The Secret to Knowing Who You Are | Luke Burgis

26:38And we're like, oh, wow, it's a really easy for me to kind of be myself or something like that in the community. But now, you know, all of these people come from different systems and it sheds light on our own. And like the goal here of differentiation is not separateness. It's actually to allow us to be in better relationship with other people. So in fact, like as I had a more of a differentiated self, I was able to have a better relationship with my parents. And, you know, one of the things that I noticed is that every time that I would call home, my parents would pick up the phone at the same time and we would always have a three-way conversation.

27:16And, you know, there was never an opportunity for me to just have a one on one conversation with either one of them. And that's just like a very little step that we can learn. Like if we if it makes us more uncomfortable, like we always need to have the third person or the fourth or fifth person. And we never want to like talk to or hang out with one person directly. Like why? And like so like like developing the one on one relationship is a little bit harder. So I got to a point where I was like, hey, I'm just going to call dad and I'm going to talk to dad and mom. And we would do that separately.

27:46And I began to develop a deeper relationship with both of them. But you could apply this to all kinds of circumstances in life where, you know, we kind of need to triangulate in order to be comfortable. And that is usually a way of kind of avoiding the solid, the development of the solid self in Bowen's terminology. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready. Because Quaker's coming in hot with morning nutrition. 100 % whole grain oats. And a good source of fiber. To fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next.

28:31Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26. Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store? It's actually a club with cool finds and like a whole community. It's a club. Of course, Jason. It's in the name, Sam's Club. Oh, yeah. Come join us. Sam's Club. What's important to recognize here is that that tension is a good thing because it actually creates space for authenticity. And we hear authenticity thrown around all the time. But what does it really mean if we're constantly joining tribes that are creating inauthenticity and not allowing us to manage that tension or even remotely try to differentiate ourselves?

29:14And I think what's counterintuitive for many of us is like when you actually step into that differentiation, the relationship strengthens. If it's a healthy relationship, if the person on the other end is coming from a healthy place, it's a good thing to be differentiated. differentiated. It's a good thing to be in a tribe where you can speak your truth and you can actually talk about the friction that you're feeling. It's not a good thing if you're in a situation where you can't do that or people who do do that are ostracized. One of the tests that I kind of have for evaluating the strength of a community or a tribe or a group, because I get invited, you know, I get invited to be part of all kinds of things.

29:56And, um, it's interesting when you look at the Delta between the way that somebody speaks and acts while they're in the group versus like why you've got them out for lunch, you know, one-on-one and like pay attention to that, right? Like when they're in the, in the group meeting or when other people are around, are they sort of following scripts, certain scripts? And then all of a sudden And when you get them one on one, it's like you can almost hear them breathe for the first time. And it's like, oh, now that we're alone, let me let me tell you this and this. And it's like, that's a little bit concerning, right?

30:28There shouldn't be that big of a difference between the two. So, you know, I often make a very intentional effort to not interact in the one to many basis, but try to interact on kind of a one to one basis and then pay attention to how we change and how I change, too. Right. In the communities that I'm a part of. Right. because I noticed that in myself. Well, many of us find this emotional triangle through gossip, right? So our first encounter in that situation that you're talking about might be, well, now the colleague is out to lunch with us and they're happy to unload about the boss. But in the group meeting where the boss is saying something that you've heard through the grapevine and you know through gossip that they're not agreeing with, but they can't speak up, that's the emotional triangle being created.

31:12and this happens in work environments, this happens in social environments, but oftentimes we look at the gossip of like, oh, I'm getting a bit of information, I'm getting something that wasn't said in the group and we feel the dopamine hit of that. We don't recognize the emotional triangle that's being built. Yeah, Bowen would say that the smallest stable relational unit is a triad. It's a triangle of three people. And, you know, a dyad or a relationship between two people is inherently a little bit more volatile because two people can become rivals. Two people can avoid each other. There can be passive aggressiveness.

31:52And the way to manage that conflict, the unhealthy way to manage that conflict is to bring in a third person, either, you know, physically or through gossip, right? Person doesn't need to be physically present for us to bring them into a relationship to help us manage it, right? We just find somebody or something else to talk about, right? And I found that like really, really fascinating. Like we triangulate in order to manage our anxiety without actually just dealing with it with the person in front of us. And it's why, you know, a lot of people use their own children to do this, Right. It's like, you know, you know, if I'm having a hard time with, you know, talking to my wife or, you know, at my in-laws house or whatever.

32:34Well, now now I've got a child that I can just kind of like throw in the mix and we can just focus all our attention on the child. Right. Yeah. And in the moment, you know, when someone is confiding in you and someone is gossiping with you, it feels good. There's a dopamine release to getting that tidbit of information or finding out about someone else's darkness or some other struggle that's not your own. But we often don't recognize the dynamic at play. And very rarely are we pushing that person to just go have the conversation with the person they're gossiping about, like deal with the conflict head on instead of involving us.

33:11I think the important question to ask is, you know, what does it say about myself that I need to engage in gossip? Like what what kind of insecurity is it in me? Right. Because it's usually the pseudo self that wants to gossip. And, you know, the self is not really a democracy. You know, I mean, I think that the pseudo self is the, you know, the part of ourselves that's up for a vote. Right. And the solid self is the part of ours is the layer of ourselves that is not up for a vote. and you know i think when we gossip when we do those things we're looking for votes right we're just we're looking for somebody else to we're trying to find something some common ground and you know it's easier to do that by by finding something that we don't like in another person and by actually trying to engage at a at the level of the cell itself so many of our audience members are super analytical they're advanced in their degrees in their career they're logical and in listening to this, you know, they might be sitting here thinking, well, I think for myself, you know, that, that might be what you, AJ and Luke and John are struggling with, but I think for myself and they don't really maybe realize the impact that the relationships have had.

34:22And, and I've had this moment in sharing my own experience of, of recognizing the success ladder in my own life that my family was creating for me. So when we started the podcast, I was in graduate school and I was doing everything I could to please them and, check their mile markers of success for me. And then when I made the decision to drop out of grad school and pursue this completely against what they thought success would be for me, I felt the pain in differentiating from my family. And then when I would share that story in the program with clients, many of them would sit there recognizing, wow, okay, maybe I've been making these decisions around someone else's success ladder, largely from the family system that I was in.

35:03And that's kind of the first recognition. But it can be hard to hear this. If you are planting that flag that I think for myself, like I've moved out from my family's house, I'm not in that family system anymore. And in the groups I am, I feel strongly that I think for myself. What do you say to them? Sometimes, you know, the smarter you are, the easier it is for you to delude yourself with very rational reasons for, you know, why you've chosen the goals that you have. And I think intelligence is kind of, you know, overrated. I mean, it's probably going to become maybe less important in an age of artificial intelligence, right?

35:39And kind of the soft like social skills, right? The ability to develop relationships and to understand where our desires come from is going to become more important. But I would encourage people to think maybe less about thinking for themselves and more about the kind of way that their desires have been formed and kind of the social nature of their lives. I mean, it's really interesting, right? I mean, from a very young age, and research has shown this through and through, like babies begin to imitate other human beings, but not interesting, not machines and not robots, right? This is very interesting when it comes to AI.

36:19So we're more interested in other people than we are in what any machine thinks. They've done a test where they can show an adult human and a machine modeling the same behavior for the baby, and the baby will only pay attention to the human person. So from a very young age, humans, right, the need to connect with other human beings is very, very present in us. And one of the most important things that I learned from René Girard as a person that felt very self-sufficient, liked to think of myself as smart, was realizing that I wasn't paying enough attention to what I wanted and my desires and where those desires came from.

37:05And I would always find ways to rationalize my goals and what I wanted. And if I was honest with myself, my desires always had a model, right? They always had a model. They came, especially like once I had all my basic needs met, I would look around and wonder what was worth wanting. And, you know, Gerard's insight was that human beings don't know what to want and we rely on other people to show us what to want. And I just found that that was just like empirically true in my own life. Like at no point could I, did I manufacture a desire out of thin air, right? Because I'm a social creature. There's no like desire that I just woke up.

37:45It was always a reason for it, right? I woke up one day when I hit middle age, as many middle aged men do, and decided I wanted to run a half marathon. And, you know, I thought that that's just like a good, healthy thing to do. But when I'm honest with myself, I realized like, no, all my friends are doing that. Saw it on Instagram. Right. I need to I need to get on the marathon band. It's about that time of my life when I should be doing things like that. And, you know, I just think like we're when we're smart, we're able to rationalize and and and convince ourselves that our desires are completely our own.

38:17And it's not that we can't own our desires and make them our own. But I just think we we we have to takes a certain level of humility to understand the way that people have shaped what we want for good and for bad. And there are positive models of desire. And one of the goals is to actually realize that we are affected by what the people around us want and to surround ourselves with people who want the kinds of things that we want to want, maybe before we even want them. Well, it's funny as you mentioned Instagram, right? And I think many of us don't realize how the algorithms have come into play with this mimesis that we're feeling.

38:54So all of a sudden you, you for a split second, see your friend in that half marathon gear and you, you hover on that video a little longer. And now the algorithm is like, great, I got to start sending you running shoe ads. And I got to start telling you about the next race. And I got to show you that everyone on this app is now running. and that artificial desire is now created. And part of it is the marketing engine that drives social media. I mean, they're getting all of their revenue from people marketing these products to us, creating desire with us. But that reinforcement is stronger than it's ever been.

39:28You know, we were part of communities in real life where sure there was memetics around the car you drove or the type of house that you were, the style of house that you were buying. And you can go to suburbs and see they're all the same style. Why? Because, well, yeah, we want to be like our neighbors. But now we're having this reinforced every time we pick up our phone. And it can be very hard even for the most analytical mind to poke through what is that underlying meaning behind this desire for me? Or is it just being reinforced by technology and my use of technology? And the people that are building the most addictive technology understand how mimetic desire works.

40:05Bernard Arnault, who's the CEO of LVMH, he said that he's in the business of generating and creating desire. You know, I mean, we typically think of business. I teach in a business school. We think of business as like, you know, people know what they want and there's such a thing as demand and that the job of the business person is just to meet the demand, find the demand, satisfy the demand and you have a successful business. But that's it's kind of a boring way to do business, in my opinion. And we actually are as entrepreneurs and creators. We're we're literally generating and creating desires all the time.

40:38Like we're showing people new things to want. And when you realize that's kind of the way that it works, it's kind of it's kind of scary. Right. It's an enormous amount of responsibility. But but, you know, we we do it. And when we do it, we realize how it actually works on us. Right. Like marketers know you can't just talk about the thing and make people want the thing. You have to show them other people wanting the thing. Like I can't I can't make you want to read my book by just, you know, holding up my book and talking about my book. you know it's Dax Shepard has to want to read my book right it's like that that's like just way way better marketing right and that and like like marketers people know that Instagram has engineered the algorithms to when when they see that we've caught a tiny bit of desire they just begin feeding it and feeding it and feeding it until we've kind of exhausted the tank on that one particular desire and they can usually tell because we stop spending as much time looking at that particular thing.

41:35And then guess what? They just have to show us a new model of desire or somebody else wanting a different thing that kind of gets us. And there's an infinite number of models of desire. So it's an infinite desire generating machine. Chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they start. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It prevents on average eight to nine headache days a month versus six to seven for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor.

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43:21So when you were in the startup founder identity, marketing that was targeting founders would have resonated really strongly with you because you identified as, hey, I'm this startup founder. I have MRR. I'm working towards a series B. I'm hitting all these milestones that map to that identity. and the successful marketers recognize, well, if we can tie our marketing to an identity, if we can put that car on the mountain that everyone that you know who's a mountain man is hiking, well, all of a sudden you're going to want that car because that makes you the mountaineer that desire has shown. How do we choose the models of desire in the first place?

43:59Like, you know, what, who, who appeals to us as a model of desire? Well, it almost never happens intentionally. It usually happens under the surface. Like we don't know that we've taken somebody as a model of desire. We normally can't name them. I think it's very important to name them, by the way. Once you know that this is happening, I think it's a really important exercise to try to name your top three models of desire right here, right now. Who's somebody, if they started to want a certain thing, you would be interested in that thing. Then ask yourself why. Usually, there's something really existential about this.

44:32There's something that we think that they possess, some quality of their character or being that makes us believe that they know what's worth wanting better than we do or something like that, right? So we sort of select them. Maybe they seem more confident than we do. People that are confident make the best models of desire because they just seem like they know what they want. And usually if we step back and we're honest, like, I'm not really sure what I want. So confident people, the more confident somebody is that I think the stronger model of desire they are. Unfortunately, in today's world, a lot of that confidence can be faked.

45:12It can be pseudo confident. It can be a complete mirage. It can be a fake private jet set that they're in taking that photo or video for their reel and not actually on the plane. But we don't know that in the way that it's presented to us in the way we're interacting with these algorithms. And the flip side of that is like, once you start to push back, if you've been in a family system where conflict is the worst thing in the world, that differentiation can feel like you're, you're tearing yourself apart. Like you're, you're now moving from conflict avoidance to speak to what it is that matters to you and tap into a level deeper.

45:50And, and that can feel like I'm going to be ripped from this group. I'm going to be torn apart. So many of us will look at conflict as failure, right? Like if I'm in conflict in the group, like I'm doing something wrong because everyone else in this group seems to be at harmony and seems to be aligned with these desires. I think that the fleeing conflict intention is the number one thing that leads to the development of the pseudo self in today's world. And, you know, leaving a group does not have to be a permanent thing. It's basically just called undertaking a rite of passage. And our culture does not have many well-defined rites of passage anymore.

46:30And the simplest way to define a rite of passage is three basic stages, right? There's some form of separation. There is a liminal phase where you're sort of in a state of in between who you were, the group that you were in, and something else. And then there's the phase of reintegration, right? Either with the family or with the group that you separated from or with somebody else. And rites of passage are literally like how the differentiation happens. You know, there has to be some kind of separation, not separation for the sake of separation, but separation for the sake of differentiation and hopefully a better, thicker relationship and a thicker community.

47:13And I, you know, I, it's hard to even name like effective rites of passage today. Like I feel like college for me was not a very effective one. Um, it just kind of seemed like a credential. I don't know how much I mature. I probably partied way too much, but like it, it, it, it just, it just didn't seem like it created the conditions for me, um, to actually have to do hard things alone. Um, you know, like the, the, the old school things, right. I mean, we used to have various forms of them, um, especially for young men that I just don't think that we have anymore. And it's like, I think about that with my own children, like, what are the rights and passages that they're going to need to undertake in order to develop a solid sense of self?

47:51And many of us find ourselves in that in-between phase, where we were hoping that post-college there'd be this reintegration or this ability to move into the next chapter. And many of us are now, again, in the mirage of social media and the way that technology is influencing us feeling, just wandering around and a bit lost with what our desires really are, who we want to be, who we should be modeling. And in that malaise, I think many of us are struggling then to build real connection with people. And I know that's really a driving force for us in the show is because much of what we've learned over the years is that the quality of your relationships in your life matters tremendously.

48:32I called my book, The One and the 99, right? And the title, you know, it comes from the parable of the lost sheep. But what I'm really getting at there is like, you know, we are both one and part of the 99. We're both a self and part of a larger group. And we need to learn to sort of exist in that space between them. But there's a lot of numbers between one and 99, you know, and a lot of people know Robin Dunbar's number of 150. You can't really have more than 150 relationships. What many people don't know is that he said that actually the identity is really formed in like the groups of five, six or seven, like in these really kind of small networks and communities where you can really invest deeply in relationships.

49:23So, you know, kind of one of the messages of the one in the 99 is kind of like the five, six or seven, right? It's like, what are the intermediary institutions between the self and the state or between, you know, me and the whole community? Like, what are those? And, you know, if I go to a rock concert with a group of friends, five friends, and I lose them in the crowd, it's very disorienting, right? And it's like, who are those people that keep me grounded and help me have perspective and help me remember who I am? And I think that the kind of like, you know, losing your four or five friends at the concert is a relatively like good analogy for the way that life feels, especially because many people don't have those four or five people.

50:06I mean, stats are wild that like how many adult, adult, especially males, like don't don't even have a single friend. Right. So like I'm actively investing in those kind of small communities of people in my life as kind of a buffer between myself and the ninety nine, because that immediate relationship is incredibly difficult to manage. And it usually leads to either the isolation or the fusionism, which we talked about in the beginning. What's interesting, and we've touched on this before, how often work culture will try to say, hey, we're a family. And they'll try to build a sense of this group that has that strong connection mentally for us.

50:47But in reality, as humans, we should have our family groups. We should have a great group at work. But then we also need that social space to allow us in that group of four or five or six to really express ourselves, to hold each other to account, to learn how to respect others and their viewpoints. And I think many of us in these situations, when we feel that tension, when we feel that differentiation, it's easier to hop on Instagram and scroll. It's easier to cancel the plans with people and to watch Netflix or find some other form of pleasure because it doesn't feel good if you've been in situations where you have differentiated and the reaction has been negative.

51:28the work as family has been like one of the most toxic sort of trends, that kind of language, you know, and because I mean, a workplace company is not like a family, like in almost no way is it like a family. I mean, you know, I can't fire my daughter, right? I mean, like, it's just, it's just, I think it's a really unhealthy way to think of that kind of community. And one of the things I noticed, one of the reasons why I wrote this book is that I've noticed that there is, it seems to me like there's a trend towards groups moving towards a kind of more of a totalitarian kind of mindset. They want everything from you, right?

52:05They want your mind, your soul. They want total loyalty in all domains of life to be part of the group. They want everything. Whether we're talking about a political party or a company, you've got to be all in. And, you know, I don't think that I mean, I am a poker player, but I generally I generally think that the message of like you've got to be all in is probably doing a lot of damage. You know, there are certain like I'm all in on my marriage, but I don't I shouldn't be all in. I'm like the new I don't know the new the new club that somebody wants me to the new local community organization.

52:42Like there's there comes a point when maybe we can make that decision, but it seems like more and more the kind of demand to be all in is coming earlier and earlier and earlier. So one of my goals here, one of the things I'm exploring is like, how do we kind of resist the kind of like temptation to sort of over identify? Right. And there's kind of a process that we have to go through where we can test the way that we're in relationships in various groups without succumbing to that kind of over identification too early and maybe never. Walk us through if you're listening to this and you're starting to feel like, man, I haven't differentiated or this group has now taken over those parts of me that I'd like to get back.

53:26I'd like to get back that sense of self. I've joined maybe the wrong group or I've entered into a community that demands that of me. What are the practical steps that we can start to take to differentiate healthy and also to find that real sense of self and not just default to the pseudo? There's no substitute for the kind of separation phase of the rite of passage, right? I mean, that doesn't mean leaving, but it means creating some space. I had the very odd experience of living with 250 other men at the age of 30 as part of this really close-knit community. And, you know, I got to a certain point where I realized that in order to gain perspective, I needed to, you know, kind of go on a journey on my own.

54:09I hiked the Comunidad de Santiago in northern Spain for 30 days. And, you know, it's amazing what I kind of learned, not just about myself, but the way that I was in relationship when I came back to that community. I came back to it with anticipating the ways in which I slid into my pseudo self because I sort of identified more with I had 30 days to actually think about what I really cared about, my convictions, who I was when I wasn't trying to perform or please or get patted on the head. so when I went back into that community I anticipated my kind of weak moments and there is something to be said like we often kind of have the hubris of thinking that we don't we don't need to prep or plan for being parts of groups but actually if we think about it even in our own families like you can usually anticipate how the Thanksgiving is going to go and who's going to say what and you know the way that things are going to go and when we do that like we can actually, we can actually prepare ourselves to know when we need to, you know, make sure that we don't slide into the pseudo self.

55:10So I think there's no substitute for the gaining perspective through separation, and then through actual, honest preparation, and then paying attention to what's happening inside of us. And then also, I think there's something to be said about, you know you can certainly find a small smaller group of four or five or six people within a larger group to confide in I think it's always a good place to start but I think that there's a healthy form of testing in in communities that we're part of I don't mean testing like intentionally being an ass I don't mean testing by lying or sort of provoking people or intentionally causing anxiety in other people.

55:51I mean, testing the reaction of the group by just speaking the most real words that you can speak and seeing what happens. And that is very, very valuable information, right? Like when I am at my most solid self, like what is the reaction here? And seeing what happens there. And that is information that you can take to either have an honest conversation about why you don't feel like you can exist as a solid self within it. you can choose to leave if the reaction is like unhinged and, you know, triggering and you're like, wow, there's no path forward here. And when you do that, I think it also gives other people the opportunity to be a solid self themselves.

56:34I mean, the people I think that we're most comfortable around are people that have a solid sense of self. And, you know, there's a kind of beautiful, positive, mimetic desire there where, you know, I now have permission to be a solid sense of self myself, because I know that this is not a person that's going to be triggered if I express an opinion that they might disagree with. There's something very freeing about that. And so I think there's like minor micro acts that we can engage in that help give us a sense of the nature of the relationship that we have with the groups of which we're a part, and that help us discern what we need to do.

57:07For me personally, and the emotional scarring from my family system around on the outside's reaction to conflict, what I had to work through was really not defaulting to the asynchronous form of communication or the easiest way to step into differentiation, because oftentimes that actually creates a false response. And I found myself even surprised by people's reaction in the face-to-face differentiation, but it can feel easier to send the text or write the email or do it in an impersonal way. And we can shift the blame onto the other person. But in actuality, to find that real sense of self, it's these face-to-face moments where you really see what that group is about.

57:53You really understand what the other person is about. And you can't get that through text message. You can't get that through an email. And of course, before technology, we knew that by default, most, if not all of our communication was face to face. And now we've found these other forms of communication where I'll just shoot the DM, I'll send the text, I'll write a long lengthy email and get it off my chest. And then I'm fully expressed. But in actuality, what you're talking about is you can see the other person's real sense of self in these moments face to face of differentiation. I couldn't agree more.

58:27And I think there's, there's kind of, you know, there's a real danger in saying like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send this email or this text message to really differentiate myself. That is not the way that it works, right? There's kind of a really unhealthy like reflexivity in that. It's like the way that we use social media. Like how can I say the contrarian thing to differentiate myself and signal this? That is a real, that's actually the opposite of becoming a solid self, right? It's like stepping back and like thinking about our identity relative to other people. And it's sort of arriving at a sense of self through this weird kind of like social calculus.

59:04Um, cause it is much easier to do than having like the, the, the face-to-face conversation and in sending the email or the text we do, we feel like we've somehow we've done the thing, but it's incredibly easy to do. We might not even want to know what the response is. Right. Um, it's like, we, we, we, we, we shoot it off and like, then we can like forget about it. Um, so I, I do think like, you know, in this world that we're entering now with AI, I think I want to double down an in-person communication and experiences. And, um, there's just so much context in them. And it's like, why I try to never hire anybody unless I've taken them out to lunch.

59:38Um, cause you just, you know, it's like a context rich environment and you can just learn so many things that you cannot learn in an interview when people are following scripts. Right. So like, it's, there's, there's something to be said about how can you sort of get people off of the scripts, um, you know, through, through like, like maybe ask a surprising question, right? Like Tyler Cowen in his interview says, you know, what tabs do you have open in your browser? Like, nobody's ever expecting that question in a job interview. Um, and they, and they have to like, stop and think honestly. And it tells a lot about a person.

1:00:06So I think, you know, ways to engage in, in, in real ways where we can't flee unless we want to be incredibly awkward and, you know, get up and leave. Um, that, that, that is the way that is the only way where we can actually not try to differentiate ourselves in a kind of engineered way, right? This is not something that can be engineered. It's hard work that has to be done repeatedly over many. There's no pill that you can take, right? You actually have to go to the gym and you have to exercise. Recognizing these forces at play, obviously you've now written two books about this. I'd love to know what you've personally done to get back to a place of dealing with this inundation of information, mimesis online, the digital age, what are you practically personally doing about this?

1:00:54There's many things that I'm doing. I think I'm a new father. I have two daughters under the age of three. And, you know, it's amazing what that has done to just not caring about stupid things that I used to care about before, right? It makes it much easier to say no to various things that I might've done for some kind of validation before. But I'll just give you one very specific concrete example, right? Related to my work. You know, I'm a writer. I just finished writing my second book. And as a creator, as a creative person, audience capture is like a real danger. Right. It's like, you know, I've got the one hit and people want more of the hit.

1:01:31And if I just keep doing that one thing, you know, that I'm playing, you know, the same song in a Midwest, you know, a boat riverboat casino when I'm 70 years old and, you know, just trying to give the people what they want to hear. And I don't know if that's necessarily the best thing for my development. So it's funny, I started to, you know, write this book and I was like, you know, you need to write the sequel to Wanting. And I was like, you know, I need to actually write the book that's wrestling with the things that I care most deeply about, even if they're misunderstood, even if I'm misunderstood.

1:02:04There's theology in my book. There's all kinds of things that, you know, I was told not to do. And, you know, I think that I just I had to I had to let go of the need for some kind of immediate recognition and understanding and sort of accept the trade off there. And I was like, what is the book that I can write that allows me to be the solid self and express my solid self in these words? I drew a lot of inspiration for Ornette Coleman. There's a whole chapter dedicated to him. He's kind of a musician that he's now known as the inventor of free jazz, but it took him, you know, a very, very long time of getting rejected.

1:02:41But he was true to his craft. He was true to his art and he was true to himself. And I think he he developed a solid self and he was an inspiration to me. So I think I rather than I was given the advice in writing this book. And I think if you're listening, you can apply this to your own work. I was given the advice that I should have a circle of, you know, 10 people and send, you know, parts of every single chapter to them and then wait for feedback and go through this highly iterative process through writing the book. I said, I'm definitely not going to do that because I basically need to go into a cave for two years and write this book.

1:03:15Because if I don't do that, I will definitely find myself negotiating in all kinds of ways. How is this sentence going to be interpreted in this really like reflexive way that does not allow myself to actually shine through the pages? And I hope I succeeded. But, you know, that's something that I've kind of learned in my work that I've had to do. and I'm willing to accept whatever the consequences might be for that. I mean, I hope they're not too severe, but I feel good about it. And at the end of the day, I've just let go of some of the metrics of success that I had earlier in my life, even though they've changed, right?

1:03:52I don't know. Maybe I'm climbing the public intellectual ladder now or something like that. Who knows? But at least I know the ladder that I'm on, and I know the way that I want to be engaged in it, And it's just a very different way that I was engaged with earlier in my life. Well, thank you so much for sharing your creative work with us today, Luke. Where can our audience find out more about this book and your other work? I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure. LukeBurgess.com. And I think you should be able to find my book pretty much anywhere you like to buy books. Thank you, Luke.

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