How to Stop Sabotaging Your Own Life With Joe Hudson

31:44Walter Mongo. Everything comes pre-packaged in a gorgeous box labeled by day. So there's no guesswork, which makes it surprisingly doable, even when life is busy. For me, it's about creating a reset point, a way to step back, recalibrate, and return to my routine with more clarity and intention. Ready for your reset? For a limited time, Prolon is offering my listeners 15 % off site-wide, plus a$40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five-day program. Just visit prolonlife.com slash richroll. That's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E.com slash richroll to claim your discount and your bonus gift.

32:27You're a very curious figure to me. The more I dive into your world, the more fascinated on becoming with you. Like a bit of a conundrum, this guy with a venture capital background who is coaching some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, people at SpaceX and Google and OpenAI, but also this person who is steeped in spirituality and spiritual inquiry. And And as much as that might strike people as counterintuitive, it's obviously like a cohesive philosophy and a foundational aspect of how you interact with people and interface with them and coach them. How do these two cohabitate in your mind?

33:19Yeah, that's a great question. I think one thing to think about is, you know, in 1970s, you were an environmentalist or you were a businessman and you couldn't be both. I don't even think there was businesswomen in 1970, right? And then now you can be an environmentalist and a businessman or a business person. Or an artist and an athlete. An artist and an athlete, right? That apparent separation of identity collapsed somewhere along the lines of 1990s mostly. when clean tech came in and and so to me it's the same thing it's being deeply committed to self-discovery only serves business right you can make a lot of money planting trees you can make a lot of money cutting trees down you can be very successful in business in a way that allows you to understand yourself and get to know yourself better and you can do it in a way that doesn't do any of that and leaves you miserable, even if you've had all the success in the world.

34:23That was one recognition that allowed for it. But I think the deeper recognition for me was I spent 10 years mostly meditating. And business is like, you just can't bullshit yourself. You can bullshit yourself on a pillow pretty easily. You can sit down and convince yourself that you're happy, but then get in a car with a screaming kid for a five-hour road trip and see how you're doing. So to me, business was this thing where could I maintain an open, loving heart? Could I maintain a sense of self and self-possession when one of the companies I loved was failing? And that became a much better ground for me to discover myself at that moment in my journey than sitting and meditating.

35:16At some point in your venture capital career, you realize that it's really an education in human psychology and human behavior, right? And you're starting to realize these worlds are congealing. Like your effectiveness as a venture capitalist is correlated heavily with your ability to understand people and kind of solve their blocks and help them kind of actualize their ambitions. That was because I was a bad venture capitalist, not because it was a good one. Meaning like great venture capital is you invest in people who don't need you. And I invested in people who needed me. uh i invested in not people who i thought would be able to take care of everything it was like people who had potential they had a good idea and i had a personal part of myself that was still trying to save my alcoholic dad so i was like finding people to save and so my portfolio did not do as well as if you would have hired a whole bunch of people who don't need you and so then my only way to save the portfolio was to coach was to coach them and to coach them into being successful.

36:29So with this awareness, how does the idea of coaching come to pass? How did you square that equation? I just started helping out some entrepreneurs who I had invested in and the word got out. And so I just took all those years of stuff that I had done and applied it to business. There's something intractable in the human mind about the idea of kind of transcending the daily pain of living. Like if we can just outpace it, if we can, it's always around the bend or the promotion or the next thing. And then there will be that opportunity where we won't have to deal with uncertainty and pain. And I think that's sort of a driving force behind so many of us.

37:19And that's a denial of reality on some level. yeah i have a phrase that says that joy is a matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome and so not only is it a denial of reality it is the exact opposite direction which you have a joyful life elaborate on that because there's a lot packed into that that was one of your kind of 30 uh in that viral tweet where you had those 30 point you know 30 points it's a but there this is like a portal into you know a deeper conversation around how we manage our emotions. Yeah, so if you look at kids, they're just joyful a lot of the time.

37:59Like little kids, they just have a tremendous amount of joy. And the more they get told not to be happy, not to be, don't be so excited, don't be so sad, don't get angry, don't be mean, don't have a temper tantrum, don't, right? Like, which is basically sending them the signal, you are not enough. you are not there's something wrong with you your anger is wrong your sadness is wrong your these things these emotions that you have are wrong emotions and the more that those happen you can just watch it in children the less joy they have and the more that they open up if somebody starts feeling them the more joy they have because it's like we're a dock with like one place for the boat to sit.

38:45And then the anger's not moving because you're not allowed to get angry. So there it is. And there's no place for joy to park. And that messaging from parent to child is really about the parent's discomfort. Correct. It has nothing to do with the child. Correct. Yeah. It's very cool. If you ever get on an airplane and a kid starts crying and you're in the front of the airplane, you just get up and you look around at all the faces and you can like point to who wasn't allowed to cry as a kid because they're just so uncomfortable so freaking uncomfortable that's right and so in your own parenting you have two daughters two daughters how old are they now uh 20 and 17 today oh wow yeah yeah yeah she's uh she's like for people who are listening and not watching your whole like composure just changed like you just you just lit up like uh yeah i'm so in love with my daughters um share the story about your experience uh you know kind of parenting them through this uh kind of total self-acceptance of their emotional states because i think that's yeah this is powerful yeah this is my wife again this isn't that my wife is like is the creator of all good things in our life um she found this thing called hand-in-hand parenting.

40:03I cannot recommend it enough. It is without a doubt the most powerful spiritual work I've ever done was parenting in the way of hand-in-hand parenting. It's like five very simple, easy tools. It's a beautiful process. But part of it is that you not only allow your kids to have whatever emotion they have, you actually encourage it. So if they're like, I want a cookie, I want a cookie. You're like, yeah, I really hear that you want a cookie. I'm sorry that you can't have a cookie. You just really allow them to have this full thing. And what you'll notice is that kids, they're disconnected. They're out of themselves.

40:46They'll have this big emotion, and then they'll be like a connected, loving kid again. It'll just whack. And if you don't do that, then you'll just start to notice that your kids are just getting cranked up and they're just never well-connected. They're just like, they're kind of always on an edge. And so my wife at this point in our marriage, my wife had a whole bunch of weird ideas in my mind to how we were going to raise our kids. And I said, no, she would have to fight. And then I would say, okay. And then she would be right. And so by this point in the marriage, and she brings hand in hand home, I'm like, okay, you're the CEO of the house and you're just right most of the time.

41:27So I'm going to agree to whatever you tell me to do for three months. And if after three months it doesn't feel right, we'll change course. We'll have a talk about it. And so she brought hand in hand in and I just saw the change. And we had a two and a half year old at the time, Esme, and I just saw the change. It was just like unbelievable. And she just, and I also noticed, oh, I don't wanna sit with that temper tantrum. I don't wanna sit with, because I wasn't allowed to have them as children. And so in the process of learning how to sit, in unconditional love with my daughters i learned to sit in unconditional love with my own so your daughters become your teachers because they're reflecting that discomfort back onto you for you for self-inquiry yeah and so just a couple stories to like make it like i was once with my eldest she's like three and a half years old she wanted something at the whole foods i was like no she just goes for it she starts a tear and i was committed at this point so i'm on the floor.

42:28I contain her so she can't pull stuff off the shelves. And she's just yelling, screaming in this store. And I live in this kind of hippie town and this old hippie woman came by and she's like, are you okay? Looking at me like, you must be screwing up somehow. I know how to raise kids. Are you okay? My daughter's like, ah, I'm just having my emotions. And then this went right back into it. I was like, okay. Even on some level, she's consciously knowing what's going on. She sees it. She knows that there's relief on the other side of this. And to this day, she'll call me up and two days ago, she called me up.

43:07She goes, I really need an anger release. I really need to move some anger. Because she'll notice, oh, I'm starting to feel stuck. I'm starting to feel resentful. That means I have anger that needs to move. And so, because of that, she also deeply learned how to listen to herself. so I can give you countless stories of both of my daughters where their friends got into trouble they didn't you know not trouble like from a parent but got in trouble in real life because they were just they they were listening to themselves so like I'm not doing that thing because they they didn't have any message that you shouldn't listen to yourself like that whatever this is it's true for you in this moment and you can move and live with that Yeah, that's a tremendous amount of emotional maturity for a young person and a capacity for emotional self-regulation through just permission to feel however you feel.

44:02So you're not repressing anything. That's right. And I think the key piece there from the parent perspective is the non-judgment piece, like allow them to do that. So when you're in the Whole Foods and that woman's judging you, like I just felt myself like judging my, yeah, she's right. I'm a bad parent. I should be doing something. This public display of, you know, chaos. Yeah. So much gets like provoked, you know? Exactly. Like deep old stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so the kind of cool experiment with my daughters is both of them are really good at receiving love. both of them are really good at like expressing and sharing love and like yeah i mean my daughter uh she just was in uh she was just in like a spring break scenario her friends were out she had the intuition not to to do what they were doing they got in this massive accident she was the only one who spoke english she went to the hospital translated and was there for them and translated for the doctors, translated.

45:11She just did this whole thing and gets on the phone with me and just starts bawling and just cries. And I'm like, oh, it's so great. I'm right there with you. And then she's like, okay, I got to pull it together. I'm going to do some stuff. She calls me back next day, bawls for a while. And she's like, I just miss you and I love you. And at the end of this thing, I want to spend a day with you can we make that happen yeah there's just a way in which like and when i'm with her and both daughters there's just so much love that and there's nobody trying to avoid it because it didn't come with like a caustic thing or we got better at making it less and less caustic i think it's more accurate but yeah that's really beautiful i suspect it's easier to like parent a child properly well it's difficult like to to do that right it's you're gonna make mistakes but like i would imagine like parenting a child in that way um into adulthood uh whatever emotional problems that they may have later in life are gonna be knots that are easier to untie than you know the typical person that you work with who comes in with all kinds of you know it's like You're trying to untie like a massive knot at that point, right?

46:30Yeah. When someone comes to you and they say, you work with all these successful people. Like, you know, I've done all these things. I don't know. I just can't like, I'm unhappy or I'm, you know, unable to be present in my life or I'm dealing with depression. What is the process by which you begin to understand what their core malfunction is and how to address it? yeah i don't ever see it as a malfunction and and the way my approach is a little bit different is that my job in that conversation is to speak to the part of them that knows and to like have a dialogue with that so i don't really listen to the story very much i don't really listen to the thing that they've told themselves a dozen times like that's all clearly not helping you've told yourself that a dozen times nothing's changed so that's not going to do us any good.

47:22And so my job is to really connect with the part of them that knows, that has that clear understanding, because we all have it. We all have our true north. Just like I trusted it in my daughters, right? I trust it in my clients. And my job is to potentially be a road sign every once in a while and to ask questions that allow them to see it themselves. So what would be an example of one of those questions? Everything is usually pretty specific to the person in the moment. So if you go online, I have all these YouTube videos of me coaching people live in front of audiences and online audiences. And you'll notice I hardly ever ask the same question.

48:14But generally, one type of question that I would ask is they would tell me a story about themselves and then I would show direct evidence that that isn't true from the conversation that we've just had and then ask them to fill in the gap for me. For instance, you're scared of intimacy. However, you share your entire life story with an audience of people, how do you make sense of those two things would be the type of question that I might ask. Or I might ask, you say you're scared of intimacy, but you're sharing this with a whole bunch of people that you don't know, an extremely large audience.

48:57If it's not intimacy, what do you think you're actually scared of? So it would be something like that. That would be a typical way that I would do it because I'm getting the wisdom from them even though their story doesn't correlate. So to start showing them this distinction between that. The story that I manufacture around my life or the people that you work with, it's just a narrative spun by my brain that's attempting to overlay it with some kind of rational logic. But that's an obstacle to the solution. The solution is really like, Forget about all of that. You have to transcend that and start to on a somatic level feel into yourself.

49:41And these are skills that we weren't taught and certainly aren't emphasized or prioritized in modern developed society. Yeah. There's also the weird thing about our stories is that every epiphany is a rut waiting to happen. Wait, every epiphany is a rut waiting to happen? What does that mean? So let's say I'm 18 and I feel powerless, right? It's really important for me to have this epiphany of I have choice. I can choose and I can make my life what I want it to be. That's a really important epiphany to have that like, oh, like I get to make my life. At some point, that epiphany stops serving. It becomes control freaky.

50:30It becomes like stressful. full it becomes. And a new epiphany is required at that moment of, wow, I can't even control the thoughts that I'm having. This is all a gift. Every thought I've ever had is one that I can't control. This must be a gift. That becomes a new epiphany that serves for the next part of the journey. And to have flexibility to be able to actually understand I do have choice and to understand that it's all a gift becomes the integration of those two things. But the idea that creates a lot of relief in our system will at some point limit us. And so that's the limitation of whatever story we tell ourselves.

51:16And oftentimes, because it created so much relief, we start identifying with it and say, no, this thing is really important. Instead of being able to see the truth in different sides of things, which is where the freedom comes. And there's this, I think it's a Tibetan saying, it says, sky as wide as the mind and action as fine as barley flour. And what it's pointing to is that, can your mind be so wide that you can see the truth in every perspective? But that doesn't change how you do things. There's only one thing you could possibly do. Yeah, that's a lot to take in. Yeah, I'm just trying to let that settle.

51:55In your case, an example of that would be self-reliance. Initially, this is a lever for growth and perhaps you even self-identified with it at some point, and then it runs its course and it becomes an impediment to your growth because it's cutting you off from connection and community and depriving you of that, which is basically required in order to feel whole and to be more self-actualized. And to take whatever mission I have in the world to another level as well.

52:37One of the things I hear constantly from people in this community is, I have an idea, but I don't know where to start. to which I say, whatever you imagine is holding you back exists only in your imagination. Let's say you have an idea to start a coaching practice, perhaps a creative project, a business, or a course, whatever it is, a great way to turn imagination into reality is by giving it a home online. And that is where Squarespace comes in. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform design to help you stand out and succeed on the worldwide web we call the internet. You can claim your domain, build a beautiful site, and run your business all in one place.

53:21It's actually insane how easy it is, especially when I think about my past experiences working with designers for months at great cost. With Squarespace, you can start with our AI design partner Blueprint or choose from a library of award-winning, super stylish templates and customize everything with simple drag and drop editing. No design skills, no coding required. And if you're offering services, consultations, coaching, events, Squarespace has built-in tools for scheduling appointments, sending invoices, and collecting payments. It's everything you need to turn an idea into something real.

53:57Head to squarespace.com slash richroll for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code richroll to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.

54:12This episode is brought to you by Whoop, which is the wearable health and fitness coach in the form of the screenless band that you see right here, which has been affixed to my left wrist ever since I first adorned it six and a half years ago. It stayed there for one reason, because the insights it provides me with every single day have just proven invaluable, helping me to dial in my sleep and my recovery based upon the amount of strain I impose upon myself. All of which I have to say has massively influenced when and how hard I push myself as well as the daily habits I'm best to adopt and those that I need to ditch.

54:51And right now, I'm really relying upon it more than ever as I applaud this slow return to some semblance of fitness in the aftermath of undergoing spinal fusion surgery, which has required me to pay much more attention to how my body responds to various types of fitness and recovery stimuli. And right now, you can get into it by going to join.whoop.com slash roll for one month free of Whoop.

55:22All of these kind of wounds that turn into superpowers ultimately become Achilles heels. Yeah. And the identity piece is huge. When we identify with them, it becomes this, that's like the meta story of like who we are. And in order to grow, we have to disabuse ourselves or detach from that identity, like shed a skin. Yes. And kind of wander in the desert until we find a more fitting skin for the next growth spurt. Yeah, that's exactly how I see it working. Yeah. And then there's another piece to it too. There's a question that you can get into, especially for the mind to find peace. There's a question that I got into, which I've now refined to.

56:09The question is, what am I essentially? And the reason I use the word essentially is it would have to be something that I've been since the moment I was born until this moment. so I'm not angry because anger is coming gone I'm not my thoughts because my thoughts come and go I didn't even think for the first couple three years potentially right so what am I essentially because if you identify with that it's a whole different thing than identifying with the person in recovery or identifying as the husband or identifying as the capable person or the self-reliant person all those have limitations but if you can identify with what you are essentially, then you don't give yourself that limitation and you become far more effective.

56:54And the answer to that question is? Not an intellectual one. It's something that has to be discovered. I asked myself that question 10 times a day for like a decade. And it is not an intellectual answer. Is there a way to put words to it? Yeah. Yeah. In Lakesha Lakin I think is the one that they use in the part of me that sees you is the part of you that sees me loosely translated. That which is behind your eyes looking out, that which is aware. There's a lot of ways people have tried to point to it. The I am that idea. It conjures the notions of oneness and questions the notion of identity itself or individuation.

57:43Correct. And that becomes a deeper probing of what is consciousness and what is reality fundamentally, right? But what it does on the effectiveness level, like on the just like art of accomplishment level, what that does is if you're not identified, I'll give you an example of what this does. Let's say you are a programmer right now. You're a computer programmer. AI has just absolutely changed your world. Half the companies that are there today won't be there in six months. I work inside of companies like OpenAI, where it's a different company every three months. Everything is changing so rapidly.

58:22If you're identified as anything, you're screwed. If you don't have the emotional fluidity to grieve and move and change your identity from programmer to software conductor or from you know inspire of of of other people or whatever like if you can't change that identity you're in a in a hurt situation if and in any kind of high changing environment it's like an accelerated crash course in the notion that anything you would you know attachment is suffering, right? On a kind of like hyper intense scale. And I guess the silver lining in that is it's compelling people to confront surrender without having to become an alcoholic or have some other kind of like personal crisis because the sort of landscape or the tectonic plates under our feet are shifting so quickly that you have no choice if you want to sort of survive and be able to get up in the morning and function.

59:31Yeah. Yes. And so that's one way that it helps. The other way that it helps is like, okay, now I'm going to do emotional fluidity. I'm going to like learn my emotions. I can see that I'm not those. So all of a sudden they become less scary. Or when you realize like, oh, today's not like yesterday. I feel all this fear, like to just be like, oh, that's interesting. I feel afraid. What is it what is that telling me or like what can i you know what can i learn about myself like having a healthy relationship with your own shifting emotional state yeah and i mean and that's the kind of cool thing is when you start having that emotional fluidity those signals become incredibly clear so the anger tells you i'm not holding a boundary i'm i'm there's a determination and or there's a determination in my life that i want that i don't have you know the fear is telling me that I'm either trying to move into a bigger room, that I'm being called into something bigger, or that there's some way I'm not taking care of myself.

1:00:34There's an action I'm taking that I want to be taking that I'm not taking. Every one of these emotions actually has a really direct signal once enough fluidity is there that you start getting excited for the emotions. You're like, oh, cool, I'm angry. Where's the boundary I need to draw? On this subject of improvement versus understanding, this gets at the crux of the personal development industrial complex. The whole self-help industry is premised on this notion of brokenness, this shame-ridden, guilt-provoking idea that there's something wrong with us and you know we need to read these books or listen to these people and or go on a spiritual you know odyssey to you know quote-unquote fix ourselves so talk a little bit about how you think about this makes me sad yeah i think that like the there's an interesting thing it's like the thought that you're broken creates most of the brokenness that you're trying to solve for say that again the thought that you're broken creates most of the brokenness that you're trying to solve for right so if i took somebody who's deeply ashamed of something like just shame in itself creates like massive stagnation so for everybody in the audience as an example here's something i can tell you about yourself i can tell you that there's something that you've been telling yourself that you should or shouldn't have been doing for the last decade if you're 30 years old.

1:02:16And I can tell you that thing hasn't changed. And the reason that the thing hasn't changed is because you're telling yourself you should be different because that should is a form of shame. Shame creates stagnation. It's not a way to actually create transformation. Nobody has shamed themselves into any kind of lasting transformation. As a matter of fact, the quote I love on this is shame is the locks that keep the chains of bad habits in place. And so there is a certain level of shame that is I need to fix myself, I am broken. The avoidance of that shame is the cause of a lot of the behaviors that people are, right?

1:02:58I should stop using porn. That's shame. If you didn't have that shame, probably porn would not be as useful or as attractive to you. like what you worked in the room the 12-step rooms is you're like working through that shame that came with the alcoholism that relieves the alcoholism so the idea that you're broken and needs to be fixed is often the biggest issue that is creating the things that you that you look for look at as evidence that you're broken the thing i like pointing to people is like if you can't go the past and you can't go into the future you have to be right here in this moment please tell me what's wrong with you like what's the problem with you right now there's no problem right now so how the fuck could you be broken like it requires a false it requires a like a memory or a false future to be broken and so just the self-awareness and the other thing that's interesting is like, well, let's look at a oak tree.

1:04:08There's an acorn. It turns into a sapling, turns into a young oak. It turns into a senior old oak. Which one's the perfect oak? Which one's the broken oak? Which one's the not complete oak? And so we look at ourselves as like, we're not the hundred year old oak tree. So there must be something wrong with us as if evolution ends, as if our evolution could be complete. Okay. I am now complete and fixed. There will be no more evolution in me it's ridiculous nor does the oak tree compare itself to other oak trees correct i mean this is the root of much of our suffering right and the brokenness you know becomes this identity you know that that calcifies us correct um but we convince ourselves that it is a kind of launch pad for growth like oh my like i'm on the you know i'm gonna fix this thing and this is worthy of my time and attention um so that i can become better like it can come from a like a good place yeah but the underlying premise you're saying is not just flawed it's completely incorrect it's yeah it's also just dirty fuel it's just a just it's just a very inefficient way to get to where you want to go like if if you are on a transformational journey that's that's effective, you're never going to end up where you think you want to go.

1:05:32You're always going to end up someplace far better than that. Because as you transform, your idea of what's possible will transform. As you transform, your idea of what's great and good will transform. As you transform, your ability to love will transform. So your idea of what perfection is today is like a shadow of what is actually available to somebody. To my life, I went through a long stage of constantly trying to better myself. I'm so glad that never happened because the thing that I found is so far greater than anything I could have possibly imagined when I was 25 years old beating the shit out of myself.

1:06:15I had no idea what was available. I had no idea that I could love my daughters the way that I love my daughters. Like I couldn't fucking even conceive of that reality. But it's a function of surrender as opposed to some kind of pursuit. Is this what you're saying? Like, cause I'm thinking about this notion of brokenness as being motivation for transformation. And if you disabuse somebody of that and say, there's nothing wrong with it right now. Everything's perfect right now. Everything is exactly as it should be. Like how does someone engage with transformation from that perspective? Why transform if everything is just perfectly fine right now?

1:06:56That assumes you have a choice. That's like the oak tree, like, why grow? Why put out some more leaves? Why stretch to the sun? It's our nature. A three-year-old isn't like, I need to improve, and yet they improve. There's more transformation from zero to seven years old than there is in any other time in our life. And there's never the thought I have to improve myself. I have this thing that I believe, which is that, you know, we're here to grow and evolve. Like this is, this is our kind of like blueprint and mandate and that everything that happens that our small brains label as good or bad, you know, without any really any kind of, you know, data points, like we just decide this is good and this is bad.

1:07:43Totally. Every single thing is an opportunity for transformation, for growth, for evolution. If we can perceive it as such, you know, instead of saying, well, this is terrible. And, you know, I hope that never happens again. And you're saying the way in is through like trying to find a way to suspend your judgment and approach with curiosity and understand that like it's it's always grist for growth. It's there for the taking. Yeah. I use the word wonder over curiosity just because curiosity is like you're looking for an answer and wonder you can be in the awe of it a while. And I find that wonder is a more effective, efficient modality than curiosity.

1:08:26Curiosity means that there's a you needing to figure it out instead of just like, whoa, check that out. Whoa, check that out. But curiosity feels more accessible to me than wonder. Like I'm intimidated by wonder. Like I'm like, I'm the guy who's like, you know, all of my wounds engineered this incredible life that I have. Right. And here I am unable to like be present for it or actually enjoy it thinking, well, what was the point of that? And now I'm like, I want to experience joy. I want to experience awe and wonder and be present with the people that I care about and really invest in my relationships.

1:08:57And instead of just being, you know, captured by the next, you know, responsibility or just being anxious and feeling urgent all the time about the next thing that I have to do because so-and-so is waiting, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah. And wonder comes up a lot. Like, oh, and wonder. And I'm like, you know, when was the last time I, like, how do I access that? Yeah. On a very practical level. Like, curiosity is like, I can make a choice. Yeah. but wonder feels like something i have to really i guess i would have to inhabit a certain state to make it possible but i can't just decide to be an on wonder but there's like a super easy practical way to like get into wonder really easily if you'd like to know it it requires like a two-person thing please so give me any it's like a just like a simple game you give me any um question that you're in in your life and it needs to be in the form of a how or what question wait say again what kind of question any question you have in your life right now like what makes it that i have a hard time with intimacy what what makes me scared of love so it just needs to be an actual question that you have in your life and then i'm going to respond with a how what question and then you're going to respond with a how what question and then i'm going to respond with a how what question and then you're going to respond with a how what question we're just going to go back and forth for a couple minutes and just see what happens.

1:10:23Okay, so I present you with a question that I'm struggling with basically about my life. Yeah. Whatever question you come up with, I'm gonna, what's the question that that brings up in me? And then you're gonna be like, what's the question that that brings up in me? We're not answering each other's questions. We're just, and they all have to start with how or what. How or what, okay. And if your brain does that, that's fantastic. What does that mean? When you kind of do your 404, we're like, uh, that's great. What is interfering with my ability to actually enjoy my amazing life? How would you know if you were enjoying your amazing life?

1:11:11This is fucking me up. That, that, yeah, that, that. Cause I, I know what I want to say, but it doesn't fall into that structure. Yeah. Yeah.

1:11:24How can I return to the experience of feeling joy that used to come easy when I was younger? What makes joy need to be easy? All right. First, I'm just trying to understand the question. What makes joy? Wait, what makes joy need to be easy? need to be what are you doing i don't even know what's happening that's right now that's one okay that's wonder that is fucked up what you just did that's some kind of weird sorcery it's that's wonder all right yeah yeah you were playing by a whole different rule book with that i was assuming i was assuming the ground rules here and you were like you were playing like four-dimensional chess with like my use we've had literally hundreds thousands of people run that exercise in small groups and one-on-one it consistently if people do it they think they see their whole problem differently they see a set of solutions differently and they've never tried to get to a solution they've only been trying to ask how what questions because wonder is far more efficient than curiosity or driving to an answer that's super interesting because it requires you to go outside of your normal pattern of thinking that's by the way that's how our work is like when we do courses we it's not me sitting there talking it's people doing exercises like that to learn how to, it's all experiments.

1:13:08That's what we do. It's a pattern interrupt. I mean, basically to experience our wonder, you have to transcend your intellectual like mind and I'm living in my head all the time. And so that's like a leap, right? And so the only way you can do that is to like, you know, like shoot an arrow into like my whole like rubric, right? To like, be like, wait, what is happening? You know, to like shake it up. One of the transformations that I'm trying to make right now is to live with a little bit more ease. Like I have this thing around suffering. Like if I'm not like bleeding out on the table, like I just didn't work hard enough and it could have been better and then the inner monologue, et cetera.

1:13:48And so I've constructed a life in which I sort of volunteer for suffering and suffering is grist for growth. And it's been this powerful lever for transformation in my life. But, you know, I'm the hermit crab who's outgrown that shell right now. And it's very uncomfortable for me to be like, well, what would it be like to create something, write a book, do a podcast and not have that heaviness or that burden or that like imperative that it must be like hard and I have to like push and push and push. Otherwise, it lacks value. Yeah. So I'm a little confused by that because it seems like being vulnerable and receiving love are hard.

1:14:32So it seems like your natural disposition should be to put that, like go after that. I'm confused. Say more about that. I'm confused now. I, I, my work here is done.

1:14:50You said being, doing one act of vulnerability every day sounds like absolute hell. Some version of. Not that bad, but like uncomfortable. Yeah. Great. Well, you're the guy who suffers, so go do it. Right. And I should say like, I actually have, it's, you know, I haven't mastered this, but I've come a long way. Like I have, you know, like I, I have a far healthier relationship with all of these things, but I'm recognizing that there's still growth for me there. And I wanna grow in that way. And I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and life is better there. What stops you from trusting that it'll just be there, if anything?

1:15:31You've already made it halfway. Yeah, it's fear of rejection or a sense of imposter syndrome probably.

1:15:44yeah i can i could coach you but we're not gonna go there we're not doing that this became way too indulgent for you know self-indulgent i promised i wouldn't do this and then here we go anyway um at some point if you ever want to do a coaching session i'm happy to do that dude believe me like you're the you're you're the guy i think you're the guy for me final thoughts what is a common misconception around those ideas that you would like to correct the record on Yeah. We've said it, but I'll say it again, which is understanding yourself is a far more efficient path than fixing yourself. And just notice, I would say for most people you can do this, not everybody, but most people you can do this.

1:16:25You do 100 things a day and you pick three that make you bad. But take a look at the other 97 and just notice the inherent goodness in it. Notice how inherently good it is to dedicate to this podcast, to bring this out into the world, to treat me with kindness and connection when I get here, to operate with curiosity towards me, to bring people who could change lives into people's lives. Just like notice all the other things. Like that's what I would say to a lot of people. It's just like, you notice those three or four things a day. See what it's like to put your attention for a week or two on all the things that prove you're inherently good rather than prove that there must be something wrong with you.

1:17:20I appreciate you. Thanks for coming today. I appreciate you too. What a pleasure to be here. It's great. If people want to learn more, where is the best place to direct their attention? I'm told I'm supposed to know the answer. I would say just - This is your self-promotion moment, Joe. Go to artofaccomplishment.com or go to the podcast, Art of Accomplishment. Those are great ways to get to know us. All right, man. Well, please come back and share more. I feel like I just - I would love it. We just tiptoed around the surface of this. So I really got a lot out of that. Thank you, Joe. Pleasure.

1:17:54Pleasure to be here.

1:18:04Thank you.