Pod Insights Good Life Project Did You Know Being Humble Can Be a Bad Thing? | Joe Hudson About this episode Have you felt trapped by self-doubt, negative inner voices, or constant self-improvement?
Explore a radically different approach to personal growth with Joe Hudson, Executive Coach & Cofounder of The Art of Accomplishment. Discover powerful practices for embracing all emotions without resistance, holding goals lightly for life's surprising solutions, and redefining authenticity through radical self-discovery.
You can find Joe at: Website https://www.artofaccomplishment.com/ | The Art of Accomplishment podcast https://episodes.fm/1540650504 | Emotional Inquiry exercise https://soundcloud.com/art-of-accomplishment/emotional-inquiry | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/authenticity-self-discovery-emotional-fluidity-joe-hudson
If you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Brené Brown https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/Njc1YzkxZTc3ZThjMjhlNmFhNDA2ZDIx about vulnerability, courage, and leadership transformation.
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Transcript 13,094 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Jonathan Fields? So from our earliest days, we're taught to be humble. Humility is good, we're told. But what if it wasn't? Or what if humility had its place, but it also came with a potential dark side? One that potentially caused both us and those around us harm? This is one of the rich topics that I explore in today's conversation with Joe Hudson, a co-founder of The Art of Accomplishment, sought-after teacher, and a legendary coach to CEOs and top leaders at companies like OpenAI, Alphabet, Apple, and so many others. Joe has this extraordinary ability to help you see what's been invisible in your life, to break free from self-limiting patterns and live with greater freedom and fulfillment.
0:43 Jonathan Fields? It's kind of like he's that one friend who sees past the shields, even the ones you don't realize that you put up, then helps you lower them, see what's real, and walk back into a life that feels so much more connected and alive. In this thought-provoking conversation, we drop into a profoundly liberating perspective on humility and authenticity. One that just might challenge us to let go of the need to think less of ourselves and instead think of ourselves less, fully occupying our place in the world without having to shrink to make others feel comfortable or conform to some dysfunctional norms. And Joe also shares some eye-opening insights on allowing and even welcoming
1:26 Jonathan Fields? difficult emotions without resistance, on holding goals lightly to remain open to life's surprising solutions, and the transformative shift of self-improvement to radical self-discovery. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.
1:49 Speaker 01 State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier.
1:52 Speaker 02 We'll have room for fried cookies.
1:54 Speaker 01 Okay, you'd never overspend on food. What's your deal?
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2:06 Speaker 01 Free phone? Oh, sign me up.
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2:49 Speaker 06 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
3:20 Jonathan Fields? It's fun to be hanging out with a new friend. You and I spent some time in the mountains yesterday.
3:25 Speaker 07 Yeah.
3:26 Jonathan Fields? Hiking around, really enjoying ourselves. And as we were talking, we're kind of going along and chatting a little bit about what we might chat about today. And you teed up something that's been on your mind for a while now that I know you haven't really shared a whole lot about.
3:41 Speaker 07 Yeah.
3:42 Jonathan Fields? Recently, it's this sort of like thoughts around the notion of humility. And before I try and even describe what we were diving into, I'm going to turn it over to you because it's not what I expected within the first 30 seconds or so of you speaking.
3:57 Speaker 07 Right.
3:58 Jonathan Fields? And we're going to dive into this. So take me there.
4:03 Speaker 07 I think the original thought process in humility for people and for me in my experience is
4:11 Speaker 07 humility is thinking less of yourself.
4:16 Speaker 07 And then somewhere along the line, there's this idea that came into my, that it's not thinking less of myself, but it's thinking of myself less, like just literally less thoughts about myself.
4:29 Speaker 07 And now in my journey, what's happening is
4:34 Speaker 07 This phrase was talked to me, and I think it's from the, I think it's from the Jewish tradition that humility is, I think the quote is like, taking your God-given place in the world. And, and that's been really hitting me deeply right now in my own journey of
4:53 Speaker 07 there's a calling and you follow the calling,
4:58 Speaker 07 even if it takes you somewhere big or small, significant or insignificant. And to actually have the moment of recognition that
5:10 Speaker 07 you hear the call, and if you don't follow it, that it ends in pain.
5:16 Speaker 07 And if you do follow it, even if it's not particularly the thing that you want to be doing, that it always ends up in someplace where you needed to go, someplace that other people need you to go. Needs a, not quite the right word, but something like that.
5:31 Jonathan Fields? So, I mean, it's so many curiosities on this, one. So when most people think about humility, me included.
5:38 Speaker 07 Yeah.
5:39 Jonathan Fields? Right? The, the thing that comes to mind is almost the exact opposite of something like a calling of rising up, of saying, I'm here, I, to do this thing, and it's also, I own it.
5:50 Speaker 07 Right.
5:51 Jonathan Fields? Yeah, like there's some ownership of the process, the experience, and the outcome. You know, this steps into a place where when most people think of humility, or at least me.
6:01 Speaker 07 Yeah.
6:02 Jonathan Fields? I think of the opposite. I think of the pulling back, the, oh, well, you know, it wasn't me, it was something channeling through me, it was everyone who came before me. So it's a, it's a bit of a contrarian take on the concept.
6:16 Speaker 07 Yeah, so I think that it, the reason I, I said it in the order I did is because I do think it is a order of operations thing. I think that there's a really important time to recognize that you're not responsible. So for instance, the way we think about ego typically is
6:34 Speaker 07 Somebody who's like, I can do anything. That's like big ego, right? You've got a big ego. But the way I think about ego is ego is anything that you use to define yourself in a limited way. And so a lot of people can take an insult better than they can take a compliment. So you can say to somebody, oh, you didn't do that right there. Okay. Well, what can I do about it? But if you say, wow, you just changed my life, they're like, no, that's okay. It wasn't just me. There's this.
7:01 Jonathan Fields? I'm raising my hand over here.
7:02 Speaker 07 Yeah.
7:03 Jonathan Fields? A hundred percent.
7:03 Speaker 07 And if you actually let that through, if you actually let a compliment through and you don't call the other person a liar, which is basically what you're doing when you're saying, no, no, no, it wasn't, that's not true.
7:14 Speaker 07 If you actually let that all the way through, it's in our coursework, I see it all the time is that, that it dissolves people's ego. It like, it opens up so much energy for their system. But there is a recognition of doing both things. So for instance, this morning I was on a call with some of the people I've been working with for a long time. And we were doing this exercise of letting compliments in. And we were looking at different ways to block the compliments. And one of them was deflection. One of the ways to block a compliment was deflection. So somebody gave me the compliment, my job was to deflect. And they're like, your work has changed my life. And my deflection was, it wasn't just me, it was like all the teachers before me.
7:58 Speaker 07 And as soon as he heard that, he saw, oh, that can be both a recognition of something greater than you, which is lovely, but it can also be a deflection. For instance, if I look at any thought that I've ever had, I didn't choose any of them. I never said, I'm going to choose to have this thought and then I had the thought, yet I call them mine. I don't call them gifts. I don't call them something beyond my control. And the recognition that they are is a really important recognition because.
8:31 Speaker 07 It allows you to not be so in control or so responsible. There's also a really important moment where you realize, oh, I have choice. I can control my destiny and I can choose to not have those kinds of thoughts. You know, so both of them are really necessary. The way that I think about it is if a hand is always like this, our hand is always like this.
8:57 Jonathan Fields? For those who are listening, Joe just started with a closed hands and then an open palm.
9:00 Speaker 07 Yeah, both of them, if they're always like that, they're crippled. And so you really want that flexibility. And so there is a way to deflect humility. There's a way to not be humble in the, it was all me. And there's a way of not being humble in the, it really had nothing to do with me. Because if you actually allow it in, that it does have something to do with you. There's a heartbreak, a love that has to be accepted. There's a, an ego destruction that has to be allowed if you're going to really let it in.
9:31 Jonathan Fields? I mean, it's interesting also, right? Because when you deflect, you're essentially denying the person who might be offering you some praise, some compliment, maybe thanks.
9:44 Speaker 07 Yeah.
9:44 Jonathan Fields? You're, you're denying them the feeling of it landing.
9:49 Speaker 07 Yeah.
9:49 Jonathan Fields? Like, and that's a gift for someone. I mean, like Adam Grant talks about this. There's all this research on what's commonly called the giver's glow, right?
9:55 Speaker 07 Yeah.
9:56 Jonathan Fields? You know, like we actually get a hit when we, when we're generous, when we're kind, when we, whether we say something, we give something, whatever it may be. And when you, when you deflect and you don't allow that to land, it's almost like we're unintentionally doing like, like a little bit of micro harm to the person who's trying to be kind to us.
10:12 Speaker 07 Yeah. So while we were doing this exercise with the five forms of resisting the compliment, right? There, we had these five forms. And while we were doing it, I noticed I wanted to start giving backhanded compliments. I wanted to start like not giving compliments. Because what's happening there is like, there's people who really want to be seen, really want to be appreciated. And they're not getting it. But every time they get it, they don't let it in. They're deflecting it so people don't want to continue to give it to them. And so it's it's beyond just hurting them. It's hurting yourself because you're setting up an ecosystem where people aren't going to see you or acknowledge you or how give you those compliments.
10:54 Speaker 07 And so it's a it's a double harm that happens. And it makes people a little pissed, you know? Hey, I just gave you a compliment and you're just in your spitting on it and gentle spit, but it's a spit, you know?
11:08 Jonathan Fields? Yeah, I mean, we're wired in such weird ways around this stuff because there's like a social code.
11:14 Speaker 07 Yeah.
11:14 Jonathan Fields? That says, well, we're not, we're kind of like supposed to answer that way in a way. Like that's, you know, like, and especially in different cultures, you know, Australians, tall poppy syndrome, you know, it's like there's it changes by culture too.
11:27 Speaker 07 Right.
11:27 Jonathan Fields? And even family culture, you know, local culture, whatever it may be, it's going to change. And then as you're describing this, I'm remembering, I think it was Snoop Dogg, who was like receiving like maybe a Grammy or something like that. And he got up and maybe it was like MTV music, whatever it may have been.
11:43 Speaker 07 Yeah.
11:43 Jonathan Fields? And it's like, I would like to thank me. I mean, it goes through all the readers, why he wants to thank like his younger self effectively for not giving up, for not listening to this and all this stuff and for and.
11:56 Speaker 07 Yeah.
11:57 Jonathan Fields? And it's like the exact opposite. It's it's just like, not only am I going to let it land, I'm going to give it to myself and then let it land.
12:04 Speaker 07 Yeah.
12:04 Jonathan Fields? But your subtler point about there's a difference between having it given to you and and receiving it is key. I meditate every morning and towards the very end, I'll just do like a little micro version of a meta meditation, like I'll say, yeah, um, like may you live with ease, may be safe, may you be healthy.
12:25 Speaker 07 Yeah.
12:25 Jonathan Fields? May you feel loved. And the reason I don't say, may you be loved is because you may be loved.
12:35 Speaker 07 Yeah.
12:36 Jonathan Fields? But if you're not allowing it to land, it kind of doesn't matter.
12:41 Speaker 07 Yeah, so yeah, two things on that. So the the first one that hits me is you are being loved. Like this, if you actually just pay attention, my experience of reality now is that like the whole universe is trying to love me and waiting for me to let my heart crack open enough to to acknowledge that that's what's happening. And when I really look at, you know, now working with tens of thousands of people, I can almost boil it all down to like so much pain is just the fact that people aren't letting the love in. So that's one aspect. The other aspect that happens is one
13:23 Speaker 07 of the things our mind says if we let in the compliment, or if we're if we're letting ourselves be the tall poppy. One of the things is that we're scared that we're going to use that power to hurt people. And so part of my job is to work with really powerful people. And what I notice is that if a really powerful person hasn't let in the fact that they have done this, that they are powerful, that they are capable, to really actually fully let it in, then they're far more likely to get dangerous.
13:57 Jonathan Fields? Taking a deeper into that.
13:59 Speaker 07 Yeah, so, you know, you could take, you know, a famous person who's incredibly rich, really successful, and yet they're lying about video games, about like how good they are in video games, as an example. So like, what what is that? What's going on there? And it's because they're trying to feed a hungry ghost, that they're enough, that they're capable, that they're deserving of love. They're trying to fill that ghost. But every time they're fed, they're not digesting it, they're chewing it and spitting it out, because they're not receiving the compliment, they're not actually acknowledging God's intended place for them. And so they'll think that it's a better place.
14:44 Speaker 07 Maybe to protect themselves or they'll think they haven't done enough yet. They're still catching up at forty. There's all sorts of ways in which the, you know, the mind plays a game. But all of it is not actually the acknowledgement of this is what's up. This is what's real. I have created a billion dollar business. I am creating a technology that'll change the world and not very many people could do it.
15:08 Jonathan Fields? And meanwhile, from the outside looking in, everything is astonishing. But the ghost is getting hungrier and hungrier.
15:15 Speaker 07 Hungrier and hungrier. And so, exactly. So they have to do more and more to prove to themselves that they're valuable or that they have control or that they have influence. And it becomes incredibly destructive. And it's very, it's hard for a lot of my clients because most clients who want to work with me aren't, you know, in the part of their cycle where they're saying, you know, I'm not good now. I gotta drive like da, da, da. They're in the people saying, no, I gotta be really humble to protect not becoming that other person that I see. And then for them to realize, oh, this is part of doing the, the actual humble thing is to acknowledge it in a way that breaks your heart. And that's the thing is that you can acknowledge it with a deflection. Yeah, I'm a, I'm a world-class teacher.
15:59 Speaker 07 Nobody can coach as good as me. Or I am one of the top one percent coaches. And that's all like the way I'm doing that is deflection because I'm not letting it break my heart. I'm not acknowledging that there is also a gift in this that is not within my control. And so it's really both of those two things. It's allowing both the personal and the non-personal and at the same time, which creates real humility.
16:25 Speaker 07 Because if you can dismiss it all, your ghost is still hungry. If you can't dismiss any of it, if you can't say it is all a gift. It, and I am incredibly fortunate or that life is a dream come true that I never thought possible. Both of those things are necessary for the heartbreak, which is the disintegration of the ego.
16:46 Jonathan Fields? So take me into the heartbreak side of this. How do we allow it? To rate our hearts.
16:52 Speaker 07 Yeah. So first, just, most people resist this idea of heartbreak. Like, oh, I don't want my heart to be broken. My experiences.
17:00 Jonathan Fields? We run from that experience. We don't want to feel.
17:02 Speaker 07 All the time. Right. What we're actually, so it's heartbreak is heartbreaking open. And so what it's, it's literally saying, okay, I have to expand my, my ability to love has to expand to include this thing.
17:17 Speaker 07 Right? I should work out more. I'm chubby.
17:22 Speaker 07 Can I love that? How much does my heart have to break? Open to expand to love that, to love both the fact that I'm chubby and also to expand to love the thing that's saying that I'm chubby.
17:38 Speaker 07 And that requires just a, like a crack in your system to do it. As a matter of fact, I'm sure somebody's listening to that. Like, I can't, I can't love that voice. What do you mean?
17:47 Jonathan Fields? I'm sure a lot of people are listening to this and say like, dude, now you just totally lost me.
17:51 Speaker 07 Right, yes.
17:52 Jonathan Fields? It's like, little, that voice has been in my head and I've been doing everything I can for all the waking hours of my life to try and snuff it out.
17:59 Speaker 07 Yeah.
17:59 Jonathan Fields? I've been going to therapy to change its mind. I've been going to extinguish it because that is the voice of harm is the way a lot of people.
18:05 Speaker 07 Absolutely. That, yeah, and it is. They're not wrong about it. However, that which you resist persists and all of what you just described is resistance and it absolutely, some of it might be necessary, actually, because again, this is an order of operations thing. And, and I'll go into that in a second, but at the end of the day, yeah, you've been doing all that year, all that stuff for 20 years. And guess what? It's still there. So you're just doing the crazy thing by repeating something that doesn't work. Um, my experience is that, so, I mean, we have this week long thing that we do, which is all about changing the negative voice in your head. And we get like a standard deviation change in, in the positive direction, less
18:50 Speaker 07 negative self-talk. And we have looked at lots and lots of exercises and experiments that one can run. My experience is curiosity, far more powerful than management.
19:03 Speaker 07 What makes it say it that way? What's, how does it feel in my system? What is, what's the somatic response? What's its really good intention behind it? What makes it manage me like an idiot? What makes it manage me good and sometimes and not good? And you, there's so many questions and to really actually be attuned and listening to it, that's, that's one thing that really helps. At some point, you have to get really angry at it because it's really hard to love something that you feel dominates you or that it feels oppresses you. If you have the feeling that something oppresses you, then it's really hard to learn to love that. But once you realize like, oh, you have choice, you can dominate and not pay attention to it.
19:47 Speaker 07 Then there's this, this space for love to occur. But the biggest trick is just how you respond to it. And so I'll give you a simple, you, we could do this right now if you want. But you, if somebody just closes their eyes and listens to the negative self-talk. And every time it says something that's mean or that it, that you wouldn't say to somebody else or that you wouldn't say to somebody you love. And your response is ouch. Just sit there, sit there for 20 minutes and just say ouch. Every time it says something and what you'll notice is it just gets quieter and quieter and quieter. Or you can say things like, oh, I see that you're really scared and I'm right here with you.
20:32 Speaker 07 I'm not leaving you. Every time the voice says something. So there's a thousand experiments that you can run about how am I going to respond to the voice in the head? And what you notice is the way that you respond to it, just like the way I respond to you, creates a different relationship. If I yell at you every time, we're, you know, we're on a podcast, you're, we're having a different relationship than if I'm, and so it's the same thing with the negative self-talk.
20:55 Jonathan Fields? So, so if you have a thought that comes into your head, let's relate it back to humility. Somebody's like, like you did an incredible job with this project that you're working on.
21:04 Speaker 07 Yeah.
21:05 Jonathan Fields? Right? My immediate response to them is, yeah, well, it was just the team. Like I literally just did like what I needed to do. It's just, and then the self-talk that's going on in my head immediately is. You're really incompetent. You're riding on the coattails of everybody else who made this happen.
21:20 Speaker 07 Right.
21:21 Jonathan Fields? And you have no business being here.
21:23 Speaker 07 Right, yeah.
21:24 Jonathan Fields? Right. So like, and that's a voice that a lot of people have.
21:26 Speaker 07 Yeah.
21:27 Jonathan Fields? Right. So your, your invitations are, what if you just sat there, let the voice in and every time it said that to you, ouch.
21:35 Speaker 07 Ouch.
21:35 Jonathan Fields? That hurts.
21:36 Speaker 07 Yeah.
21:37 Jonathan Fields? Give me some other
21:39 Speaker 07 Yeah.
21:39 Jonathan Fields? ways to respond, I'm curious.
21:40 Speaker 07 I'm, I see how scared you are and I'm right here with you. You're absolutely right. You're totally, totally, I hunt, I cannot deny that I'm riding on the coattails of others and I don't belong to be here, that it's all a gift. I'm with you. Or, hey, how would it be to manage me a little bit differently? Or, go fuck yourself. I don't care. Like, the, the modality is, on Monday, I'm gonna try to respond to it and I'm gonna try this experiment. I'm gonna respond to it in this way and see how it reacts. It's all about wonder still. On Tuesday, I'm gonna react to it this way. I'm just running experiments with it. I'm, I'm learning to understand it.
22:22 Speaker 07 The thing about negative self-talk generally, it does self-improvement rather than self-awareness, self-discovery. And self-improvement is a lot less effective than self-discovery.
22:37 Speaker 07 So we've all been telling ourselves, we should be doing something for a decade that we haven't been doing it. We've all been telling ourselves, here's all the things that I have to do to improve that haven't improved.
22:48 Speaker 07 Rather than being in self-discovery, actually trying to understand ourselves deeply. And when you really understand yourself deeply, it just changes. The same way that once I understand how to talk into a microphone, I speak into a microphone differently. The way that once I understand a camera, I don't need to tell myself, be a better cameraman. You know, I just understand the camera.
23:12 Speaker 07 And it's the same thing with ourselves. We think that self abuse is the way to have a better relationship with ourselves, but it's actually self-understanding. And we have all these fears of, oh, if I, if I give up the self abuse, I'm just gonna lie on the couch and drink beer and I'm not gonna do anything. But what actually happens is you have all this freedom, all this free energy, because you're not working against yourself all the time. You know, you look at a three-year-old, they do not have negative self-talk and yet that doesn't usually happen until seven or eight, and yet they do all sorts of stuff. They learn all sorts of stuff. They learn so much more in a year than we ever learn.
23:54 Speaker 07 Because they're not fighting against themselves.
23:58 Jonathan Fields? And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
24:03 Speaker 01 State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier.
24:07 Speaker 02 We'll have room for fried cookies.
24:09 Speaker 01 Okay, you'd never overspend on food. What's your deal?
24:12 Speaker 03 What's his deal? He went to Metro and got $450 in value on the new Samsung Galaxy 837 5G for free and no activation fees.
24:20 Speaker 01 Free phone? Oh, sign me up.
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24:26 Speaker 04 Bring your number and activate $40 period plan. $450 based on device discount waived activation fee. Not available with Metro T-Mobile in the past 180 days.
24:34 Speaker 05 Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.
25:04 Speaker 06 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
25:36 Jonathan Fields? I mean, the notion of elevating self-discovery over self-improvement intuitively lands with me.
25:42 Speaker 07 Yeah.
25:42 Jonathan Fields? It's also.
25:45 Jonathan Fields? It's more interesting to me in a weird way.
25:47 Speaker 07 Totally.
25:48 Jonathan Fields? Like, I feel like we've, like, so many of us have spent our waking hours trying to, like, in the process of fixing, everything that we perceive has been wrong.
25:56 Speaker 07 Yeah.
25:56 Jonathan Fields? Our entire lives.
25:57 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's right.
25:58 Jonathan Fields? Yeah, some people, and you know, profoundly different levels. But it's almost like the entirety of our lives is like, just incremental pursuit of improvement towards some sort of end where like, oh, like we quote, made it, we finally feel good with ourselves. We got X, Y, or Z, you know?
26:17 Speaker 07 Yeah.
26:19 Jonathan Fields? Rather than, you know, at your invitation, which is like, what if you kind of let go of that? And, and maybe if somebody's watching, listening to this, like, yeah, no, like, they got, there are things I want to work towards. There are things I want to change about myself. There's things I want to accomplish or achieve, right? Okay.
26:38 Jonathan Fields? Maybe if we say,
26:40 Jonathan Fields? suspend it just, just for a window.
26:43 Speaker 07 Yeah.
26:43 Jonathan Fields? Like, what would happen using your approach, which is so, and we've talked about it. We both are true believers in experimenting your way to things rather than trying to think them through. You know, what if just an experiment? You didn't let go of that for life.
26:57 Speaker 07 Yeah.
26:58 Jonathan Fields? But for, for a moment.
27:00 Speaker 07 Yeah.
27:01 Jonathan Fields? For a little window.
27:03 Speaker 07 How about like right now? Because the, so for instance, the idea is there's something wrong with you. But if you take this moment and you don't go into the past for evidence,
27:16 Speaker 07 and you don't go into the future for evidence, I can only find evidence in this moment right now. What is essentially wrong with you? And I'm asking you, but I'm asking anybody who's listening, like, if you do not go to the past or the future, if there's something wrong with you, it would be wrong right now.
27:35 Speaker 07 And yet, if you look at what's essentially, what is essentially wrong with you right now, there's never an answer.
27:43 Jonathan Fields? But what if there is?
27:44 Speaker 07 Give me an example.
27:48 Jonathan Fields? What if somebody is sitting here now and they've just heard this question and they're asking themselves, okay, so,
27:57 Jonathan Fields? what like in this moment, not in the past, not in the future, like what, what is wrong with me in this moment? Well, I have incredible back pain.
28:08 Speaker 07 Yeah. And how does that make you essentially wrong?
28:14 Speaker 07 So it's essentially.
28:17 Jonathan Fields? Okay.
28:18 Speaker 07 So yes, there's discomfort in this moment for sure.
28:21 Jonathan Fields? So let's tease that out a little bit more.
28:23 Speaker 07 Yeah.
28:23 Jonathan Fields? Because I think that can get confusing.
28:25 Speaker 07 Yeah. You have back pain, but that's not you. You is the thing that you've been ever since the moment you came into existence until now. If it's not that, it's not you. If it doesn't, hasn't had to existed through the whole thing.
28:40 Speaker 07 Right? I have a thought. It comes and goes. That's not me. That's a thought. I could cut off my arm. I'm still here, so it's on my arm.
28:49 Speaker 07 It's like, what are you essentially is the question?
28:54 Speaker 07 So yes, I can have a sensation.
28:58 Speaker 07 You know, I could even say, hey, the problem is right now I want to kill myself. And I would say that's future and that's something like what's right now?
29:13 Jonathan Fields? So take me deeper into how this helps. Because there's going to be a thought bubble, you know, her listening into this and also say, okay, so. Interesting experiment.
29:21 Speaker 07 Yeah.
29:23 Jonathan Fields? Maybe even interesting more broadly to say like, what if I just spent time really discovering rather than trying to fix?
29:29 Speaker 07 Yeah.
29:31 Jonathan Fields? But if I do believe that there's something broken or if I'm dealing with a struggle or a circumstance that I do want to be different.
29:38 Speaker 07 Yeah.
29:39 Jonathan Fields? How does reallocating my energy to discovery rather than change?
29:45 Jonathan Fields? Make me feel the way I want to feel?
29:48 Speaker 07 Yeah. So there's a, there are a whole bunch in that. There's a whole bunch in that. So the, the, the first piece is.
29:58 Speaker 07 Evolution happens whether you're telling yourself you have to improve or not. An oak tree evolves. When is it perfect? When is it good? And when is an oak tree good enough? When it's an acorn, or when it's a sapling, or when it's 100 years old, or when it's 200 years old, when is it good enough? But yet, evolution continues. So in the question, there's this assumption that I have to tell myself I have to improve for evolution to occur, rather than evolution just occurs. A three-year-old doesn't have to tell themselves, "I gotta, I gotta improve, I gotta improve." And yet, lo and behold, evolution occurs. So that's the first piece of it. Second piece is, how do I feel the way I want to feel?
30:40 Speaker 07 Is another big postulate in there, which is my question response is, how do you enjoy feeling whatever you're feeling?
30:52 Speaker 07 So I once sat with one of my teachers. His name was Adiyasante. His name is Adiyasante. He doesn't teach anymore. And, and I was telling him what we were doing in our work, what's happening. We hadn't seen each other in years, and we were having dinner somewhere, and his wife and my wife.
31:10 Speaker 07 And I said, he said, "What's your work?" And I said, "A lot of our work is going from emotional management
31:18 Speaker 07 to emotional clarity, which is the loving acceptance of your emotional experiences without the resistance." And so we're talking about one of those things, which is to allow the compliment, that feeling of joy in, but it's feeling of anger. And he said, and he was a meditation, non-dual meditation teacher. And he said, "That's 90% of the questions I get. How do I feel this way? How do I stop feeling this way?"
31:42 Speaker 07 And that never leads anywhere good. Instead, it's like, "Oh, how, how, how can I be excited to feel sad? How can I be excited to feel heartbreak? How can I be excited to feel angry? That doesn't mean that I am taken over by it. It doesn't mean that I've lost myself in it. But it's, it's that. So your question was, if I want to feel a certain way. And you're going to feel all sorts of ways in a day. In the, in the, in this podcast, if you're listening, in our conversation, we both have had 100 feelings. Whatever it is will come and go. Those emotional experiences will come and go. So I can't say that, but as far as evolution, as far as us continuing to evolve.
32:27 Speaker 07 That happens. The other thing that's a supposition and the question is that there's something wrong that somehow I have to be better to be good enough to be lovable to, rather than, oh, I'm perfect as an acorn, perfect as a sapling.
32:46 Jonathan Fields? Yeah. And I wonder, part of like, there's a, there's a part of the supposition there also is that to live a good life, we need to feel a certain set of feelings.
32:58 Speaker 07 Right.
32:58 Jonathan Fields? And not feel a certain set of feelings, or at least maximize a certain set.
33:01 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:02 Jonathan Fields? And minimize or try and extinguish a certain set.
33:05 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:05 Jonathan Fields? Rather than saying, you know, what if a good life is allowing ourselves to feel the full sweep of emotion?
33:12 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:13 Jonathan Fields? And just letting it all in.
33:17 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:17 Jonathan Fields? I was asked recently, somebody, I was in a conversation and people were asking, you like, how do you define mental health? I mean, such a loaded question, somebody today.
33:25 Speaker 07 Yeah, boy.
33:26 Jonathan Fields? So how do you answer that in a way where you just don't step it in some way, shape, or...
33:30 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:31 Jonathan Fields? But then it came to me right away was just, you know, for me, and again, like, I'm not going to postulate that this is right for everybody. I said, for me, I think the way I would define it is the, the capacity to feel everything, but not grasp to anything. You know, it's too like, to cry.
33:54 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:54 Jonathan Fields? Like when I'm, when I'm heartbroken and to like, not try and stifle it or feel it to like, laugh out loud around friends and to just to let love land, to feel that gratitude, like to.
34:07 Speaker 07 Yeah.
34:07 Jonathan Fields? You know, to feel grief, to feel really sad.
34:11 Speaker 07 Yeah.
34:11 Jonathan Fields? When hard things happen and, and not, not to, to allow it all in, to let it all in.
34:19 Speaker 07 Yeah.
34:23 Jonathan Fields? And also not to spend my entire life in any of it.
34:27 Speaker 07 Right, yeah.
34:29 Jonathan Fields? And but we like we have this sort of like Western overlay that says, no, that's that's not the aspiration.
34:35 Speaker 07 Yeah.
34:36 Jonathan Fields? The aspiration is as much good as possible and as little, quote, bad feelings as possible, which is not possible.
34:44 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah, there's a whole bunch of weird things in that. So the first one is just a neurological thing. Neurologically speaking, a grand majority of our decision making happens in the emotional center of our brain. So it's not. So therefore, clear decision making isn't being logical. We're using logic to decide what emotion we're going to feel. So when a person who has a part of their brain damaged, their IQ stays the same, but it takes them like a half an hour to decide what color pen to use.
35:17 Speaker 07 So if you think about just the clarity of decision making, it comes from,
35:24 Speaker 07 I'm happy to feel one way or another way. And therefore I'll make a decision that's actually good for me rather than to feel one way or another way. Because so many of our decisions are made to not feel like a failure or to feel loved or to feel at peace or to not feel like a loser. And so, so if you are happy to feel all that stuff, then you make really great decisions, as it turns out. Second thing is, none of the feelings are actually negative or are really actually that uncomfortable. The resistance to them is ungodly uncomfortable. But if you are, whoa, I so enjoy feeling sad. Sadness changes. It's like there's a pipe.
36:09 Speaker 07 And let's say, let's use anger. And so there's this channel of anger. And if it's kinked one way, it's nice shirt. Right? And if it's kinked another way, it's you son of a blah blah blah.
36:22 Jonathan Fields? I hate you, blah, blah, blah.
36:24 Speaker 07 If it's kinked another way, it's. If you love me, you would.
36:30 Speaker 07 Those are all kinks in the hose, but when that hose is not resisted, when you're fully allowing yourself to feel that anger, that anger comes out like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. It comes out with.
36:42 Speaker 07 Boundary and clarity and dignity.
36:47 Speaker 07 And so it's the resistance that's uncomfortable on these, all the emotions. It's the resistance that's uncomfortable, including the resistance to the compliment.
36:58 Speaker 07 The appreciation. If you actually let it in, it's really pleasant, it tickles. But we're like, no.
37:07 Speaker 07 It's not me, it was my teacher. It's not me, it's the team. I have a quote that sums it up really well, which is. Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome.
37:22 Speaker 07 And that's my experience is that when you fully accept all the emotions and love them and can't look forward to them, welcome them. And joy just happens a lot more often and your ability to feel the joy becomes a lot deeper.
37:39 Jonathan Fields? Which begs the question, like, how do you?
37:43 Jonathan Fields? How do you unkink the hose there? You know, like the, and I guess maybe that cycles back to. A stance of curiosity.
37:51 Speaker 07 Wonder is huge. Yeah, yeah. I make a distinction between curiosity and wonder. It's arbitrary, but curiosity I just define as. Looking for an answer. Wonder is just. Being a little kid about it. And I find wonders more effective than curiosity. And yes, lots of wonder, expression, your emotions live in your body, they live in your muscles. Right now, if I said to you, stop feeling. You have to constrict a muscle. If you're going to completely stop feeling, you're going to constrict a lot of them. That's why resisting emotions hurts. That's why that's the uncomfortable piece.
38:32 Jonathan Fields? Yeah, there's like a little somatic connection.
38:35 Speaker 07 Yeah, exactly.
38:36 Jonathan Fields? It's like everything's just tightening up.
38:38 Speaker 07 So there is an expression that's necessary and a lot of wonder to really understand the emotional emotional system. Because we've been trained, most of us have been trained our whole life not to feel.
38:52 Jonathan Fields? What's that about?
38:52 Speaker 07 Don't cry. It's because our parents didn't want to feel it.
38:57 Jonathan Fields? And their parents.
38:57 Speaker 07 And their parents and their parents. Like, oh, if I feel that, I'm going to open up a bag of whoop ass on my life. So I'm just going to push that down into this little corner of my body where it will slowly become cancer.
39:11 Speaker 07 Some version of, you know,
39:14 Speaker 07 or I'm going to push down the anger and be passive aggressive. There's, it always ends up getting leaking out, but it creates a lot of tension in the system. And and the fear is that if I am really allow myself to be sad, it'll last forever. If I really allow myself to be angry, it's going to destroy everything I love. If I really allow myself to be scared, I'm going to be incapable. But it turns out, if you really let yourself cry, you feel better. If you really let yourself get angry, not at anybody, meaning not not to control anybody, but just have an experience out in the woods getting angry, you feel more love. You feel less like destroying your world.
39:57 Speaker 07 And if you really allow that sensation of fear through your system, you feel very capable. But our brains will tell us that the opposite, because our brains don't get emotions. Emotions aren't logical. Our brains aren't supposed to get them.
40:08 Jonathan Fields? I'm thinking also, like, the opposite is true, too, because a lot of times the story we tell us about, quote, positive emotions or the opposite, like, if I really allow myself to be happy, that's going to end and then I'm going to be miserable. If I really allow myself to love and be loved, they're going to leave me, I'm, something's going to happen and then it's going to be devastated. It's like when we like the quote aspirational emotions.
40:31 Speaker 07 Yeah.
40:32 Jonathan Fields? We tell the opposite story.
40:33 Speaker 07 That's right. That's right. Totally. And and so so well seen. And that's why typically what I notice when people are in the journey of emotional fluidity, which is what my description for what you just said about allowing yourself to feel all the emotions and not be ruled by them. Is it's usually anger sadness first? Some depending like men in middle class America anger is more accessible than their sadness and vice versa, but um and you do that and then the fear and then
41:07 Speaker 07 the peace bliss, joy, love. That it actually happens in that order typically. You can't just jump to the positive things and actually have a full sensation of them.
41:19 Jonathan Fields? Yeah, so it's like you have to, there's, there's almost like a pecking order.
41:22 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah.
41:23 Jonathan Fields? Foundation that has to be laid in.
41:25 Speaker 07 Yeah.
41:25 Jonathan Fields? But it also invites us to step into the stuff that we probably struggle with the most.
41:29 Speaker 07 And it's because, oh, my God, if I really let the love in, I will be hurt. I will be just stomped on and the answer is, yeah, and I can't wait to be stomped on.
41:40 Speaker 07 Because I have felt that before. I know how much freedom is on the other side of that. I know how much clarity is on the other side of that. If you can find a part of me that gets triggered, I am stoked. Like, great, fantastic, because that's exactly something I can't say about myself. That's exactly the place that wants to evolve. So, yeah, it's, I'm very excited about it. I'm excited to get triggered by somebody because it is more freedom for me.
42:11 Jonathan Fields? And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
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44:51 Jonathan Fields? I wanted to even into that, but there's something I don't want to let go of before we just take that step, which is if so much of this conditioning that says basically "don't feel" has been handed down through generations, often by parents, like, or whoever it may be, who's who you want to have a sense of belonging with, so you can conform to whatever the norms were that were taught to you, the family norms, the local culture norms. Yeah.
45:19 Jonathan Fields? Part of then saying, okay, so what if I actually start to allow myself to feel? What if I get like, what if I allow us to wander around all this stuff, all the feels?
45:28 Speaker 07 Yeah.
45:29 Jonathan Fields? Embedded in that, wouldn't there also be a potential? And maybe this is one of the restrictions that stops us from doing it is that we're effectively rejecting
45:43 Jonathan Fields? the, the safety, the container of belonging that's been passed down to us through our, our family or whoever it was.
45:50 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's right.
45:50 Jonathan Fields? Where we want to feel safe and want to belong, we want to be accepted, we want to be seen. And part of that was buying into this notion that, okay, so like you only feel a certain way or you don't feel, that's how, that's how we belong to each other.
46:01 Speaker 07 Right, yeah.
46:02 Jonathan Fields? So.
46:04 Jonathan Fields? Part of like saying, okay, Joe, like I buy into this, I'll run the experiments.
46:08 Speaker 07 Yeah.
46:08 Jonathan Fields? Is also saying, okay, Joe, I buy into this. Maybe I'm gonna actually reject or be rejected by those people who I really care about and they're still in my life.
46:21 Speaker 07 Yeah, that is true. There's no doubt about it, but you're already rejected by them.
46:29 Jonathan Fields? Tell me more.
46:31 Speaker 07 If I get sad, they will reject me, means they're rejecting you for who you are, whether you're showing them or not showing them. You're already living in a relationship where the love is conditional.
46:43 Speaker 07 You can pretend to be something that you're not by not crying, but then you're not loved. The thing you're pretending to be is loved, which is why you feel so unloved in your life.
46:54 Speaker 07 Not you particularly, but you know what I mean?
46:56 Jonathan Fields? But I mean, probably me at certain points and probably almost everybody.
46:59 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's right.
47:00 Jonathan Fields? At certain points and probably a lot of folks right now.
47:03 Speaker 07 Yeah.
47:04 Jonathan Fields? Joining us in this conversation, you know, and it's, it's. That was me for a lot of my life. I I I learned that I could be really good at being a chameleon.
47:15 Speaker 07 Yeah.
47:15 Jonathan Fields? I could walk into a room and and a pretty good social awareness and understand like the culture.
47:20 Speaker 07 Yep.
47:21 Jonathan Fields? Of a room and maybe that's also a family.
47:23 Speaker 07 Right.
47:23 Jonathan Fields? Or a group of friends or kids or a clique.
47:25 Speaker 07 Yeah.
47:26 Jonathan Fields? You know, and I could kind of scan the environment and sort of notice like this is how I would need to be.
47:33 Speaker 07 Yeah.
47:33 Jonathan Fields? To quote fit in. But in my mind, it was to belong.
47:37 Speaker 07 Yes.
47:37 Jonathan Fields? And I would I would sort of like form myself.
47:39 Speaker 07 Yeah.
47:40 Jonathan Fields? Into that person. And then that that person like that I'm thinking of myself, I'm sweet. I'm I'm literally, I can walk into any of these groups, you know, like this group, this group, this group, this group. And it's all good.
47:53 Speaker 07 Yeah.
47:53 Jonathan Fields? And meanwhile, I'm still lonely.
47:56 Speaker 07 Right.
47:57 Jonathan Fields? Because as you're describing, I'm not actually in any of those rooms.
48:02 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There's something, there's something else about it that I find my experience is very similar to you. I used to even dress in a way that I could blend in to as many. I was like just neutral enough that I could flip into any situation in in my twenties. It was a really similar situation. I think that the the other thing about you're saying that oh, if I feel a certain way, then I'm going to be rejected in in the society or in this. I have a story about that. My, first of all, if you have a young kid and you're really interested in this, there's Patty Wiffler has a book called Listen, and the organization is called Hand in Hand Parenting. It's so valuable. It's
48:47 Speaker 07 just amazing work. And I'm doing this, which is basically being with your child as or having an emotion and loving attention without trying to get them out of the emotion. But this time it happens at a Whole Foods. So I'm at a Whole Foods. I got my two and a half year old just raging about wanting potato chips or some such thing. I can't remember. I'm containing her.
49:05 Jonathan Fields? Every parent is like immediately transferring to some power, but it's where they're to that.
49:10 Speaker 07 So but I am committed. I am committed to allowing her to have her emotions and I'm going to be in loving attention of them. So she is having the full thing on the floor. I'm on the floor of this Whole Foods.
49:23 Speaker 07 And I'm just like, I'm I'm I got you right here with you. I really hear you want the potato chips.
49:30 Speaker 07 And we live in this little hippie town in Northern California.
49:34 Speaker 07 It used to be a hippie town and and. And this little old lady hippie comes by and she goes, are you okay to my daughter? And my daughter's like, I'm just having my emotions. And then she went like right back into it.
49:53 Speaker 07 And so, and yeah, well, like I didn't disintegrate. I didn't get expelled from my town. She didn't get expelled from her town. That, but the other thing that happens is as emotional fluidity comes, as you welcome all of it, there's a short time where like, if you're allowing anger for the first time, you're going to get angry more often. You're like tears, you're going to tears more often. But that, that arc starts going down. All of a sudden, oh, I feel anger. And instead of yelling, oh, I have a boundary. Okay, here's my boundary. Cause I feel that I got that little bit of anger and I didn't repress it. I didn't think I was bad. I didn't wonder, what did I do wrong because I'm angry? I didn't wonder, what did they do wrong because they're angry?
50:38 Speaker 07 It's, oh, anger, oh, boundary. Oh, hey, could we not do this this way? Oh, sadness. Oh, that's a longing. Can I, I'll express my longing.
50:52 Speaker 07 Oh, fear, there's something I'm not taking care of myself. So these things become signals. And so you're not rolled over by the emotions. And then it, and then, and you can get angry and you don't have to get angry at anybody. You can go into the woods and get angry. You can get angry in a safe place. And it's weird because we're so scared of our emotions. One of the things fear does to the brain is it makes us into binary thinkers. And so we're scared of our emotions and it's either we are going to hold it back or we are going to be taken by it. We are either going to hurt somebody with it or we are going to hold it back instead of, oh, I can just express it in a way that's not shame based and not bad for anybody.
51:39 Jonathan Fields? Easier said than done.
51:41 Speaker 07 Yep, yeah, yeah. No doubt.
51:44 Jonathan Fields? It's like I can have long hair all I want. So you're like, well, yeah.
51:48 Speaker 07 Yeah.
51:49 Jonathan Fields? And then, you know, like, life happens.
51:54 Jonathan Fields? And it's funny also, right? Because I think early days of meditation, sort of studying eastern thought, eastern philosophy, you know, I, I think I interpreted a lot of teachings as, you know, mountain grasping, lack of desire, sort of like, you know, like the ultimate, the aspiration, fear is an aspiration is to basically
52:15 Jonathan Fields? not attached to anything, which I translated to not feel anything.
52:18 Speaker 07 Yeah, yeah. Most people, I started meditating, I meditated for whatever, seven years in a room, most of, well, most of my time. And somewhere along the line, I realized I'm not meditating, I am managing myself. I'm not, I'm not being with what is, I am trying to create what is. Total
52:38 Speaker 07 pain, suffering. I mean, I thought I was meditating, I was just torturing myself.
52:43 Jonathan Fields? No. I mean, so the invitation is, is really just like, what if we let it all in? What if instead of, and
52:53 Jonathan Fields? and I guess part of the curiosity for me here is like, do we have to let go of the aspiration to at some future point, want to feel different or want our lives to be different or want something to like be changed in some meaningful way? Do we have to let go of that?
53:07 Speaker 07 Yeah.
53:07 Jonathan Fields? And, and just focus on like, what if I just allowed it all in right now in the moment and, and sat there in the place of wonder and said, okay,
53:19 Jonathan Fields? whatever it is I'm experiencing, huh?
53:21 Speaker 07 Yeah.
53:22 Jonathan Fields? Huh.
53:24 Jonathan Fields? Can we hold both of those simultaneously? Or does the future aspiration somehow stop us from doing the work of opening to sensation and feeling now that will maybe at some point actually get us to where you want to be?
53:38 Speaker 07 Right. So you don't have to do anything. So that, that, that, that, but that's typically the way it works is we tell ourselves, oh, so now I see, I've heard that, so I have to do this.
53:49 Jonathan Fields? Right.
53:50 Speaker 07 And insane, I have to do it. You're guaranteeing that it's not going to happen or not, not going to happen easily. Yeah, exactly. So that, exactly. So you're in fear, you're acting from fear, you learn slower. That's, that's part of it.
54:03 Speaker 07 There is a nature. Part of the way that we evolve is because we, our nature is to evolve. And so of course, we're going to have thoughts of evolution. I'm, I'm most, mostly suggesting that the way to it is through wonder rather than through self abuse or drive. I, I don't know how to let go of the call, which is the call to evolve. And like I haven't tried, don't have a particular want to try. I don't see that it's, it's painful or bad.
54:43 Speaker 07 And I often, however, don't have a specific outcome in mind. Or I'll, I'll have the goal, but it'll be very, very loosely held. Because my experience is my goals suck compared to what happens.
55:00 Speaker 07 I, I did not in my twenties say, this is what I want my life to be like. I had a very different vision of my life. I'm so grateful that that vision did not happen. That this vision is so much better than I could have imagined. That the solution set that you can come up with from the place that you are now is not even close to the solution set that you can come up with, with a place where you have learned to love yourself a little bit more, or felt more emotional fluidity or any number of things. So I hold the goal because there's a directionality to it. But I don't really hold on to that it's going to look the way that I want it to look.
55:42 Speaker 07 Because life has a way of looking a lot better than my preconceived notions.
55:47 Jonathan Fields? I mean, it's funny, there's, um, as you're describing that, what, what came to mind for me is I've had plenty of conversations with founders, entrepreneurs who are like, this is exactly what I'm going to build. This is what I want to make happen. This is, I have a very clear goal and there's all this mythology. So if you don't have, you know, if you don't know what the target is, like, you know, like there, you're just never going to do anything that will get you there. Like you have to be crystal clear about what the endpoint is.
56:11 Speaker 07 Yeah.
56:11 Jonathan Fields? And and, and I've often said, and there's data that shows what like, okay, so if you do have clarity around that thing, you probably are more likely to actually like achieve that thing. And there are different modalities to get there, different methodologies.
56:25 Speaker 07 Yeah.
56:25 Jonathan Fields? But the point that you're making, I think is just so prescient, which is. A, is that thing worth wanting? And B, what about the universe of a bazillion other possibilities?
56:39 Speaker 07 Yeah.
56:39 Jonathan Fields? That you're excluding without realizing it by saying this and only this. Rather than, what if I just allow myself to be really intentional about being and observing and, and being in a state of wonder and evolving and letting things in?
56:55 Speaker 07 Yeah.
56:56 Jonathan Fields? And let that direct me like how?
56:59 Jonathan Fields? You know, I tend to look forward and there's, I'm a maker, like I just love to make stuff.
57:05 Speaker 07 Yeah.
57:05 Jonathan Fields? But I do it largely, I'm a weirdo in that like I'll write a book, I'll spend two years writing a book. My publisher ships me a case of books, like the first thing. It's like, you know, like a case of like 24 hardcover books.
57:16 Speaker 07 Yeah.
57:17 Jonathan Fields? And I'll just let it sit there in the box unopened for a couple of weeks and everyone's like, dude, what? Meanwhile, everyone's doing unboxings online and stuff like this. And I'm like, it was never about the, like the thing.
57:30 Speaker 07 Yeah.
57:30 Jonathan Fields? For me, it was just about the experience of like, how cool is it? That I'm growing and unfolding and learning and like, um, okay, so like now there's a thing at the end of it, awesome.
57:40 Speaker 07 Yeah.
57:43 Jonathan Fields? You know, and but, but the whole, the whole idea of
57:49 Jonathan Fields? being really rigid about exactly how you want your life to unfold and then working towards the things you want and the things you want to extinguish from it.
57:56 Speaker 07 Yeah.
57:59 Jonathan Fields? And that may actually get you closer to those things faster. But does that actually, but, but even if it does,
58:07 Jonathan Fields? you know, is that the life you're gonna want to be living when you get there? What have you completely ignored along the way by having the blinders on?
58:15 Speaker 07 Yeah. But, and I mean, if you've spoken to that many entrepreneurs and I work with them, how many like hit 45 and they're like, I got everything I wanted, but I'm fucking miserable.
58:25 Jonathan Fields? Yeah.
58:25 Speaker 07 Happens all the time. I think that the, there is also a huge amount of wisdom to holding a goal. Meaning, let's say I have a goal of reaching a million people. Not my goal, by the way. Or I have a goal of a thousand people. Well, I'm going to ask different questions. How do I reach a thousand people? I can go door to door and knock on a thousand doors. So, but if I'm trying to reach a million, I'm going to have it different. So I think that the, holding that goal is, and having clarity on it is really what makes visionaries and the fact that.
58:59 Speaker 07 I define a visionary as somebody who's living in a world as if it already exists.
59:07 Speaker 07 Gandhi existed as if he was a free man.
59:14 Speaker 07 He existed as if India was free. When they walked under the salt mines and it was a half a million Indians and 20 security guards or whatever it was, 100 security guards. And they just walked and got beaten down four at a time. So they were acting like free people. They weren't acting like, like subjects. And, and, and so that, if you can't see the reality, you can't live as if that reality already exists. And so I think that's the power of it.
59:46 Speaker 07 You also can't catch the beauty if you're attached to it. So it's like having it, having that vision, having that clarity. But also being okay with the fact that life is going to serve up something a lot better. If you're, if you're paying attention.
1:00:04 Jonathan Fields? Yeah, and there's the tension, right? It's sort of like, okay, get crystal clear about that thing. The vision of like how you want to be or what you want to participate in making happen.
1:00:14 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:00:15 Jonathan Fields? And at the same time, you know, you gotta hold it lightly to serendipity.
1:00:18 Speaker 07 Yeah, exactly.
1:00:19 Jonathan Fields? Yeah. You know, to allow serendipity to enter the experience.
1:00:24 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:00:24 Jonathan Fields? And wonder.
1:00:25 Speaker 07 Yeah, and that's where the humility actually is. Cause if, if it's not you doing it, there's no vision. And if it's not a huge gift, then you're not actually,
1:00:37 Speaker 07 you, you're not seeing the serendipity. And so the, to actually take your God given place in the world and that it requires you to both see the serendipity, which is a humility of this is beyond me. And walk into it, which is a humility of this is personal and it's me doing it.
1:01:01 Jonathan Fields? Hmm. It's almost like, um,
1:01:07 Jonathan Fields? this shall be, and who knows?
1:01:09 Speaker 07 Right. Totally, totally.
1:01:13 Jonathan Fields? Which is, and I agree with you. I think a lot of people who do astonishing things in the world somehow hold, like, find a way to hold on to both of those and to let go of all of it at the same time.
1:01:23 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:01:24 Jonathan Fields? Which sounds bizarre. Like, if you're listening, you're like, my head is spinning right now.
1:01:28 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:01:28 Jonathan Fields? I don't get this. Like, how, like, and you and I love conversations like this, but I think sometimes people listen to that and they're like, but what do I do?
1:01:38 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:01:39 Jonathan Fields? Like, what, like, okay, so, so I get that. I'm kind of nodding along. Some of these things really make sense to me.
1:01:43 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:01:45 Jonathan Fields? But what do we do with this?
1:01:47 Speaker 07 Yeah. So the first thing in that question is, uh, it's, it's pretty ineffective. That with a question, what do I do? Not entirely, but often ineffective because what it's doing is it's cutting off the understanding. Oh, I have this epiphany. If you're listening to this, there's some moment where you're like, oh, yeah. What do I do about it? And so you're not letting, oh, yeah, actually register in your entire system. And, and again, so it's the idea is that you're doing is going to be more important than your understanding. So that's, that's one of the things. And so to actually allow the understanding to wash over you is one of the best things.
1:02:31 Speaker 07 The second thing that you, and these are things you can do. The other thing you can do is just have gratitude for recognition, like really allow yourself time to be deeply grateful for recognition that you have when you have it. Cause that like deepens that washing over and deepens the understanding. As far as the humility goes, well, there is the, the, are the, how to talk, how to react to the negative self-talk, that's some very good action that you can take. Another great one is to allow yourself to feel a whole bunch of emotions. We have something called emotional inquiry that we can give you a link to if you're interested and that's a really great way to feel into emotions with a lot of wonder.
1:03:16 Speaker 07 Um, so that that's a great thing that can be done. Um, the other thing that can be done is to
1:03:27 Speaker 07 Let me think of a way to put this, which is,
1:03:33 Speaker 07 you can notice that you are not,
1:03:39 Speaker 07 you can literally,
1:03:42 Speaker 07 one way to do it is to notice that no thought you've ever had is yours. And literally spend an hour noticing like I'm not deciding to have any of these thoughts, but the thoughts are arising. The other way to do it is somatically go to back to where the source of the thought is.
1:03:58 Jonathan Fields? Describe that for me, like, what do you mean by that?
1:04:00 Speaker 07 It is not a good way to describe it, but if you sit down in a chair and you just watch your thought come up, go back to where it came from. So we can just do that for a minute. We all have tons of thoughts, so for a thought will come up in 30 seconds.
1:04:21 Speaker 07 And you just somatically go to where that thought arose from.
1:04:26 Jonathan Fields? We say somatotherapy, saying, where do I feel it in my body?
1:04:30 Speaker 07 Yes, yeah, the physical sensation of where that thought came from.
1:04:34 Jonathan Fields? And how does it help me?
1:04:39 Speaker 07 Do it for a long, yeah, I think it's great. I think it's great. And my response would be do it and find out. Because here's one of the things that I've learned is that when I discover something, so my, I had huge authority issues when I was younger. And because I have authority issues, I didn't believe any teacher. I couldn't really allow for teachers in my system for a long time. But I really wanted to learn, so I would listen and then I would say, hey, let's test it out. Let's see if they're right. So I would test everything. And in that process of testing everything, what I realized is I would do something, I'd do an experiment and it would quote unquote work. Oh my gosh, if I loved my emotions, wow, they changed.
1:05:22 Speaker 07 The resistance was gone and, oh my gosh. But then I started loving my emotions to get rid of them and it stopped working.
1:05:31 Speaker 07 So what you discover is that oftentimes when in self-discovery, if you're doing something to change your emotional experience, it stops working. Or if you do something to get you somewhere, it stops working. If you're meditating to get somewhere, it is far less effective than if you're meditating just to enjoy the hell out of meditation. And so if I give like the destination of this thing, what I'm scared will happen is that somebody will hold that destination in their head and not discover what happens naturally.
1:06:04 Jonathan Fields? Which kind of deprecates the whole point of it.
1:06:06 Speaker 07 Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
1:06:07 Jonathan Fields? Yeah.
1:06:09 Jonathan Fields? There's a certain faith, amount of faith.
1:06:12 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:06:12 Jonathan Fields? That comes with this invitation.
1:06:13 Speaker 07 Certain humility.
1:06:14 Jonathan Fields? Yeah.
1:06:16 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:06:17 Jonathan Fields? Early in the conversation, you you also brought up this notion of calling.
1:06:22 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:06:22 Jonathan Fields? In this context, in the context of humility. Tell me more about the relationship.
1:06:31 Speaker 07 At some point, there was a recognition that if I didn't follow the calling, it was really painful. It's very hard for me to describe what exactly calling is. So if this is frustrating for somebody, I totally understand.
1:06:49 Speaker 07 But I there's a knowing that, oh, this is what I'm meant to do. I might not want to do it. I might rail against it. But there's a knowing, oh, this is the thing that I'm supposed to do. And then I realized if I didn't do it, because I don't want to do that, it always was got more and more uncomfortable until I did it.
1:07:09 Speaker 07 And when you realize that, then there's a choicelessness in it.
1:07:14 Speaker 07 You don't get the choice of doing this thing or not doing this thing. You get a choice of having to be more and more uncomfortable or not having to be more and more uncomfortable. And there's really no choice, there's really no choice in that. And when you recognize that, then that's a deep form of humility. Because it's it's a choiceless life.
1:07:34 Jonathan Fields? People can't go like that.
1:07:36 Speaker 07 They sure aren't. And I think, and for good.
1:07:39 Jonathan Fields? It's nice of determination in a lot of ways.
1:07:42 Speaker 07 Yeah, it's not quite, it's not quite the same way, meaning that's a great, great thought process. It's not quite the same way because you can't get to the place of calling until you realize you do have choice. So until you realize, until you realize like, oh, I can shape the world into what I want to shape the world into, at least somewhat, that I can say no to my boss, that I can not accept this abuse from my husband, that I can not live in a societal standard that I'm supposed to live in, that I don't have to follow this career path, and I don't have to have 16 kids or two kids and 2.5 kids at this age and live in this kind of a house, until you
1:08:23 Speaker 07 realize that you actually have the freedom to do what you want, you can't actually, you're not even, you can't even be aware of the calling. And then there's a place where it's, oh, it's all a gift. It's also necessary to get to, to, to get to the place where it's like, oh, this is a calling. So when the calling comes and you see it and you understand it, it includes all of that. It includes, oh, I'm being called to go and take action and do something in the world, which is going to require my determination and it's going to require my, my showing up in a way that's uncomfortable for me sometimes, sometimes it doesn't.
1:09:02 Speaker 07 And it's also going to require the recognition that it's, you're not responsible for this, that it is a gift.
1:09:12 Speaker 07 And all of that requires a humility to get to the place of, I have a choice, but I don't really have a choice, that the oak tree doesn't really have a choice, the dog doesn't really have a choice. And I get we do have choice, so it's like, again, it's holding the dichotomy both at the same time. It is holding the.
1:09:33 Speaker 07 The empowerment of choice and it's holding the faith of non-choice. And if we can't do both of them, then we're still, our little personalities are entrenched and digging in, and which is not the humility.
1:09:51 Jonathan Fields? Do you feel like we all, if we allow this space, if we acknowledge, the, if we acknowledge that, that, you know, in so many ways, we do have choice, we have agency.
1:10:03 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:10:04 Jonathan Fields? Which sort of seeds the possibility of something resembling what we might call calling.
1:10:13 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:10:13 Jonathan Fields? To emerge.
1:10:14 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:10:14 Jonathan Fields? And as you said, like, if we can't even get to the fact that, like, we have any sense of agency or choice.
1:10:20 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:10:21 Jonathan Fields? Then there's no space for an understanding calling to emerge. Like, we can't, because that would imply agency.
1:10:29 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's really well said.
1:10:30 Jonathan Fields? You know, um, do you believe that we all have that thing inside of us? Because I think a lot of people are probably say to themselves, because I don't know what it is, I'd never know what it is. I'm in my 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, whatever it may be.
1:10:42 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:10:42 Jonathan Fields? Maybe you're younger. Um, maybe I just don't have, maybe that's for other people.
1:10:49 Speaker 07 Then you wouldn't walk.
1:10:54 Speaker 07 That's the first calling, one of the first callings, reaching, understanding where your hands are. These are all the calling. This is like the natural tug of evolution. It is the thing that allows the birds to know where their migratory paths are.
1:11:11 Speaker 07 It's the thing that allows an oak tree, I get emotional thinking about it, that it is the thing that allows the oak tree, the acorn to know how to become an oak tree and respond to the light. It is, it is our birthright.
1:11:30 Speaker 07 We just have to create a ton of resistance to stop it, which is where most, which is what we do.
1:11:38 Jonathan Fields? That's how we live.
1:11:39 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:11:40 Jonathan Fields? And it sounds like the way you're describing also is you don't necessarily, you're not really describing from, and tell me if I'm getting this right, like, we're all born with one singular calling and like, or like it's this one thing and like, that's it. It's like, no, there, there could be a myriad of ways that we're called in different contexts, different seasons, different ways, different parts of our lives.
1:12:01 Speaker 07 That's right.
1:12:02 Jonathan Fields? And, and like it's, it's not just this one universal thing. It's just like, it literally, we're being whispered to all the time.
1:12:10 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:12:10 Jonathan Fields? Like all day, every day for the entirety of our lives. And, and part of the work is to create the space to hear the whispers.
1:12:16 Speaker 07 Right. And, and you can only hear it now. Like, sometimes I get an idea where it's headed, but it's generally like this right now, this thing is clear. I have to do this thing right now. And so I see people get lost a lot looking for their purpose that they're calling as if it's an abstract thing. And then I'll know what to do from this point forward. It doesn't work like that. It's you know what to do at this point forward because you took the next step on the path.
1:12:44 Jonathan Fields? Yeah.
1:12:45 Speaker 07 Like, I don't know what to do at the fork until I get to the fork.
1:12:49 Jonathan Fields? I love that. Um, feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well in this conversation. So in a, in this container of good life project.
1:12:59 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:12:59 Jonathan Fields? If I offer up the phrase to live a good life.
1:13:01 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:13:02 Jonathan Fields? What comes up?
1:13:04 Speaker 07 Be yourself.
1:13:08 Speaker 07 The authenticity of you is the good life.
1:13:12 Jonathan Fields? Thank you.
1:13:13 Speaker 07 You're welcome. Pleasure to be with you.
1:13:15 Jonathan Fields? Be involved.
1:13:19 Jonathan Fields? Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet, you'll also love the conversation we had with Brene Brown about vulnerability, courage and leadership transformation. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did, because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome
1:14:02 Jonathan Fields? too, but just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
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