it's like, I am nothing, I am everything.

But like, let's just leave that out for now.

That moment is what people call awakening or enlightenment.

When that moment persists, that's usually what somebody would call enlightenment.

Okay. Yeah. Because I was reading the book by Jed McKenna, which is a he calls it abiding non -dual awareness.

Yeah, non -duality. So that would be another way to describe awakening or enlightenment is non -duality.

So that's the sum from the sense of I.

There's also a sense of time that goes along with it.

So little kids, if you say to them, oh, your birthday's in like three months, they could give a crap.

Yeah. Birthdays in three days, they get really excited.

The average American, they can see out like three and a half years.

They can think about things longer, but they'll sign a mortgage that will blow up in four years, because they're not really considering.

And then you move into like seven generation thinking, which is the American Indians, the Native Americans, they would, they talked about like, you couldn't really know a valley or a location until you'd lived there for seven generations.

And when you're making a decision, you're making a decision for seven generations.

That was like that thought process.

You're actually thinking about the expanse of time.

Like when your work stops mattering about like today or tomorrow and your start work starts mattering about future generations.

This is kind of where that moves.

Again, there's this point where it kind of implodes on itself.

And infinity doesn't become a length of time.

It becomes like the depth of a moment.

Okay. So there's a sense of self sense of time.

And those are easy ways to see how that works in the system.

Another thing that happens, especially with like the mental one is that the oftentimes a negative self talk loop will really change.

There won't be a lot of it because you start seeing through all your thoughts, all your thoughts become true and not true.

And so none of them you take very seriously.

So you can't like someone's like, Oh, that person thinks you're an asshole.

And there's some party that's like, Hey, look at that thought.

Yeah, I don't really particularly believe that.

And in that spaciousness is a lot of like the lack of defensiveness and stuff like that.

Okay. That's a lot.

Yeah. Nice. This is good.

So, um, I am me. I am my family.

I am my tribe. Yeah.

But it's not like I am right.

Like it's like, I don't like, my mom doesn't feel like she is me, but she really cares about me.

Yes. So is that is that the same thing?

Yes. Oh, fine. Okay.

That's yeah, that's the same thing.

And there are some friends of mine who really care about the environment.

Right. She really cares what your actions are, like where you live and everything.

Cause she's very identified with you as her and her as you like, she would be like, I like, my, my, like, so my kid, if they did something embarrassing, I'd be like, that's embarrassing for them.

But I wouldn't say like, Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed by what my kid did.

Ah, yes. Because I'm not really identified in that way.

So identified means like, what does identified mean?

Yeah. So it means that I'm a good way to say it's like, I'm taking it personally.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, fine.

So, huh. It's very, very hard for me to take things personally.

Yep. So are you enlightened?

So I don't really believe in the enlightenment term.

But yeah, the voice in my head is there's no negative repeating voice in my head and my sense of identity is very universal.

I am everything. I'm nothing.

That's true. And, and what was interesting about that is I was very identified with that for a bit.

Look at me, I'm this.

And now it's like, you know, it's like hair color.

It's like, it's not, it's not relevant.

Okay, interesting. Cause I've been listening to some Alan Watts lectures where he also talked about how like the quest to destroy the ego becomes its own ego trip.

Correct. Yeah, I think.

Yeah. So, I mean, I went through like many, many years sitting on a pillow, meditating, looking out a window at a tree and reading non -dual teachers.

Like I just went through like trying my hardest to get to awakening and like, why?

How did this vibe with the whole venture capitalist philanthropist, being coach for CEOs or billionaires kind of thing.

Yeah. Where does all this fit into the picture?

Historically, it was I was doing investment banking.

I went to a meditation retreat.

I got a taste of unity consciousness and I was like, whatever the fuck that is, I'm after it.

And then I chased so, so hard for it, which made it harder and harder to like see that it was actually just what I was by my nature.

So the more I chased, the more pushed away.

How old were you at the time?

25 years old, something like that.

So 25, you had this experience in a meditation retreat.

Yeah. Where you're like, Oh, I dedicated my entire life to it for a decade.

Oh, okay. Yeah. And I didn't do venture capital until 35.

Oh, how do you dedicate your life to meditation?

Do I literally want to show you some?

I made $12 ,000 a year, I made almost no money.

I worried about money quite a bit.

Yeah. I had all those things that people like.

So everybody out there who's like that rich guy, he doesn't know about money that it is like, actually, yeah, I was incredibly poor, worried about money and stressed about it all the fricking time.

Yeah. And but I just was totally dedicated to this thing.

I was, I was, I was avid about it.

And so I tried everything I could I, I did meditation, I did the Hoffman process, I did somatic healing, I did breathwork, I did everything I could possibly do for, I was dedicated to it.

And, you know, I could do high paying work because I did international stock lending.

So I could go out and like make a lot of money for a couple weeks.

And then I would just be back in the room, sitting, meditating for seven hours a day.

Isn't that really boring?

My wife's sure thought so.

It wasn't for me. No, I got what happened somewhere along the line, this question arose in me, there's just like, what am I essentially?

And, and it's not, you know, you can say I'm Joe, or you can say I'm a human.

But like, what is it that I've always been always will be that can't be taken away?

That's never been changed.

And that question just naturally showed up 10 times a day.

And I was on a hunt to find the answer to that, only to find out that it was the question that was the brilliance, not the answer.

Yeah, this is what I don't know what also talks about.

Yeah. Okay, so you went on this 10 year long journey.

And then what happened to the end of it?

I was taking a pee at a meditation retreat.

And I was like, Oh, I was I was okay.

So backing up for a second.

So I was like lucky and unlucky.

I was unlucky in the fact that when I tasted it, I put a lot of effort into getting it.

So and that really slows down the process, the more effort putting an effort, really slows down the process.

Okay. Because it's the same thing as like, you know, ask for advice, you get money, ask for money, get get advice, like it's the same thing.

It's like, if you're running after, you're also pushing it away.

Okay. And so and then and so that was very unfortunate.

But it was great because I got to learn a whole bunch of stuff.

And then at the moment when like I was going to the bathroom and it was like, Oh, oh, I am that basically was the answer, which is a non answer, but the answer kind of evaporated.

And then the next thought was this never ends, which is where I was very lucky.

And so this never ends was the thought.

And the reason it was lucky was because there's this thing that happens where people have that awakening moment and they think they're finished.

But evolution doesn't end, we don't stop evolving.

And that's when your identity kind of gets solidified as the awakened one or something like that.

And so that, luckily for me, I know people who stuck in there for 10 years.

Yeah. So like when I was there and I like I know those people identify that way.

I was just at a wedding recently and they're still identified that way and it will it will undo itself.

It just will take whatever time it takes.

But for me, for whatever reason, I was very lucky in the fact that it was just like, yeah, this never ends like I there's never an end to the growth and to the movement, which is why I stray away from enlightenment because enlightenment seems to connote finished, done.

And that's not I haven't ever seen that.

And I know a lot of folks who are folks in our courses have had awakenings, a lot of people in the meditation retreats that I've done, that's like, it's not an uncommon thing in the circles.

And I and everybody still is growing.

And but there is a there's a piece that you can access at any time.

And that's another interesting thing, because that can become an emotional avoidance.

So I've seen people like access that piece.

Like Alan Watts was a drunk, as an example, I like and his daughter will openly talk about it.

Wonderful teacher, amazing person, but it was like it wasn't done.

It wasn't finished.

Yeah. And so, yeah, so it just like, yeah, it's just it's it's a never ending thing.

But you can access this piece.

And in the access of the piece, you can escape into it.

Yep. And what they it's interesting, because you find those people and they're like, Yeah, peace.

I'm like, Yeah, where's the joy?

Joy. But I got the piece.

And at some point, you kind of want to get back into the human skin, you get back into the emotional thing, it kind of feels like you're going back into hell a little bit.

And then all of a sudden, you learn to like move all the emotion and boom, joy.

Okay, so I so I've read a few of these texts of respiration enlightenment, Jed McKenna, I recently finished a new earth in power of now.

Yeah. And started reading Christopher the Mill by Romdas.

Yeah. And waking up by Santa Harris ages ago, and stuff.

So it's like all of the things you're saying, I'm sort of connecting to the stuff that I've read.

Yes. One thing came to mind when he said that it's it's never finished, or is that in Jed McKenna's book, he does this line where he says, you know, at some point along the journey, you'll meet the Buddha.

And when you do, then you should kill him.

Yeah, kind of thing.

And he says in the book, like, don't think about this too hard.

Like, when you get to the point, it will suddenly make sense.

Yeah. But like, for for now, just like, ignore it kind of thing.

And a lot of these, like, spiritual teachings seem to also make this point that you that you made, which is like, the harder you try for it, the further it goes.

But also, you kind of do have to try.

But also, you don't really like have to try.

And it's all feels a bit hard to use words to describe.

Yeah. So the, so to geek out on this, the reason for that is because the teaching is like, pointed at what is in front of it.

And so I wanted to do this thing when I was in the searching mode, I wanted to get four different teachers, ask them the same questions and see how they answer differently.

And the name of the film that I wanted to call was Four Fingers One Moon, because they all answer it slightly differently, but they're all kind of pointing at the same thing.

And so you can say you have to, you have the one way to say it is, oh, you have to destroy the ego to become awakened.

The only problem is and then you're in a war with yourself called the ego, right?

So then another teach, but it's a good pointer.

It's a good thing. Like, it's useful for a moment.

And then someplace along the line, it's useful to say there is no such thing as an ego.

Like it doesn't exist.

It's a phenomenon that you made up in your brain.

It doesn't even exist.

It's just a concept.

And then that creates like a spaciousness so you can see something different.

So all they're trying to do in their teachings, even though they're a little bit different is to create enough space for a moment.

So you can actually feel what's actually looking out behind your eyes.

Okay, so if I want to shortcut the process, meditating seven hours a day.

Yeah, not necessary.

What do I do? What's the process you'd recommend?

Yeah, so the process I would recommend is the part that I got right luckily was and by luck is that I was actually doing the emotional healing work at the same time that I was doing the non duality.

And I heard it expressed recently that a lot of time like the I thought this was pretty accurate, that a lot of the like emotional holding makes it harder to see the truth of who you are.

And so I think it works on that level.

But the other thing is I noticed that it's just natural for us to get there.

Like this is just human development.

This isn't like spiritual or something special.

It's just like if you continue to like look at yourself and discover yourself, see what you are, pay attention.

It just is going to happen.

It's just it's nature.

So it's like saying how do I learn how to walk?

Like you keep on kind of trying to walk and then walking happens.

Like does a baby actually try?

Kind of but kind of not.

Like it's just going to happen either way.

So it's a very similar thing to that.

It's like this is our nature.

And the interesting thing about it is because it is like a memory.

Oh, it's like it's always been there too which is really interesting and strange.

But like what we don't ever in our work, we never talk about it as a path to enlightenment.

But you'll read reviews where it's like the person's like I fucking meditated for seven years and what the hell are you doing?

I do this one little exercise and I have this awakening moment.

What the fuck? Now that doesn't happen for everybody.

That was a right moment for him at the right time doing the right thing.

But it's not uncommon in our work.

But we never talk about non -duality.

We never talk about awakening.

It just happens because oftentimes when people start striving for it, it gets in the way.

But doing that emotional thing, that's a great exercise for it.

Like to be undefended.

That's a great if you want to do something.

But even that, notice it.

Okay, you're gonna go be undefended.

Is that a doing or is that an undoing?

Is that an effort? Like try to effort being undefended.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

And so that's why they're pointing to it.

Yeah, you have to do something, go be undefended.

So it's a doing, but it's kind of not a doing because if you try to do it, you're defended.

How do you feel about the word spirituality?

It's like Christianity or Buddhism or Judaism.

It's gonna trigger somebody.

Yeah, yeah. They're all pointing at something similar with slightly different, you know, whatever, you know, they're thumbnails all, they're different thumbnails all at the same video, so to speak.

And so I try to use words as much as possible that don't trigger folks.

I try to just use like regular words.

And it's why somewhat stay away from the, stay away from like the, like I never call myself a spiritual teacher.

Yeah, and I rather have it be like applied self discovery.

Like our conversation started with, you know, business and how to make money.

I want to think like these tools, it's like how do we apply them to creating a world that we want to live in?

They're not really useful otherwise.

If I just learn how to meditate, I can fool myself all day long.

God knows I did for years.

Whereas like if I'm actually interacting in the world and they're applied, I know these things work, I know what's real.

Or more real. What's your take on reincarnation, multiple lives, all that jazz?

I have none. Yeah. I don't know, it doesn't.

Yeah, it doesn't. It's not that when you have that moment of awakening, you suddenly realize, oh, this is just one life out of 10 ,000 lives or something like that.

Things like that happen.

But to me, it's like the way I look at it is no matter what my belief is, I don't know how that's going to help anything.

I don't know, like, I don't know how that belief system or whatever the experience is that I can make a story out of, explaining it.

It's just living in the future in some other way.

It doesn't ever seem to really be a benefit.

Yeah. And they're usually turned into stories to create morality.

And morality stops us from listening to ourselves.

I'd much rather have people deeply listen to themselves, because that's our nature and our nature is good.

So instead of being like that there are some things that are just right and wrong kind of thing, which is what a lot of religious people will often say.

Yes. Yeah. So I mean, this is getting a really touchy subject, but like to geek out on it for a minute.

If your boss says to you, you got to like work twice as hard, it's not going to be really fun.

You're not going to really enjoy it.

If you are sitting there working, you're like, oh, wow, I wonder what could happen if I do this choice as hard and I like, can I do this choice as quickly?

And you like create a game with yourself.

It can be incredibly enjoyable.

So morality, it takes the joy out of being moral.

Like it becomes an obligation.

It becomes a should, it becomes something that I have to do.

And it takes a long time to actually get to the joy of it.

But being good to people is joyful.

To being bad to people is disconnecting.

It's painful. It sucks.

So I'd rather have people listen to themselves than follow an idea of what's good or bad.

How do you feel about the word should?

I don't think it's effective.

So I think if there's, if somebody's listening to the podcast, you probably have some habit that hasn't changed in a decade or five years or three years, depending on how old you are, that you've been telling yourself should change.

And the reason I know that is because you're telling yourself it should change.

The thing about all those habits that haven't changed, you're telling yourself they should change.

It's just not an effective mechanism for transformation.

Shoulding yourself just doesn't work.

It's a resistance. It's shame.

It's shame so it stagnates.

It's a resistance so it persists.

Look at everything that did change.

The other way to do is the reverse.

Look at everything that did change of who you are in the last five years and how many of those needed a should to change.

Mm -hmm. Surely, that's like, you know, I should be a less abusive spouse to my partner or like, surely, there are some shoulds that are genuine shoulds, right?

I think all the shoulds are genuine.

Okay. I'm just saying that they're ineffective.

Okay. So if I'm saying I should be a better partner to my spouse.

It's not going to help you be a better partner as I want to be a better partner to my spouse, it's going to be far more effective.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yep. I should is like, you know, tell your kids you should, they should do shit.

And it's a great way to make sure that they don't do the shit that you tell them they should do.

On that note, so I was, I was giving a talk a couple of weeks ago and a parent came up to me afterwards when I was like signing books and shit.

And she said, hey, you know, my kids, they're teenagers, and I just can't seem to motivate them.

And like, what advice do you have?

And I was like, well, I mean, I'm not a parent, so take this with a pinch of salt, but like, I didn't I didn't really know what what to say to her because like, I had a sense that like, it's really hard for a parent to motivate a teenager, like whatever that means.

Yeah. And I was like, what are you trying to motivate them to do?

And she said, Oh, I want them to take the studies more seriously.

I was like, Okay, so that, oh, so that they can they can actually get into a good university, because at the moment, they spend all the time playing playing video games.

And so I've been telling them that they should watch your videos.

And I've been trying to put your videos in front of them to say, look at this guy, you should listen to what he says.

And there's all this shitting going on.

I was like, Oh, hello, this there's something here.

But I didn't quite have time to get into it.

And I didn't really know what to what to say to her.

So I just said, Look, man, all of these, like, bros, all of these like super successful, like teachers and stuff that I know, their kids don't listen to them either.

So like, you know, it's probably all good.

But like, how would you approach that?

Like a parent saying, how how how do I motivate my child to take studies more seriously?

I would say, what are you trying not to feel?

I mean, when you're telling their kid that they you should be different, but you're basically telling them as they're not good, that they're broken in some way that they need to be, they they they need to be managed.

Yep. There's broken so much that they have to be managed and controlled to be a good thing.

Yep. So like, why the fuck would you want to listen to anybody who thinks you're broken?

Why would I like that's not the person I like, I want the coach who's like, I see you as whole and complete, and I know you're going to get there.

Right? That's who I want to listen to.

That's, you know, like criticize your kid all the time.

Why would they even want to listen or be around you?

So to me, it's like, I have a great I love the teenage years, I frickin love them.

And it's funny, because I mean, I talked about the $2 ,000 thing, which I've only paid for something like that, like once for one kid and kind of this other weird time for another kid.

But my kids are totally naturally motivated.

Because they just are listening to themselves.

Kids who are listening to themselves, they they're motivated.

Kids who have been taught not to listen to themselves, but listen to their mother, they're usually not motivated.

Hmm. Unless the only way they got their mom's love is through achievement, then they might be motivated, but with a lot of fear.

Some some parents will say, well, I'm not gonna let my kid jump off a cliff.

That would be terrible.

And therefore, when I see my kid doing the doing this thing, which I viewed to be the equivalent to him like taking cocaine, you know, if all your friends were taking cocaine, would you expect me to just like step by and stand by and let you do it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does this?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're at that point, you might need to, but it's getting it's like preventing yourself from getting to that point.

I meaning like, that only happens after years of your kid to being told that they're bad, wrong and you criticizing them.

Why else would they need to do cocaine?

But to like escape the negative voice in their head that you gave them?

Hmm. I'm being ruthless about it, but it's absolutely true.

Like I've never met like outside of course, there's some neurological atypicalness or some some chemistry.

But if that's the case, you don't have much of a chance of managing it anyhow.

Addiction comes with shame.

Shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place.

You want your kids not to have bad habits.

Teach them that there's nothing that they don't need to be ashamed of themselves.

One thing we were talking about earlier is hand and hand parenting.

Yeah. I wonder if you could just do a bit of a like a quick explainer of what is hand and hand parenting and why is it?

Why did you raise your kids using this methodology type thing?

Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing.

It's actually, so the reason I did is because my wife said we're gonna do this.

Yeah. And at this point in our marriage, I had realized that she was right when it came to kids most of the time, especially young kids.

Okay. So, I had come up with a methodology and it was do whatever she says for three months and if I don't like it, don't resist whatever she says, do whatever she says for the first three months and if I don't like it at that point.

Like, but do a good, a clean experiment on it.

Yeah. So, I did the clean experiment on what she wanted, which was hand and hand parenting and it was freaking remarkable.

And basically, it's very much centered around that same thought process of like, if you allow your kids to feel their emotions all the way through, express their emotions all the way through, they get back to connection.

They're not overwhelmed anymore and they go back to just being the kid that is like this wonderful, loving child.

And if you look at little kids like two years old as an example, if they see that you're out of attunement, they'll go that I love you.

They'll like try to bring you back into attunement.

That's how badly they want to be in attunement and connection.

And so, that's their nature.

And the job is to just help them live their nature, which is to move the emotions through them so they can get back to connection.

So, hand and hand parenting has five basic rules and and Patty Whiffler is much better to speak about this than I am.

But it's having a place where you can off gas whatever emotions you're having about raising kids so in a way that's not going to hurt the kids.

That's called the listening partnership.

There's stay listening, which is allowing their emotions to be big and just sitting in loving attention of them, similar to what I was suggesting for you.

There's play listening, which is playing with the kids so that the fear can move.

And so, it's like playing in a kind of rough housing way with kids so that they can actually move fear that's been moving through them.

Having gentle and firm boundaries, which is like staying close and insisting.

It's like, I'm the adult.

This is what we're doing.

It's just very gentle, but very firm.

We're not going to go out of it.

And then the last one is going down the rabbit hole, where you basically like have special time with a kid and you go into their world and join them.

You don't try to make them in your world.

You're just like T, T it is.

Let's do T. Come on.

Oh, is that really an elephant over there?

And you're fully going down the rabbit hole.

And so, what sort of age group is this useful for?

Like zero to eight.

Okay, cool. Yeah, there's some usefulness and I mean, I use this with CEOs when I was a VC.

The book is great even if you're not a parent.

It teaches you so much and doing it with the kids was a huge spiritual practice for me.

It is the thing that allowed me to feel all the emotions that allowed me to get to emotional fluidity because my kids were sad.

I needed to feel it or I was going to be tied in a fucking knock.

Just stop, just eat a cookie and stop being sad or whatever the hell it was.

Yeah, I guess it's easy to take it personally if your kid is sad or if your partner is sad.

Yeah, or you just don't want to feel sadness, then you're going to get agitated.

You can be on a plane and if a kid starts crying, like you can just stand up, look at the entire plane and you're like, you can just...

You weren't allowed to cry as a kid, you weren't allowed to cry as a kid.

It's all the agitated people.

So, is the book like, what's the book called?

It's called Listen by Patty Whiffler, but the organization is called Hand in Hand Parenting and Parenting by Connection and that is...

They have so many great resources.

So, if you have young kids and they have research just like kids are biting, this is what you do.

As long as you know the five tools, it's pretty easy.

And we'll put links to all of that.

When you are rich, how do you not spoil your kids?

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

So, I've thought about this a lot.

So, the thing about it is, there's a difference between spoiling a kid and then teaching a kid of like buying off a child.

So, are you giving them money so that you don't have to feel emotion or so that they don't have to feel an emotion?

That's one question.

What I notice is that kids who are used to having a certain kind of lifestyle will probably maintain that lifestyle if they're like loved and like they're respected and supported.

So, I don't have a problem in particular of like allowing them a particular lifestyle.

But what I'm not looking for them to do is avoid their emotions through money because that's where like the troubles start coming.

And the other thing is I don't want to hand them money unless they know they can earn it.

So, meaning... So, I've seen there's this great family that I worked with for a while.

I just was so impressed with this.

They had hundreds of millions of dollars and it'd been passed on generation to generation successfully and kept on growing.

And they were like, okay, if you don't want to make money, then you just get X amount and you can like live comfortably but not great.

It's like good middle class job kind of thing.

If, however, you want to be a part of the thing and decide where the money is going to go and blah, blah, blah, then you have to take a million dollars and start a company that gets you X millions of dollars.

They had like kind of hurdle.

And if you did that, then you could be because they didn't want anybody controlling the wealth who was scared of losing it.

Because what happens in the second generation of wealth typically is that they get scared and get really tight and they're scared of losing it instead of which makes money go away.

Like you as an entrepreneur, I as an entrepreneur, we take risks all the time, back rows our money.

If we were scared as entrepreneurs, our businesses would shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink.

So, I love that thought process.

So, I'm thinking about it that way.

I'm not thinking about as spoiling as much.

Yeah, because there are some people that I know who have decided that like the kids are going to get zero inheritance or that the kids are going to get only as much inheritance as pays for their education and a house or whatever.

Like, do you have any kind of system like that or?

I mean, once my kids are out of school, I won't be giving them money unless they have like a good reason.

It's not like because I want to buy a car, but it's like I will support you growing as a human with my money.

I can think of a better way to spend it, but I'm not going to like throw money at you to solve a problem or anything so you can avoid an emotion.

Nice. Yeah, I haven't thought much about what I would do if I died with the money.

I don't think it's going to make much of a difference.

I mean, the way that my kids are with money right now is that they generally are respectful of it.

They appreciate it.

They're grateful for it, which is I think the most important thing is that they're just like, they see it as a blessing for lack of a better word.

Okay. So bringing things full circle, we started off the conversation talking about this relationship between money, success, fulfillment.

How do you achieve success while also enjoying the journey along the way?

Yes. And we kind of took a bit of a roller coaster ride through emotions, through enlightenment, spirituality, parenting, all those sorts of things.

I guess if someone's going to the end of this episode, if you were to imagine the people you've coached, they're all successful by society's definitions.

Yes. By any stretch of the imagination.

But some of them are probably enjoying their life and feel fulfilled and some of them probably don't like what are the key factors that differentiate someone who is successful and fulfilled and happy versus successful and unhappy?

Yeah, what I noticed is that there's seven key factors.

Oh, great. And it's actually what we teach in like our long course.

So I'll go through just some of them, but they all kind of revolve around the same thing.

Like one of them we've already discussed, which is wants are more effective than shoulds.

So if they're moving from their wants and they're willing to be vulnerable enough to share their wants and feel their wants like in this weekend, I started with wants.

Instead of shoulds, they're far more fulfilled, far more happy.

If they focus on connection over perfection is another one.

So perfection, whether this is a business where I want to make the perfect product or I want to create a product by connecting with my customers, the second one is always going to work better than the first.

And so it's the same thing and like almost everything.

It's like there's some weird like if you're going to do a book, you kind of like need to spend a little time with perfection because it's in print forever or whatever.

But the book that you try to make perfect is not going to be as good as the book that you really feel connected to, connected to while you're writing it and connects to the people that you're writing it for.

So that's another one as an example, love over defense, we've touched about in a little bit as well.

People who still stay defensive rather than being open hearted even in their boundaries, even in saying no, even in you know, actually being incredibly competitive in a business environment, but still can be open hearted in that far more.

So those are some of the examples.

Nice. And where can people go to learn more about these if they want to find out the rest?

Yeah, there's a couple ways you can get on the website.

But also in our podcast, we have one podcast on each seven.

So when we do the online courses, what we do is we make the podcasts available for free.

But the courses is where, you know, the exercises like what we did the other day where it gets really deep and really intense, and you get to experience it in your bones that we do in the courses.

Okay, cool. So we'll put a link to the YouTube channel, the podcast, the website, and all the free stuff.

And then if people want, they can explore the paid stuff.

Exactly. I'll be attending your groundbreaking course in a few months.

That should be fun.

A final question. So I am turning 30 in about a week.

Any tips? I'm turning 30?

Yeah. Or any advice for someone who's just about to turn 30?

Yeah, a couple of things are weird about what things I didn't know when I was 30.

One is like, oftentimes for men, their prime is 40.

So you think that like, there's some idea that you're passing your prime, but somehow like 40 is like this time where like there's this confluence of energy in your system.

Your body is doing great.

Your mind is doing great.

You've learned all this great stuff.

So that's one thing that I would tell anybody who's 30 is like, don't like, nothing is like, nothing is gone over the cliff, nor is it going to I've actually like getting older every year.

But there's definitely like a feeling of primeness in the 40 years old.

I think the only other thing I would say is what I notice is that like, from like 28 to 30s, there's a major train to 30, there's like a turning that happens and, and humans generally, they go from kind of thinking they know everything a little bit.

And they feel like that even if they're curious and learning, there's kind of like this brash, I can do anything kind of feeling and that starts flipping at 30 years old, there's like a like a couple of lessons to get learned.

And there's like, wait, like, maybe I don't see things as much as I thought that I would see them.

And it's uncomfortable.

But it's also like incredibly relieving at the same time, because it allows it like it softens us in a way.

And so I would just say like, enjoy the softening.

There's a lot like as we get older, there's like less to prove less to show less to get to and and if you can enjoy that softening, oftentimes things explode blossom that you could never even imagine.

But it's also just super enjoyable to enjoy the softening.

Amazing. Joe Hudson, thank you so much.

Pleasure. Thank you.

All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive.

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Bye -bye.

[The Art of Achieving Success Without Sacrificing Fulfillment with Joe Hudson]-[Success Beyond Money: Joe Hudson]

📋 Summary

Redefining Success and Fulfillment

The Myth of the "Money-Only" Goal

Emotional Fluidity: The Key to Authentic Living

Parenting and the Ego

Conclusion: The Softening of the Self

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript