#888 - David Sutcliffe - How To Stop Betraying Yourself & Be More Authentic

25:55right? And that's going to create problems for you. So it's really, really important that you understand, know without shame what it is that you're feeling and you know how and when you choose to share that with her is ultimately, you know, is up to you. Why is self compassion so hard? We want to have our own back if nothing else.

26:23If we're school teacher and also a pretty sort of ruthless prison guard at the same time, I suppose. But we need that self -compassion. Why is that often quite difficult to access? Because it comes into conflict with a lower self aspect of us that believes that we are bad. And what do I mean by that? Well, going back to what I was saying earlier about we we have to repress or deny or disassociate from certain aspects of herself in order to stay connected and in favor with our caregivers. Well the child has no discernment, no consciousness, right? It's the parents are God and so they're going to make the assumption they're going to draw the conclusion that those parts of them are bad like that part of me is bad.

27:23And so most of us, I would say all of us, but I'll say most of us, have some place inside us that doesn't trust our own inherent goodness, right? There's some part of us that's bad. And it's usually deep in the unconscious and it can be masked by a kind of confidence or bravado, but most people have some degree of shame. And so that, um, that part of us that thinks it's bad, uh, it wants to continue to tell ourselves the story that we are bad. Why? Because that's what creates safety for us. And meaning that this part of me, right, let's say for a guy, it's my aggression. Okay. A lot of guys think their aggression is bad.

28:11They've been told their aggression is bad. So if I show my aggression, I'm going to get in trouble like mom's not going to be happy or the world is not going to be happy or my girlfriend's not going to be happy. So we make that part of us bad. So whenever it comes up, we're going to tell ourselves a story that there's something wrong with us. I'm out of control. I need to work on this. something that it's not okay. And so it takes a lot of work to sort of override that to accept, and maybe this is why on a deeper level, it's hard to accept the depth of our shadow. It's hard to accept how cruel we can be.

28:48It's hard to accept that all of the insanity that we see out in the world that's horrifying to us also exists in us. And maybe we don't act it out in our over -ways, but sometimes we act it out in subtle ways. All of us are capable of cruelty, and given a certain set of circumstances, like, would I have been a Nazi? Maybe? Probably. I mean, I don't know. So that lives in me. And I think it's very hard for people to come to terms with that and accept themselves there. Generally, what we do is we suppress it, because we want to create an idealized self -image that we're good. We don't want to know that part of ourself.

29:26And so it's in the place where it's hard to be compassionate for yourself. It's really hard to be compassionate From that place where there's there's this deep root of belief that there's something about us. It's not okay Yeah, something wrong or broken it is odd that I don't know I can't think of a much a much less functional belief than that It's it's not really going to contribute to having a flourishing life or thriving and yet it's so endemic to most people, especially people that are high performers. Yeah, well, there's, and I understand it, you know, there's a belief that if I'm hard on myself, like I'm gonna achieve more, right?

30:09Having that militant general in your head. And I think that's useful. I mean, I want a tough coach. I loved tough coaches. I love coaches that pushed me and who are clear. And if I wasn't meeting the standard, they'd let me know. I liked that. And if they were disappointed in me They also let me know. But at the same time if that coach doesn't have the capacity to love me To be there for me to see me as human Right and to to transcend the the performance of the goal and go underneath that. I don't really trust him and ultimately it's going to Unravel and you see these coaches those hard abs coaches.

30:52They don't last long They move from team to team, you know, it's like a little bit of medicine that maybe that team needs for a couple of years, but then they move on, right? So I think we need we need both both things we need we need. We need to push ourselves. But we also need compassion for ourselves and again, you know, it's easy to rationalize like again, the mind is very, very tricky. And so it's like, oh, I could take the day off today. Things like that. And so we want to mitigate against that. So it's a really, really tricky balance. And I struggle with it all the time, right? Like where is the balance between pushing myself and self -compassion?

31:36Yeah. It's strange that by continuing to whip yourself into submission and push yourself harder, you become successful in the only way that other people can judge you, which is outwardly. But nobody really sees the personal price that you've had to pay to get to the position that you're in. And that means that a lot of the time the trade off, it's one of the metrics is observable and I know the one of the metrics is hidden. And you will almost always trade a hidden metric for an observable metric because people will happily spend an extra hour and a half daily commute going to and from a job that's one rung up the ladder higher and another 15 grand a year in terms of annual revenue But what have they lost in terms of sanity and sleep and time with their kids or the relationship quality?

32:25Well, those are all hidden metrics the observable metric is what's your job title? How much do you earn per year? Where did you go on holiday last year? Yeah, I there's this cool insight I learned from an evolutionary psychologist about how So, ancestral leaders are two ways, primarily that leaders ascended within tribes. So one was through dominance and the other was through prestige. So dominance being more tyrannical, more top down, more authoritarian, and prestige being more egalitarian, so devoted by the group, one that's come maybe from the bottom up. Now what's interesting is that you need different kinds of leaders at different periods.

33:02So it seems like the more domineering leader that's top down, you want that person in times of war and conflict because they're decisive, they're ruthless, they'll garner everybody together. Everybody needs to get on the same fucking page, we're all gonna die, okay? Like stop ticking about Johnny. But then the other side, the problem that you have with that, and I think that I'm certain that there's a parallel when it comes to sort of the way that we treat ourselves, The problem with having a tyrant is that when the war's over you've still got a fucking tyrant. And the prestigious leader, the one that's risen from the bottom up, raising everyone else along, he's able to play the game, he knows what's going to...

33:44He's not going to get a look in because this fucking tyrannical top down authoritarian bastard has now surrounded himself with sicker fans. He's fortified himself. And I really think there's something to this about how we sort of treat ourselves. and I think that the most obvious place is when you begin doing anything and you're on the launch pad of self -growth or understanding, discovering who you really are, getting a business off the ground, leaving the city or the country that you don't want to be in anymore, leaving that relationship, getting out of the family that you don't want to be in, whatever it is.

34:18You need to use whatever fuel you can get a hold of and it's kind of like you're in war. Like if you're gonna make something happen from zero, you're at total, the RPMs are at zero, the miles per hour at zero, there is nothing, there's no inertia or momentum to carry you off, and you need to rip this motherfucker off the launch pad one inch at a time. You could probably do with someone that's good at going to war. The problem is, after you get out into orbit and you're just floating around, you go, So I know that that was a really useful mindset. I know that that tyrannical leader was one that I needed to dominate over me, but I really wish he would fuck off now, but unfortunately he's still there.

34:59Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Different energies, different qualities, at different times in our life. But I agree with you if I was going from zero, trying to get into shape, I'd want a hard -ass motherfucker driving me all the time. I don't know how to do it. And David Duggan screaming at me. Exactly. That's going to get me there as quick as possible. I'm going to learn something about myself. But then once I arrive and I'm satisfied with where I'm at, maybe that energy wants to shift. So it might be also like, I mean, while you were talking, I was thinking about the balance of the masculine and the feminine.

35:33It's not exactly what you're saying, but there's something about that too, and both are necessary at different times. You need that strong masculine force. And sometimes you need that comforting feminine force. You said earlier on the reason I asked about the mature man versus the young man strategy is I'm 36 now So I guess I'm kind of straddling both of them and I get the sense that when you're starting out with something you really need to be a bit more prescriptive and you probably do need more of a drill Sergeant than an Eckhart tolle But as you start to accumulate a little bit of instinct and experience that is precisely the thing that's hard to replicate So not only are you allowing yourself to sort of aggregate all of your life experiences, you're finding more ease, you're finding more play, you're competitive in a manner that other people simply can't do because unless they've had all of the experiences that you've had in precisely the same sequence with the reflections that you've got for the amount of duration of time that you've done it for, they can't be you.

36:34There is no blueprint that can work that back because, frankly, kind of like YouTube's algorithm them, open the black box, they don't even know how it works. You don't even know how you're on instinct work. That's right. And I'm just fascinated at the moment, you know, I spent a lot of time when I first started this show seven years ago, very much productivity bro, the five daily step routine that I need to do to ensure that I get my sort of three month sprints of my one year goals and my five year vision at all the rest of the stuff. It was very prescriptive, it was very rigid, it was very compartmentalizing, it was very useful and fuck, it worked.

37:11But I'm really interested now in what a more sort of fluid, easeful version of that looks like, one that does allow me to use instinct and aggregate all of this experience a lot more. And I kind of get the sense that that is moving from the tyrant across into the sort of benevolent leader. Yeah. That's kind of how I've got it in my head. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. Well, you're 36 years old. You're at the height of your powers. It's not your time to be self -reflective. You're attacking. And that's what you should be doing. You're just following your energy. You're following what you want to do.

37:54Later in life, you can look back and maybe make sense of it all. And I was that. And right around your age, I started to think, there's something else, right? Because I went to Hollywood and I was hungry for it, and I went after it, and it was thrilling, and it was exciting, and I was making money, and meeting all these people, and having success. And then there got a point where I just like, mm, there's more. And I didn't know exactly what that meant, but that's when I started on this journey that I've gone on. But I can tell you now at 55, my approach to life is completely different. And it goes back to what I was saying earlier, it's just instead of like make it happen, I think let it happen.

38:42It's gonna come to me. I wanna be in the flow. I don't wanna force anything. And that was very hard for my ego to come to terms with. You know, my ego was driving seat anymore. Yeah, my ego was screaming like, what the fuck, man? Impose your will on the world, bro. And that's a very powerful feeling. And I did that and it feels fucking great when you impose your will in the world and you get what you want But that is That is a diminishing supply and it It at a certain point you want to just experiment with doing something differently like what's another way to meet life? Like there's there's more information out there and you know Like I'm in my wise man years apparently which is sort of weird because you know I have some wisdom I've accrued along the way but there's another part of it still trying to figure it all out and make mistakes but there is there is something about what I just said like having faith letting it happen that life is going on full that you're not really in control of things and the more conscious and present that you can be the more you're going to see the entirety of everything.

39:57And as far as you get older into your paternal years, you've climbed the mountain, you know what that feels like. You have that satisfaction. You're in a different place in your life where you want to, you know, hold things, you know, and I mean, help other people and share what you've learned. And it's deeply gratifying. I mean, I'm just coming to this because that, But I was pretty aggressive and ambitious in my youth, and I still am, but I approach it now as an older man in a completely different way. It's so interesting, saying, getting what you want from the world, imposing your will on the world again, if that's sort of domineering energy.

40:41But one of the things that it assumes, a lot of things, the thing that's so funny that it assumes is that you know what's best for you to want. How fucking like narcissistic you to think that you know what's best for you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something I'm very much sort of leaning into now. Again, a lot of parallels. Being able to make things happen. Agency. Having a vision, bringing it into the world, breaking through it, smashing through whatever barrier it was that you thought, even a small mundane boring success is thought patterns that you never thought that you could get past or believe structures that you thought that you're going to have or ways of seeing the world or or ossified social networks that you were just adamant would would kind of always be there.

41:28I'm breaking through those. It's very, very impressive. But yeah, I get the sense that I am not necessarily always the best advisor for what I need in the world. Maybe maybe just having some faith and getting out of my own fucking way. And again, this is the only thing that you can do, I appreciate that this might sound like a sort of opulent position to be in. But after a while, after you've accumulated enough momentum and inertia with good habits and good routines and you kind of have a sense of, you know, everything's moved from system to thinking where it's very deliberate into system one thinking where it's a little bit more sort of automated.

42:05You have to assume that most of the things that are going well in your life aren't coming because of what you're doing consciously. You did all of the conscious stuff before, so it's like, okay, why are you gripping so tightly? Yeah. To it now, why are you sort of holding? And why are you that adamant that you actually have that much control over the outcomes that are coming in any case? How much of it is intention and fear and rumination and concern and anxiety and worry? And how much of it is just that you've accumulated some competence and over a long enough time horizon, people tend to get what they deserve because they roll the dice enough times?

42:37Well, I can only speak for myself, but I think a lot of us go through this time when we realize that what was motivating me was not what I thought. Yeah, yeah. I thought I wanted it for this reason, but in fact, it was something else. And for me, I realized that about 37, that almost everything that I was doing was to win the love of my father. And I didn't, I learned that in a process like a, you know, I do this, you know, somatic therapy called core energetics. And, you know, you get deep, deep into your feelings. And this was not something that I was aware of at all. But in this process, all of a sudden, this awareness came and these thoughts came that, you know, I played hockey.

43:20And it was like, I said these words like, I play hard for him. And, and that I thought, what else am I doing in my life? to win his love. Because my dad wasn't around. And I thought, well, if I'm doing it for that reason, I'm not actually free. And what is it that I wanna do? And that was a real crisis point in my life. I don't think we can avoid it. I think we all wanna win the love of our father. We want to please the father. I think that's built in. So I don't necessarily think it's wrong. But once you've achieved, you know, I did what I had to do. My dad was proud of me. I'd achieved that.

44:02But then the rest of my life, what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? Well, I wanna do what I wanna do. But what is that? Because I've been driven by this thing for so long. It's overtaken me. I've created stories around it for the reasons why. But what is it now? And that's a very uncomfortable place to be because you're letting go of everything that you thought you know everything you're attached to your entire identity and you have to go on this hero's journey, let go of the known world, enter into the unknown and it's fucking scary. And that's why, going back to what you were saying, I had this thought, this is why people need therapy.

44:41I think it's not even necessarily to solve a problem that you have, but just to reflect you back to you in the places where you may have distortions or blind spots, because when somebody is talking to you and they're kind of full of shit, you can feel it, right? You can feel that they're off just a little bit. And a good therapist is gonna be able to sort of name that for you and then lead you back to yourself. Like, I don't give advice to my clients. I just try to reflect what I see back to them and lead them back to their own internal compass, their own internal wisdom. That's the best I can do.

45:15I heard the other day eventually you just get sick of yourself. Yeah, yeah, that's so good. A lot of, a lot, it sort of refers to a lot of things, I think. First off, that sort of selfish energy that you were talking about before, the you can't really be in service, you can't really have that sort of paternal pay it forward thing, because it's still all about you, even the kids are about you, even your little Timmy's performance isn't about Timmy. It's about how does this reflect on you? It's not about being there. It's not about being there. It's not about being there. Yeah, it is. And in many ways that is a fucking powerful energy again, and it will make you incredibly successful in the only way that we can all be judged, which is outwardly.

46:04But I think whether it's Wilberian transcendent include or, you know, alchemizing it into something else, eventually. I mean, fuck, you know, you can get through your entire life and sort of get to that stage. Perhaps we have a new president who has managed to do such. But it'll carry you a very long way, but I'm not convinced that that's the energy that you want to be using for the entire time. I don't – I think it's a toxic fuel one used long term. And I think that there's sort of more holistic and interesting ways to get there, especially after you've burned the first couple of rocket boosts filled with that, like me, energy, and then, okay, what's next?

46:43I had my most satisfying experiences when I played hockey when I didn't concern myself with my stats or scoring goals, whatever it was, when I concerned myself with how can I be useful for this team? Like when I made that switch, like, because sometimes I was playing with a lot of really good guys and I wasn't as good as them and I was like, I have to figure out a way to be useful. And I always found that those experiences to be the most satisfying because I was I was part of something. And sometimes you're appreciated, sometimes you're not, but you have this own internal appreciation. So I think you're right.

47:22I think real maturity is understanding that particularly as a man, that spiritual fulfillment, psychological fulfillment comes from being of service that you have to give your life to something bigger than yourself and serve that thing. And I think, unfortunately, the culture is, we're very much lost and being famous and being successful in all the outward things you were talking about. But that's the switch that I'm trying to make. Again, my ego gets involved. It's like, what about you, bro? What about what you want? But you also are less neurotic that way when you're not thinking about yourself.

48:02You have less anxiety because you're just focused on on giving now not in a way that you're betraying yourself Was we talked about earlier you have to be discerning you have to take care of yourself But if you're oriented in that way I think it's I think it's ultimately a lot more satisfying Do you think that they'll ever be a way to Communicate to people that becoming rich and successful is not going to fix your problems? No, I think you got to you got to find out on your own. I did you are It's fucking wild. I've been fortunate enough to be around some of the highest status richest people on the planet over the last few years since moving to America.

48:40All of them have got problems. All of them are fucked up. I was thinking, right, okay, well, if that's the trajectory that everybody wants to be on, and you know for a fact that the people that are there have still got, maybe even more of the problems. They've got layers of expectation and resentment and uncertainty and pressure and scrutiny and all of this stuff piled on top of them. And all of the shit that they had when they were still poor. Yeah. And there's just no, I am yet, I'm yet to find an effective way to communicate that external validation will not fill an internal void. Yeah, that's how most of us oriented.

49:21That's what we see, you know, because they look so happy, you know, that we get this curated version of celebrities or influencers, but I know the truth because I was there in Hollywood, I saw what's going on. I was like, these fucking people are crazy. I couldn't believe it. It was shocking to me how incredibly neurotic and they were and wonderful people and brilliant and all of that as you're experiencing. But it doesn't take away your problems. It's the one thing I appreciate about Ben Affleck. I mean, he talks about this wide out in the open. He's just like a heaping fucking famous. I can't do anything.

49:58I have to live in this fucking box. And none of my problems went away. Like I still have to live with all my problems. And maybe in some way it actually makes it harder. Because certainly gives you less sympathy. Yeah, right? At the very least, the people at the bottom that are miserable will get sympathy from everybody. But the people at the top that are miserable just feel like how bourgeois, how luxurious of a position to be and to have all of this. Do you not know how many people would kill to have the, do you not, if I was you, I wouldn't, I would be, it would all of my problems and you go, I think if they could get rid of their problems, they would too.

50:40Yeah. Well, yeah, nobody gives a shit about the problems of the rich and successful. And that's, that's a burden that, you know, you have to bear. I feel fortunate that that I got a level of fame that wasn't crippling. You know, I had one TV show and, you know, people knew me from it, but it was a very popular show, but it was small audience. So, you know, I can walk down the street and all of that. I mean, I still got to get recognized on the regular, but it allowed me to continue to engage in life, and it allowed me to make a career transition, you know, because I went back and talked to a lot of my friends who are very famous and you know, and I told them what it was that I was doing.

51:22They're like, you got out. And I was so surprised. But what do me, I got out. They're like, man, good for you. You got out. The treatment like alcatruth. Well, it is. It is a kind of prison. What's your famous? Because you can't really go anywhere. And you can't make a transition. Like you're stuck there. You can't go get a regular job because of the amount of transfer. And that's placed on you. And so I was really surprised by their reaction. It was the first time that I realized that they did, in fact, feel trapped. And I felt fortunate that I still had the kind of freedom to be able to walk away.

52:00Yeah, it's fascinating. I remember I did a few TV shows in my 20s. One of them was Love Island, the first season in the UK. Popular sort of reality TV dating thing. And I always remember thinking at the time, like a little bit wistful, I was, I half had the perspective that I knew that this was the right thing. The first season was 10 times smaller than the second, which was 10 times smaller than the third, which was 10 times smaller than the fourth. And then it kind of peaked and has now maybe flattened out. But I always, I always thought, I wonder what it would have been like to have done one of the, you know, better known seasons.

52:33We've come in a season two or season three or season four. I could have pretty much picked any of them, the casting directors with friend. And in retrospect, I'm so fucking glad that it was the smallest one. It was basically a full cast, broadcast, dress rehearsal for the rest of the series, not even the seasons. And I'm so glad because it meant, like you say, I was like beholden to nothing. I came off nothing had changed. No one cared. Maybe accumulated a thousand followers on Instagram. So basically nothing had altered. So it meant that I was unencumbered by any... But you're pretty famous now.

53:11I mean, you must get recognized everywhere. And I mean, I remember when I saw you at KUYA, like, because I'd seen you on YouTube, and you know, there's a, I have a projection onto you. Like, there's something that happens in relationship when you meet somebody who you've seen on the screen. And so that must be happening for you all the time. It is, but the difference is it feels like people know me. You know, on a reality TV show where 24 hours is curated into 45 minutes, nightly for seven weeks or something. And you're 27, 26, 27. And you're still an adult infant. I mean, I still largely still am, but at least it feels like when people come up to me, they know me.

53:51You know, they come up and they ask stuff about my life. They understand what I genuinely care about. Right. And I've not, you know, with at least with this show. So this isn't that normie of a show. If you're gonna sit and listen to two bloaks, Prattalon, for an hour about like the inner sort of machinations of emotions and we do we really need to be what's the difference between discernment and containment. Like, you know, it's select for a very particular type of person and I'm very glad that the kinds of people that I would want to go for a coffee with. And what it basically has done, if I'm being honest, is it has outsourced friend finding for me on a sort of global scale.

54:34And the only people that come up are the ones that have been through the fire and brimstone of putting up with us talking about this like kind of niche, weird psychology bullshit. I'm sure, you know, as it continues to go, there'll be challenges. And I was having this conversation a couple of days ago, how do you know when enough exposure is enough and how do you then stop it from being too much and it's not really a train that you can sort of stop slowing down? The rocket ship, you can't just like pull some ejector button and be like, okay, we'll stop it there. Like this is the perfect amount.

55:06So I don't know. And also, you're like, what, again, what an opulent problem to have. It's like a rich guy complaining about how hard it is to this taxes. But it'll be an interesting challenge at the moment. It's the perfect level. People say, hello, once every 15 minutes when I'm on the street or a bit more often if I'm in a gym. And sometimes I get free coffee, you know, like people have always got nice things to say. It's brilliant. But again, that the roller coaster continues to roll. So we'll see what's a few years time. Yeah. Well, I guess the any kind of anonymous life is essentially over for you.

55:48Yeah, that's not something that I'd considered before. Yeah. But you're right. I mean,

55:56you want everybody to know your face. You want everybody to know your name and no one to know your face. And I've managed to do probably close to the opposite. Like, you look like that guy, That guy that does that thing. I'm like, ah, right. Okay. Yeah, you know the face and have no idea of the name. So Yeah, it's the bird that comes with with the gift It is it's the shadow. There's always a shadow There's always a price that we have to pay when we bring our gift fully to the world What was the moment? For you when you kind of got to the I'm not sure that this is all it thing when you were in Hollywood.

56:38Um, I, I don't, you know, it's, I had, I had this great year where I had this television show. I had two movies. I was dating this very beautiful movie star. I had just bought this house. I was redoing it. I mean, I had everything and it was upside everywhere that I looked and I just had this like deep feeling of dissatisfaction. I wasn't really happy. I mean, I was gratified in a way and proud, but I wasn't satisfied. And I didn't know what that was. I didn't have the consciousness at the time to realize this wasn't where I was supposed to be. Oh, you know, that had moments where it's, you know, I was on the set of friends, I remember.

57:28And doing a guest spot and, you know, sitting on the couch in the coffee shop and there are all the friends and it's kind of a surreal moment. It was early in my career. And at the time they were making $750 ,000 in episode and I'm just, you know, looking at them, taking all of that in. And I had this feeling, it's like, I don't want this. And I didn't know what that was. I mean, it was a very clear thought. And I was like, is that real or is that just some fear of success that I'm having? And it didn't really play out for another six or seven years. And then it wasn't until I found something that really lit me up.

58:11And I realized that the thing that I was searching for and acting, I found in this somatic psychotherapy, like everything that I wanted was in that and the game that that was and the container that it existed in was so exciting for me and creative. And at that point, then it was like, it was really simple. I just started to move in the direction of what I was most interested in. Isn't it crazy when people have an inkling, the sort of earliest murmurings of a realization, and you say, and about six or seven years later, I actually was able to commit to that thing. Yeah, man. It's a... Part of me thinks, oh, wouldn't it be great if we sort of had the courage of our convictions, and we were able to pull to pin and things would happen more quickly.

59:07But then another part of me just thinks you can't realize things before you're ready to realize them in that way. No, I had to go through it. I had to go through the process of letting go. I mean, my ego was incredibly attached. I mean, I came up, you know, you're an actor, you're trying to make it. You don't think you're going to make it or you know, maybe you have an intuition but you don't know. And then you make it and you're working on television, you're getting and lots of money and people are recognized. You know, I mean, you're just in this other world that so many people dream about. And your ego is just so elated.

59:41So then to have a thought, like, I don't really want this, it's like, no, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is like a dream come true. So it took, yeah, it took a long time for me to detach my ego, detach my identity. And all the validation that I was getting constantly, it just, you know, it fuels you. And I saw it. I saw with other people like that. I saw that they were, we talked about earlier. They were trapped. There was no way out for them. With the amount of money that they were making, the fame they had, this is, this was, whether they liked it or not, that was their life. Well, I think a question, a good question to ask and one that I think everybody can kind of, no matter what stage of success that are I can think to themselves is, okay, how much would be enough?

1:00:31Like, what would it be? Would it be one gold medal? Well, how many gold medalists get one and then they get gold medalist syndrome and they think that they need to? Or would it be one superbowl? Because this guy's that have got pretty much enough to fit on every finger on their hands. Yeah. Would it be an interesting psychological study? If you ask people what that ideal level of earning is, and actually we can do this, I guess the people that are listening and can do this now. So if you think to yourself, what level of earning would you get to annual earning, where you would think, yeah, that's it.

1:01:02Like that's, I mean, that's really it for me. That number is almost definitely around about three times your annual income, regardless of what your annual income is. And it scales all the way up. So if you're making a hundred grand a year, it's almost always about 300 grand a year. If you're making a millionaire, it's almost always about three million a year. You're making five million a year, it's always about 15 million a year. It just keeps on getting to round about three times what you earn at the moment. But it doesn't stop. It just keeps going. So ask yourself the question, what, okay, so what would be enough?

1:01:36Because we're not designed to be happy. We're designed to try as hard as we can. Right. And that's the game. The game is you will try harder. You were a donkey with a stick on your back, with a carrot attached at the front, and every step that you take toward the carrot, the carrot is going to move one step further away. Well, the satisfaction is in the quest. You know, it's the climbing of the mountain that's most exciting. You get to the top and how long do you spend at the top? A couple of minutes and before you start climbing down and then thinking about the next mountain, you want to climb.

1:02:08So I think it's hard to orient that way because we're so goal oriented. But if you can stay present in the moment and realize it's like, I mean, that's how it is for me. When I look back at Hollywood, the fond memories, yes, I have fond memories about shooting scenes and meeting certain actors and really nailing something and then seeing it on the screen and feeling proud. But actually it was the early years in LA when I was driving around to auditions, three audition as a day, and all the chronic craziness of all of that. Like that part of the movie is my favorite, looking back on it. So it was the journey, the moment before I made it, it was most exciting.

1:02:46The thing that's wild is, I want to get onto talking about presents, but even in the nostalgia of thinking about that time, your nostalgic memories will almost always be more enjoyable than the actual time themselves. Morgan Howes will tell us this really brilliantly. He's got an awesome, awesome article about nostalgia. Everyone can look at it. It's collaborative fund, and I think it's called nostalgia or memories. He came up a couple of weeks ago. And he is talking to his wife now about the Golden Years, what he called the Golden Years. I think they got together when they were maybe 23 or something and they're living in Seattle or somewhere and they've just got their first apartment, they're living together and they had no obligations, no kids.

1:03:28And he's reminiscing, he's talking to her about this now in the, you know, like 40s and he says, you remember that was the golden years, we didn't have to wake, we could lie in whenever we wanted, we could eat whatever we wanted, we were able to do. You know, what a brilliant time that was, apparently his wife turned to him and said, you were miserable, do you not remember? You hated it. You were constantly terrified you're going to lose your job. We were living paycheck to paycheck and he went a little bit deeper and realized, oh, yeah, that was what was happening. I was terrified, but my memory of that young kid was that all of the things he needed to be worried about or that he thought he should be worried about didn't come to pass.

1:04:06So I have the wisdom, I have the perspective that he never needed to worry. So all of the worries are forgotten and all of the highlights are retained. But the felt experience day to day of that particular individual was concern and rumination and anxiety and threat display. It was all of that stuff. Well, he maybe felt alive, you know, and maybe that's what he's remembering. I don't if you saw that Peter Jackson movie, forget the name of it, but he took all this World War One footage and remastered it. Sorry, put it in color and smoothed it out. It did really interesting. But the film starts with all these voiceovers from British soldiers.

1:04:49And they're obviously recording this when they were very old and they're 80s probably. And we all know that World War I is considered the most brutal war in history. Every single soldier essentially said, I said, oh, that was the time of my life. That was the great adventure. They loved it. You think, okay, maybe it's a lot of what you're saying, but they were alive and they were up against death. And yeah, in the moment, there's all this horror, but there is something about, I mean, I don't know how you feel, but there was a part of me when I was a younger man that felt sad that I never got to experience war.

1:05:30Me too. It's like, I want to know what that feels like. And I'm never going to get to know that. And there's something that I think is lost. And you know, certainly play it out in our lives in all kinds of different ways. But it's not the same. And my life is not at stake. I'm not walking into a situation where I could be killed or I have to kill. You have to feel what that is. Yeah, there's some insane percentage. I saw this start the other day about the percentage of silent generation that had been in military service of boomers of Gen X, of millennials Gen Z, and it's just all the way down.

1:06:04It just gets precipitously lower. Another thing that I was thinking about when you're talking about the wartime mode, especially early on, I only realized this recently. One of my friends said this to me, I always sort of lament how busy things are, and we've got all of this stuff to do, and so on and and so forth, we were walking into a gig, having just finished recording a ton of episodes and a ton of days in a travel to Australia and come back and I was in the UK and just doing all this stuff. And I was filming a vlog, I was like, dude, it's gonna be a tough week, it's gonna be tough going.

1:06:40And he sort of fact checked me in. And he was like, what the fuck are you talking about, man? Like you love this chaos. And it was the first time, you know, how are you saying before? A therapist is somebody that reflects you back to you. I remember thinking, yeah, I do actually. I do fucking love this chaos. I do. I love spinning 10, 15 plates at once and seeing if I can keep them all going. But we have this story. We kind of, especially around peace, at least for me, peace being something that I tried to, I'm a big fan of. That any diversion from that is an aberration. It's something that should be fixed or it's wrong, it's broken.

1:07:18But there's certain things that are gonna come along for the ride. If you want to do things, some nights you're not going to get perfect sleep. Right. Some nights you're going to have to stay up late. Some nights, certain things are going to keep you awake. You're going to have to miss social engagements. You're going to have to make sacrifices in the gym, etc., etc. And I don't know. I feel like just accepting some of those things, not railing against them so much, not saying that these are personal curses bestowed just on you, unique problem that you have to deal with unfair, a bug not a feature.

1:07:54And you go, hey, what if kind of like gravity? You go, I wish that gravity was just a bit lighter and you go, well, guess what? Gravity is the exact weight that gravity is. It's the precise force that gravity is. So you're just gonna have to put up with it. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's no light without dark, there's no peace without war. So it's part of it. I personally love the chaos as well. I mean, it's... I like it because it takes you out of control. And you find out things about yourself when you go out of control. And it can be exciting, it can be scary. And we can get addicted to it. I think that can be an issue.

1:08:38I've certainly suffered from that and I have to find the balance of it. But there's a lot of life in it. And I think it's, I don't know, my feeling is I think it's important to go a little insane sometimes. Right? We have to lose our mind. We have to lose ourselves. There's a lot of different ways that we could do that. It can be in our work or through some kind of, you know, spiritual practice or, you know, running a marathon, these kind of things. But I think it's really important, particularly for men, to put yourself in situations where you face overwhelmed. You're at your edge and to not judge it.

1:09:14As you said, to accept everything that's happening in the moment, I mean, that's really, that's what peace is, I think, it's just the acceptance of what is and being okay with it. You've mentioned the word presence a number of times. Sam Harris been on this show a number of different meditation teachers. They have a conception of presence. What is it that you mean when you talk about being present? Well, I guess I'd talk about it through the framework of my work and it goes back a little bit of what I was saying earlier about. We repress, you know, deny shame, disassociate from certain aspects of ourself, feelings, impulses, desires, needs when we're children.

1:10:00We all do it. And so in that place, we form a defense, or maybe an idealized self -image or a mask, and that's sort of our operating system for the world, and we become identified with it, and it feels like who we are. But very often, we hit a certain point in our life where things aren't working, or we experience some frustration or dissatisfaction. We see patterns that are happening, and they happen over and over again at a certain point you realize, well, this must be me. there must be something going on in my unconscious that I have to confront because this, you know, I'm creating this. And so what you know that you're in that moment that you're not present, right?

1:10:44You're not present with some aspect of yourself. There's something in your unconscious that's guiding you. And so the work for me is to help people feel what they had to repress, Right? Feel the pain, feel the rage, feel the fear, like feel it like literally in their body, like liberate all those emotions that we hold on to that are stuck there and creating the cognitive distortions. And so it's for me, presence is an embodied experience.

1:11:27It's happens and we have feelings and there's a certain tendency to want to control those feelings or manage those feelings. And I think that there's a wisdom in that. But if you do that from a state of repression or fear, it doesn't work. And so in the place where I'm not present, let's say with my wife, it's because there's something inside me that I don't want to face or feel. That's it. So that's the frame that I put on it. the question I ask is, well, what is it that you're unwilling to feel? Because it means that there's something in the present moment that scares you. Now, it might be irrational.

1:12:03It might not make sense to your conscious mind because you're a grown man, but it might be the fear of the child that's coming up in that moment. And so I work with presence, you know, through people's emotions, through people's feelings and in all the distortions that get created. Does that make sense, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it does. It does. It does. Does this, do we need to become stronger than in a way in order to be more present, more resilient, more powerful? Stronger, more vulnerable. I think is really the work. It's because feeling feelings at Scaris were forced to be vulnerable.

1:12:48What does vulnerable mean? to me, it just means openness and truth. And so there's a strength that it requires in order to be vulnerable. And that was a reframe that I had to make for myself, because I had all of those typical masculine images about what strength meant. And then I realized the strongest thing that I can do is to tell the truth and to reveal myself, like to be honest about what's actually going on inside me without shame. and again, you know, going back, that creates all kinds of images. I mean, you can hear the men in your audience, you know, say, well, what are you supposed to feel all your feelings?

1:13:28And, you know, it's not exactly that, but to be with them, to learn to be with, right, to learn to build a container for them, to not be ashamed of anything, really, you're light in your dark. And I think it's, I think there's so much that so many ways that we avoid vulnerability. We avoid showing our shadow, we avoid showing our pain, we avoid acknowledging our fear. And probably the deepest one for most people is we avoid feeling how much we love. Because there's nothing more vulnerable than letting your love, your passion, your light, like shine through. Like most people's major problem is they protect it.

1:14:13right? Because once you're all the way here with all of who you are, you're not in control anymore, right? Like you're completely exposed. That's the only way to be fully present in the world, is to be completely exposed. And most people are unwilling to tolerate that level of vulnerability. Myself included, that's all I'm working on, you know? Like because that restriction, I can see fractal out into all of the things in my life, right? It fractals out into my career, fractals out, into the work and how I'm approaching it, it fractals out into my relationship. So really for me becomes about one thing.

1:14:51It's like, can I risk exposing, revealing maybe as a better word, all of who I am, the good, the bad, the ugly? I like the reframe around strength to show you vulnerabilities. I think, I know, acknowledging your weaknesses is not the same to, it's not the same as surrendering to them. the only way to overcome your limitations is to actually know what they are. That's right. So, I don't think... I don't know. I still haven't been able to sort of fully thread the needle with the whole men's distaste for showing vulnerability and openness and stuff like that, because I don't think it's massively aspirational from really the guys, even the guys that do it, I think there's still a sense of fear and ache and concern and shame around it.

1:15:50I get the sense that in order for you to say something that a guy will want to go and do it, it needs to be two things at once. It needs to both understand the fact that they have difficulties and challenges, but also not patronize them at the same time or make them feel weak. And that's a really difficult line to balance. Yeah. Unbelievably difficult. Things are hard for you and you can get through them and I understand and I can support you, but you don't need the support, but it's there in case you need it. You decide, you know, you're permanently having to fucking caveat your way around the fragile masculine ego.

1:16:36Yeah, well, you know, it's it's great. All you really all people need is for feet. Their feelings to be validated. I understand why you'd be scared. That's usually enough. I understand why your heart is broken. Like not get over it, motherfucker. There's another girl out there for you. It's like, and then you know, that's how I approach all of my sessions with people. It's like they they have a story about what happened to them. I'm not necessarily validating their interpretation of events, but invalidating their feeling, their experience of that event. And because that's real for that, I mean, you can't argue with somebody's feelings.

1:17:14And so once they feel seeing and acknowledged in their feelings, I think that creates a kind of a safety and a resonance that then they can meet, go meet the challenge or take responsibility. But until that happens for a lot of people, they get stuck in the feeling, right? and they don't, they can't move past it and they attach it to a story. So, I mean, that's, it's as simple as that. Just acknowledge your feelings within yourself. That's all you have to do. I'm sad. That's it. You're good, bro. You know, this girl broke up with me. My heart is broken. It's like, that's fine. You know, just acknowledge it within yourself and be with that for a second.

1:17:58Don't romanticize it. don't succumb to it, don't indulge it. But be with it. Like of course your heart's gonna break. I mean, are you human if your heart's not gonna break? I mean, it's a beautiful thing to have a broken heart. Like let yourself be in that experience of it, right? And eventually you're gonna move on from it, or whatever, I'm filled with rage right now. I wanna fucking kill the world. Just be wherever you are with what it is you're feeling. And if you let, if you presence that, if you let yourself be with that, what you'll find is that you'll move very quickly out of that into the next thing.

1:18:32Yeah, Chris Bumstead's Bodybuilder Man. He talks about how if you don't feel the bad, you don't feel the good. So I kind of sort of think about emotions. What people want to do is to be able to sort of slide them up and down a scale. So I want this particular window of emotions, but I just want them at the top end. I want like all of these good ones here. But I don't think that that's the way that it worked. I had actually for the first time ever at the start of this year, like really really sort of Bad couple of days a really sad few days went through a breakup and it sucked and Then found myself randomly laughing hysterically in the Uber on the way to therapy like three days later I was like what the fuck am I doing?

1:19:19And that was the first time that I'd ever thought oh Emotions really are a roller coaster. They actually are a roller coaster Yeah. And after this huge emotional release, another one comes on the kind of the, what's what's the opposite end of this scale? It's sort of the, it's swung one way and then it swings back the other. Well, the illusion is we're stuck in it forever. And because that, that, that was not to bring it back to the, the, the therapy model, but you know, that was the child's experience. Like, when you're a little child with your parents, you are stuck in that situation. You're stuck like they're forever.

1:19:55So the feelings you have, you have their feel like they're forever, they're eternal, that you can never get out of that situation. And because that actually is in fact reality, it's not true anymore as an adult, but that fear that I'm gonna be stuck in this is forever. Like when I'm working with people very often, it's, you know, if I'm encouraging them to go into their, their rage or their, their sadness, whatever it is, very often the reaction is like, I feel if I go into this, it's never gonna end. like it's a bottomless pit and it's going to it's going to completely consume me. And that's the illusion that they're living in.

1:20:31It's not that way at all. Once they allow themselves to go there and express it and feel it and let it move through them, usually what happens is they feel lighter, obviously, but they come into more connection with themselves and then with other people because they're not carrying this around. You know, they're not way down with this burden and using all of this energy, you know, physical and psychic energy. They're not using that to repress it anymore. So they're lighter, they're more here. And I think, you know, that's... Again, it's... You know, the work that I do is it's so unique in that way, because of the tools that we use.

1:21:16You know, I mean, breath work is becoming really popular now, and I think that's great. But there's not really many places where you can go to really Like get it all out You know to really like fucking express it like unbridled Whatever it is. I mean that's always the invitation at my workshops Don't hold anything back and people are like what do you mean? I'm like you don't have to hold anything back anything at all and any moment you can just like let it come through and obviously we we there's certain rules and And the container that we create, but that is, you know, it's liberating, in one sense.

1:21:54It's like, oh, that sounds exciting, but it's also terrifying because, and I'm there to challenge you when I feel like you're holding back. Like, what is it you're holding back and why? Well, I know why because you're afraid, you know, and if you didn't hold back what? And they have all kinds of images about what's going to happen. But, you know, on the other side of it, they're just, it's, yeah, they're free. David Sutcliffe, ladies and gentlemen, David, where should people go? Do you want to keep up to date with all of this stuff that you're doing? Go to my website, David Sutcliffe .com. It's all there.

1:22:28Dude, you're sick. I really appreciate the energy that you bring to this. And we've got lots more to talk about, so let's bring you back on soon. Appreciate you, man. Thank you for having me.