Speaker 1: If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with
Speaker 1: your family. That's what the spiritual teacher ram Das said,
Speaker 1: and it strikes a chord with so many of us.
Speaker 1: Combine that with the inherently stressful holiday season, and it's
Speaker 1: no wonder that the last few months of the year
Speaker 1: are some of the most difficult for so many people.
Speaker 1: That's why we're opening the doors to the Spiritual Habits
Speaker 1: Group program once again, and I'm inviting you to join me.
Speaker 1: Whether you're looking to develop a consistent daily meditation practice,
Speaker 1: or implement mindfulness practices into your life, or connect more
Speaker 1: deeply to what really matters, the Spiritual Habits Group program
Speaker 1: will give you the tools you need to turn this
Speaker 1: wisdom into daily, sustainable, transformational practice, and you'll do so
Speaker 1: in a community where you belong and feel connected. Finish
Speaker 1: strong with the satisfaction of knowing you showed up as
Speaker 1: your best self with less stress able to actually enjoy
Speaker 1: this time of year. Just go to one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Spiritual Habits to join the program. Enrollment
Speaker 1: is open now through October twelfth. That's when you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Spiritual Habits. It's a part of non
Speaker 1: violent communication to identify the feeling and attach it to
Speaker 1: a need. We have a need inside us in that
Speaker 1: moment that's being unmet. That's why that emotion is there.
Speaker 1: And if we could cop or even identify what that
Speaker 1: need is and share it with others, a powerful opportunity
Speaker 1: opens up. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Christopher Carter,
Speaker 1: a spiritual teacher at the intersection of consciousness and business.
Speaker 1: He's a frequent speaker, author, and founder of This Epic Life,
Speaker 1: a website and podcast devoted to contest living. He's also
Speaker 1: a previous guest on the One You Feed podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: Christopher and Eric discuss his book Permission to Glow, A
Speaker 1: Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership. Hi, Christopher, welcome to the
Speaker 1: Show's it to be back with you, Eric, You were
Speaker 1: on the show a long time ago. I mean we
Speaker 1: maybe had been doing the show a year at that point,
Speaker 1: which boggles my mind that we're at like seven and
Speaker 1: a half years that we would have done it that
Speaker 1: long ago. We did it at your house in Akron.
Speaker 1: We played music, we ate dinner with your family, we
Speaker 1: looked at your altar. We had a great time. Uh.
Speaker 1: This time we're doing it via zoom, which is not
Speaker 1: quite as fun, but still fun. It's lovely to see
Speaker 1: you again. We're gonna be talking about your book, which
Speaker 1: is called Permission to Glow, A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership.
Speaker 1: And before we do, let's start like we always do
Speaker 1: with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 1: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild thinks about it, looks up at their grandparents
Speaker 1: as well, which one wins, and the grandparents says the
Speaker 1: one you feed. So I'd like to start off by
Speaker 1: asking you what that parable means to you in your
Speaker 1: life and in the work that you do. I've always
Speaker 1: loved this parable you use. I think about it lately
Speaker 1: through this lens of just conscious awareness. Inside the book
Speaker 1: and inside my coaching practice, I'm always trying to encourage
Speaker 1: leaders to feed that good wolf of their conscious awareness
Speaker 1: versus the default settings that we all operate by, fear
Speaker 1: and greed and so forth. So I know you're a
Speaker 1: fan of the word discernment you mentioned, and I think
Speaker 1: that one you feed is that discernment of our conscious
Speaker 1: awareness to feed kind of the essence of ourselves, the
Speaker 1: best of us versus those finicky, tricky, greedy, needy parts
Speaker 1: of us. Yeah. I want to get into discernment a
Speaker 1: little bit more later, but let's hit what you just
Speaker 1: said there for a second, which is increasing that conscious awareness,
Speaker 1: because the longer I'm sort of in this space doing
Speaker 1: this sort of work, the more I realized that is
Speaker 1: the foundational step is we have to realize what's going
Speaker 1: on inside of us. And then if we can realize
Speaker 1: it from a conscious place, then there's a thousand strategies
Speaker 1: we can employ to work with it more skillfully. But boy,
Speaker 1: learning to realize it is so hard. So what are
Speaker 1: the ways in your own life and in the book
Speaker 1: or in your coaching practice that you help people develop
Speaker 1: that ability to have some conscious awareness of our internal experience.
Speaker 1: I think it's a hugely important conversation because it is
Speaker 1: so foundational. You know, we're alive at an age where
Speaker 1: it is truly volatile. Our ability to navigate through that
Speaker 1: and get to the other side, not only get to
Speaker 1: the other side, but to thrive through it, or to
Speaker 1: figure out what we're here to do it all requires
Speaker 1: conscious awareness of what's driving us, which wolf we're feeding
Speaker 1: at any moment. And how we develop that in my
Speaker 1: practice is through meditation, creating a habit out of the
Speaker 1: meditation practice, and I'm always trying to get my leaders
Speaker 1: to get to a fifteen minutes a day minimum, non negotiable,
Speaker 1: seven days a week, three sixty five days a year.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work for everybody, but the ones that that
Speaker 1: get it down definitely report back huge shifts and just
Speaker 1: their ability to make better choices, whether it's at the
Speaker 1: grocery store, the check outline, on Tinder, all these all
Speaker 1: these ways that that could benefit us or hold his back.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I don't have to make those kind of choices.
Speaker 1: So totally mean to go. I've been out of that
Speaker 1: game for twenty two years. Yeah, the number of ways
Speaker 1: that I've made bad choices in that department is right
Speaker 1: up there with the number of ways I've made bad
Speaker 1: choices about substances. I think, you know, I've got it. Luckily,
Speaker 1: I'm with a wonderful partner now, and yeah, it's all wonderful.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, just just even taking the split second
Speaker 1: and kind of this maelstrom of life that's coming at us,
Speaker 1: to take a split second and ask does this serve me? What?
Speaker 1: Am I so desperately trying to distract myself from that
Speaker 1: level of awareness. It's kind of uncommon, but when people
Speaker 1: get a taste of it, it becomes a dragon they chase,
Speaker 1: and that's very interesting, And those are the flames that
Speaker 1: I'm here to fan is keep moving towards that because
Speaker 1: all the good stuff is in there. I love that.
Speaker 1: So I think meditation is a powerful practice. It's one
Speaker 1: that's been foundational in my life. I've become really interested
Speaker 1: in what are the ways after we meditate that we
Speaker 1: bring that conscious awareness into more moments of our lives.
Speaker 1: And I know that meditating, just the very active doing it,
Speaker 1: it trains that muscle and it makes it more likely
Speaker 1: it's going to happen. But I'm curious if you've got
Speaker 1: other approaches for how do I just wake up out
Speaker 1: of that default, that trance of thought into like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: here's what's happening inside me, and I can choose to
Speaker 1: react to that more skillfully. Well, let me start by saying,
Speaker 1: if you ask any of my children or my wife
Speaker 1: of twenty two years, the work continues. You know, like
Speaker 1: none of us except maybe I car totally live fully
Speaker 1: awake all the time. Uh So, you know, depending on
Speaker 1: when we're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you probably know that
Speaker 1: from recovery service the halt gronym, we are going to
Speaker 1: dip into that unconscious place. So your question around what
Speaker 1: practices work the meditation habit over time just strengthens that
Speaker 1: muscle of the meta attention, our ability to bring our
Speaker 1: focus back. So in meditation it's to the breath or
Speaker 1: to the mantra, in waking life or in mindfulness, it's okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to eat that. I want to eat
Speaker 1: something that nourishes me. I'm not gonna say that harmful thing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say something that nourishes my partners. Um
Speaker 1: just that more mindful behavior. And you know what I
Speaker 1: get into in the book through the four Permissions is
Speaker 1: once people give themselves that first permission to chill and
Speaker 1: to just create stillness, they're more likely to listen to
Speaker 1: some of the wisdom their body is speaking. So they
Speaker 1: could tune into this really highly tuned instrument of our
Speaker 1: feelings and our emotions to ascertain like what we need
Speaker 1: in the moment and then navigate accordingly. So lately I've
Speaker 1: been really geeking out on that. We know people that
Speaker 1: seem to be divinely internally guided by that, and they've
Speaker 1: just developed that capacity to listen to that inner voice
Speaker 1: and to act on it, you know. And we could
Speaker 1: call it intuition, we could call the gut to whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think there is a connection between stilling practice
Speaker 1: and listening to our feelings and emotions. So let's move
Speaker 1: into the book. You have a phrase that you use
Speaker 1: called the frenemies within. Let's talk about that. What does
Speaker 1: that mean? Yeah, so if we don't have two wolves
Speaker 1: in a battle royale at all times, we we have
Speaker 1: these I call him friend of mees jokingly because in
Speaker 1: high school we have certain parts of our friends circle
Speaker 1: that we can't be sure if they're with us or
Speaker 1: against us. You know, we tolerate them, we sometimes listen
Speaker 1: to them, but they sometimes do more harm than good.
Speaker 1: So these friend of me is that I refer to
Speaker 1: our kind of our default settings, these internal saboteurs that
Speaker 1: get spooked by external circumstances or they just act on
Speaker 1: these practiced internal stories that we all carry around with us.
Speaker 1: And there's four of the most common ones that I
Speaker 1: see in all of my coaching clients. And I'm usually
Speaker 1: working with executive leaders or conscious leaders of different types
Speaker 1: of organizations or founders. And but it's important to point
Speaker 1: out that it doesn't mean that these freenemies are bad.
Speaker 1: They're they're there to protect us, and we have to
Speaker 1: listen to them and work with them and That's part
Speaker 1: of the reason why they are partially our friend. You know,
Speaker 1: they're protecting our hearts or protecting our interests in some way.
Speaker 1: But also we have to see them for what we
Speaker 1: are what they are if we're going to be able
Speaker 1: to move towards the thing we want to create, because
Speaker 1: make no mistake, they will stop you from creating whatever
Speaker 1: dream you want to create. So what are some of
Speaker 1: the most common for enemies. The ones that I call
Speaker 1: out in the book are speedy Rabbit. Speedy Rabbit moves
Speaker 1: faster than everybody else, judges everybody for not keeping up.
Speaker 1: You could usually recognize them because they're pitting out in
Speaker 1: their shirt or their pants suit. Game face is one
Speaker 1: we all I think no pretty well in America. It's
Speaker 1: it's that mask that we wear over our authentic emotions,
Speaker 1: like masking any vulnerability. I call that game face. The
Speaker 1: phantom pest is like the classic swooper, like the micromanager
Speaker 1: that comes out of nowhere when it's time to, you know,
Speaker 1: step up and go big with their power. They're confronted
Speaker 1: by their own power, so they stay up all night
Speaker 1: obsessing over things like power point fonts or something irrelevant,
Speaker 1: and then dark Star, which is that person at the
Speaker 1: far end of the galaxy that refuses to accept help
Speaker 1: or support from anybody else. So Dark Star, Speedy Rabbit,
Speaker 1: game Face, Phantom Past, those are great names. Reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of the concept in Buddhism of near
Speaker 1: and far enemies. You know, take a trade like equanimity.
Speaker 1: The far enemy is you know, you just get shook
Speaker 1: up all the time and you have no center. The
Speaker 1: near enemy is indifference. Oh beautiful. Yeah, it's a continuum.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying, there's in each of those friend
Speaker 1: of mees right, there is a positive quality in there,
Speaker 1: hence the name friend of me. One of the central
Speaker 1: themes in the book that I call out a little
Speaker 1: bit is some of this problematic stuff that came out
Speaker 1: of nine eighties personal development, and I loved all of it,
Speaker 1: by the way, Like I I used to download Tony
Speaker 1: Robbins programs off a napster back in the day when
Speaker 1: on the thing, and I was I was so into it.
Speaker 1: But that achiever consciousness, it reinforces this I got this
Speaker 1: and the eye got this. Is this overcorrected self confidence,
Speaker 1: which is good. It serves us, but it makes us
Speaker 1: move fast. We assume we're always in competition with others.
Speaker 1: We we can't let anybody into you know, our fear
Speaker 1: or you know, our sadness that that that looks weak.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, I blame and thank personal development for
Speaker 1: the freenemies. I listened to a bunch of those things
Speaker 1: on cassette tape. You know, for me it was it
Speaker 1: was early nineties, but I think there's still a theme
Speaker 1: of that that runs through personal development to this day.
Speaker 1: Brings me to sort of one of the things in
Speaker 1: my own spiritual path that I wrestle with, which is
Speaker 1: that sense of wanting to achieve something, whether that be
Speaker 1: a state, whether that be the realization, whether that be
Speaker 1: a certain state of consciousness. You know, that desire to
Speaker 1: achieve something that can then you say, become very goal
Speaker 1: oriented um and also becomes very dependent on me. Yeah. Well, gosh,
Speaker 1: you know what it brings up from me. It's about
Speaker 1: seven or eight years ago when I was taking my
Speaker 1: vows in Crea Yoga, which is uh parmajant Ci Yogananda's path.
Speaker 1: You study for about a year and a half and
Speaker 1: then you apply to take these vows and it's a
Speaker 1: very serious ceremony. But I was holding getting to that ceremony,
Speaker 1: getting that point in my path as this achievement like
Speaker 1: a certification or some sulf something, and and through no
Speaker 1: fall to my own. That's how we're kind of brought
Speaker 1: up in this country to work for the degree or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I was working towards that at the exclusion of
Speaker 1: all the important things like actually practicing the path and
Speaker 1: being a yogi. I just wanted the thing. And I
Speaker 1: remember this monk, one of the last gatekeepers, just smacked
Speaker 1: me down and I already had airfare books to go
Speaker 1: out to California to do this, and he's like, you're
Speaker 1: not ready, And I thought, okay, you know, this was
Speaker 1: a big lesson learned. And you know, I think there
Speaker 1: is a natural tension there between what is our work
Speaker 1: to push for to achieve that masculine aspect of achievement,
Speaker 1: and then the divine feminine, which is about allowing and
Speaker 1: the unfolding and the embodiment. And I think all of us,
Speaker 1: if we're honest, are constantly in that tension. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just had a conversation with my spiritual director yesterday about
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the messiness of spiritual life and
Speaker 1: the nonlinear path of growth. And what came up in
Speaker 1: that was a word that we referenced earlier, that's in
Speaker 1: your book a few times, and it's a word that
Speaker 1: has become really important to me. And the word is discernment.
Speaker 1: You know, how do I know what the right answer is?
Speaker 1: I'll give an example. I was practicing in Zen Buddhism
Speaker 1: very seriously for a few years. I was working with
Speaker 1: a teacher, I was doing co on practice, you know,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of different things happened. I passed
Speaker 1: my hundredth coon, which is the end of like a
Speaker 1: collection of coons, and the group there started to meet
Speaker 1: in Colorado again. They've been all virtual and now they
Speaker 1: were starting to get together in person and caused me
Speaker 1: to feel a little so I've kind of I kind
Speaker 1: of wandered away for a little bit. And I also
Speaker 1: getting pulled towards certain other spiritual paths. And so the
Speaker 1: discernment of am I just naturally being called to a
Speaker 1: different place in a different area of growth, or am
Speaker 1: I up against resistance there and I'm running away from it?
Speaker 1: So discernment is a really important thing. And I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of curious how you work on discernment for yourself
Speaker 1: and discernment for the people you work with. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's a really important exploration I think for people, because
Speaker 1: I think most great things in our life come from devotion,
Speaker 1: like long term devotion, whether it's a marriage or sobriety
Speaker 1: or meditation practice or you know, heightened states of awareness. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a long game. It's not a short game. And
Speaker 1: what Yoga Nanda taughts was that all true paths will
Speaker 1: get you to the goal, whether that's enlightenment or to
Speaker 1: God whatever. That back to source connection is right yoga.
Speaker 1: And it's very natural on the path to get spooked
Speaker 1: or to question and to keep, you know, like a
Speaker 1: little bumble bee, going from teacher to teacher to path
Speaker 1: to path to exploring, leaving all your options open. Because
Speaker 1: as we move further down that path, we start to
Speaker 1: realize the path is very narrow. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: razor's edge, and you can slip off and lose an arm,
Speaker 1: but also all the good things remain on that path
Speaker 1: and uh, and as you travel further so it has
Speaker 1: been the same. I really share your experience on that
Speaker 1: is that I knew very early on I felt a
Speaker 1: lightning bowl connection to my guru's path, and as I
Speaker 1: travel further down it, at different times it's confronting. It
Speaker 1: makes me question every fabric of my previous identity and
Speaker 1: what I know to be true. And also through practice,
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to the kind of that safe
Speaker 1: fold of wow. Even being the small percentage of people
Speaker 1: on earth that that have an inkling of what their
Speaker 1: path could be, You're doing great, you know. But as
Speaker 1: it relates to discernment, I think that that's why the
Speaker 1: meditation practice is so key through all of it, is
Speaker 1: that ability to navigate back to the path when a
Speaker 1: million things are vying for our attention, you know, old distractions.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't had a temptation to consume alcohol
Speaker 1: in about ten years until the pandemic. And then whether
Speaker 1: it was boredom or monotony or whatever, I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, a beer would be pretty good right now.
Speaker 1: And it was the first time that thought even crossed
Speaker 1: my mind. I thought, Okay, this is where I need
Speaker 1: to be vigilant. So I noticed it because of my discernment,
Speaker 1: and then I acted accordingly. I didn't drink the beer,
Speaker 1: but I see how people can slip very easily back
Speaker 1: into things, and if I'm not relapsing on booze. Trust me,
Speaker 1: I'm relapsing on sugar or impatience or you know, throwing
Speaker 1: a mantram once in a while around my children. It's
Speaker 1: it's all, you know, a path of refinement over time.
Speaker 1: I think I want to circle back to a part
Speaker 1: of this discernment. And you use this word a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier when we were talking about this, I got
Speaker 1: this nature of the personal development path. And for me,
Speaker 1: this is where every conversation with my spiritual director, every
Speaker 1: single one, even when he wasn't my spiritual director, he
Speaker 1: was a supervisor in a spiritual director training program I
Speaker 1: was in every single conversation ended up back at trust.
Speaker 1: What do you trust in? Eric? What do you trust in?
Speaker 1: And I think that I got this in order to
Speaker 1: let go of the I've got this a little bit,
Speaker 1: We've got to think about some of what is it
Speaker 1: we trust? Beautiful? I mean I kind of use I
Speaker 1: got this in the book to set up the real
Speaker 1: goal that I think God or our creator is asking
Speaker 1: of us, which is we got this, which is to
Speaker 1: surrender the ego, move past that, achieve our consciousness and
Speaker 1: two more of a collaborative approach to life. You know,
Speaker 1: transcend competition for collaboration radical concept. I know, trust others,
Speaker 1: and in trusting others, we could trust our creator to
Speaker 1: hold us and to support us when we only have
Speaker 1: trust in ourselves. I don't know, I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of a brittle framework, you know. I'm I don't know about.
Speaker 1: But my autopilot's a little sketchy, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I trust them to fly me from point
Speaker 1: A to point B. It doesn't mean I don't have
Speaker 1: belief in myself to achieve things I've proven to myself.
Speaker 1: I have personal integrity to deliver, but that is in
Speaker 1: no way equal to the power of the collective or
Speaker 1: the power of you know, certainly the divine you know,
Speaker 1: for us in our lives. Yeah, I agree with you,
Speaker 1: And it is probably the most challenging part for me
Speaker 1: because my spirituality is less about there being a creator
Speaker 1: of being, but it does believe in things like the
Speaker 1: underlying unity of things and think you know, you know,
Speaker 1: things that I've experienced. So so it's a little bit
Speaker 1: more tricky to trust. But I love that we got this,
Speaker 1: you know, because when I came back to a A
Speaker 1: the second time, I realized I couldn't do the higher
Speaker 1: power in the way that most of the people in
Speaker 1: a A were using it as, which was there is
Speaker 1: a being out there that will intervene in my life
Speaker 1: and help. And so I really like, what do I
Speaker 1: you know, what do I believe in? What is my
Speaker 1: higher power? And I ended up with certain spiritual principles
Speaker 1: like if I live according to these principles, And then
Speaker 1: the other one was other people, you know, the power
Speaker 1: of the group, the power of the support around me.
Speaker 1: My understanding of those things and the things I trust
Speaker 1: in and deepened. But it does remain an area that
Speaker 1: is challenging. So I want to use this to jump
Speaker 1: to for you, because what you are doing is you're
Speaker 1: writing a book on leadership. You do a lot of
Speaker 1: leadership consulting, you work with executives, and you're talking about God,
Speaker 1: the Divine. You don't tiptoe around that, you go right
Speaker 1: into it. So just talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? Why do you do that?
Speaker 1: I'm sure it costs you clients to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: or maybe you don't think that, but but just say
Speaker 1: a little bit about that because you are brave for it.
Speaker 1: I've always admired that thank you. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in the corporate circles, we soften even meditation practice because
Speaker 1: people we call it mindfulness or or presencing or something ridiculous,
Speaker 1: because we're afraid to like imply that hindu has brought
Speaker 1: this to the country and it's an Eastern religious philosophy
Speaker 1: and tradition. Well, the yoga that I practice and study
Speaker 1: through yoga Nada's path has been an ancient science for
Speaker 1: thousands of years, and it's scientific. I'm wired and was
Speaker 1: raised to be a skeptic. I'm like, prove it, you know,
Speaker 1: arms crossed, you know. But through direct practice you get
Speaker 1: an inkling of some direct experience, and then I can't
Speaker 1: avoid kind of evangelizing the power of that. The way
Speaker 1: I take that conversation into me that the doorway into
Speaker 1: that conversation is every leader I coach, no matter how
Speaker 1: accomplished or how much smarter than me, or better schools,
Speaker 1: they went to Ivy League schools, whatever it is, all
Speaker 1: of us have to face capacity issues at some point
Speaker 1: in our leadership. The capacity issue usually shows up of
Speaker 1: I don't have enough time to do what I'm required
Speaker 1: to do, I don't have enough money or resources or
Speaker 1: funding or venture capital to do what I need to do,
Speaker 1: and I don't have the space in my life to
Speaker 1: hold this responsibility for this many people who have families
Speaker 1: and whatever. Those are all capacity issues and there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to expand that capacity, but
Speaker 1: none more powerful and my experience than through spiritual practice.
Speaker 1: And I probably said it on the podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: many years ago when I was on is that I
Speaker 1: I kind of figured out early on that I felt
Speaker 1: like the personal development path ended where the spiritual path began.
Speaker 1: The personal development path is great, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of value in it, and I still love love it dearly,
Speaker 1: but so much of it is about the personal. It's
Speaker 1: about me, you know. The spiritual development is getting that
Speaker 1: you know, figment of our imagination, our ego, out of
Speaker 1: the way so we could surrender into caring for the collective.
Speaker 1: And that has been my experience. And I say very
Speaker 1: early in the book, I make that big, bold disclaimer.
Speaker 1: You know, in the beginning there were capitalized words, because
Speaker 1: I knew it would turn people off and they see,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this guy's on the God squad. I'm
Speaker 1: done with this, you know, and uh, and that's fine,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to incite them to go further because
Speaker 1: whatever that thing is, you and I have different names
Speaker 1: for it. Whatever that thing is, it doesn't necessarily care
Speaker 1: what we call it, but I think it does reward
Speaker 1: us for doing that work. And you said it's basically
Speaker 1: principles and practice. It's the exact same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: We're talking about the same thing in different language. That's right.
Speaker 1: And I think at the core of any of those.
Speaker 1: To me, the thing that exists in the center of
Speaker 1: all of the great traditions is the idea that the
Speaker 1: small self ego has to be transcended. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to go beyond that. And they have different ways of
Speaker 1: dissolving that, different ways of seeing through that, different approaches.
Speaker 1: That's the work. Well, I think the work is dissolving
Speaker 1: that and also, as you said, just conscious awareness. Once
Speaker 1: you dissolve that ego. And I'm not claiming I have
Speaker 1: dissolved that ego once and for all. I have had
Speaker 1: experience as though where that thing is gone and what
Speaker 1: rushes in is stunning. So for me, it's it's all
Speaker 1: about how do I lessen my attachment to that, how
Speaker 1: do I see through that more? And then to your point.
Speaker 1: When you do that, it's capacity. It's funny you mentioned capacity,
Speaker 1: because I'm just thinking about one experience I had on
Speaker 1: retreat where I had sort of the real big mystical
Speaker 1: experience and it kind of all vanished, and I thought
Speaker 1: about every difficult thing in my life and I went,
Speaker 1: I can do that. It was like if I had
Speaker 1: to do that every day the rest of my life, fine,
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden there was room for it.
Speaker 1: You're capassing in that moment was wider to include those
Speaker 1: things and to not resist them exactly. Yeah, how Yogaata
Speaker 1: describes it. As you know, Yoga at its core just
Speaker 1: means union, union with something bigger than ourselves. And when
Speaker 1: when you said, when you dissolve that kind of membrane,
Speaker 1: whatever that invisible membrane is between our little self and
Speaker 1: our much bigger self, the soul or God consciousness, whatever
Speaker 1: that is. I always love the analogy Yogata use of
Speaker 1: all of us being individualized waves on a vast ocean
Speaker 1: of consciousness, and we could dissolve into that ocean and
Speaker 1: let it hold us, and in doing so we could
Speaker 1: increase our capacity to hold more and more and more
Speaker 1: of what that ocean will give and give and give
Speaker 1: versus what we typically do, which is resist and resist
Speaker 1: like I can't handle it. I can't do it, And
Speaker 1: I think personal growth and leadership for that is in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways for me a spiritual conversation to
Speaker 1: just increase that capacity. This segment is sponsored by Novo Nordisk.
Speaker 1: It came acrost some interesting facts that really struck me.
Speaker 1: It said the average person with excess weight makes seven
Speaker 1: serious attempts to lose weight over time, yet only about
Speaker 1: ten percent succeed at keeping the weight off over time.
Speaker 1: This highlights the real tug of war that exists between
Speaker 1: weight loss and weight regain. I've experienced this myself for
Speaker 1: really most of my adult life, this struggle of losing
Speaker 1: weight only to gain it right back. But it reminded
Speaker 1: me of a conversation we had about the upward and
Speaker 1: downward spiral of weight loss and weight regain, which I
Speaker 1: think is a useful idea. You want to share a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, sure. The idea is that positive
Speaker 1: actions build on each other. If I exercise and I
Speaker 1: feel a little bit better about myself, so I might
Speaker 1: be more likely to eat better, And then if I
Speaker 1: eat better, I might be getting a better night's sleep,
Speaker 1: and since I get a better night's sleep, I have
Speaker 1: more energy the next day, and so positive actions increase
Speaker 1: and we spiral upwards. In that case, this can all
Speaker 1: so happen in reverse the downward spiral. Let's say I'm
Speaker 1: trying to lose weight and it's not going well. So
Speaker 1: maybe I feel discouraged and I don't take positive actions
Speaker 1: to continue my weight loss routine. Or you may look
Speaker 1: at your weight numbers on a scale and if the
Speaker 1: scale didn't move the way you wanted it to, you
Speaker 1: feel discouraged and you don't continue the positive actions that
Speaker 1: support your weight loss. And this is really common because
Speaker 1: as we lose weight, there are changes inside the body
Speaker 1: that try to push back, making maintaining that weight loss
Speaker 1: harder and harder. So the spiral continues downward. But the
Speaker 1: good news is it's possible to break the cycle and
Speaker 1: reverse the trajectory. Right, It's important to understand the science
Speaker 1: and what's really going on in our bodies when we
Speaker 1: lose weight and regain it, making weight and management more approachable.
Speaker 1: In fact, there is more at play here, like appetite hormones.
Speaker 1: Your appetite hormones can change following weight loss, making you
Speaker 1: feel hungry and less full, which can lead to weight regain.
Speaker 1: And this has nothing to do with will power, but
Speaker 1: rather our biology. That's when you need a different approach
Speaker 1: to weight management. Working with your healthcare team, you can
Speaker 1: form a plan to end the cycle of weight regain.
Speaker 1: By working together, you can champion your weight loss journey
Speaker 1: while improving weight related conditions. Right. I think what I've
Speaker 1: learned is it's not just about willpower. Diet and exercise
Speaker 1: are not the only keys to success. A lot of
Speaker 1: us feel that failure is inevitable, but we can have
Speaker 1: a more holistic approach to weight loss that looks at
Speaker 1: the science behind it, that looks at behavior change, and
Speaker 1: that also looks at community support. We encourage you to
Speaker 1: explore the science behind weight management and partner with your
Speaker 1: healthcare provider to develop a weight management plan that works
Speaker 1: for you. Let's move into the permissions in the book.
Speaker 1: But before we talk about what the four permissions are,
Speaker 1: why are you calling them permissions? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I'm in no way qualified to give anybody permission, including
Speaker 1: my own children. They are far more capable than me
Speaker 1: to have a gate this world. Uh, it's not my
Speaker 1: permission to give. I am encouraging people to give themselves
Speaker 1: permission because we practice and we grow up in a
Speaker 1: society that is kind of training us to do anything.
Speaker 1: But you know, we learned these questions the imposter syndrome,
Speaker 1: who am I to dot dot dot? That's like a
Speaker 1: not giving myself permission for full expression. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to just light a path through these ascending gates of
Speaker 1: claiming your own power permission by permission, you will do
Speaker 1: it the same way anybody else on this path has
Speaker 1: done it, but it starts at a very individual level
Speaker 1: of consent. So let's start with the first permission, then,
Speaker 1: which is permission to chill. What more radical first permission
Speaker 1: could there be in a speedy rabbit culture of high
Speaker 1: octane caffeine and more is more and you know, energy
Speaker 1: drinks at all hours of the day, than to just
Speaker 1: chill the hell out and stop once in a while.
Speaker 1: Because when we hit the pause button, it's represented by
Speaker 1: that pause button symbology that when we hit pause, we
Speaker 1: can actually see what we're doing. We could see things
Speaker 1: as they are, which is the virtue of sobriety, you know,
Speaker 1: to actually be with and see things as they are,
Speaker 1: and we could make peace in that moment with what
Speaker 1: is being asked of us versus the just unconscious resistance
Speaker 1: to everything. So I encourage ivery want to start by
Speaker 1: slowing the hell down, and I know radical idea stopping
Speaker 1: in that section, you say, our head and our heart
Speaker 1: are both vital and navigation. We tend to defer to
Speaker 1: the head when receiving guidance from both simultaneously. Wisdom is
Speaker 1: the integration of both. Yeah. Yeah, And then I say,
Speaker 1: the kind of the punchline on that section, I believe
Speaker 1: is something like one of those is literally keeping us
Speaker 1: alive and the other one only thinks that it is.
Speaker 1: You know, and it's true, you know, my my brain.
Speaker 1: When I default to my brain, I'm I'm an angiogram
Speaker 1: seven type, which is on the higher end of the
Speaker 1: mind type. So I'm always spinning a lot of ram
Speaker 1: and so I'm naturally going to defer to that because
Speaker 1: it's my logical, rational thinking mind. But when are able
Speaker 1: to get into the heart and figure out what that
Speaker 1: heart wants, there's so much more wisdom to guide us.
Speaker 1: What are some of the ways that we can give
Speaker 1: ourselves permission to chill? Yeah, So the obvious one that
Speaker 1: I really push on is creating the meditation habit bar none.
Speaker 1: It's the most powerful. It has a compounding return on
Speaker 1: our time over time. It's all about consistency and not
Speaker 1: about how long you meditate. But if you consistently make
Speaker 1: those deposits, it will come back to you in huge,
Speaker 1: huge ways. Even before that, just the four seven eight breathing,
Speaker 1: you know, to enforce breathing patterns and yoga it's prana
Speaker 1: yama breathing, but these four seven eight breathings, you know.
Speaker 1: Dr Andrew Wile is a huge proponent of this breathing
Speaker 1: in for four accounts, three four, hold for seven counts,
Speaker 1: exhale through the mouth for eight counts. Just enforcing specific
Speaker 1: breathing patterns on the involuntary nervous system tells our body
Speaker 1: to chill. It reminds our body, our brain is part
Speaker 1: of our body. It reminds this unconscious thing that we
Speaker 1: are the ghost in the machine and that we can
Speaker 1: be conscious. So I encourage and my executives to really
Speaker 1: pause a minimum four times a day to do four
Speaker 1: cycles of four seven eight, which takes about one minute. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's another way of sort of going from just
Speaker 1: the meditation cushion to four minute long breaks, you know,
Speaker 1: like a reboot, you know, for four cycles takes fifty
Speaker 1: seven seconds, about two in for four, hold for seven,
Speaker 1: exhale through the mouth for eight, and increases that discernment
Speaker 1: in the moment. And it just gives you a way
Speaker 1: to stop because we're all dragging the last crisis around
Speaker 1: with us into every new interaction. Totally. You've mentioned meditation
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, and I'd just be curious on
Speaker 1: your path, describe a little bit about what the practice
Speaker 1: of meditation is in the beginning and does it evolver change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's always evolving and changing based on life circumstances.
Speaker 1: I think it's truly something that the more you get
Speaker 1: a taste of, the more you crave it, you know,
Speaker 1: which is exciting. You know. That's why I was able
Speaker 1: to turn some of my earlier addictions into addiction for meditation,
Speaker 1: which I think has been a good choice. I would
Speaker 1: make a good swap, I'd make any day of the week.
Speaker 1: But how it's evolved for me, I mean, I break
Speaker 1: it down in the book is every meditation session has
Speaker 1: basically three phases. There's the getting our own attention, which
Speaker 1: four seven eight works great for just to wrangle in
Speaker 1: the snow globe of our scattered thoughts, and then once
Speaker 1: we have that attention, to spend the bulk of our
Speaker 1: time bringing that attention back as many times those are
Speaker 1: the reps of our meta attention muscle at the gym,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing it back to the mantra, back to
Speaker 1: our breath, and then at the end of the session,
Speaker 1: directing our attention into loving kindness, gratitude, using that focused
Speaker 1: power of our attention that we worked on for that
Speaker 1: time to put it towards, you know, something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 1: But yeah, my practice has evolved a lot over time.
Speaker 1: You know, right now, my duration has struggled through the
Speaker 1: writing of the book. What served me well was about
Speaker 1: an hour every single morning, no excuses, and then thirty
Speaker 1: minutes at night. And you know, it's it's not as
Speaker 1: consistently strong as that lately. But I'm also making room
Speaker 1: for a lot of other things that at the time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I look forward to getting back into my
Speaker 1: you know, my groove with it because it's it's so
Speaker 1: key to who I am. Is the basic practice remain
Speaker 1: coming back to a mantra or breath for you. Is
Speaker 1: that still with the basic practice in the bulk. I know,
Speaker 1: the experience of it evolves in changes, but the basic
Speaker 1: instruction remains the same essentially, you know. So if you
Speaker 1: look at transcendental meditation, it's all mantra based and it's
Speaker 1: very powerful for a lot of people. And the mantra
Speaker 1: gives the mind something to focus on. It gives it
Speaker 1: like an anchor point to come back to. So some
Speaker 1: of the simple mantras I use with my students that
Speaker 1: have been very successful are this is what it feels
Speaker 1: like to be free, Just to say that over and over,
Speaker 1: this is what it feels like to be free, and
Speaker 1: you start your mind starts looking at that phrase from
Speaker 1: every possible vantage point and interpreting it until it embodies it.
Speaker 1: And it just to focus on the gaps between those words,
Speaker 1: gaps between the letters. Just the repetition of that is powerful.
Speaker 1: Or the other one is I am the sky watching
Speaker 1: all weather move through me. That's literally li I meta meditation,
Speaker 1: because we're not the storm of our thoughts and the
Speaker 1: clouds of our emotions. We are that sky watching the
Speaker 1: weather move through us. And just that reminder that we
Speaker 1: have this awareness, I think is powerful in repetition. So
Speaker 1: you're not then necessarily a believer in the specialness of
Speaker 1: the sound of certain mantras, because in in certain Eastern traditions,
Speaker 1: transcendental meditation puts a big emphasis on this. You know,
Speaker 1: you get this very secret, very special mantra. It's beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's something about the vibrational quality of it. Those
Speaker 1: are beautiful mantras, but they're not that sort of one
Speaker 1: or two syllable Yeah. So this is my equivalent of
Speaker 1: being their meditation teacher in America. One for for busy leaders,
Speaker 1: I am the dad holding the two wheeler bike seat.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't encourage guided meditation. I've produced guided
Speaker 1: meditation with this intent to let go of that bike seat,
Speaker 1: and I start them off with those simple mantras. But
Speaker 1: in my own tradition with Yogan and is work, Oh man,
Speaker 1: it's all about residence. It's it's about chanting home for hours.
Speaker 1: It's about we'll do a Christmas meditation for eight hours
Speaker 1: and we're chanting home. A good portion of that. We're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of chance and curtains because that resonance
Speaker 1: of music is just so powerful to open the consciousness.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm a huge proponent of that, and it's
Speaker 1: been interesting. The four permissions have started to evolve into
Speaker 1: mantras and into chance, and I'm happy to chant one
Speaker 1: for you so you could hear it. But when I'm
Speaker 1: starting people out, I want them to have the most
Speaker 1: accessible entry point into it, and it's usually just everyday language.
Speaker 1: This is what it feels like to be free. I
Speaker 1: am the sky watching all weather move through me. And
Speaker 1: the reason why that later one works is because I
Speaker 1: think it gives them that higher advantage points their meta attention. Ye.
Speaker 1: Just that analogy in general of the sky and the
Speaker 1: weather is is such a powerful reminder reminder of what's
Speaker 1: happening and what consciousness can be like or actually is like,
Speaker 1: and we can recognize. Yeah, So let's move on to
Speaker 1: permission to Permission to is my final frontier and my
Speaker 1: own personal growth. It's the one I butt up against
Speaker 1: all the time with my own coach and in my
Speaker 1: own inner work. It's permission to feel all the fields.
Speaker 1: So on one side, it could be looked at is
Speaker 1: just increasing your emotional intelligence, your ability to read others
Speaker 1: and to share authentically where you are in any given moment.
Speaker 1: That takes a lot of honesty and and a lot
Speaker 1: of ability to see what we're feeling. And also on
Speaker 1: the other side of that, it's deepening our intuition and
Speaker 1: using that as data to navigate, and I think it's
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful. So it's it's symbolized in the book by
Speaker 1: the unicorn, and I had a lot of fun with
Speaker 1: this because I tried to write a lot of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties pop culture references into it. But the reason I
Speaker 1: chose the unicorn is because the horn of the unicorn
Speaker 1: comes out of what we call in Hinduism or in
Speaker 1: Yoga the kutasta titania, the seat of consciousness, the seat
Speaker 1: of concentration, also called the third eye or that point
Speaker 1: between the eyebrows. But when we're able to focus there,
Speaker 1: we're able to tune into this portal of divinity in
Speaker 1: yoga that this is where you know, spirit speaks to us.
Speaker 1: And I think that that arrives from most of us,
Speaker 1: first as our feelings and our emotions, and later as
Speaker 1: our intuition, and then later, if we're really clear and
Speaker 1: we could really hear what's going on, maybe it's the
Speaker 1: silent speaking voice of God. What part of permission to
Speaker 1: feel all the fields is hard for you. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna frame that up with a personal reflection, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's hard for me with feel all the fields is
Speaker 1: to feel anything. Yeah, I'm pretty good if a strong
Speaker 1: emotion arises in me. I am pretty good with a
Speaker 1: lot of years of practice and training and allowing it
Speaker 1: and going into it. Yeah. For me, it's more I
Speaker 1: think years of deadening myself left a more often than not,
Speaker 1: a flatness. Yeah, you know. So, I'm curious for you,
Speaker 1: is your challenge with permission to feel all the fields
Speaker 1: more one of the strong emotion and just sweep you
Speaker 1: away and you try and damn them down? Or is
Speaker 1: it more of what I'm describing. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I think that what you have serves you well on
Speaker 1: your spiritual path. We could redeploy those at at the
Speaker 1: any point that was a shortcoming of sorts to be
Speaker 1: you know, muted on that level. It serves us in
Speaker 1: other ways when we're pursuing equanimity, you know. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that what I said earlier. I'm familiar with the near
Speaker 1: enemy of equanimity, right, because I'm naturally equanimious. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think I pronounce that a plommonious. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am naturally that way, but it's you know, taken
Speaker 1: too far, it ends up in indifference or sort of flatness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my challenge with it is embracing my full, messy humanity,
Speaker 1: you know, and so being um, you know, a white
Speaker 1: privileged male and modern America. We're not likely to cry
Speaker 1: around our children. We're not likely to share when we're
Speaker 1: scared shitless by certain life circumstances. And the more that
Speaker 1: I've leaned into that in my entrepreneurial journey here the
Speaker 1: last five six years, the more magic opens up, the
Speaker 1: more willing I am to embrace my humanity and share it.
Speaker 1: The more it invites others in to step forward and help.
Speaker 1: It attracts the right allies, coaches, teachers, and my team
Speaker 1: to support me. So yeah, that's been my biggest challenge
Speaker 1: is just like most modern males, is just being honest
Speaker 1: about what is coming up. Again, like most males, I
Speaker 1: think I'm pretty attuned to my anger and rage and
Speaker 1: when it's boiling and brimming over and when I'm about
Speaker 1: to blow my stack like his Yosemite Sam and start
Speaker 1: firing my little emotional pistols in the air, and that
Speaker 1: awareness has been deepened over the last few years through
Speaker 1: this work around permission to and noticing it, like the
Speaker 1: work of Tick not Han, his incredible book on anger,
Speaker 1: Cooling the Flames. I believe it's called just that ability
Speaker 1: to notice it before you're at the boiling point is
Speaker 1: powerful because then you're able to redirect it, let it
Speaker 1: inform you, versus just create a lot of destruction all
Speaker 1: around you. Let's talk about that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: What is your process for allowing yourself to feel the
Speaker 1: anger and to work with it skillfully without venting it
Speaker 1: and causing destruction. What's your internal process of working with
Speaker 1: anger look like? Yeah, so I'll give you a common
Speaker 1: scenario for I think most parents. There's a witching hour
Speaker 1: for parents that happens between like five and six pm.
Speaker 1: It's when you're standing at the sink washing the dishes
Speaker 1: maybe from the day before, the night before. You've got
Speaker 1: to get food on the table. The dog is at
Speaker 1: your ankles, the kids are acting up because they're starving,
Speaker 1: and you're just about to blow because you have work
Speaker 1: bouncing around your head. You're not quite in the family
Speaker 1: game yet. It's a transition point. It's an important transition
Speaker 1: point that decides whether you're going to have a great
Speaker 1: evening with your family or create some irrevocable damage from
Speaker 1: your anger. At least that's how it shows up for me.
Speaker 1: I don't something that's going to make your child listen
Speaker 1: to the one you feed podcast in twenty years exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, it'll just increase those later therapy bills. It's
Speaker 1: a real inflection point. So as I'm washing dishes, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get really mindful of the warmth of the
Speaker 1: water on my hands. You know where my emotional game
Speaker 1: is in that moment. How hungry, angry, lonely tired am
Speaker 1: I in that moment, and noticing the feeling becomes just
Speaker 1: this real anchor point, Like what am I going to
Speaker 1: take with me into preparing the food? What am I
Speaker 1: going to take with me into sitting with my family?
Speaker 1: I work all day to get back to the table.
Speaker 1: You eate dinner with my family. You know that's something
Speaker 1: we do to touch stone with one another every single night.
Speaker 1: We don't miss dinner. I don't want to ruin it,
Speaker 1: as can happen when I'm full of anger or full
Speaker 1: of just distracting thoughts. So you know, I make it
Speaker 1: that time at that sink to really get clear of
Speaker 1: what I'm bringing in, and then I'll use my words
Speaker 1: when I sit down. Like last night, it was a
Speaker 1: very agitated type of day. I sat down and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to let you know I'm coming in
Speaker 1: a little hot tonight, you know, so just be easy
Speaker 1: with me, be patient with me, and cop to it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's forming a different type of
Speaker 1: bond with my kids than I would have maybe even
Speaker 1: a few years ago. Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom
Speaker 1: and all of it, but that very last part of
Speaker 1: sharing what we're feeling, you know, with partners or with
Speaker 1: kids with kids, I really see what you're saying about
Speaker 1: your showing your children. You have emotions. They are difficult
Speaker 1: to work with and there are ways of being skillful
Speaker 1: about it. So you're you're modeling skillful emotional regulation. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the generation ahead of us was great at
Speaker 1: modeling blowing the stack, you know, the mantram I jokingly
Speaker 1: call it like the clear the tables. And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna be piste off for a while. And and don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, that could come up for me in
Speaker 1: different ways. But what What I think is important to
Speaker 1: underline about what you just shared is that it's a
Speaker 1: part of non violent communication to identify the feeling and
Speaker 1: attach it to a need. We have a need inside
Speaker 1: us in that moment that's being unmet. That's why that
Speaker 1: emotion is there. And if we could cop or even
Speaker 1: identify what that need is and share it with others,
Speaker 1: a powerful opportunity opens up where you know, even your
Speaker 1: son saying, oh, Daddy, why are you so sad or
Speaker 1: what's making so angry? I didn't have those conversations with
Speaker 1: my parents. Me neither, And I think my son is
Speaker 1: a little older than your kids. I often wish, you know,
Speaker 1: i'd had him a little bit later. Yeah, I did
Speaker 1: more of that stuff at the tail end, and I
Speaker 1: do it now. It's not like the game is over.
Speaker 1: But he's twenty three, so it's a very different environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta share something I think is important for both
Speaker 1: of us is that my friend Eric Klein, who's a
Speaker 1: great Buddhist teacher. He has a great company called Wisdom Heart,
Speaker 1: written written a bunch of books, but he's raised two
Speaker 1: amazing sons. They're in their mid twenties. They're both yoga teachers.
Speaker 1: These kids both glow, they're both amazing boys. And I said,
Speaker 1: how did you do this? How did you not screw
Speaker 1: them up? You know? And he said, the good news
Speaker 1: is your kids tune into the long arc of your transformation,
Speaker 1: the long vibe of what you put out over time.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're somebody like yourself committed to
Speaker 1: constantly improving and gaining wisdom, that's who they become. They
Speaker 1: don't remember these moments of terrible fathering or whatever. Thank God,
Speaker 1: Let's try and hit the other two permissions quickly, and
Speaker 1: then maybe in the post show conversation we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the seven compassionate laws of personal change. That sounds good
Speaker 1: to you, Yeah, it's perfect alright. Permission three. Permission three
Speaker 1: the reason why most of us get into the personal
Speaker 1: development game or hire a coach. Permission to glow in
Speaker 1: the dark, to self actualize with witnesses, to get paid
Speaker 1: for who we are in the world. In writing the chapter,
Speaker 1: I realized it's just as much, if not more, about
Speaker 1: the darkness befriending the darkness and the ever present fear
Speaker 1: that travels with us every where. That audacity muscle we
Speaker 1: built to throw the damn switch anyway and to glow
Speaker 1: in that darkness because of it. I always feel it
Speaker 1: in my body every time I talk about it, because
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful thing to witness as a coach of others. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's less about the self actualization unapologetically and more
Speaker 1: about dancing with that fear to get to the self actualization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it strikes me. It's so interesting that you know, you
Speaker 1: talk about one of the things that you did that
Speaker 1: you work on consciously, and this is back to the
Speaker 1: previous permission, is you know, sharing the fears that you
Speaker 1: have on your entrepreneurial journey. Oh man, Yeah, what could
Speaker 1: be more terrifying than having a family of five in
Speaker 1: tow and doing this freaking entrepreneur thing. It's like, but
Speaker 1: that's my story. It's not for some people, but yeah
Speaker 1: that's my fear. Yeah. Yeah, that's part of the going
Speaker 1: in the dark piece, right, is recognizing that darkness that's around,
Speaker 1: because you definitely are a glower, you know, like you
Speaker 1: have that energy of like you know, boom here I am. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I call it the I say we do it you guys, Like,
Speaker 1: that's who I brought to Camp Good Life Project for
Speaker 1: five years. If I put on a towel cape around
Speaker 1: my neck and I say, I say we do it.
Speaker 1: You guys, let's go jump in the lake. Four people
Speaker 1: will follow me into the lake because that level of
Speaker 1: whatever glow or enrollment isn't you know, it gives other
Speaker 1: people permission to follow suit. But what I realize is
Speaker 1: that thing is connected to moving past that fear because
Speaker 1: I was always scared shitless to go out on stage
Speaker 1: and be unapologetically myself where unicorn yoga pants or be
Speaker 1: ridiculous in front of a large group of people. But
Speaker 1: the reward was always that being seen at a different
Speaker 1: type of level, that bravery piece. And you know, I
Speaker 1: say it in a lot of different ways in the book,
Speaker 1: but bravery is not the absence of fear. It's the
Speaker 1: muscle we build by doing the damn thing anyway, even
Speaker 1: though we're terrified. And uh, I think that's just another
Speaker 1: way to go. So you do get afraid by doing
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Oh man, I live in a
Speaker 1: perpetual state of being mortified. Eric, My kids will verify this.
Speaker 1: And I've gotten good at doing the damn thing anyway
Speaker 1: through practice, through being in bands, being a performer or whatever,
Speaker 1: stepping out into rooms feeling completely unprepared. That's a great
Speaker 1: venue to unleash your light. Absolutely, yeah, Okay, permission four.
Speaker 1: We were glowing in the dark in Permission three and
Speaker 1: Permission four, we're glowing in the light. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: my shiroes, Annie de Franco, who I grew up idolizing,
Speaker 1: just a huge influence, you know, as a crafts person
Speaker 1: around lyrics and activism and everything else feminism. She asked
Speaker 1: me why, She's like, what if glowing in the dark
Speaker 1: is not enough, what does glowing in the light look like,
Speaker 1: you know, unapologetic glowing, you know, no fear around. Just
Speaker 1: what what could that look like? And I had to
Speaker 1: go to kind of a higher place in my meditations
Speaker 1: during writing this part of the book, because I had
Speaker 1: to really try to perceive like a truly unlimited vibration
Speaker 1: of what that could be. And I did my best,
Speaker 1: and what I came to is that this would be
Speaker 1: like armies of lighthouses, unapologetically glowing, the people that have
Speaker 1: done the earlier work of chilling, feeling, glowing in their
Speaker 1: own darkness and then choose to stand together in one
Speaker 1: another's light, unprovoked, un triggered by competition, or that person's
Speaker 1: that color or they're that sexual orientation, just being fully
Speaker 1: willing to glow in the light of others. And I
Speaker 1: truly believe that that's what our creator is asking of
Speaker 1: us right now, with climate change, with pandemics, with political division,
Speaker 1: is to transcend that competition to collaborate and to uplift
Speaker 1: one another. And so that that's where I got on
Speaker 1: that fourth permission so far. But but it's always kind
Speaker 1: of developing that perception of what that could look like.
Speaker 1: What what do you think it could look like? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you say it very well, and you say
Speaker 1: to be with our full power while standing in the
Speaker 1: full power of others. Right. I think we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about this before the conversation in a completely
Speaker 1: different thread, but it was the ability to sort of
Speaker 1: stand on an equal level with people makes me think
Speaker 1: about something we used to say in a a slightly
Speaker 1: different but we would say, humility is not thinking less
Speaker 1: of yourself or thinking more of yourself. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just sort of an accurate assessment. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know that glowing in the light is I'm glowing,
Speaker 1: You're glowing, And I don't feel like you said I
Speaker 1: don't feel a need to compete with that. We also,
Speaker 1: at the same time are helping each other. And I've
Speaker 1: become so much more convinced of the importance of community
Speaker 1: and doing this work. Yeah right, It's the thing we
Speaker 1: all crave, you know, is that connection to others and
Speaker 1: not being threatened by others. And we're alive in this
Speaker 1: age of social media where it's such a comparison platform,
Speaker 1: so triggering. But those moments that we find where we're
Speaker 1: truly happy for our friend being married, or getting that
Speaker 1: big job, or or doing something amazing in their community,
Speaker 1: that that is true inspiration and it's what we need
Speaker 1: because I don't see the big media ever covering that truly.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not in the game of talking about
Speaker 1: collaboration versus, you know, fostering outrage and division. They're going
Speaker 1: to focus on what's wrong. Um. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: a Buddhist concept called moodita, which means sympathetic joy, and
Speaker 1: the idea is you take joy in other people's good fortune.
Speaker 1: You know, you're probably familiar with meta meditation, where you
Speaker 1: sort of sit there and you wish well to others, right,
Speaker 1: but moodita meditation, as you actually sort of visualize someone
Speaker 1: else getting everything they want. It's beautiful. The Dalai Lama
Speaker 1: said something like, you know, Moodita just makes sense because
Speaker 1: there's what seven billion people in the world, so that's
Speaker 1: seven billion opportunities for joy. You have one opportunity for joy.
Speaker 1: So if you're only focused on your ability to feel joy,
Speaker 1: that's pretty limited field of it, right, This is an
Speaker 1: unlimited field, and I think that's a vision that for
Speaker 1: me that aligns with sort of glowing in the light.
Speaker 1: That's so beautiful. Thanks for sharing that moodtail Moodita. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sympathetic joy. I finally found my tattoo. Eric. It's taking
Speaker 1: me forty five years, but I'm not that's awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: you and I are going to continue in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation and we're going to talk about the seven
Speaker 1: compassion Laws of Personal Change. I think these are awesome
Speaker 1: and listeners, if you'd like to get access to that,
Speaker 1: as well as a host of other membership benefits and
Speaker 1: the joy of supporting something you care about, go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash joint. Christopher, Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: it is such a pleasure to reconnect. Congratulations on a
Speaker 1: really wonderful book. Um will have links to it in
Speaker 1: the show notes and all that and how people can
Speaker 1: find your website and all your work. So thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Eric, It's been a pleasure. I loved
Speaker 1: our conversation. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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