How To Make Better Decisions (with way less uncertainty) - Joe Hudson - #1171

Joe Hudson is a coach, entrepreneur and a podcast host. Expect to learn how important it is to develop the skill of decision-making, why intelligent people often struggle the most with making decisions, how to spot the biggest indicators you are about to make a terrible decision, the things that separate someone who makes decisions quickly from someone who agonises over everything, how to distinguish genuine intuition from fear masquerading as intuition, and much more… Sponsors: Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription to the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a free trial from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (00:00) How Your Decisions Shape Your Life (02:27) Can You Train Yourself to Be More Decisive? (03:34) Why Some People Struggle to Make Decisions (04:30) Emotion vs Information: What Drives Our Decisions? (11:03) The Secret to Making Great Decisions (16:52) How Fear Holds Us Back (25:43) Why You Should Trust Your Brain’s GPS (29:27) Is Courage the Key to Better Decisions? (32:36) The Hidden Trap of Audience Capture (39:31) Why Your Principles Matter More Than You Think (44:04) The Emotions That Control Your Decisions (53:27) How to Make Conscious Choices (01:03:43) How to Face the Biggest Decision of Your Life (01:09:44) Why Change Feels So Scary (01:12:47) What Actually Makes a Decision Bad? (01:18:16) Is Seeking Reassurance a Form of Self-Abandonment? (01:20:46) Is Decisiveness Just Confidence in Uncertainty? (01:24:48) Does Regret Paralyse Our Ability to Make Decisions? (01:28:30) What Are the Costs of Indecision? (01:29:47) How to Take Back Control of Your Choices (01:37:05) How to Distinguish Real Intuition From False Instincts (01:38:06) Joe’s Recent Retreat (01:41:50) Where to Find Joe Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I want to talk about decision making.

• 0:01Joe Hudson?

  Great.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  There's a line from Alex Hormozi that says, the life that you want is on the other side of a few hard decisions. And the reason that you're unhappy is because you're not making them. In your experience, how important is the skill of decision making and guiding someone's life?

• 0:17Joe Hudson?

  It's everything. Like, if you look at,

• 0:22Joe Hudson?

  if, let's say, like, the one of the things I talk about when I'm working with

• 0:27Joe Hudson?

  leaders who are like growing billion dollar companies is that your business is only two things. It's the relationships that are held in the business and the decisions that you make. Everything else can, goes to those two things. There's some capital, you know, there's potentially some IP, but those came from decisions that people made. So it is, for a business, it's the critical thing. And if you look at,

• 0:51Joe Hudson?

  I think it was founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who said,

• 0:57Joe Hudson?

  for my next company, I want it to be the best decision making company in the world. So after somebody grew the biggest company in the world, he then said, my next company is going to be just really great at making decisions. That's how important it is for a company. But if you look at your life, well, what doesn't happen from a decision? Right? Like, if you're smoking cigarettes, if you are building a company, if you are getting married, who you're getting married to, how you stay married, how you fight. All these things are decisions that we make. From, for, I think for the framework purposes, I think it's really important to separate. What, and this is, this is the way I think about it. So it's, is there's choices and there's decisions.

• 1:42Joe Hudson?

  So choices are just the things that you don't think about. Like, right now, you're sitting like this, you never thought about it. You just, right? And, or the first question, maybe you thought, this is a great first question. Maybe you're like, is that the right first question? Or is that the other, is that the right first question? If you are just making choices, it means that you're not sitting there really spending time on it. And so I call that a choice. And decisions is where you're really making, spending time on it. So knowing how to make great choices and great decisions is all of life. Like, everything that you're gonna, and when you're at your grave, it's going to be a series of decisions that you made. So I'd say it's super, hyper critical. And if you can learn how to make great decisions, then you're going to make decisions that are going to make a great life.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Can you train decisiveness? Or is it largely a personality trait?

• 2:32Joe Hudson?

  You can absolutely train decisiveness. I don't think it's a training, but it's a recognition. There's some recognitions that can happen that allow for decisiveness. So once you really understand what's happening behind decision making, then you can, then decisiveness starts to flow from that. Like, why, why is it hard for people to make decisions? Why are some decisions hard to make? Why are some choices, like, I'm going to go to the grocery store, I took a left here, I'm calling my friend? Why we don't even think about those and why some are really difficult to make? And when you get that, when you understand that, then decisiveness becomes, like, there'd be less and less decisions, more and more choices. And the choice, and the, and the result is better and better.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  It feels to me like system one, system two, thinking a bit from Daniel Kahneman, thinking fast and slow. So the system two is very deliberate and you sort of have to pay a lot of cognitive attention to it. And then over time, you train system two into system one. And the sort of carefully thought decision becomes the, the default.

• 3:34Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  What types of people

• 3:37Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  tends to struggle with decisions the most? What's the avatar of the sorts of people who tend to be the most indecisive? That have the toughest time when it comes to?

• 3:49Joe Hudson?

  Well, I'll give you like what humans, what most people in society would call them. And then I'll tell you like the thing that's underneath, right? So it's going to be people who are perfectionists, people who've been criticized a lot as children, people who, who were told that their value wasn't getting it right. And it's really important for them to get it right. And people who are, like, have a tendency to be scared of consequences. Those are the people that are going to have a hard time making decisions. That they're going to be long prolonged SWOT analysis, you know, thinking, thinking, thinking, still thinking about it six months later. Should I marry them? Should I not marry them? That's, that's going to be what's behind it for them.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  How much is decision making an emotional problem? And how much is it an informational problem?

• 4:37Joe Hudson?

  Hundred percent emotional problem. So that's not, that's not me. That is, that is neurology. So if you read a book called Descartes, 20, 2012,

• 4:54Joe Hudson?

  he wrote that the emotional center of the brain is what makes decisions. So there are people who have had the emotional center of their brain damaged. And they cease to be able to make decisions. Their whole, their IQ stays the same, but their whole life falls apart. Because, well, what color pen should I use? And 15 minutes later, they're still trying to figure out what color pen or where am I going to have lunch? Right? So there is, just to be, because there's some neuroscientists in, in the audience, he's going to be, he's going to quibble with me. So I'm gonna, there is a place where the emotional center of the brain doesn't make the decision. Like, if a snake comes at you and you jump away, then it bypasses that.

• 5:36Joe Hudson?

  But if you're trying to decide who to hire, if you're trying to decide what investment to make, no matter what your spreadsheet says, you're making a decision to feel a certain way. So if you think about your life and you say, how many decisions did I make to feel loved, to feel liked, to feel valuable? How many decisions did I make to not feel like a failure, to not feel like a loser? To not feel dismissed, to not feel rejected? Right there is guaranteed 90% of your life. So that is actually how we make decisions. Neurologically speaking, that's how, so, so the idea that you're going to make a logical decision is absolute crap. It did like, it, it's a great idea and it's a, and it's a great way to like justify emotional repression, but it's not true neurologically. So that's why I say it's a hundred percent an emotional decision.

• 6:21Joe Hudson?

  Where logic comes in is logic says,

• 6:26Joe Hudson?

  I'm going to logically try to figure out how I'm going to feel if I make this decision, or how I'm going to feel if I make this other decision. So a SWOT analysis of like where you should take your business, where you should invest a million dollars. And if I said to you, and let's say your, your number one modus operandi was, like, was happiness. And I said, hey, I guarantee, and you believe me, you'd be happier if you did this. And you had that knowledge, there's the SWOT analysis goes away, doesn't matter. Maybe your thing is like a meaning, like this will give you the most meaning. Okay, I'm going to do that thing. But whatever that thing is, you're going to do it. And all the logic is doing is trying to figure out how you're going to get to the emotional state.

• 7:11Joe Hudson?

  And so that's, that's just the neurological reality of it. And it, and it gives us the biggest clue on how to make great decisions. If you are scared to feel a certain thing, then a certain solution set in your decision making is not available to you.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Why?

• 7:28Joe Hudson?

  If I'm scared to be a loser, I'm not going to be able to take the same kind of risk. So you and I know the guy at the bar who doesn't mind getting rejected, doesn't mind that feeling of rejection. They'll go and hit on 10 women and they will have options that the person who's scared of rejection, I don't want to feel that. And then I make a choice, because I don't want to get rejected, to not hit on those women, I have no choice.

• 7:54Joe Hudson?

  It's, and it's that in everything. I'm scared that my boss will yell at me and I will have to feel like a dweeb. I don't want to feel like a dweeb. So I'm not going to say the thing to my boss. And therefore that option is off the table.

• 8:11Joe Hudson?

  So that, that's, that's really what's going on behind decision making. So if you can get to, oh, I love, and this is going to sound weird to everybody, but like, I, I don't mind feeling rejected. Like, that guy, like, I'm good with that. Even like, I look forward to feeling rejected. I know that I'm winning if I have tried enough times, right? Just like a hurdler who's like, I know if I practice enough, if I do enough reps, doesn't matter how many times I fail, I'm winning. Or if I say, oh, I'm okay feeling like a dweeb, I'm okay embarrassing myself, I'm okay not looking good for a moment. Then I can make really clear decisions, because then I'm making decisions based on my principles,

• 8:50Joe Hudson?

  based on what's most important to me, not based on a fear of, of a consequence.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, the,

• 9:01Speaker 00

  your value, so your option set gets constrained a lot if you're not prepared to face a ton of emotions.

• 9:09Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  James, business partner in Neutonic, used to work door to door selling like gas for N Power, which is like a utility company in the UK. And he needed, I think, two more sales before the end of the week in order to hit his target and not lose his job. And he was getting all stressed about it. And he spoke to his, the team leader. And the team leader said, what's your sales rate? Like, how many doors do you need to knock on to get a sale?

• 9:35Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  He said, at the moment, it's one in 50. He says, okay, so if you do 100 doors, you've hit your target. You just need to be rejected 98 times. If you're rejected 98 times, you've hit your target.

• 9:46Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  I always think about that frame.

• 9:48Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. I, so I, I have a, I have an even better. I had a barber, it still is my barber, but he doesn't give haircuts to very many people anymore. And the reason is, is because we were sitting and I was looking at his paintings. And I'm like, wow, man, you've got some amazing paintings. He's like, yeah, I'm like, well, are you in any galleries? He's like, no. And I was talking to him and I saw that fear of rejection. I said, hey, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you, I think it was one or $2,000. I'll give you $2,000 if you can get 50 rejections in the next 60 days.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  $2,000 if you can get 50 rejections?

• 10:22Joe Hudson?

  In the next 60 days.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:24Joe Hudson?

  He couldn't get 60 rejections. He got two acceptances. And so now he's making a living selling his art.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  That's

• 10:31Joe Hudson?

  But the reframe was, you're not failing, you're winning.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 10:37Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. So that's a hack, but the, the, the, the deeper truth, right?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  So manipulative.

• 10:43Joe Hudson?

  It was, it totally was, yeah. It totally was. And for his own good and, and, and his art deserves to be out there. And, but that's the, the thing is like, he wasn't scared of making $2,000. He was scared of the feeling of failure.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  A great frame. How do you come to think about decision making then? What are the component skills?

• 11:08Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. So, so the other thing to understand is like in that, before I can go into that, the, the, the decision, like, back to decisions and choices. So choices are often done because we have subconscious.

• 11:26Joe Hudson?

  Emotions that we don't want to feel and never gets into consciousness, right? Like, so I'm gonna smoke the cigarette, so I don't have to feel the thing. Or I'm gonna scroll, so I don't have to feel the thing. Or I'm going to tell my wife I love her because that lets me feel the thing, right? So that's one set of like, how do you, how do you make good choices? How do you make great decisions? So the thing to understand, I noticed, the thing that like unlocked this for me around making decisions was that every time I was making a decision, I was in fear. So if you are in fear, your brain does certain things. One of the things your brain does is it goes black and white thinking. Like you become very binary. Should I take the job?

• 12:10Joe Hudson?

  Should I not take the job? Should I break up with the girl? Should I not break up with the girl?

• 12:16Joe Hudson?

  It doesn't say, oh, I could talk to the girl and say, this is what I need if we're gonna stay together. It doesn't say, I could buy the car, or I could lease the car, or I could buy the car that's a different color or whatever. So it doesn't see all the possibilities. It narrows things down into black and white thinking. The other thing that it fear does in the brain is that it creates a false end. Like, okay, so you make a bad decision. So what? Like, you get to make another one tomorrow. You get to make another one after that. Amazon is another, another great example of Amazon. Make decisions fast if you can, if you can pull them back. If you, if you can't, then, okay, take a minute, make your decision.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Reversible decision.

• 13:02Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, exactly. So, so that's another one that, that fear does to the brain. And, and so, so that false end is like, you don't see through the end, like what's happening afterwards. And so that's why most people think of decisions as like, what do I do about this decision? They don't think about decisions as a portfolio, the way somebody who's running a hedge fund or in your stock account, if you have one, you're saying, I don't need to get everything right. I just need to be principled about what I buy because a majority of them will work out. And so people are thinking, this decision right now is really important instead of the portfolio of decisions that I'm gonna make this year.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Final decision I will ever make.

• 13:48Joe Hudson?

  Right, exactly. So, so, and so that's how we know that we're in fear. Now, there's the, the rare occasion where someone's like, oh, I'm just gonna really think through this. And I'm, okay, I've thought about it. I've collected data. This is what I'm gonna do. Right? That's pretty rare. So most of the people are like, oh, my God, I gotta make a decision. What am I gonna do? It means there's just a tremendous amount of fear that's going on under the surface. And so one of the things to learn is that the fear is of a consequence. And if you go and you feel that consequence, you're gonna make a better decision. So I'll give you an example of this. My wife and I have been married now 27 years. We've been married a long time.

• 14:33Joe Hudson?

  But I've married, I've been married to three or four different women, all with her name, right? She's been very, she was very different at 27 than she was at 37, than she was at 47. And, and so there's been these moments in our life where the, the, the marriage is rough. Like, what, what are we doing? And I'm scared to lose her. So I'm, I'm trying to make decisions to keep her. But I'm abandoning myself by doing that. I'm abandoning my principles. So both of us have come up with this, this method where we basically just mourn the marriage. Good, well, I'm scared of is that I'm gonna lose her. So I'm, I'm just gonna assume I've lost her. I'm gonna feel all that stuff.

• 15:18Joe Hudson?

  And then in feeling all that stuff, I'm not scared of it anymore. And then my response is, okay, this is who I am. And I'm gonna show up like that. And she shows up as who she is. And then we work out like, how are we gonna be together? Do we wanna be together? What's gonna actually go on? But that fear isn't there. And this is like an age old process. So whether you are a stoic or a samurai or Tibetan Book of Living or Dying, the way to overcome the fear of death is to actually visualize and feel the experience of death over and over in slow motion again and again. And then that

• 15:56Speaker 00

  They include like watching your own body decay away and stuff. It's like even after you're dead, you're thinking about it.

• 16:02Joe Hudson?

  Because, because you're going past the false end.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 16:07Joe Hudson?

  That's why it's critical.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 16:09Joe Hudson?

  Right? It's the same thing. If you're gonna, if you're gonna like mourn your marriage, you don't go to the moment of divorce. You go to like, and then I'm lonely after, and I can't find a woman. And then, you know, you do the whole thing.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  And then, and then.

• 16:22Joe Hudson?

  And then, and then, and then, and then I have a marriage again. Or then I'm, you know, whatever it is. So, so overcoming your fear that way is a really critical thing. Because if you're having a hard time making a decision, it's not because you don't know what to do typically. It's because you're scared of a consequence. And the consequence you're scared of is an emotional consequence.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  That is the episode. Like, that's the, that, that's really lovely. That's a great, a great summary. Why is it fear? Why is that the emotion? I understand that there's this sort of absolutist thinking. I understand that creates a, a type of constraint, which will cause panic. I also understand that if there's a kind of finality to things, because you don't think that the life is gonna continue beyond this decision. And if you choose, especially if you choose the wrong one or not.

• 17:14Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  But why fear? Like, why, why is that the case? Why is that the emotion default?

• 17:19Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, this is a great question because the fear is because the identity is gonna get messed with. Right? So like, who do I think I am? I think that I am a very successful person. It's important for me to be a successful person. So taking this job is really important. The things that are really important to us are the things that define us and our identity. And so that's gonna be a, that's gonna be where we're really important. And in some way, every time we're making a decision and we are in that fear-based decision-making process, it teaches us exactly where we're not principled in being ourselves.

• 17:56Joe Hudson?

  And so that's actually the antidote. So for instance, I have a set of principles that I make 80% of my decisions by. And I make them that way, the same way that like Berkshire Hathaway says, this is what we invest in. It's not guesswork. It's like, these things have to be true for us to invest. And I think right now they're sitting on like $230 billion because nothing is true enough to invest in. They're like, it doesn't hit what we invest in. So we're just holding cash. Right? And that was the case, maybe like three months ago. I don't know where they are today. And, and so it's the same thing. If I'll make a decision based on a set of principles

• 18:40Joe Hudson?

  of who I wanna be in the world. And if I'm thinking about those principles, the way I think about the principles are, if I have five, seven principles, do they,

• 18:54Joe Hudson?

  do they get me where I wanna go 80% of the time? Do they almost guarantee success over time? Not a single success, but over time? And do they solve 80% of my problems?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Can you give me an example of a principle? It doesn't necessarily need to be one of yours.

• 19:11Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a decision-making principle. We have our business, which is whenever we're building something new, we go to the thing we know the least amount about and we build it first.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Give me an example.

• 19:26Joe Hudson?

  So if I'm gonna build a car and I know how to build a car, but I don't know how to build a catalytic converter, most people will build the car, then build the catalytic converter and then go, oh, shit, the catalytic converter doesn't work inside this car. I'm gonna have to rebuild part of the car. I'll say, let's build the catalytic converter first.

• 19:45Joe Hudson?

  And now I'll build the car around it because it's gonna be a more efficient process.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Why?

• 19:50Joe Hudson?

  Why is it a more efficient process?

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Why, why do the hard thing first?

• 19:53Joe Hudson?

  Because then I don't have to redo the car. Cause I don't have to like

• 19:57Speaker 00

  How does that make, how does that help with the decision? Like, I suppose that's a principle, but in what way does that make the decision more likely to be

• 20:04Joe Hudson?

  Right, so if we're, yeah, so the, so the decision that we're, if we're in the decision of we're gonna build out a podcast for the first time, we're gonna be more successful because we went to the thing we don't know and we've solved that first, rather than do all the things we know and solve that later.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Okay, can you give an example that's something from a personal life, not a business life?

• 20:25Joe Hudson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. So my, I have a personal, I have a personal, this is actually the perfect one. I have a personal principle, so everything is an iteration. So what that means is the same thing that I was teaching to the barber, which is failure isn't the thing. There's just, I run experiments and I learn, and then I keep on running experiments and I keep on learning and I keep on running experiments and then I learn. If I do that, instead of thinking I fail or I succeed, I'm just like constantly learning, then I ultimately always succeed.

• 21:01Joe Hudson?

  Because I'm just running iterations until I figure the thing out. And there's a lot of neurology on this. There's, there's something called the hybenaula and, and it basically prevents us from failing inside of our brain. And it's basically the part of our brain that's in all invertebrates, I'm loosely speaking here, that if a bear goes and fights for mating rights and they lose, it stops them from going, I'm gonna go fight for mating rights again, right now. Right? Like it, it's, it's the same thing in our brain that it's like, when you're on a diet and you're like, I'm gonna be on this specific diet for a while. And you're like, great, for like two weeks. And then you eat that one piece of chocolate cake or whatever. And then you're like, fuck the diet and you're completely off. But you just ate one chocolate cake. Like, so what?

• 21:46Joe Hudson?

  You just get back on the diet. But we don't, because that part of our brain is like, we can't fail again. In my world, it's, everything is an iteration. So what's the experiment I'm gonna try? What's the next experiment I'm gonna try? What's the next experiment I'm gonna try? And they did this study with, uh, people who were, I think it was like at the poverty line who lost weight successfully. And all of them, or not all of them, but a grand percentage of them, all were doing iterative mindset. They were all saying, I'm just running a series of experiments until I find something that works. So for me, everything is an iteration. Everything is, I'm trying. So we run, we, we do this in our business, but I do this in life. So I do something that goes horribly wrong.

• 22:31Joe Hudson?

  I'm like, great, that was an iteration. What's the next iteration? Or I'm like, I have a big decision to make. I'm like, ah, well, just what's the simple iteration? I'm gonna do that.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've been, at least in your business, uh, impressively prepared to put stock in shit that I've told you to do.

• 22:46Joe Hudson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  And I'm like, huh, he listened to me. And he not just listened to me, not just give me lip service or do the thing, say that he wants to do the thing and genuinely want to do the thing. And then encountered some practical fear or some emotional barrier. Like I've said, hey, I think you should do this. I think we might've even talked about it last time on the podcast.

• 23:05Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  You doing, I wanted you to do basically the, uh, master coach critiques, breakdowns emotionally of these things. And these videos are ripping and you guys are doing like the, you, you fucked it on a few of the early ones.

• 23:16Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  And had a couple of winners on the early ones and then changed it and changed it. And now it's like, yeah, it's fucking awesome.

• 23:22Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  It's really good.

• 23:23Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. And that's, and so that's what, that's exactly it. And so that's the way it is with everybody in the company. Anybody wants to try and experiment, as long as it's like within brand, go.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:33Joe Hudson?

  As a matter of fact, we actually have a criteria. Everybody who works for us has to run, depending on where they are, three to five experiments on how to do their job differently every quarter.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 23:44Joe Hudson?

  So that's, that's how deeply we take, everything is an iteration. And it allows you to make mistakes. It allows you to learn. It allows you not to care so much. It allows you to have pace over getting it right. Most people will lose in life because they are trying to get it right, rather than trying to keep a pace. It's like forward progress is more important than getting things right.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  I think the, as you're explaining it, I'm noticing what's coming up in me is a reduction in the sense of grandeur about and, and, uh, pressure around decisions. Like, well, I'm just moving forward. You've removed the finality of this decision and also kind of baked into it that an experiment that doesn't prove the hypothesis isn't a failure. You did still learn something, which is that hypothesis was wrong and we continue and continue. I'm sure you've heard.

• 24:38Joe Hudson?

  And I'm never, and I'm never done.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:40Joe Hudson?

  I'm just gonna keep on learning and that's just one principle.

• 24:43Speaker 00

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• 25:28Speaker 00

  And right now you can get $25 off, bring it down to 340 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I use and save $25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/ModernWisdom. That's functionhealth.com/ModernWisdom. Uh, have you heard of GPS brain?

• 25:45Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  The GPS principle, it's, it's something not too dissimilar, which is if you are trying to get to a destination following Google Maps, when you miss the turn, Google Maps doesn't judge itself or you for you missing the turn. It just updates the route.

• 26:00Joe Hudson?

  Correct.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  GPS brain.

• 26:02Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  It's cool.

• 26:03Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. So a cool, so there's this guy who was a, I love this story. This guy, he was a surgeon and he was a dog trainer. And so in dog training, you have this little click that tells the dog you did it right. And you go click, click, click. And that just, it's like a GPS brain. Click, click, click, click. So he's working with this, um, dog, his dog. He's pretty successful, but he loses his shit one day and just fucking yells at the dog. Doesn't do the clicker, just yells at the dog. And the dog like goes back, like regresses horribly. And so he's like, oh crap. Like that's what happens when there's any kind of emotional content. In, in his assumption is either good or bad.

• 26:48Joe Hudson?

  It's just like, you did it right or you didn't do it right. GPS brain.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 26:52Joe Hudson?

  So he goes to his surgeon students and he's teaching them like how to tie tendons and stuff. And there's like a six press, six thing problem. And he starts bringing a clicker. Instead of saying, good job, you got it right. Don't do that. What are you doing here? And he just clicks when they get it right. And he improved the rate of their learning dramatically.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  No way.

• 27:14Joe Hudson?

  By having GPS brain. So that's another, like, okay. If, if everything is an iteration is a principle that gives me GPS brain, which is what it does, then it helps me be more successful. So now when I'm confronting a problem, what do I do about this? One of the principles I look at is everything's an iteration. What, if everything's an iteration, what would that tell me to do?

• 27:37Speaker 00

  And this is in service of trying to improve the quality and accuracy of decisions, but also rid that fear, get rid of that fear, not just feeling it, not just going to the like reductio ad absurdium of the kind of mental projection.

• 27:50Joe Hudson?

  It's mostly, this is who I want to be in the world. Do I want to be neurotically freaking out about each one of my decisions? Nah, I don't really want to be that. Does this work as to make me successful? Yes, it does. Is this like more comfortable and awesome? Yes, it is. Cool. That's a principle. Like I have another principle that is connection. It's, you know, we have the connection course, but it's a principle. It means that if we build somebody, we, we, how do we build them with connection? If I'm sitting here talking to you, how do we actually build connection? And over the years, we've actually built connection. If I run a course, how do I make sure everybody feels like we're deeply connected with them and we really care about them because we do?

• 28:34Joe Hudson?

  And how do we help them find connection? And I have this video with Ali Abdaal where I'm coaching him and we're having this moment where I was like, oh, you know, I don't, not sure if I mentioned, it's one of my things. I was just like, okay, let's go through all your business problem and look at it through the lens of connection. What would make you feel more connected to yourself and others as a solution? And you could see him come up with like multiple solutions to the problem because he's just looking through the lens of that principle.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:01Joe Hudson?

  And so it's the same thing. And so, so now I have a decision to make. Let's say like, do I go on the Chris Williamson podcast? And I'm like, everything's an iteration. Okay, I don't give a shit if I pop, blow this, like, why would I care? Okay, that's a one, that's a, and connection. Well, I, I love being with Chris. This is something that makes me feel connected. I'm gonna do it. And I get to connect with a lot of people. Yeah, okay. And so I'll just go through my principles if I have a decision to make and I will.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  It feels like, I mean, we haven't even got into the, like the structure, but this seems really interesting to me. Kind of the idea of engineering bravery or courage in a way that this is like improving your bravery to some degree. It's increasing your preparedness to face scary things. When people think about bravery and courage, a lot of the time that's what it is.

• 29:51Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  So i- is bravery or courage are those words that factor into this at all?

• 29:56Joe Hudson?

  It's so interesting because as you say it, I'm like, yeah, that's true, but it's, it's, but it's not, wasn't the thought process, right?

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 30:04Joe Hudson?

  So the thought process was, what are the thing, how, I can't control the outcome of a decision, but I can control how I want to be in that decision-making process. Am I proud of how I made that decision? That's the thing I can control. So it came from that. It came from like, I think over a portfolio of decisions, these principles are gonna work and I'm gonna be proud of them even if they don't work. And if they don't work, I'll iterate on the principles themselves, right?

• 30:32Speaker 00

  You know that from the outside, somebody looking at you choosing to make decisions that are big or scary or difficult, whatever, in that way would go, wow, that is brave.

• 30:41Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Very courageous.

• 30:42Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  You've chosen to do that.

• 30:43Joe Hudson?

  Right. So, so then, then, then what happens? So this is the cool thing. So then you start making decisions that way. And most of them are easy. You're like, okay, I'll make it. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, that makes sense. And then there's one where it's like, I don't want to fucking do that. There's nothing in me that wants to do that. But if I look at my principles, it's very clear that's what I'm supposed to do. And you look and you say, well, shit. All I can say is that my principles work most of the fucking time and I can't come up with a better solution. So I'm gonna do it, even though I don't want to do it. And you do it and maybe it works. Most of the time it works. Occasionally it doesn't work. But every time you act on the principle, the courage, there, there's less and less

• 31:28Joe Hudson?

  courage required.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Because you are positively reinforced that the principles work, which means you trust them more in future?

• 31:35Joe Hudson?

  That's one. And the other one is because you are being who you want to be. So there is an implicit reward, whether, no matter how it works out.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. I'm showing up in the way that I want to. And if the choice was between showing up in the way that I want to and the decision going wrong and showing up in the way that I don't want to and the decision going right, a lot of the time people would actually prefer the former to the latter.

• 31:58Joe Hudson?

  I think I, Margaret Cho, if I have her name right, she had an early stand-up. Like I'm saying how old I am, but she had an early, I think it was her first stand-up. And she was a comedian who had like an Asian sitcom and it failed. And her whole sitcom thing, basically this one woman show is.

• 32:21Joe Hudson?

  It failed, but that's not what hurt. What hurt was I abandoned myself and then it failed. I would rather have been true to myself and fail than been fake and succeed.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Have I taught you about audience capture before? Do you know this term?

• 32:38Joe Hudson?

  No, no.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  You, I detest how afflicted you are with not being on the internet. I require you to be more terminally online. Fucking infuriating.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Okay, so, um, audience capture is when a creator typically on the internet, but I'm sure it's happened with newscasters and, and, and people in late night shows and more traditional media as well, uh, begins to not create what they want to, but they create what they think their audience wants. So it's referred to as throwing red meat to the audience.

• 33:11Joe Hudson?

  I get it, yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Very common and may have even been born out of the politics wing. If you're a political commentator, you know, you have your takes and your audience comes to you. Well, that's an interesting take for the person that's on the left or the right or the whatever. And, and then after a while, you realize because you're looking at the popularity, uh, maybe the play counts, the positive reinforcement that you get, oh, when I talk in this way about this kind of subject from this lens, people seem to give me more positive reinforcement. And over time, you like Pavlovianly can condition yourself into this type of behavior.

• 33:46Joe Hudson?

  Gotcha.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  What's interesting about this is it's almost like a looking glass creator.

• 33:51Joe Hudson?

  Wow.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Here.

• 33:52Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's fucking cool, eh?

• 33:54Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts here.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  What you, the thing that's one interesting wrinkle is it's not what the creator knows the audience wants. It's what the creator thinks that the audience wants.

• 34:08Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  And people don't always know what they want.

• 34:10Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Which is interesting. Like, what's that Henry Ford line? If I asked the customer what he wanted, he would say a faster horse.

• 34:15Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  So that, that's, that's one interesting thing. And then you roll the clock forward a little bit, you know, roll the clock forward six months, one year, a couple of years. This creator is now out of touch with their taste, uh, because they haven't created something from themselves for a very long time.

• 34:29Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  They are kind of marioneted or puppeted by the audience, but their projection of the audience, which means they don't actually know what they want. They're just kind of trying to do something that they think that they want.

• 34:41Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  And this is the kind of pernicious thing. If the audience stops loving the work that you do, when you compromise yourself in order to serve them.

• 34:52Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  You will resent them so quickly because you say, how can you not love me? How can you not appreciate what I'm doing? Look at what I did for you. I even pushed myself to the side.

• 35:04Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Right, I shunted myself to the side of my own work just to serve you. And I'm sure you got lots of things, but the one final bit on top.

• 35:11Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Ethan Strauss wrote this fucking outstanding article and it's called, "Criticism Capture Is More Dangerous Than Audience Capture." And he wrote it about three or four years ago. He's a sports reporter, but he thinks about audience dynamics and like, like creative dynamics too. What he basically said is, he thinks that it's the criticisms, not the compliments that are more deranging to people. And when you see this, you actually realize that many people are criticism captured, not just audience captured. So there's two things going on. They protect themselves from the potential negative. They do it by being more inflammatory, by being more aggressive, by sort of like the, the guy outside that flares his lats outside of the nightclub. Or they do it by, uh, neutering themselves, by sort of staying small and milquetoast and, and always sitting on the fence

• 35:57Speaker 00

  and never actually staking a claim in the ground. Maybe they do it by always caveatting, by always having some sort of equivocation before they speak, so that every single potential in negative permutation of what they were going to say is already been put out there. Uh, there's a lot of ways that they can do this, but, um, you see some people that are more, um, positive reinforcement, uh, compelled.

• 36:20Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Uh, and then you see some people that are more negative reinforcement compelled. And the perfect example, and I think that this is true, and it's the canonical example that's used by Ethan in his article about criticism capture. It's Jordan Peterson.

• 36:30Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Is very criticism captured and you see how warping. And that man maybe had, apart from perhaps like Trump and Tate, but whilst not being a Tatey and Trumpian kind of individual.

• 36:42Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  A volume of criticism that almost no one in history has had to deal with, right? Outside of like fucking leaders of countries and shit like that. And, um, who would be able to deal with that? Almost nobody. But I do think it's a fair comment to say that criticism did some fucking warping. So, audience capture, criticism capture, some new ideas for you.

• 37:02Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I love, there, there's so much stuff. The first tangential thought I have is like,

• 37:11Joe Hudson?

  it, it, it also creates the creation of porn-like entertainment.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Oh, this is George Mack's idea. You run enough split tests and you end up with a porn website.

• 37:19Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  This is George's idea.

• 37:21Joe Hudson?

  Okay.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, it's brilliant, it's fucking wonderful.

• 37:23Joe Hudson?

  It's like, I'm going to, if you're red meeting your audience, I'm going to give them more and more emotional, like this is happening on our news and everything like that. I'm going to give them more and more emotional hotness and, but I'm going to desensitize them so much as I'm doing it that the, the only thing that's left is like hate and, yeah, so.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Most base, most inflammatory.

• 37:43Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. So, so it's an interesting thing. It's like audience capture leading to the destruction of your audience.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  The pornification of everything.

• 37:53Joe Hudson?

  And the destruction of your audience, which is like fascinating. The second thought process that I had there is like, this isn't just creators, this is life. This is how people operate in a, in a, in a business with their boss. Did I make them happy to her? Did I make the people around me happy?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  More pleasure and less pain.

• 38:13Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, exactly. And that's, doesn't make good decisions. Like, if, if they, at the end of the day, if you look at somebody who's been doing that, they, either their business or their audience or their personhood has dropped off of a cliff somewhere along the line. Whether that is, in Jordan's case, uh, anxiety, like deep anxiety, or, um, you know, you become the person that you hate or you have the resentment. It doesn't actually lead to a successful life. But if you're principled, if you're saying, these are the principles, and this is true for companies too. Somebody is principled about what they're doing.

• 38:56Joe Hudson?

  It doesn't mean that they're not listening and they're not reacting, but if they're principled about what they're doing, if they're like, this is our brand and we don't stray from the brand, or this is what we're here to do. This is our mission. We're not strained from the mission. We might find 20 ways to get it done, but we're not strained. These are our principles. Those people have much longer lasting success without the burnout too. And it's the same with a human in life. Like, if you look at the people who are 70 year old, 70 years old, have done something significant and are happy, they're almost always have lived a pretty principled life. You might not agree with their principles, but they've lived a pretty principled life.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Does this mean that we need to canonize our principles before we can start making good decisions?

• 39:36Joe Hudson?

  I don't think before, but it's super fricking useful.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 39:40Joe Hudson?

  So we have a, we have a, we have a course called the Great Decisions Course and that is.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Which everyone needs to get ready to sign up for, cause it's in January?

• 39:47Joe Hudson?

  January, January, sells out usually in a day.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Fuck, yeah.

• 39:50Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Well, okay, get ready.

• 39:51Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Um, yeah. Yeah, does this mean, okay, process, component skills?

• 39:56Joe Hudson?

  So that's one of it, yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Decision making. Does that mean that, is that one of the first things to do? I mean, you're not going to stop making decisions. You'll be like, I'm going to put all decisions in a holding pattern.

• 40:04Joe Hudson?

  Right, no, no, no.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Including what pants I'm going to wear today up until the point at which I've done my principles.

• 40:09Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, so one of the things you can do is just start looking at the decisions you made in the last year and say, what are the principles I've actually lived by? Am I, am I proud of those? And are they working?

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Might be an ugly reflection.

• 40:18Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, for a lot of people it is. But yeah, so two main components of great decision making and great, making great choices is, can I become comfortable with all sorts of emotions so that I have my, my set of solutions available to me?

• 40:36Speaker 00

  And the other one. To talk to the girl in the bar.

• 40:38Joe Hudson?

  Right. And the other one is, what are the principles that I want to live by that are going to lead me to success? That are going to solve most of my problems for me if I just live by my principles? And those two things are going to be incredibly, like, that's a, a huge portion of the work. Yeah, that, that's really.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  I imagine that's going to be hugely disappointing to a lot of people that they were expecting to have some lovely framework for how to bypass having to feel things or having to face things. It's saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, what's the flow chart that I follow in order to make sure that my decision doesn't require me to encounter any negative emotions?

• 41:15Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. Yeah, so here's, here's, here's the coolest thing. This is one of the things I get to see in my work so much. This, and I, and they're going to hate this even more.

• 41:27Joe Hudson?

  I'll give you the example that just happened recently. My daughter is applying for colleges and she's like, I don't know what to write the essay on. The essay is so important, this is a big thing. Fear, black and white thinking, I can't do this, I can't do that. I'm just watching her say. And I was like, hey babe, fuck them. Fuck what the colleges say, fuck what everybody says, fuck. Like, what the fuck? Like, who the fuck are them? Like, be you, what the fuck do you want? And she's like, what are you, like, what's going on?

• 41:58Speaker 00

  Why are you swearing?

• 41:59Joe Hudson?

  Exactly. And I'm like, I see how angry you are at this whole thing, that you have to prove yourself to people. Like, this is bullshit. Go get angry for me. Like, and we have a thing in our house where anger is like, so she gets out the tennis racket, she gets the thing. And I'm, I'm like in Nepal at this moment, right? And she's at home and.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Oh, you're doing this virtually?

• 42:19Joe Hudson?

  I'm doing this virtually, yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Wonderful. So you're, uh, cursing, uh, you're, you're the half to, you're subjecting her to like hearing the bang, bang, bang.

• 42:28Joe Hudson?

  She doesn't do it in front of me.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:29Joe Hudson?

  And so she, she's like, okay, yeah, I got it. I'm going to go get angry. And she calls me the next day, she's like, I've already written three essays. I have all these ideas, they're, they're not quite good enough, they're not what I want to be yet, but I'm still writing. This is great. I have to get angry again. And a dozen times during the decisions, of course, easily in a week, you'll see somebody do that. You'll see somebody who had a massive decision they couldn't make, and it was just an emotion that they needed to feel, and the whole thing unlocks for them.

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• 43:45Speaker 00

  Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernd wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com/modernd wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What are the most common emotions that people encounter when it comes to that? They're stuck with a decision.

• 44:11Joe Hudson?

  Anger, fear, and grief, sadness. Yeah, sometimes helplessness. Yeah, there's some of the really hardcore decisions. But underneath that emotional content is like the identity breaking, right? So with my daughter, there's like she had to let go of this identity of being the smart one, of the straight A student, of the one who can get anything she wants done, done. She had to say, I'm gonna be myself, and people can accept me or not accept me. And that was her anger. Her anger was, fuck you. I don't care if you judge me. If your school can't see me, go fuck yourself.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  This keeps on sounding like bravery and courage. Like, that's the word. And maybe my conception of bravery is tied up in decisions more closely than it should be. But like, you hear that and you say, hey, this place is gonna take me or it's not gonna take me. And I'm a 17, 18-year-old girl, and you know, it's a big deal. And all of my friends are gonna have things to say if I don't get into college or whatever.

• 45:14Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  And I don't care. I'm just going to do the me thing. Like, that level of, from the outside, it seems like self-assuredness, self-esteem, self-worth, confidence, resilience, bravery, courage. It's like, all of these things wrapped up.

• 45:30Joe Hudson?

  It doesn't feel like it in the moment. I'm with you, because I'm like, yeah, that's true. I can't deny it. But in the moment, when you're doing it, it feels like I'm being honest. So it doesn't feel like shit. There is that moment of like, oh, my gosh. Because there is like the, I'm stepping into a bigger room. There's like, oh, my God, I'm getting on stage and I'm doing this thing. There is that excitement that comes along with it. So you feel the excitement, but mostly you feel like honesty, right? Because we know what it feels like when we compromise ourselves. It doesn't feel good. Like, there's a way to say, it takes a lot of courage and bravery to feel like you're compromising yourself.

• 46:13Joe Hudson?

  That feels like far worse than feeling like you've done the right thing and been rejected.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Alex has a line where he says, fear is an inch deep and a mile wide, that when...

• 46:25Joe Hudson?

  That's so good. Hold on, that's so good. That's so good. That is so fricking good.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Looking out over this massive lake, and you know, my God, how am I ever gonna be able to? It's so terrifying. You go like, oh, and it's a little splash.

• 46:40Joe Hudson?

  That's right.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Oh, fuck. Right. It wasn't that bad. And I mean, he, so I don't know how much you know about Alex. Actually, it would be wonderful to introduce you to at some point.

• 46:50Joe Hudson?

  He, I have enough internet to know who he is.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Oh, impressive. Wow, he's broken. He's really reached a scapegoat. Holy fuck.

• 46:59Joe Hudson?

  I mean, I geek out on business content, so there's that. And I actually really appreciate, I appreciate how straightforward he is.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  Very much so. So the straightforwardness, I think, is one of the things that I appreciate about him. And we were talking about, maybe over dinner, or maybe it was on the pod, about the first time he had to make a really difficult decision. And he'd done the classic college, I will be son of a Middle Eastern father success.

• 47:28Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Path. And then he realized that he wanted to start a gym, and the...

• 47:33Joe Hudson?

  Middle East, was he from Iran?

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:35Joe Hudson?

  You know, I lived there.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Why?

• 47:37Joe Hudson?

  Because my dad.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  You were in Iran for a...

• 47:40Joe Hudson?

  Well, when the revolution happened, yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  And then that was when you left?

• 47:43Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 47:45Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Does that feel strange now, watching so much of the world center around Iran, a place that you know, you knew quite well?

• 47:52Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, there's a grief in it for sure, because like, the people of Iran are beautiful people. Like, they were incredibly beautiful people. So there's a lot of grief around that.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Iranian father, and with all of the accoutrements that come along culturally. And yeah, Alex sort of tells this story. I was on track to do this thing, and then I move, I start gyms, and I have to tell my father. And my, you know, all I've wanted to do is kind of impress my father at some point. And he says, from the outside, that looks like an incredibly brave decision. But the way that Alex made that first decision was he drove across the country before he rang his dad. He literally, essentially went from coast to coast to put himself a few thousand kilometers away before he was prepared to pick up the phone. And one of the things that I'm sure you'll resonate with is...

• 48:40Joe Hudson?

  Beautiful.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  When you're faced with a difficult conversation, or a difficult decision or whatever, especially a conversation, and you're worried about it, and you're thinking about it, and you're ruminating and thought looping about it, and then you do it, fear is an inch deep and a mile wide, and you step in, you realize it's not. Soon as you do that first one, you go, all right, fucking, who else is on the chopping block? Like, what else can I do here? And you like, you go from having, I don't know, being a bow hunter who's taking forever, very carefully to wait to release the thing. And as soon as you release it, the bow sort of turns into a belt-fed M140 machine gun. And you're like...

• 49:22Speaker 00

  It's just interesting the way that the momentum thing works with that. And I think that you mentioned this before, that there's kind of a breakthrough moment, and then it kind of tumbles downhill. But again, without spiraling off into that.

• 49:32Joe Hudson?

  And also, there's, just to say this, there's like, also a long-term, short-term effect on bravery, because the fear has got that false end. The other thing that's occurring is, like, if you're doing the thing that is true to you over time, every time, you will have a life that's true to you. Because the things that aren't true to you are gonna be failures, the things that are true for you are gonna be successes. Like, you're going to create a life that's organized around who you are, instead of who you're pretending to be, or who you're trying to be, or who you want people to think you are. And so,

• 50:17Joe Hudson?

  short-term, making a decision that compromises might work to get your immediate need met, but it's not gonna work for creating a life that actually is suited for who you are, essentially. And like, I think Alex is a great example of this. Like, he is like, I am going to be me, period. As well, as much as my consciousness knows who I am, that's who I'm dedicated to. And he's created a life that is for him, that works for him.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  Well, regardless of whether or not you like him or don't like him, or I think even maybe, might be wrong, you might tell me I'm wrong, maybe a better example than Alex is Donald Trump, because it's somebody who has an obvious lot, maybe an even more obvious number of reasons to not be the person that he's being, if that makes sense.

• 51:11Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I see what you're saying. Right.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, the price of being Donald Trump is quite high. Somebody else that's actually probably less triggering, although maybe similarly triggering, is Sam Harris. So I think a lot about Sam Harris when I think about this. People regularly accuse Sam of flip-flopping on his beliefs, of not being logically consistent in some way that they see, that they think that he doesn't see, whatever. But the reason that I've always had a good bit of faith that he is doing what he believes is that he pays an incredibly high price for the positions that he takes. How many people do you know that are anti-Trump but also anti-woke, that are like, anti-Islam, but also prone to like, nationalized healthcare,

• 51:57Speaker 00

  that are from the left but are concerned about people coming across the board? Like, it's a very non-fungible, like, unique construction, right? It's very idiosyncratic. And I go, okay. And for each of those, every time he goes on one side of the fence and then back over to the other, he pisses off both sides. And again, in order to arrive at that kind of outcome, to me, if you were just doing it in order to feed red meat, or to like, placate yourself for the world in some sort of a way, you wouldn't choose that. Those wouldn't be the decisions that you go for, because it's like, deranging.

• 52:29Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  To your, everybody else is confused about what, so if that makes sense, the more, the higher the price that someone pays for the positions that they hold, and the less that you can predict what their next opinion is going to be. Basically, if I know one of your opinions and can accurately predict everything else that you believe, you're probably not a serious thinker.

• 52:49Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  And I find that that's not necessarily the case with those guys.

• 52:53Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I think that they, those are some extreme examples. I also see that there are people who are living, you know, regular lives, that are saying, I'm gonna be true to myself, and they end up with a life that's actually true to them. And it doesn't, it doesn't mean that they have to be like, committed to something that pisses people off.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Yep, yep, yep, yep. But the bravery can show up in mundane and very boring, normal ways every single day.

• 53:19Joe Hudson?

  Exactly. But there are gonna be moments for those people where they are gonna go, I don't wanna do it, but it's the right thing to do.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Okay, what else is there to say about breaking down those component skills that we haven't covered so far?

• 53:32Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, the, on the choice side of things, that's really important, is to slow down, this is where you get into the world of habits. The underlying principle is that your identity is still at stake, right? So you still have to work through the identity piece. But, but the other piece is to really be able to slow down the emotional process that's happening there and be present with it in one way or another. So if you are...

• 54:05Joe Hudson?

  Trying to quit coffee as an example, because your coffee somehow you'd decided is bad for you.

• 54:14Joe Hudson?

  What you should do instead is reach for a new tonic.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Yes, sounds like a true investor.

• 54:25Joe Hudson?

  You have like a series of habits that are going to trigger that desire for the coffee. It's going to be an unconscious reach for the coffee when you drink it. Can you actually be totally present? What's the emotion that's happening before you drink the coffee that makes you want to drink the coffee that you get after the coffee to slowly unpack that experience and start noticing what you're avoiding or trying to run into.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  So this is kind of unwinding current choices to become decisions in a way.

• 54:55Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I would say making, turning choices into conscious choices. Yeah. And so that's a really important skill set if you want to change the kind of the habitual choices that you're making, which is there's lots of tricks and James Clear is amazing at what he writes for all the tips and tricks. But one of the key ones on the emotional level, because the decisions are being made emotionally, is can I slow down, unpack and feel the stuff that I don't want to feel that drives me into some bad habits?

• 55:31Speaker 00

  It comes back to awareness again.

• 55:33Joe Hudson?

  Yes.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  Interestingly, yeah, I mean, I can give you an example from my own life that because I've been fighting with health stuff for the last couple of years, a lot of the time that's disrupted my sleep. When I wake up on a morning, if my body decides it wants to rip me awake at 3am or 4am or something, and there is this story that I tell myself of, oh, well, fuck, like today's already going to be ruined and this is really, really painful and I'm going to lie awake and I'm going to stare at the ceiling and this is super annoying and it's not going to suck and I'm not going to perform as well on the podcast and then maybe people are going to laugh, they're going to like me and my whole life's going to fall apart and I get gluten intolerance and live under a bridge and it's all going to go wrong.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  And reaching for my phone and being distracting myself from that emotion is now, after a while, your sleep has improved, which has meant the fear's gone away, but you're left with the fucking residue of the habit.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  This is very strange situation where you're puppeted by the coping mechanism of an emotion that you're no longer feeling.

• 56:39Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  And that sticks about a lot of the time. And as now there'll be something else I'm doing, I'm sure that is the case. And I'm like, well, I've got to unwind this thing that I don't even need anymore, that kind of maybe served a purpose to some degree or whatever. And now I'm like, well, fuck, like I've got to, if you're going to get rid of that, and I'm sure there's some other shit that I'm doing right now that I probably should be pointing at too. So like you end up, if you're not careful, I think, and this is why people, the sort of Pareto principle of to those who have everything more will be given and to those who have nothing more will be taken, Matthew principle.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  The reason that it seems to suck so much for many people and the reason that spirals go down and spirals come up is that if you don't step in and consciously design your life, if you're living it by default, you will begin to like sedimentary rock accumulate these things over time. And you're like, why the fuck, like, why have you got that habit? And he's like, oh, I don't know, like 15 years ago, this thing was happening and I did it and now I'm still puppeted by it, even though that's gone. Does that make sense?

• 57:41Joe Hudson?

  Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, I think about this in a company structure all the time, which is bureaucracy does not destroy itself. You have to actively go in and destroy bureaucracy. And what you're describing is the kind of an emotional bureaucracy.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Ah, that's so good.

• 57:56Joe Hudson?

  It just like.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, Connor's line, one of my favorites that he's given to me a gazillion times, but he dropped yesterday. One of my favorites is, we try to control that which we cannot trust.

• 58:07Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah, I love that one.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like shit. The first time he told me that was like, oh, stop. I was like, close the call. I don't need to hear from you anymore. I'm going to go and like, think about that. I'm going to think about that for the next couple of days. Yeah, we try to control that which we cannot trust.

• 58:20Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  And that's the bureaucracy thing, but to some degree, that's also the emotions thing.

• 58:24Joe Hudson?

  Well, so, yeah, so let's take your, let's unpack your situation for a second. You're sitting in bed, waking up and your brain's doing da, da, da, da, da. What's the emotions underneath are probably sadness and helplessness.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  Probably some shame as well.

• 58:39Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah, and probably some shame. The shame is most likely the thing blocking you from feeling the sadness and the, so, and so a bureaucratic free mentality is I'm going to cry, I'm going to be scared, I'm going to go back to sleep. But nope, before you can do that, you have to fill out this paperwork. It's called a phone and you need to like scroll on the phone for this bureaucracy. And then, okay, now you have to, well, you've been scrolling on your phone, you kind of feel like shit, so you need to, and you didn't get enough sleep, so now you need some caffeine and now, but that caffeine, it kind of makes you anxious. And so you've got this bureaucratic thing that you have to go through just to get back to some level of normal.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've accumulated, you've piled this bunch on top. Okay, so, yeah, choices, choices, making the unconscious choices more conscious. That's one step.

• 59:33Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah. And feeling the emotions that are happening around, bringing your awareness to the emotional experience around the choices. And in all of them, so it's feeling the stuff that you don't want to feel, learning how to embrace love, the stuff that you don't want to feel. So that's, this is, I think, the hardest part for people to really grok.

• 59:53Joe Hudson?

  So my story is emotional abandonment was like, I had an alcoholic father, I had an alimony mom, my needs were not taken care of for a large part. Some were and they did the best that they could, but a lot of them were not taken care of. And so when I was growing up, when I was like in my twenties, I was like,

• 1:00:19Joe Hudson?

  I'm going to be emotionally abandoned by everybody, fuck you all. Like anytime I felt emotional abandonment, I would do one of two things. I would be like, fuck you, I don't need you anyhow, which created more people emotionally abandoned me, or I get needy, which would create more people getting like emotionally abandoned me. So, so I was recreating this situation. Once I learnt that I could embrace emotional abandonment, right? So that feeling would come up and instead of trying to get rid of it by going fuck you or please come closer. And I was just like, oh, I can actually experience this. I can allow for this. I can allow this in my life.

• 1:01:00Joe Hudson?

  I don't need to run from it. Then I stopped doing this and I stopped doing this and people abandoned me, emotionally abandoned me a lot less. And when they do, I don't really mind because I get to have that experience again and learn more deeply from that experience and realize that, oh, their emotional abandonment doesn't hurt even half as much as me emotionally abandoning myself. And so then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I can't wait to be emotionally abandoned again, because I get that experience, I get to learn again, which is weird, but you had that moment. And when you have that moment with one of these emotions that you're like, this is ridiculous, what starts happening is you're like, oh, let's see where else, what other emotions I can love.

• 1:01:43Joe Hudson?

  And all of a sudden, these patterns that have been ruling your life, like emotional abandonment, start collapse, collapsing, because all you're trying to do is feel the thing that you couldn't feel as a kid, which was like, this fucking sucks. Like, no one's here for me. That was the feeling I couldn't feel as a kid, because if I did, my whole life would collapse. So I couldn't feel it then, but somewhere in my twenties, I learned to feel it and then the pattern starts dissipating in my life. And so what you start seeing happening is when people start accepting these emotions, learning how to love and, and, and, and accept and say, oh, I can't wait to feel, I welcome this emotional experience.

• 1:02:27Joe Hudson?

  And you got to experience this in Groundbreakers, you got to see what happened. All of a sudden, these patterns that are in their lives for decades just start falling apart because.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Fucking terrifying.

• 1:02:36Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  It's really destabilizing.

• 1:02:39Joe Hudson?

  Because their choices change because their, their decision making changes.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

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• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinklmnt.com/ModernWisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/ModernWisdom. Is there a category of decision?

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  That is markedly different. People, some people may have problems with like, what, what am I even going to wear today? Or, you know, how am I going to have a conversation with this barista at the, at the coffee shop? But for the most part, I think it's going to be bigger things.

• 1:04:02Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  And when it comes to bigger things, am I going to stay in this relationship or not? Am I going to marry this person or not? I'm going to leave this job or not? Am I going to move to a new city or country or not?

• 1:04:12Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  How, is, is there anything different when it comes to that? Because it's less routine, right? Like, you're not go, this is less of a reversible door, not necessarily a reversible door, but significant, like, fuck, if you're going to like move back from a country, you picked up all of your possessions and you've gone over there and maybe there's financial implications and stuff, like things happening. And also, how many times have you moved countries previously? Like, show me the CV of how this has gone for you in the past. I don't know, I've never done it.

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  I'm thinking about when people are facing the biggest decisions of their life.

• 1:04:43Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  What they feel are the most impactful, the most momentous, the scariest, the grandest. How do you advise them to go through that?

• 1:04:49Joe Hudson?

  Well, there's a couple of things that I think are really important to see first, and then we can talk about the advice. So the, you started with the guy who was like, how do I talk to the barista?

• 1:05:01Joe Hudson?

  It doesn't matter if it's, how do I talk to the barista? If the decision is like as hard as it is to like, where do I move? It's because the identity is at stake. So that person probably has like social anxiety, some sort of version of that. And they're like, oh my God, like, am I going to be liked? Am I going to be like, their whole identity of I am a person who's not good with other people is at stake if they talk to the barista. The person who's like moving, their whole identity is at stake from like more obvious reasons. Like, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a British guy in England who's a party boy. I am a guy in Austin. Well, who, what the fuck is Austin? Who's going to like me, right?

• 1:05:41Joe Hudson?

  So the identity starts, in either case, that's like a really important piece to understand. The other thing to understand is that we have no idea what our big decisions are. We have no fucking idea what the big decisions are. So you could say my big decision was to marry my wife Tara. Well, how about the decision to meet my wife? I didn't make it. How about the first date? I wouldn't even gotten to getting married if I didn't have the first date decision. Right? So there's a whole bunch of little choices that I made along the way that allowed for the, for me to even be considering whether I am going to marry my wife.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  I think that's interesting. It's certainly true that there are some choices or decisions that we face that we don't realize what the future impact of them will be.

• 1:06:31Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  But I would say that there is a certain category of decision or choice that we are going to make where we realize the likelihood of this being small isn't that great. Like, this is probably going to be a big decision. So you have like type one decision errors that sneak up on you.

• 1:06:48Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  But then the other kind probably don't evaporate quite as readily in the other day. It's unlikely that moving countries is not going to be a big decision.

• 1:06:57Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  Let's say.

• 1:06:57Joe Hudson?

  Right. The reason to, to think about the fact that there's a whole bunch of decisions that led to this, that you had no thought over and no, maybe no control over, is to get you, get the identity of you out of the way and make the big decision.

• 1:07:15Joe Hudson?

  Right? So the identity is that if you're having a big decision, the identity is, is like, oh my gosh, who am I going to be in this situation? You know, you talked the other day about the Love Island thing, right? You couldn't see yourself the same way after the Love Island thing. You didn't choose for that to happen, but it had a massive stake in your identity. If you knew that that was potentially a potential for joining Love Island.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  Oh, you would have existential crisis island.

• 1:07:47Joe Hudson?

  Right. You would have been like, I have to make a choice. What am I going to do?

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  I thought I was just going to get to wear swim shorts for a few weeks.

• 1:07:55Joe Hudson?

  Exactly. So, so the, the reason that you can, that is to start separating the personalness, the stops, starts separating the identity. And that's the biggest thing about making like a really big decision, whether it's the barista decision or the thing, is to really start looking at, who is it that I want to be? Like, or who even more profound is? What am I exactly? Like, to really question that identity. So if I move to England and I have no friends, what does that mean about me? What is it that I'm scared of?

• 1:08:37Joe Hudson?

  Like, who, who, how could I be proud of myself even if I have no friends in England? What, what essentially am I?

• 1:08:48Joe Hudson?

  And that question, I remember when that question hit me. That was a question I asked myself like 10 times a, a, a day for like years.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  What am I essentially?

• 1:08:57Joe Hudson?

  What am I essentially?

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  That, hearing you say the words, what am I essentially, gives me fucking PTSD.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Reason that we're not going to bring up. Beautiful, beautiful, very grand PTSD.

• 1:09:10Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:09:12Joe Hudson?

  And so, so, so in those moments, the, the, the added piece, I would say, is like, this is a great moment to really wrestle with what you are essentially or what you want to be. And it's, it's an opportunity. Instead of seeing it as like, how do I make a great decision? Like, a crack in the veneer of what you think you are, which means a crack in the veneer of the limitations you put on yourself.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:09:40Joe Hudson?

  Gets to get opened up and you get to see yourself for who you are.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  Is a, do you, do you think about fear of change? Is that playing in? Because most decisions will result in some kind of change.

• 1:09:52Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  I suppose, interestingly, inaction is also a decision, right? The decision to continue doing what's happening now. We have like a status quo, anchoring bias, inertia, momentum thing that kind of carries us through. And yeah, well, that's also kind of a decision. It's just a decision to not change as opposed to a decision to change. But I think about fear of change, difference, different, being, things being different.

• 1:10:14Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  Is that, does, is this got a role to play?

• 1:10:16Joe Hudson?

  So I, I just think it's like a higher order or lower order, right? So fear of change, what's actually the, behind the fear of change? The fear of change is that unknown. And what's behind the unknown? I'm not going to be okay. And I'm not going to be okay as identity. So I'm scared that I, the job situation is going to change. Okay, cool. I guarantee you the job situation is going to change, but I also guarantee you that you are going to be better off because of it. Okay, cool. I don't, I'm not scared of the change anymore. I'm only scared of the change because of the potential negative repercussions on me. It's an unknown thing that might be bad for me. And it's the me, that's the essential part of it. So yeah, I do, but obviously there's a fear of change. It's just a higher order.

• 1:11:00Joe Hudson?

  It's like, it's not the core of what you're dealing with.

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  Understood.

• 1:11:04Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  Is there anything else to say on the difficult decision, big, grand decision?

• 1:11:09Joe Hudson?

  No, not much. Just that it's a great opportunity. I mean, I've had some amazing, that level of like, if I have a client come to me and they're like, I'm in a big transformation moment in my life, like shit is changing. I'm like, yay. Because that's where the most growth is going to happen for a person. And if you look at your own life and you say, when did I grow the most as a human? Or decline the most because I didn't pay attention?

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:11:35Joe Hudson?

  It's going to be those moments of transformation. And so, so I get excited for them. They're huge opportunities.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  I'm aware, I'm aware you get excited because,

• 1:11:46Speaker 00

  you are the cross-legged emotional equivalent of a Navy SEAL drill sergeant.

• 1:11:51Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  Or like a particularly rough PT. Like, anyone that's ever worked with a trainer or been on a sports team or whatever, and they've seen the strength and conditioning coach. The strength and conditioning coach has got this unnerving grin on their face on the morning of one practice. And they're like, oh, we're going to have fun today. That's the face you pull.

• 1:12:09Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 00

  That's the face you pull. More than you should. As you're staring, it is because you're a bastard and you.

• 1:12:22Speaker 00

  It's the, I take pleasure in somebody else's discomfort if they're, they're working hard or doing the thing and you, you're like, you're going to face it. Like, you're going to face it. So I, drill sergeant.

• 1:12:33Joe Hudson?

  It's the freedom on the other side that I am excited about.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Joe Hudson?

  And also, yeah, it's kind of fun to watch.

• 1:12:43Speaker 00

  It's a mental torture, emotional torture. Okay.

• 1:12:48Speaker 00

  Are there any big indicators that somebody's about to make a terrible decision? That you could see, that somebody could sense inside of themselves where they're about to like, oh, I'm pointing in the, I'm really pointing in the wrong direction. The reason I ask this is.

• 1:13:02Joe Hudson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  I think, good.

• 1:13:03Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  I think, um,

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  expediting success is, is great and what we want, but avoiding failure, like the, um, what's Warren Buffett's two pieces of a trading advice? Number one is never lose money. And number two is, please read number one. That if you can go through life avoiding pitfalls, that's a pretty fucking good start.

• 1:13:29Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  And expediting success can come after rule number one of avoiding pitfalls. So if somebody is about to make a terrible decision, what's going on?

• 1:13:38Joe Hudson?

  So I think there needs to be a definition of like, what does it mean to make a terrible decision? Right? So most people think a terrible decision is a decision where they don't get what they want. That's what they think a terrible decision is. Meaning like, they're sitting there saying to themselves, I want a girl. No, I want a.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  Cold, frosty, that's not a terrible decision. Use something else. I want a cigarette.

• 1:14:04Joe Hudson?

  I want a cigarette.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  I want a cigarette. There we go.

• 1:14:06Joe Hudson?

  I want a cigarette. And they, they, and if they get the cigarette.

• 1:14:14Joe Hudson?

  Then they have made a successful decision. That's what they're thinking. Right? I want the girl. Did I get the girl? I made a good decision. I want the money. Did I get the money? I made a good decision. I want the job. Did I get the job? I made a good decision. That is not what makes a good decision. Because the question is, if I got the cigarette, did the cigarette actually give me what I want over the next year?

• 1:14:43Joe Hudson?

  Month, week, decade? If I got the girl, did I get the thing? Right? Yesterday, we talked about people be successful so that they can get the made of their choice. But then the made of their choice is the only made of their choice are the transactional ones who only want them for their success.

• 1:15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Joe Hudson?

  So, so the, the question is, if you're thinking about it that way, no, I don't have a way to tell you if you're making a great choice or a bad choice. I can tell you that the more fear that's in the choice makes it less likely that you're going to get the thing you want.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:15:20Joe Hudson?

  Because if I'm coming to you with something that I want and I'm scared I'm not going to get it, you're less likely to give it to me.

• 1:15:28Joe Hudson?

  I was wondering if you could donate to my cause.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Joe Hudson?

  Right? Isn't going to be as good as like, hey, I've got this great cause. So the more fear that I have, I'm probably going to not get the thing that I want. The more fear that I'm running when I'm doing it, not that fear is a bad thing. It just means your fear is unprocessed.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:45Joe Hudson?

  But, but if you're looking at what's a good decision, like a good decision is I want the cigarette, but I'm, I don't get it. That is, it's easy. Like if a person is compromising themselves to do the thing, then they're making a horrible fucking decision.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  And how will you know if you're compromising yourself?

• 1:16:07Joe Hudson?

  That is a hard question. There is something in us that knows.

• 1:16:14Joe Hudson?

  Oh, I just don't like how I am right now. Like it's, it's, and it is something that you become more and more sensitive to.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  Exactly what I was about to say.

• 1:16:23Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  Exactly where I was that there is a category of person, maybe even a large majority of people who have suppressed that voice for so long.

• 1:16:35Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Speaker 00

  That it's an entirely detrained muscle, right? They've atrophied that. And even the lightest, even, you know, the bicep curl of a cigarette is a weight that's too heavy for them to lift.

• 1:16:46Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 00

  They're, they're not attenuated enough to that. So let's say there's somebody who hasn't used that muscle for a long time, very atrophied.

• 1:16:56Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  They, they can't hear the voice particularly well.

• 1:16:58Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Speaker 00

  How would you start? How would you begin to retrain the muscle?

• 1:17:01Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. What I would say is look at the last week, month, two months. And what's the one way in that timeframe that you heard that you, you felt this isn't the right thing to do and you did it anyway? What's the thing or what's the thing that's creating resentment in your life?

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Why resentment?

• 1:17:23Joe Hudson?

  Because resentment means you've abandoned yourself.

• 1:17:27Joe Hudson?

  Right? Like, uh, if you ask me to do something and I don't want to do it and then I do it, enough times I'm going to resent you. Period. Right? So if you look at a marriage and somebody resents the other marriage, it means the other person in the marriage, it means that they're doing shit that they don't, they're not holding their boundary. They're abandoned, they've abandoned themselves because they're trying to make the other person happy or trying to make them not angry or trying to, they're walking on eggshells or they're accepting some sort of criticism because it's just keeping the peace. So resentment is a great way to look at it or just look back and go, where's the ways that I don't feel like I was the person I wanted to be in the last week?

• 1:18:07Joe Hudson?

  Right? And take your time with it because I think most people, if they look at that fully, it's, it's, it's quite a ego collapse.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  I can imagine there's a certain category of person who constantly needs reassurance from others that their decisions are okay.

• 1:18:22Joe Hudson?

  Every single one of those moments of needing reassurance from others is a self abandonment.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:18:30Joe Hudson?

  How do you explain this?

• 1:18:34Joe Hudson?

  It's saying, I don't know what's right for me, which is a lie, but you do. Which means I am literally giving my power over to you. I'm, I'm saying, and I'm giving my happiness. The responsibility for my happiness is yours now, not mine, which is a self abandonment. And I'm saying, you know, the answer for me, when the truth is that I know the answer for myself. All of that is some level of self abandonment.

• 1:18:59Speaker 00

  In other news, have you ever noticed how some websites make it ridiculously easy to buy while some feel infinitely harder?

• 1:19:05Joe Hudson?

  Back in my day, I had to walk 10 miles to the local store.

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  Aren't you younger than me?

• 1:19:10Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, but my dad got a DUI.

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  Anyway, the reality is most businesses just get the website wrong. And if your setup is messy, you lose a ton of sales, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Shopify. They power 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including brands like Jimm Shark, Skims, ALO and New Tonic, because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout's 36% better on average compared to other platforms and with Shop Pay can boost conversions by 50%. So upgrade your business and get the exact same checkout that we use at New Tonic with Shopify. You can sign up for a free trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to Shopify.com/ModernWisdom. That's Shopify.com/ModernWisdom.

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  How do you split the difference between that and genuinely having a friend that is a good confidant, that has a degree of expertise, that knows you, that is able to see things that you don't see? You know, that this would make a wonderful case for never listening to anybody ever about anything in your life.

• 1:20:13Joe Hudson?

  No, I, I, I'm not ever saying, don't listen to people. I think listening to people is like where a tremendous amount of wisdom comes from. I'm saying that if you're looking for their approval. And there's

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  Is this okay?

• 1:20:28Joe Hudson?

  Big difference.

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  Is this okay for me to do?

• 1:20:30Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. Like somehow or another, it's like, if you're saying, if you can't say, I feel good about doing this without like looking over to you and say, is it all right that we do this? Then you know you're, you're abandoning yourself.

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  How much of decisiveness do you think is learning to cope with increasing amounts of uncertainty?

• 1:20:58Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. So without a doubt, if you're, if you are confident in your identity, decisiveness increases dramatically.

• 1:21:09Joe Hudson?

  People who have a very stable sense of self are far more decisive than people who don't.

• 1:21:17Joe Hudson?

  There is also, there's, in business, what you'll notice is that most CEOs start realizing that making decisions is better than getting decisions right.

• 1:21:30Speaker 00

  Making decisions is better than getting decisions right?

• 1:21:33Joe Hudson?

  Yes. Meaning if I have a choice between making 10 decisions a day and making them right, making sure that they're right, which I never perfectly do, or making a hundred decisions a day and just getting them made. The hundred decisions a day is a better choice. And the reason is, is because as soon as you make a decision, then you're testing your thesis against reality. If I'm sitting there going, how do we market? Well, let's make sure we market it best. What's the thing? And do all the data. I have, I'm not running any experiments. I'm not actually going, well, what did the audience say? Okay. What did I learn? As soon as I make a decision, then I run an experiment, then I learn something, then I can make another experiment, then I can,

• 1:22:16Joe Hudson?

  I'm interacting with the world and learning from the world immediately. And so making the decision allows the action to happen so that the learning can occur. And so it's the same in life is that making that decision is really important. The thing that stops you from making the decision is again, if your identity is in jeopardy. So there's certain identities, like if I have the identity of I'm an action guy, then it's easy for me to be decisive by nature.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Joe Hudson?

  But if I have the identity of I have to be right, because every time I was wrong, my parents criticized me for 20 years and made fun of me. And like six years later, I'm at dinner table and I'm still being told how I like made a mistake from six years ago. Then I'm going to be like, okay, I gotta, I gotta make this thing right. Because my identity is, is engaged. And so as people start to

• 1:23:07Joe Hudson?

  be really confident, like this is who I am and I'm valuable. Just because I'm valuable, those people become far, far more decisive. And, and even more than that, it's like, there's less decisions and more choice because there's less fear, because there's less, there's less identity at stake. Like, what, like, what, what, what do I have to worry about?

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  George has this line. He says, I'd rather be high conviction and wrong than low conviction and right.

• 1:23:36Joe Hudson?

  Oh, fucking right. Absolutely.

• 1:23:38Speaker 00

  That call.

• 1:23:38Joe Hudson?

  I, yeah, because I will learn I'm wrong a lot quicker.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'd rather be high conviction and wrong.

• 1:23:45Joe Hudson?

  I love this thought process. There's this test we use for gauging talent. And it's a, a test that has X, Y accesses that people think are not,

• 1:24:01Joe Hudson?

  uh, they, they think they're contrary when they're not contrary and it's called paradox accesses. And so one of them is conviction and one of them is openness. And most people think you can either be convicted and open. But this graph is basically saying you can be high in convicted, high in openness, low in both. Right?

• 1:24:20Speaker 00

  Why do you place yourself on the graph?

• 1:24:21Joe Hudson?

  I, I test as both very open and very convicted.

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:24:27Joe Hudson?

  And, and, but I say, I say that because that actually makes it, makes really good decisions. But that comes from a confidence in your identity, meaning I am totally happy to be wrong and that doesn't threaten who I am. So I love being open and I have high conviction because if I don't have high conviction, I don't take action.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Does regret play a role here? Lots of people fear future potential regret, so much so that they get stuck and paralyzed in the moment now. They must transpose it from the future and start to feel it down in the present.

• 1:25:08Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. Yeah. I see that for sure. The interesting thing that I noticed with a lot of people, and I think this is really useful for folks at home.

• 1:25:18Joe Hudson?

  Do you, will you regret? What you're imagining will happen more than you regret?

• 1:25:27Joe Hudson?

  Being indecisive for three months about whether to marry the woman or not.

• 1:25:34Joe Hudson?

  What's interesting is that the thing that people fear is often the thing that they are feeling and stuck in in the moment of trying to make the decision.

• 1:25:47Joe Hudson?

  Like, I'm really scared that if I marry her, I'm going to be stuck. You're stuck right now trying to make this decision for six months.

• 1:25:58Joe Hudson?

  I am really scared that I'm going to regret that I wasted my time if I do this wrong. You're wasting your time right now in making this like decision for like three to six months.

• 1:26:08Speaker 00

  You're a low conviction stew.

• 1:26:10Joe Hudson?

  Exactly. So, so what's amazing is that oftentimes the thing that people are scared, the emotional consequences people are scared of are far less, they're one inch, but the shit you're stewing in right now is like 10 inches deep. To use Alex's.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  There's a line from Alain de Botton talking about leaving relationships. And he says, uh, people are worried about leaving relationships because they're scared of being lonely, but what they don't realize is that exiting is the first step towards feeling connected, that the loneliness they fear is what they're already enduring.

• 1:26:46Joe Hudson?

  Exactly. That's exactly, that's oftentimes the, the consequence that we're scared of in the decision is the thing that we're actually currently suffering.

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And is less at a velocity or an amplitude that's less than what we're currently dealing with.

• 1:27:01Joe Hudson?

  Well, there's also the opportunity for it to stop, where there isn't any opportunity to stop unless you take the action.

• 1:27:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. And presumably less shame around, well, I am doing this to myself.

• 1:27:13Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Speaker 00

  I'm choosing to, I'm like imprisoned inside of this cell. And I know that not only am I the prisoner, but I'm also the captor that's holding the keys. And for some reason, I refuse to put the key in the fucking lock and turn it and open the gate.

• 1:27:30Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. The other thing that's really interesting is I think people when they're in that deep indecisiveness, they really forget that they're being super self abusive.

• 1:27:41Joe Hudson?

  There's a lot of self abuse in that.

• 1:27:44Joe Hudson?

  You have to get it right? Why? Why can't you get it wrong? What's the problem? Like, you, you don't know? It's like, you're literally telling yourself, you have to get it right. You don't know. You don't know what's best for you. You don't like, you can't, and whatever happens, you're not going to be able to work yourself out of it. You know that, right? Like, you're not going to just be able to take it as a lesson and then like grow from it. It's going to destroy you forever. Like, that's the, that's the subtext of being indecisive.

• 1:28:14Joe Hudson?

  Right? And so that level of self abuses is, is often unacknowledged or unrecognized. And when somebody actually sees it, it often can allow them to see like themselves in a way that allows them to be more decisive.

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  Can you go, just for a little bit, can you go full Joe Hudson, Connor Beaton crossover and apply as much pain as possible to people that are being indecisive? Like, what, what are the costs that?

• 1:28:42Joe Hudson?

  Not to apply pain.

• 1:28:44Speaker 00

  But apply some pressure. Give them the gravitas of the situation. Like, how important is this? And, and what is it that they, what is it that the situation is costing them if they're continuing, if they continue to be indecisive? What does indecisiveness cost you?

• 1:29:02Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. I, I think the thing I would say in that is some version of, I'm, I'm really sorry you're depressed.

• 1:29:15Joe Hudson?

  And that somehow or another, you think you need to be perfect, to be valuable, to be loved, to be worthy. And you, you don't.

• 1:29:29Joe Hudson?

  And if you could see yourself clearly for a moment, you would see that this decision isn't going to define you for who you are and that you're worthy of love, no matter what decision you make here. So make the one you're proud of. I would say something like that.

• 1:29:47Speaker 00

  What else is there to say?

• 1:29:49Joe Hudson?

  You dweeb.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  You dweeb, yeah.

• 1:29:52Speaker 00

  Fucking idiot.

• 1:29:55Speaker 00

  How does this relate to assertiveness? Cause I imagine, maybe not quite the same.

• 1:30:01Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  But the people pleasing, the standing up for myself, the saying what's true for me, the, the assertiveness. I imagine people who have clicked on an episode about decision making to become better with their decisions.

• 1:30:13Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:14Speaker 00

  May also, you know, like the, you may also like this.

• 1:30:16Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:17Speaker 00

  Thing. It's like, you may also be interested in being more assertive.

• 1:30:21Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Speaker 00

  How do you come to think about assertiveness?

• 1:30:24Joe Hudson?

  I'm not going to be audience shaped, like what was, I'm sorry, what was it called? Audience?

• 1:30:29Speaker 00

  Captured.

• 1:30:29Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I'm not going to be audience captured like that. I don't give a fuck.

• 1:30:31Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah, fuck you. I'm going to talk about fucking sushi. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:30:37Joe Hudson?

  Exactly. I, assertiveness, I think can be.

• 1:30:44Joe Hudson?

  So there's a difference between being assertive, I would say, and having agency. I would say that if you do the work to be decisive, you definitely feel like you have more agency. Agency doesn't.

• 1:30:57Speaker 00

  I'm happening to life.

• 1:30:57Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. Agency doesn't have to be assertive. And I think those get confused a lot.

• 1:31:02Speaker 00

  Can you give me an example of a way that somebody is agentic, but not necessarily assertive?

• 1:31:09Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:15Joe Hudson?

  Like a great actor, they're, they say, I'm going to be this kind of an actor I want, and I'm committed to these kinds of roles and I'm going to do it. And people accept me and I'm going to go for auditions, but I'm not going to like create, create my own role and, and, and get a, uh, whatever, get directed and buy a script and produce the thing so that I can finally have the role that I want. Now, some people would, that would be called, I would call that more assertive. But, but this person has agency. They're saying, I'm going to live the life that I want to live. I want to be the person that I want to live. I think there's an assertiveness that, in some people's definition, that goes along with aggression. Like, I'm going to like fundamentally.

• 1:31:59Joe Hudson?

  And, and I think for some people, their nature is not that level of aggressiveness. They don't have that fire.

• 1:32:07Speaker 00

  Imposition in that way.

• 1:32:09Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, they don't have that fire, but at the same time, they're not going to compromise. And I remember when I was in college, there was a, um, right, right before I got kicked out of my first college, um, I was taking a class on Herman Hesse and there was a German teacher. And the German teacher was, uh, lived through the Berlin bombings. And, and he said, when we were under the, under the tunnels and the bombs were happening and people were yelling up top, it was always the quiet, non macho man, kind of the non assertive type who went up and pulled them out of the, of the bombing.

• 1:32:55Joe Hudson?

  And it was always the Revotto guy who didn't.

• 1:32:59Joe Hudson?

  And so that to me would be the difference. Like, one of them has assertiveness, but they don't have the agency to be themselves.

• 1:33:07Speaker 00

  Are they inversely linked, in your opinion? More assertive people, less agentic?

• 1:33:11Joe Hudson?

  No, not at all. No, no, no. I think they're just not correlated.

• 1:33:14Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 1:33:15Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. But I do think there's a tremendous amount of people who are, my experience is there's a tremendous amount of when you, when you become, when you get really good at decision making, that you, it's a very high agency place.

• 1:33:29Speaker 00

  Well, it's, I would imagine it is difficult to be high agency and indecisive.

• 1:33:37Joe Hudson?

  Correct.

• 1:33:38Speaker 00

  So even if decisiveness is, it's necessary, but not sufficient.

• 1:33:43Joe Hudson?

  Right.

• 1:33:44Speaker 00

  Perhaps to be agentic. George is currently trying to get his conception, he's got this fucking tricycle that he sent me a photo of the other day.

• 1:33:51Joe Hudson?

  George?

• 1:33:52Speaker 00

  George Mack, he's writing a book on agency. He's going to be writing the definitive book on high agency. And it'll come out at some point in the next year and a half. And I've watched this guy craft this thing, like watching like a, like David be carved out of a massive block of, do you know the story about David? About how a number of other sculptors had tried their hand at that block of marble previously?

• 1:34:15Joe Hudson?

  No, I had no idea.

• 1:34:16Speaker 00

  Really cool. So I've been to see it twice and I've taken the same tour and I just, for me.

• 1:34:21Joe Hudson?

  It's Michelangelo?

• 1:34:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:34:22Joe Hudson?

  Okay, cause that also.

• 1:34:24Speaker 00

  Is, yes, true.

• 1:34:25Joe Hudson?

  One of my favorite, by the way, one of my favorite symbols in the world.

• 1:34:29Speaker 00

  It's beautiful.

• 1:34:30Joe Hudson?

  God stretching out, reaching for man, and man's just not worth, he's not, I'm not going to fucking lift a finger for you, bitch.

• 1:34:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's so true. Well, I actually got the guys to move that a tiny little bit because when you look at how close together it is, we looked on the, the painting and it was too close. It was closer than it is in the painting because the whole point is that, um, even the ligament that was, uh, the way that the hand was shaped, because there was a ton of dissections being done right by Michelangelo. And he'd realized the way that the ligament is when it's relaxed and when it is, when it is stretched, but it was too fucking close. I was like, I, I know that we've done all of this time in the studio and all this stuff. I was like, can we just move it like about two inches further apart? But no, so Michelangelo's David, uh, this block of, you know, gargantuan block of marble. Have you ever seen it in person?

• 1:35:21Joe Hudson?

  I have not.

• 1:35:21Speaker 00

  Dude, it is, and because it's on a plinth, it's a motherfucker plinth. So it's already, his foot's pretty much head height or maybe even higher. And then he's eight feet tall, maybe 10 feet tall, maybe even more. Massive, massive, maybe even more, maybe like 12 feet tall. He's a huge guy. And with the proportions as well, that were used to kind of accentuate that, so much bigger hands by proportion, longer arms, longer legs by proportion.

• 1:35:44Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:45Speaker 00

  Than you would have. So it's long and tall and big at the same time. Anyway, this block of marble had been, a number of sculptors had had a crack at it previously and sort of started like, fuck, he's too unwieldy to use gargantuan thing. And, um, he was the one that, that went to go and do it. And my favorite thing, which I've said a gazillion times on the show, but not for a while, is the Michelangelo effect. Two people in a relationship, friendship, intimate partnership, see the best in each other. And over time, like Michelangelo saw David inside the marble and he just removed that which was not David.

• 1:36:24Joe Hudson?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Speaker 00

  And then David emerged.

• 1:36:26Joe Hudson?

  I love that.

• 1:36:26Speaker 00

  And it's the same thing that, you know, the best kinds of friendships and relationships are, is I see in you the best parts of you and I'm going to help to bring that out. I'm going to try and cut away all of this other stuff that isn't you.

• 1:36:39Joe Hudson?

  I don't even think all that is necessary. It's just seeing the other person. Like, my experience is like, that's the, when we teach people coaching, that is the core of what we teach. See that, see the wisdom, see, see them as who they actually are, even if they can't see themselves. Listen to that part, talk to that part. That's all that's really required is to just see them as they essentially are and everything else takes care of itself.

• 1:37:06Speaker 00

  How do people know the difference between

• 1:37:13Speaker 00

  the genuine embodied wisdom fueled intuition? And something masquerading as intuition, impulsivity, fear that I imagine many clever people that are two hours into a podcast about decision making will be afflicted with. They've managed to cleverly contort and pretzel this thing actually, oh, that is my intuition speaking, but it's not. It's just a clever like confabulation of what is actually fear, or maybe it is impulsivity or coping or whatever. Is there a way to discern?

• 1:37:51Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, the way in coaching relationship, it is your capacity to understand yourself. Right? So the more clearly you see yourself, the more clearly you can see others. Like, and exactly the way I can't see myself is exactly the way I'm not going to be able to see you.

• 1:38:07Speaker 00

  Can we, can you tell me about what your retreat was like that you did recently? Been real excited to learn about this. Do you mind talking about this?

• 1:38:14Joe Hudson?

  I don't want to talk about this.

• 1:38:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:38:16Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, there's a lot. I mean,

• 1:38:18Speaker 00

  Go for a walk.

• 1:38:20Joe Hudson?

  I can tell you, I can tell you like a broad thing, but I can't. Yeah.

• 1:38:26Joe Hudson?

  Yeah, I've been, ever since I was in my twenties, I really got into the Vedic sciences generally, just as one of the avenues in which I've learned. So I got into Zen, I got into Herman Hesse, I got into the Vedic sciences. And the Vedic sciences have a part that's all about health and they have something called Ayurvedic health. And they have something that they do for longevity called Panchakarma. You could call it longevity, you could call it health, I call it health. And it's basically like a reset where there's a very particular diet and they give you, in this particular place where I went, they give you like six hours of treatments a day.

• 1:39:09Joe Hudson?

  And they can be, they're all sorts of crazy treatments. And, and so I did it. It was, I've done it three years in a row now. This is the most intense one that I've ever done. I found a very intense place to go. And it was an amazing emotional roller coaster, which I haven't experienced in years. So that was really cool to like, watch my emotions do this thing.

• 1:39:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I imagine that sounds a little bit like a Brazilian jiu jitsu, fourth degree black belt going, I got twisted into a pretzel. That's been a little wild. I didn't think that that was going to happen. I remember what that feels like.

• 1:39:45Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. And it was all through physical stuff. So the, the part that I enjoyed the most about it is that they really discouraged talking. So everywhere there's room, sign silence, there's no phones in the cafeteria. There's no talking in the cafeteria that like, you're basically alone, quiet. It's in a forest, you know? And so

• 1:40:05Speaker 00

  Little like noble science adjacent, noble silence adjacent.

• 1:40:08Joe Hudson?

  Yeah. So I got to do a lot of meditation, which made me really happy. So I got to really observe the the craziness of basically, I think the mood was mostly just a nervous system because there was a huge part of it as a nervous system reset. Or in their words, it's like a Vada reset. And, and so there was just this massive kind of for the six day period of just like, wow, holy crap. I got to do things. Why am I got to do that? I don't need to do anything. Why do I like that? And I was, and it was in this contrast between like absolute bliss and peace. So I'm like, oh, this is amazing. And then it just turned on.

• 1:40:48Joe Hudson?

  And then it just turned off and then it just turned back on because they're just like,

• 1:40:53Joe Hudson?

  what happens when I do this? What happens if I do that? Right? And I got to experience, by the way, I got to experience the doctor having that facial expression.

• 1:41:02Speaker 00

  He was a Navy SEAL training, I'm going to poke you in the thing and it's going to make the stuff happen to you. Wonderful. It makes me, that's comic for me to find that you're on the receiving end for once. I feel

• 1:41:15Joe Hudson?

  I much prefer to be on the receiving end because that's where the freedom's on the other side of it. So, yeah. So, and, and, and I, there's no shortage of it. You've met my wife, but you haven't met my daughters. There's no shortage of me.

• 1:41:28Speaker 00

  Met one very briefly. I think she come from La Crosse.

• 1:41:32Joe Hudson?

  Oh yeah. Okay. So you met Una.

• 1:41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:34Joe Hudson?

  We did a podcast with her. Such a good podcast.

• 1:41:37Speaker 00

  Was it like, was it something titled like what it's like to be Joe Hudson's daughter or some shit like that?

• 1:41:41Joe Hudson?

  I don't remember.

• 1:41:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. You're not in the titles.

• 1:41:45Joe Hudson?

  I am, I am, I am horribly not on the internet.

• 1:41:48Speaker 00

  Again, afflicted with it. Dude, I love you.

• 1:41:52Joe Hudson?

  What a pleasure to be with you.

• 1:41:53Speaker 00

  I love you to bits. People that are interested in this, what should they go and look at? Where should they go?

• 1:42:00Joe Hudson?

  We have the, there's, we have a couple of podcasts on decision making that go into some depth on all of the things that we talked about. And the decision, great decisions course, I will say it's only a five week course, but oftentimes it is an extremely intense course. Because you're going right into a lot of these emotions. So just like know that that's Yeah, that's know what you're getting into.

• 1:42:23Speaker 00

  And that's at the, that begins at the start of the

• 1:42:25Joe Hudson?

  January. I think we sell it the very beginning of January, like as a new year's resolution kind of thing.

• 1:42:30Speaker 00

  When does that go live? You got any idea? Like when the

• 1:42:34Joe Hudson?

  You can get on, you can get onto the waiting list and the waiting list gets a 24 hour early thing. And you can get on the waiting list today.

• 1:42:40Speaker 00

  And it usually sells out very

• 1:42:42Joe Hudson?

  The waiting

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  Within the waiting list. A great connection course, all of the other stuff, Heart of Accomplishment podcast. You're the best.

• 1:42:48Joe Hudson?

  Thank you.

• 1:42:50Speaker 00

  See you next time, my beauties.

• 1:42:51Joe Hudson?

  Dude.

• 1:42:54Joe Hudson?

  That's a good one.