Speaker 1: Okay, as soon as I get done with this, then
Speaker 1: everything is going to be perfect and I'll never be
Speaker 1: anxious or feel out of sorts or feel like I'm
Speaker 1: off my balance again. And I'm like, yeah, well that
Speaker 1: your true self is just laughing about that right now.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Jacob Norby, an author
Speaker 1: whose many quests have led him to a deep fascination
Speaker 1: with life and all of its weird splendor. He penned
Speaker 1: the award winning novel The Divine Arsonist, and a nonfiction book,
Speaker 1: Blessed Are the Weird, a Manifesto for creatives. He's the
Speaker 1: founder of Manifesto Publishing House and his new book is
Speaker 1: The Creative Cure, How Finding and freeing your Inner Artists
Speaker 1: can heal your life. Hi Jacob, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, I'm so glad to be here. It's a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you on. We're going to be discussing
Speaker 1: your latest book called The Creative Cure, How finding and
Speaker 1: freeing your inner artist can heal your life. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's start the way we always do,
Speaker 1: with the Parable and the Parable. There is a grandparent
Speaker 1: talking to their grandchild, and the grandparents says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second and looks up at a grandparents says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. You know, there's a parable
Speaker 1: I've loved for a really long time. And I woke
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night, actually, and something
Speaker 1: prompted me to think about this, and I was just
Speaker 1: sitting with what does that mean to me? And began
Speaker 1: to realize Eric this to me is, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: the obvious face of a layer, like it's wonderful to
Speaker 1: feed the parts of ourselves that know how to be
Speaker 1: a better person and be more healthy person. I love
Speaker 1: that level. The other thing, though, that I began to
Speaker 1: re lives was, oh my god. I've spent years asking
Speaker 1: various parts of that question and then developing practices and
Speaker 1: have found some very interesting, practical, earthy ways to feed
Speaker 1: the good wolf. And I assume that a good number
Speaker 1: of those practices are in the latest book. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I'm delighted that we're talking about the book. I want
Speaker 1: to be clear that I told my publisher before we
Speaker 1: released this when I said, I wish we could find
Speaker 1: a different word than creative. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: word love or God or something. It's so big and
Speaker 1: it's come to mean so many things. That for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it starts to feel like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is just for those people. Those writers are those artists,
Speaker 1: are those genius inventors. And what I want to do, though,
Speaker 1: is say that what we're talking about the theme of
Speaker 1: your show is connected to what I feel like is
Speaker 1: the core of the creative spark, the energy that brought
Speaker 1: us here to be ourselves on this planet. Let's start there. Then,
Speaker 1: let's start by exploring a little bit about what creativity
Speaker 1: means to you. You've got a line in the book
Speaker 1: you say creativity is a forgotten cure for these life
Speaker 1: depleting ailments and a spiritual practice for returning to your
Speaker 1: truest self and living a life you love. So that's
Speaker 1: a little bit about what creativity does. But in your mind,
Speaker 1: what is it? It's kind of elusive, I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of us. You know, like I love philosophy, Eric,
Speaker 1: I love psychology, and I love all spirituality. I love
Speaker 1: all of these things. And you know, what I've felt
Speaker 1: tasked with in my life is making those things touch
Speaker 1: the ground for myself. And so for me, as I've
Speaker 1: been with that question semantically and spiritually in every other way,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to me, it's sort of synonymous
Speaker 1: with the soul for me. And again there's another big word,
Speaker 1: freighted with so many meanings for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: For me, underlying the word is an energy, is a feeling,
Speaker 1: is an experience, And to me that's sort of this
Speaker 1: mysterious spark of Okay, something showed up here a as
Speaker 1: me and as you and as everyone who's listening. And
Speaker 1: before we knew the names for anything, or the rules
Speaker 1: for life, or what good and bad was, this spark
Speaker 1: was here and it's still present, and it oftentimes becomes
Speaker 1: buried under layers of traumatic experiences and socialization and all
Speaker 1: of these things. And so for me, the practice then
Speaker 1: is not creating the spark, because I don't feel like
Speaker 1: that ever goes away. It's healing the connection to it,
Speaker 1: a little bit like there's the Buddhist idea that underneath
Speaker 1: everything there's essential goodness and you've got to uncover it.
Speaker 1: You start off by saying, um, you know, you believe
Speaker 1: that every human being is creative, and so again some
Speaker 1: people are gonna, well know, not me, you know, like,
Speaker 1: not me, I don't feel creative. What are the ways
Speaker 1: that people might be creative in their life? That they
Speaker 1: don't even recognize. Again, there's the obvious ones like well,
Speaker 1: I paint, or I write, or I play music. But
Speaker 1: what are other ways that the creative impulse shows up
Speaker 1: in our lives? That really came home to me. I
Speaker 1: think several years ago, Eric, I was walking to my
Speaker 1: brother Nate's office. He was then the head of a
Speaker 1: tech company, and we were walking through and he said, so,
Speaker 1: how's the book writing going? And I told him a
Speaker 1: little bit about it, and he turned and had this
Speaker 1: wistful look in his eyes and he said, you know, Jake,
Speaker 1: I'm just not that creative. And we were walking through
Speaker 1: this space and there were teams over here, development teams
Speaker 1: working on things, and people over here doing things. And
Speaker 1: we walked into his office and he sat down in
Speaker 1: front of three screens, Eric and looked like the matrix,
Speaker 1: you know, code running down it. And I watched his
Speaker 1: posture change, and you know, it was like he was
Speaker 1: sitting down to a grand piano, and he he kind
Speaker 1: of forgot that I was in the room, was sitting
Speaker 1: here working away. And I tapped him and said, Nate,
Speaker 1: you just said you're not creative, But when you sit
Speaker 1: down in front of your work in front of what
Speaker 1: you love to do so much. It's like watching a
Speaker 1: cod or version of Mozart, like I'm watching you create something,
Speaker 1: and this, to you is a liveness, this is connection,
Speaker 1: this is creation. And that's just one example. And that
Speaker 1: began this process then Erica pulling that thread and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's this misconcession about what this. There's a lie. Somehow
Speaker 1: we believed a lie. And this was also then amplified
Speaker 1: for me when in twenty nineteen, the World Economic Forum
Speaker 1: came out with their every five years study of what
Speaker 1: are the skills and abilities we need to improve on
Speaker 1: to you know, survive in our careers And these are
Speaker 1: big money, big data. People and creativity had moved since
Speaker 1: the previous time they had done this study had moved
Speaker 1: from the bottom of the list to number three. Some
Speaker 1: other things had had entered the list for the first time,
Speaker 1: like empathy and people related skills, softer skills. And that
Speaker 1: was interesting. So I did a study with ten thousand
Speaker 1: people and said what's your greatest creative challenge? In seventy
Speaker 1: four point three percent of them responded and said, I
Speaker 1: doubt my talented talents and abilities. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: good enough. So that was the kind of the Newton's
Speaker 1: apple on the head moment for me. Okay, there's some
Speaker 1: we know we need it, we don't really seem to
Speaker 1: know what it is or who it's for. We have
Speaker 1: to figure this out. So that's been quite a process
Speaker 1: since then to keep asking that question. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things that you identify early on in the
Speaker 1: book are three enemies of creativity. So I assume these
Speaker 1: are you know, doing that analysis of like, well, why
Speaker 1: are people feeling like they're not creative? What's getting in
Speaker 1: their way? If the belief that you have is that
Speaker 1: underneath it's there, and a lot of us are saying, well,
Speaker 1: I don't see it as there, then there's these blocks
Speaker 1: and the three that you identified, do you want to
Speaker 1: walk us through those? Yeah, so let me see I
Speaker 1: can pull these out of my head right now. Uh, socialization,
Speaker 1: which the Toll texts um would call the domestications the
Speaker 1: socialization rejection or the fear of it or and the
Speaker 1: fear of it, and then traumatic experiences. So say a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what those mean and what ways
Speaker 1: do they get in the way of our creativity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you're willing uh for me to put
Speaker 1: you on the spot a little bit as we talked
Speaker 1: through this, is that all right? Sure, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: be on the spot. Well, I love being interviewed, but
Speaker 1: I really loved real conversations so much more. And uh yeah, no.
Speaker 1: And I've spent some time on your site and looked
Speaker 1: at your show, and I love the work you're doing.
Speaker 1: I love how you're asking these questions and leading people
Speaker 1: into a truly deeper experience of themselves, of life, of healing,
Speaker 1: you know. And sometimes these things stay at such a
Speaker 1: conceptual level that people can walk away and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it's good to be more loving, it's good to
Speaker 1: be more compassionate or whatever. How the how do I
Speaker 1: do that? Yes, you know? And so I think stories
Speaker 1: going into you know, what are the real stories of
Speaker 1: these things can really be helpful sometimes. But yeah, domestication
Speaker 1: or socialization. What's interesting to me about this one, Eric,
Speaker 1: is that this isn't some evil force. It is the
Speaker 1: process by which we learn how to be humans as
Speaker 1: we currently know that, which means that everything we learned
Speaker 1: to do talk, read, write a bike, use the bathroom, eat,
Speaker 1: everything we have to learn by mimicry. We have to
Speaker 1: learn by people saying this is how you do that.
Speaker 1: But then at some time, at age thirty five or forty,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, a lot of us, wake up,
Speaker 1: I certainly did at age thirty four and look around
Speaker 1: and say, I don't even know who I am. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what I want. I've built a life.
Speaker 1: I feel the prison walls around me of this life.
Speaker 1: But I don't even know how to find my north
Speaker 1: star again. I don't know how to find my way
Speaker 1: back to ourself that could even tell me what's real,
Speaker 1: what's important? And so where were you at that point, Like,
Speaker 1: what were you doing when that sort of landed on you? Well,
Speaker 1: I was driving into the parking lot of a new
Speaker 1: building that my brothers and partners and I had designed
Speaker 1: and built for this enterprise we had just launched several
Speaker 1: years before. It was on fire, and um, everybody in
Speaker 1: the community was looking at us, saying, while you guys
Speaker 1: are really sharp, you're doing wonderful things. And I just
Speaker 1: bought this big, beautiful house. And I walked through that
Speaker 1: office and I looked round and said, why does my
Speaker 1: heart feel so heavy? Why when I look around me
Speaker 1: does this feel like I can't wait to get out
Speaker 1: of here, and I don't know where I would go.
Speaker 1: And was this a tech company? It was several, It
Speaker 1: was a mortgage company, it was a real estate investment
Speaker 1: firm in the tech company. Yeah, got it, got it.
Speaker 1: And you had just realized that you had sort of
Speaker 1: succeeded in achieving what you thought you wanted to achieve.
Speaker 1: There you are and it doesn't feel right. Yeah. A
Speaker 1: young guy was working for me two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: how it feels like three lifetimes ago, came into my
Speaker 1: office in the summer and said, Hey, I'd like you
Speaker 1: to go to this meditation retreat with me. And I
Speaker 1: had been reading Deepak Chopra and Mary and Williamson and
Speaker 1: Wayne Dyer, and but I had never learned how to meditate.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, I should probably learn how to
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, I'll do that. And I didn't know why,
Speaker 1: though eric I had all these fears. I look back
Speaker 1: and realized it was my ego self was really afraid
Speaker 1: of what was coming. And I didn't know why. I
Speaker 1: thought meditation was pretty pretty chill, you know. But I
Speaker 1: ended up getting in his truck A couple of months later,
Speaker 1: and we drove up a couple of hours into this
Speaker 1: mountain town and got up to this beautiful cabin lodge
Speaker 1: and somebody opened the door and they had long hair,
Speaker 1: and there was like, I don't know, sage or incense
Speaker 1: in the air, and somebody was tapping on a hand
Speaker 1: drum and like, oh man, I'm not in Kansas anymore,
Speaker 1: what's getting ready to happen? And it turned out to
Speaker 1: be a shamanic initiation. I didn't even know what a
Speaker 1: shaman was at the time, and they administered very powerful
Speaker 1: Now it's in very common part of the conversation, you know,
Speaker 1: d MT. But I had never been high, I'd never
Speaker 1: been drunk. I didn't know anything about any of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And that was really a date with destiny. You know,
Speaker 1: it's quite an introduction. Yeah, yeah, let's just jump right off.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like that was a pretty transformative experience.
Speaker 1: What happened next, you know, in your life? Well, it
Speaker 1: was during that experience, Eric and my brothers, you know
Speaker 1: who I went back to the next week, and then
Speaker 1: what happened the next couple of years. They were deeply
Speaker 1: confused by it and you know, upset by because things
Speaker 1: started to change and they said, what, you went up
Speaker 1: in the mountains and took drugs, Like what, so, now,
Speaker 1: why is everything changing? What happened there, though, was this
Speaker 1: contact with an original self, with universe, with something that
Speaker 1: was alive and freedom. Eric For the first time, probably
Speaker 1: all of my life, I experienced this freedom from fear.
Speaker 1: And looking back at my growing up years, my childhood,
Speaker 1: much later, as they delved into trauma studies and things,
Speaker 1: I began to realize, I have been shaping my entire
Speaker 1: life from the basis of fear. I have been creating
Speaker 1: everything in this bathe and this fear and this anxiety
Speaker 1: and trying to get away from rather than moving toward
Speaker 1: something I would love to create. And so I would
Speaker 1: like to say it was all tidy, and I just,
Speaker 1: you know, had that experience and and then got myself
Speaker 1: aligned and started taking strides forward. It wasn't tidy. It
Speaker 1: was this tremendous process of surrender too, some tug inside
Speaker 1: that said you need to keep going, you need to
Speaker 1: keep moving towards something that feels real, even though you
Speaker 1: can't see the outlines of it yet, and that led
Speaker 1: you into writing. Yeah. So the financial meltdown in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine wiped me out, which was great because I
Speaker 1: had been struggling so hard to keep everything together. I'm
Speaker 1: the oldest child and how this pressure, you know, to
Speaker 1: keep it all together. And then it was taken out
Speaker 1: of my hands and suddenly I was without all the things,
Speaker 1: without my titles, without retirements or companies or identity or
Speaker 1: credit score or anything. Oh I had when it was
Speaker 1: just really bad. Uh So, so I felt like I
Speaker 1: needed to move. And my then wife was actually such
Speaker 1: a help and that she said, I think we need
Speaker 1: to get out of here, like this town is full
Speaker 1: of ghosts for you. And so we looked around and
Speaker 1: eventually moved to Austin, Texas. And it was during that
Speaker 1: time that I've had this part time job in a
Speaker 1: warehouse and I was the only one. They're just waiting
Speaker 1: for these orders to come in. I had all this time,
Speaker 1: Eric and I was deeply depressed and deeply afraid and confused.
Speaker 1: And that's when I began reading The Artist's Way actually
Speaker 1: and um so where I began journaling for the first
Speaker 1: time really as a study thing. And it was during
Speaker 1: that time that I had this tap on my shoulder
Speaker 1: and the question was, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: With this time that you have. You've been waiting all
Speaker 1: of your life for freedom to follow your dream of
Speaker 1: being a writer, because that was one of my earliest
Speaker 1: dreams at age ten. And you have time now, so
Speaker 1: are you going to waste this time? And so that's
Speaker 1: when I began writing, and that's when my first book
Speaker 1: started to form. That is a journey. I love how
Speaker 1: you talk about how untidy it was, how much fear
Speaker 1: there was in there. There was a lot of unpleasantness
Speaker 1: in a transition into a life you really wanted. And
Speaker 1: I think that's always good to know because I think
Speaker 1: people tend to think like it's all easier. Positive. You
Speaker 1: know that when you move from doing something into the
Speaker 1: life you want and you arrive in a place where
Speaker 1: like this is really what I want, that that's easy
Speaker 1: and it it it's often a very hard fought battle. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I'd love to if you're willing. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've talked about this so many times, but I would
Speaker 1: love to hear. You know, you said before you were
Speaker 1: in software development and different things, and then it took
Speaker 1: time to create what you've created, and I would just
Speaker 1: love to hear a little bit about that. If you're willing. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a little bit of a long story,
Speaker 1: but I started a solar energy company in about two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and I worked really hard to try
Speaker 1: and make that work, and we had a couple of
Speaker 1: years that were pretty good, but then the state of
Speaker 1: Ohio kept sort of changing its legislation around energy and
Speaker 1: and and just it just eventually, after like the third
Speaker 1: time that we had, you know, millions of dollars of
Speaker 1: deals just kind of go up and smoke, I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't do this anymore. And so I stopped doing that,
Speaker 1: and I was just doing software consulting in my sort
Speaker 1: of field. But I was kind of bored, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just start this podcast. You know, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to do it because it sounded like it would be
Speaker 1: fun to do. I thought I needed it because I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I just needed the emotional sustenance and uh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to spend more time with my best friend Chris,
Speaker 1: who's our editor and producer, and so I I just
Speaker 1: sort of started it on a whim. But it went well. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: people were really listening and it kind of took off.
Speaker 1: So a few years into that, I started to think well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could do this for a living, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I could do this like this is what I do,
Speaker 1: because I started doing some coaching work with people, and
Speaker 1: I just thought, this feels right, this feels like the
Speaker 1: right place for me. But it took me, you know,
Speaker 1: even from that point another probably two and a half
Speaker 1: to three years to grow the podcast to the size
Speaker 1: financially where I felt like I could make the leap right,
Speaker 1: Like I was still primary breadwinner for a family, I
Speaker 1: had a son about to start college. I prefer not
Speaker 1: to go the route you did, which is like lose
Speaker 1: everything and start from nothing. I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if I can avoid that, that might be might be best, right,
Speaker 1: and so um, it just took me years of kind
Speaker 1: of doing both, you know, doing the software work and
Speaker 1: doing this work, and you know, there's lots of interesting
Speaker 1: lessons and how those things work together, but for me,
Speaker 1: it was just a gradual process and then at a
Speaker 1: certain point making what felt to me like a educated leap.
Speaker 1: We're still leap of faith, still walking away from a
Speaker 1: lot of money in a particular career, but also not
Speaker 1: doing it blindly and having a sense of like, all right,
Speaker 1: there's at least a path forward here, and it's been
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's been three I can't keep
Speaker 1: trying of time. I feel like it's been three years
Speaker 1: since then and we're still going. So it's it's working.
Speaker 1: So this is a question my brother and I asked
Speaker 1: all the time because he comes from you know, the
Speaker 1: way his brain works in the Myers Briggs world. He's
Speaker 1: an I N T J, so he tends to process
Speaker 1: very intellectually. First and um, when I went my own
Speaker 1: way there for a while, he told me, Jake, I
Speaker 1: followed you all my life. He's my next sibling, and
Speaker 1: he said, I can't go there with you. And I
Speaker 1: really felt like my earliest best friend diverging. Their paths
Speaker 1: were going separate ways, and I've felt a lot of
Speaker 1: sorrow about that. And then over the years, somewhere about
Speaker 1: two or three years ago, he began to have these
Speaker 1: experiences of panic attacks as this head of the tech
Speaker 1: company that we had started, and he would show up
Speaker 1: at the hospital and they would say, no, you're not
Speaker 1: having a heart attack, you're not dying. In fact, you're
Speaker 1: really in great health. And so that began this process
Speaker 1: of him going Okay, but something's not working, and then
Speaker 1: he began to pull his own threads and he got
Speaker 1: into Dr Joda Spenza and Dr Bruce Lipton, and he
Speaker 1: took this sort of more intellectual path and and now
Speaker 1: we're doing many of the same things, meditating every day,
Speaker 1: journaling every day, doing these practices, and I love that.
Speaker 1: But that has become this really important conversation to both
Speaker 1: of us because I feel so strongly Eric that there
Speaker 1: are many many people out there who feel left out
Speaker 1: of the conversation when it comes to spirituality or some
Speaker 1: of these things because they don't like the way it's
Speaker 1: framed or they can't understand it. They go, I'm just
Speaker 1: not that kind of person. But Nate just told me.
Speaker 1: He said, Jake, there was a soul hunger. And he's like,
Speaker 1: I kind of don't like the way I say that
Speaker 1: because it sounds flowty, but he said that's the only
Speaker 1: way I know. He's like, there was something in me
Speaker 1: that woke up and said I want more. I'm not
Speaker 1: satisfied with just making money and just creating things. And
Speaker 1: he's like, that became insatiable. So I'm curious for you,
Speaker 1: at what point something became insatiable and not just in
Speaker 1: the terms of leaving a certain career behind, but just
Speaker 1: to pursue this theme, this thing that you're doing now
Speaker 1: and sharing with the world. Well, pretty early on for me,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I was going to point to,
Speaker 1: you know, at twenty four, I was homeless, heroin addict,
Speaker 1: and when I got sober, that was a real launch
Speaker 1: into what matters in life. And I got sober in
Speaker 1: a twelve step program. And a twelve step program they
Speaker 1: say a spiritual experience is what you need to recover,
Speaker 1: you know, so I was sort of going to questions
Speaker 1: of meaning and spirit and connection really on sort of
Speaker 1: you know, life or death sentence. It felt like right
Speaker 1: like I really had to do it. But I realized
Speaker 1: I loved it and I was really interested in those ideas,
Speaker 1: and so that waxed and waned some over the intervening
Speaker 1: years as I had a rear. But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I was really involved into all step programs for a while.
Speaker 1: I was very involved in some Buddhist groups for a while.
Speaker 1: So I feel like it's been there for me for
Speaker 1: a long time now. This podcast was just the latest
Speaker 1: sort of iteration of it, and the one that actually
Speaker 1: worked well enough that allowed me to sort of do
Speaker 1: it at an even deeper level and do it more
Speaker 1: of the time without having to say, okay, well, eight
Speaker 1: hours of my day goes over here. So I'd say
Speaker 1: for a long time I've kind of had that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of the benefits of burning your life to
Speaker 1: the ground early is that I was forced a very quick,
Speaker 1: very early on go well, okay, what what's what's important here?
Speaker 1: What matters here? What do I want? Doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I didn't wander down, you know, putting career maybe more
Speaker 1: important than it should, but I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: time in life where that's kind of our energy. And
Speaker 1: I had a child and so there was providing for
Speaker 1: the child, and so all that comes together in promoting
Speaker 1: career some degree. But I feel like, at the same time,
Speaker 1: my alcohol and depression have always lurked close enough. I
Speaker 1: know what makes those things better, and it is a
Speaker 1: connection to something deeper, something more meaningful. When I stray
Speaker 1: too far away from meaning and connection, I get in trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love hearing the various paths, you know, and not
Speaker 1: that there's a path to get somewhere specific, but the
Speaker 1: path to connection, the path to healing that connection, and
Speaker 1: then I love how you pointed out the practice, you know,
Speaker 1: and also the wave form, the waxing and waning of
Speaker 1: that sense of purpose or connection. People come to me
Speaker 1: and I do work probably as you do, with some guidance,
Speaker 1: and people sometimes who have been, you know, very intent
Speaker 1: on some sort of awakening or some kind of transformation,
Speaker 1: they'll hit a point after a year or two and
Speaker 1: they're like, I'm kind of scared because I don't feel
Speaker 1: all that intent about this right now. I feel kind
Speaker 1: of bored, and I just know that if we take
Speaker 1: this back to kind of where we started, that spark,
Speaker 1: that true self, it knows the way through all of
Speaker 1: the parts of life. It also knows the way through
Speaker 1: the practicality, and there's not something that's better or worse
Speaker 1: about any of that. As I see it, it's like
Speaker 1: navigating the sea. It's like you're not going in a
Speaker 1: straight line. And people who get really focused on I've
Speaker 1: seen it happen in workshops and people taking you know, courses,
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, as soon as I get done with this,
Speaker 1: then everything is going to be perfect, and I'll never
Speaker 1: be anxious or feel out of sorts or feel like
Speaker 1: I'm off my balance again, and I'm like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: your true self is just laughing about that right now.
Speaker 1: I think there are inevitable ups and downs and periods
Speaker 1: of intense focus and periods of stepping back, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think those boredom periods or those dry periods are
Speaker 1: always really interesting periods to discern. And I was going
Speaker 1: through one a little bit recently with my spiritual practice.
Speaker 1: After having you know, a few years of really powerful
Speaker 1: awakenings and insights and deep committed practice, I hit this
Speaker 1: point where I was like, I just don't really feel
Speaker 1: like doing this a whole lot right now. And I
Speaker 1: was a pretty dedicated Zen practitioner working with a Zen sanga,
Speaker 1: and I'm talked with my spiritual director a fair amount
Speaker 1: about this, like is this a time for me to
Speaker 1: pivot direction a little bit and and go after some
Speaker 1: areas of this that feel really interesting to me? Or
Speaker 1: is this a time to say, you're hitting this sort
Speaker 1: of inevitable dry period and the task here is to
Speaker 1: learn to work through it. And that's deep discernment. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if I discerned it correctly or not,
Speaker 1: but I discerned it as I was going to explore
Speaker 1: some other spiritual directions that felt really interesting to me,
Speaker 1: at least for right now. So I think those are
Speaker 1: always the sort of questions, and like you said, I
Speaker 1: think it's really helpful to have guidance along the way,
Speaker 1: to have somebody to at least talk to. My spiritual
Speaker 1: director didn't have the answer. A matter of fact, I
Speaker 1: ended up doing the opposite of what he what he
Speaker 1: thought was the right thing to do, but he asked
Speaker 1: a lot of right questions that got me in the
Speaker 1: direction of Okay, I think this is what I want
Speaker 1: to do. Like and for me, it ended up with like,
Speaker 1: I have always trusted my curiosity. I have always trusted
Speaker 1: when something is sort of calling me, and when I
Speaker 1: mean calling me, I look and go, well is it?
Speaker 1: You know I've been called by Heroin, right, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say that, like, okay, not everything that calls me
Speaker 1: as a good idea, but taking the self destructive things out,
Speaker 1: I've always followed my curiosity. And I just realized I
Speaker 1: had a curiosity about some different types of spiritual practice,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: trust that. I'm going to trust that there's something in
Speaker 1: that for me. There's something that's calling me in that direction,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to choose to listen to it. But
Speaker 1: there may be another time in life where the answer
Speaker 1: is to say no, I'm going to stay. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stay and really work through this. Yeah. Well, and Eric,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is so important for the world.
Speaker 1: I spent the last eight years working with hyper Publishing
Speaker 1: an Insight Events USA, and I just had the incredible
Speaker 1: benefit of becoming real friends with people like Don mcgarois
Speaker 1: for Agreements Guy and Dr Joe to Spendza and Julia Cameron.
Speaker 1: I just it was such it was an amazing experience
Speaker 1: to get to know these people behind the scenes. I
Speaker 1: guess Dr Joe not as much, but we helped produces
Speaker 1: events for a long time. But what I noticed was,
Speaker 1: with Dr Joe being an exception, almost everyone else, the
Speaker 1: people showing up to by the books or come to
Speaker 1: the retreats or seminars, by and large, they were a
Speaker 1: certain category, a certain demographic, and it was by and
Speaker 1: large middle aged, white females and generally affluent. And by
Speaker 1: the way, that's a absolutely wonderful demographic. And I began
Speaker 1: to notice this, there are so many people feeling left
Speaker 1: out of what's happening there. They don't feel like it's
Speaker 1: for them, they don't feel like they could possibly get there.
Speaker 1: They're just like, I'm just not wired that way, which
Speaker 1: is why I feel like we see a lot of
Speaker 1: men of our age. How about how old are you?
Speaker 1: So I'm forty eight and a half. I would have
Speaker 1: given you I would have thought you were a decade
Speaker 1: younger than me. At least you're awfully kind. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I think that our generation of men eric Generation X,
Speaker 1: or whatever we call that. I feel like, by and large,
Speaker 1: were something of a lost generation. And you know, I
Speaker 1: don't mean that like some negative thing. I just feel
Speaker 1: like many of us were raised by parents who had
Speaker 1: been at some level connected to the counterculture. My parents
Speaker 1: were Hippies when I was born, and they were very
Speaker 1: passionate about that. And then my mother told me, you know,
Speaker 1: she was right in the heart of hate Ashbury nineteen,
Speaker 1: so right at the epicenter of everything big, and she said, yeah, Jacob,
Speaker 1: we thought we could drop it off acid and give
Speaker 1: enough positive vibes in the world would change. And then
Speaker 1: sometime about the time you were born in seventy three,
Speaker 1: the party started to be over there was really crazy
Speaker 1: racial stuff going on in San Francisco, and there was
Speaker 1: the Manson murders, and we were having kids, and we
Speaker 1: didn't have jobs and there was no food, and she said,
Speaker 1: we just we just had to quit. And she said,
Speaker 1: we felt terribly disappointed and disillusioned by the idea that
Speaker 1: something that felt so real and alive we had to
Speaker 1: give up. And so they went back to in their case,
Speaker 1: they jumped right into really extreme Christianity, but also went
Speaker 1: back to getting the regular kinds of jobs and raising
Speaker 1: us that way. And so I feel like our generation
Speaker 1: of not just men certainly, but I observed this a
Speaker 1: lot with men. Many of us were conditioned, were socialized
Speaker 1: by parents who were disappointed. Therefore they weren't really teaching
Speaker 1: us about life from this place. Of these are deeply
Speaker 1: held convicts. It was like, no sit down, get good grades,
Speaker 1: and somehow just get yourself out of here and go
Speaker 1: get a job so that you can survive because our
Speaker 1: old things didn't work. So I'm looking at very broad
Speaker 1: categories here, but I just see a lot of men
Speaker 1: of our age feeling spiritually disconnected and also feeling somewhat cynical.
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of what I call now
Speaker 1: like mix stoicism out there, and it's an ethos, right,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff, but it also doesn't quite scratch the
Speaker 1: deeper hitch for a lot of us in saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I want to go all the
Speaker 1: way down one of these you know, wisdom tradition paths
Speaker 1: or anything super new a g even though I've kind
Speaker 1: of done all of that. But I do want something
Speaker 1: that feels like it goes beyond just a sort of
Speaker 1: sterile code for this is how I live my life.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense totally? Totally? Well? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there is a deep yearning from a lot of
Speaker 1: people for more meaning, you know, a life that has
Speaker 1: more meaning. I actually think it's embedded in all of us, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think most human beings will hit
Speaker 1: a point where they start to look for that. I've
Speaker 1: always found Hinduism interesting because they talk about the stages
Speaker 1: of life and they sort of say, you know, like
Speaker 1: your thirties mid forties is going to be a time
Speaker 1: that you you know, late twenties you're gonna be very
Speaker 1: focused on career and family. That's what those years are for.
Speaker 1: And then you're going to emerge on the other side
Speaker 1: of that, and spiritual questions are going to come alive
Speaker 1: for you, and you're gonna start to think about meaning,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna start to think about legacy, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna start to think about what ways am I contributing. Now,
Speaker 1: again we are talking broad demographics. Not everybody follows those things,
Speaker 1: but I've always loved that they sort of have said,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's a kind of normal progression. And
Speaker 1: so if you're a fifty year old man, you're probably
Speaker 1: going to start to notice a hunger for meaning. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people may not into it. What's happening.
Speaker 1: I think it's where you get the cliche of the
Speaker 1: fifty year old with the year old wife in the
Speaker 1: sports car, right, But it's because there's a sense of
Speaker 1: something's not right. And my experiences when when we get
Speaker 1: that sense of something's not right, some people just double
Speaker 1: down on the paradigm they already have, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: something's not right, so I need more of it, more money,
Speaker 1: more status, more whatever. Or some other people question the
Speaker 1: paradigm and they go, wait, I've got a fair amount
Speaker 1: of that stuff and it seems to not be really working.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a different direction. God, I love this conversation.
Speaker 1: So if you look at this to the lens of
Speaker 1: Maslow's hierarchy, the basis of that pyramid are survival, and
Speaker 1: then you have an upward mobility, and the very apex
Speaker 1: is you know, self actualization. And of course all of
Speaker 1: these are these big words and concepts, but I think
Speaker 1: what you just described is what happens for so many
Speaker 1: of us, and Carl Young would absolutely agree about. I
Speaker 1: love the the sense like the Iliad is the going
Speaker 1: out in the Odyssey is the coming home. And I've
Speaker 1: just been reading more Young lately, and he talks about
Speaker 1: that turning point Eric at which time it's the inward
Speaker 1: longing begins to wake up in most people in some
Speaker 1: way of it's time to come home. It's time to
Speaker 1: come home to myself. And if you look at it
Speaker 1: through Maslow's it's like when we start bumping our heads,
Speaker 1: let's say, in midlife, if we've achieved enough enough survival
Speaker 1: levels type things, and maybe even some of the higher
Speaker 1: order needs, then of you know, esteem or prestige or
Speaker 1: whatever it is in community, we can start bumping our
Speaker 1: heads on the floorboards of the next level up, which
Speaker 1: is actualization, and oftentimes we find ourselves trying to answer
Speaker 1: the questions of the higher order with lower order answers
Speaker 1: like well, I guess I just need to have a
Speaker 1: third home now, or I need another sports car or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and that we know you and I
Speaker 1: know that doesn't really satisfy, not long term. And by
Speaker 1: the way, nothing wrong with second and third homes. I
Speaker 1: want to be clear about that. Whatever is true and
Speaker 1: a life for anyone is I feel like really good,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. Yeah, that's interesting that you think
Speaker 1: of it that way, because that does seem to be
Speaker 1: one path. One path seems to be okay, I sort
Speaker 1: of ascend through these these hierarchy of needs and I
Speaker 1: get to a point where I'm the next The other
Speaker 1: is sort of the path that I was put upon,
Speaker 1: which is, I've just burned my life to the ground completely,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm sort of forced into forced is
Speaker 1: the wrong word, but compelled by my consequences into uh,
Speaker 1: into seeking deeper meaning also, you know, so I think
Speaker 1: there's nothing like life crisis as far as a transformation tool.
Speaker 1: I love taking apart these ideas, these concepts like Maslow's
Speaker 1: or any of the frameworks, because I don't feel like
Speaker 1: any of them explains it completely, but they can provide
Speaker 1: sort of examples, I think, for us and for me
Speaker 1: that one I did the same thing Eric, I burned
Speaker 1: my life to the ground, or it was burned down.
Speaker 1: In fact, the title of my first book was The
Speaker 1: Divine Arsonist, because that's exactly how it felt. Everything is gone.
Speaker 1: And so that actually was the first time I had
Speaker 1: consciously I've been reading all the books and success literature
Speaker 1: and trying to do all of the things sort of
Speaker 1: hyper vision lee for all those years, and that was
Speaker 1: the first time I think that I was I, like
Speaker 1: your word, compelled. I was compelled to ask myself questions
Speaker 1: like who am I, what do I truly desire? Before that,
Speaker 1: those have been sort of unconscious, automatic reactions to life. Well,
Speaker 1: I just guess I need to go out there and
Speaker 1: flail around and build a business and make more money
Speaker 1: because I'm not feeling safe with the amount that I
Speaker 1: have now, And the more money I had, the less
Speaker 1: safe I felt, which was interesting. And but having a
Speaker 1: time of poverty in midlife there early midlife was actually
Speaker 1: really useful because I got to ask the questions do
Speaker 1: I need to basically take a vow of poverty and
Speaker 1: be a renunciate for the rest of my life, because
Speaker 1: that was felt like a very valid path for me
Speaker 1: at the time, and I began to look around and go,
Speaker 1: that's not what I truly desire, which allowed me then
Speaker 1: to begin making choices, little by little, step by step,
Speaker 1: back toward a life that felt like it had some
Speaker 1: additional meaning or more meaning than what I was doing before.
Speaker 1: I want to take a second here and sort of
Speaker 1: see if we can pivot this to some of the
Speaker 1: ideas in your book. I'm gonna keep dragging you back,
Speaker 1: promote your damn book, Jacob. Your publishers on the other line,
Speaker 1: they're like, get on track, man, that's so funny. Some
Speaker 1: people you can't drag them off their book no matter
Speaker 1: what you do. Every third line is well in my book.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, but I do want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about this idea because as you were talking,
Speaker 1: it came to mind, and it's the idea of imagination,
Speaker 1: because you were talking about imagining what sort of life
Speaker 1: you wanted, and I've, over the last x a number
Speaker 1: of months, have started to think about imagination a lot more,
Speaker 1: and your book was just another sort of input in
Speaker 1: to that for me about the power of imagination. Let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the role of imagination in
Speaker 1: connecting back to who we really are. Well, it's such
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. I was driving down the road one
Speaker 1: day and was really asking this question, and like, that
Speaker 1: feels like there needs to be some simplicity here about
Speaker 1: this question of what even is creativity? What does it
Speaker 1: mean to be creative? And again felt like kind of
Speaker 1: the Newton's apple on the head. I actually pulled over
Speaker 1: and wrote it on the back of a on the
Speaker 1: back of an envelope or something, this creative formula. So
Speaker 1: it came out. It's like, oh, interesting, So there is
Speaker 1: a structure, and imagination is the very first thing. So
Speaker 1: the creative formulas imagination plus feelings and stories plus actions
Speaker 1: equals result. And I began to realize, oh, we are
Speaker 1: literally creating all of the time, every day, So whether
Speaker 1: we are conscious of it or not, we are employing
Speaker 1: this formula. And we may be creating wonderful things, or
Speaker 1: maybe creating destructive things, or just purely unconscious things. And
Speaker 1: I look at unconscious things often as more like clutter
Speaker 1: rather than just purely destructive. But it's like, Okay, my
Speaker 1: life is getting more and more junked up with this clutter.
Speaker 1: So imagination, though, so if I begin to picture what
Speaker 1: I would desire in any moment, rather than just letting
Speaker 1: kind of the unconscious old patterns run the show, I
Speaker 1: can actually begin moving the needle a little bit toward
Speaker 1: something that would be a desired result. You basically said,
Speaker 1: we can't get rid of imagination, and so since we
Speaker 1: can't get rid of it, what ends up happening for
Speaker 1: a lot of us is that the imagination turns into
Speaker 1: imagining all the ways that things could go wrong in
Speaker 1: our lives that really hit me and struck me in
Speaker 1: that Yeah, a lot of our imagination, that's the direction
Speaker 1: it goes. Well, now we're back to the three enemies
Speaker 1: of creativity. Since we're talking about the book, socialization, rejection
Speaker 1: and the fear of it, and traumatic experiences. This became
Speaker 1: very personal to me, Eric before I wrote the final
Speaker 1: draft of this book, because I was going through a
Speaker 1: period of depression, and you know, this is after years
Speaker 1: of meditating and years of you know, teaching and all
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and I was feeling pretty ashamed about that.
Speaker 1: It's like oh my god. You know I should know
Speaker 1: better than this. But during that period of real depressive episode,
Speaker 1: I began to rather than treat the depression as an enemy.
Speaker 1: I think for the first time in my life, I
Speaker 1: made space and asked it what it needed, like, this
Speaker 1: is a feeling, this is here for a reason. And
Speaker 1: what was interesting as a younger version of myself showed up,
Speaker 1: I guess in imagination and he said, can we please
Speaker 1: just rest? I'm so tired? And that was interesting. It
Speaker 1: was also during that time that I was reading The
Speaker 1: Body Keeps the Score book on trauma, and also The
Speaker 1: Deepest Dwell, another book on trauma. And what was interesting
Speaker 1: is I had been reading those books for the information
Speaker 1: and for you know, improving my work. I began to
Speaker 1: see myself in the mirror and it was no longer
Speaker 1: something to read and then share with other people. It
Speaker 1: was like, I need to develop a practice. It was
Speaker 1: during that time that I learned the role that early
Speaker 1: traumatic experiences. And I want to say this to everyone listening.
Speaker 1: Some people have what's considered on the you know, more
Speaker 1: clinical scales extreme trauma. Other people take the same assessment
Speaker 1: and go, I don't have anything, so why am I
Speaker 1: still broken, and so it doesn't require an extreme level
Speaker 1: of trauma to begin to darken or create static in
Speaker 1: the connection to your true creative, original self. Many things
Speaker 1: can happen, and it's basically unavoidable in our world. And
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of us don't want to
Speaker 1: take on the label of trauma victim, for example, because
Speaker 1: we don't identify that way. But this is coming back
Speaker 1: to that idea Eric of since it's the first step
Speaker 1: in every creation imagination. The fact is that those three
Speaker 1: factors step in over time and they do develop a
Speaker 1: darkness in our imagination. For most people, it's really rare
Speaker 1: to run into someone who came into adulthood without being
Speaker 1: taught through the don't do that. You're not good enough,
Speaker 1: you're dumb, you're not going to fit in, I don't
Speaker 1: feel safe. If you look at the core beliefs that
Speaker 1: are way down in the roots, I'm not good enough,
Speaker 1: I don't belong, I'm not LoVa ball, I'll be rejected
Speaker 1: or abandoned. Those things often aren't at the front of
Speaker 1: our brains running the show, but they are deeply down there,
Speaker 1: and so learning how to address those, learning how to
Speaker 1: give them their say. But then also really start healing
Speaker 1: and creating new neural pathway. This is a practice, and
Speaker 1: for me it has developed as something that has to
Speaker 1: be a kind of non negotiable practice in my life.
Speaker 1: I don't meditate now because that's going to get me
Speaker 1: closer to enlightenment or because I'm following a particular wisdom tradition.
Speaker 1: It's like this is a daily routine, a daily hygiene
Speaker 1: practice to keep me in touch with and heal and
Speaker 1: keep the heaviness of those old beliefs on their way
Speaker 1: up and out, sort of keep metabolizing them, and then
Speaker 1: make space for something better to support my life. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of things in what you just said there.
Speaker 1: I can't decide quite which I want to which threat
Speaker 1: I want to pull, But I think I'm gonna pull
Speaker 1: on this thread which is in your book. There are
Speaker 1: a couple different times where I felt you sort of
Speaker 1: wrestling with a question that I wrestle with a lot.
Speaker 1: I think you'd be a great person have a good
Speaker 1: conversation about this with And it's this idea of allowing
Speaker 1: our thoughts and emotions to be kind of what they
Speaker 1: are and ask them what they have to teach us
Speaker 1: and what they have to show us and healing them.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, how do we balance that
Speaker 1: with not empowering them or living in them or from them. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you talked about writing your book, right, and
Speaker 1: I thought the way you talked about the creative formula
Speaker 1: for writing your book was really interesting because you did
Speaker 1: talk about how you've got these fears like that are
Speaker 1: saying you can't do this, You're not gonna be able
Speaker 1: to do this, You're not good enough. Right, So you
Speaker 1: didn't automatically squash them with positivity, but you also didn't
Speaker 1: let them sort of run all around and take over
Speaker 1: the whole place. So how do you balance those two
Speaker 1: sort of ideas of allowing thoughts and emotions to be
Speaker 1: what they are, ask them what they need, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: also then putting in better, more useful positive beliefs. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're back to just that they've practice. Eric. I
Speaker 1: feel that there is no benefit to trying to affirm
Speaker 1: or positive my way over the top of things that
Speaker 1: are there. And as you just said, there's also no
Speaker 1: real practical benefit in just wallowing in those things. And
Speaker 1: so what I've found is I use a very simple
Speaker 1: daily journaling practice and it's in the book. It's also
Speaker 1: available in my site for as a free download, and
Speaker 1: it's a set of three simple questions. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: do this literally every day. How do I feel right now?
Speaker 1: What do I need right now? And then what would
Speaker 1: I love or how would I love to feel? Sometimes
Speaker 1: that's a better way to ask the question, depending upon
Speaker 1: what I'm in the middle of that day. I've found
Speaker 1: that this actually helps me as a precursor to attempting
Speaker 1: mindfulness or meditation. Also because what happens in those three questions.
Speaker 1: For me, it's so simple. And even people who you
Speaker 1: know don't like journaling or have never been journal ors,
Speaker 1: I say, well, then, don't call it journaling. It's simply
Speaker 1: listening to yourself. By the way, when I say a
Speaker 1: specific pattern, it's like not dogmatic. But I've just found
Speaker 1: that when I do it every day, it tends to
Speaker 1: get enough out and it brings the unconscious to consciousness
Speaker 1: for me. And so when I say how do I
Speaker 1: feel right now? I like to get grounded with that.
Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes it's very physical. I feel tired because
Speaker 1: I didn't get enough sleep last night, or I'm feeling
Speaker 1: emotionally churned up about this big change that's underway or whatever.
Speaker 1: So just the level of honesty with which I answer
Speaker 1: that question for a few sentences, there's this relief that happens.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to a lot of us early
Speaker 1: in childhood were taught that our needs didn't matter and
Speaker 1: our feelings don't matter, and so reaffirming that to myself
Speaker 1: every day is this sort of micro choice to say no,
Speaker 1: I matter, and what I'm feeling right now matters. And
Speaker 1: also there's some part of me. I view some part
Speaker 1: of ourselves as almost like a toddler. And you and
Speaker 1: I have both had children, so you know, as a
Speaker 1: three year old is not going to say, Daddy, I
Speaker 1: need a drink. At some point, it's going to get
Speaker 1: louder and louder and something's going to break. They will
Speaker 1: get our attention. And I feel that way about parts
Speaker 1: of the self as well. It's like, if I don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to this, or at least give it someplace
Speaker 1: to have something to say, something will eventually break. It's
Speaker 1: going to find a way to get my attention. So
Speaker 1: that's one of the practices that I've developed in my
Speaker 1: life every day, Eric, So how do I feel, what
Speaker 1: do I need again. This can range anything from more
Speaker 1: philosophical or emotional needs down to I feel like I
Speaker 1: need more money because my tax bill is do something
Speaker 1: about the act of acknowledging it on paper. It's a relief.
Speaker 1: It can be transformative. And also it's interesting how it
Speaker 1: works with the brain, where rather than having this just
Speaker 1: sort of flying around like a flock of crows, it
Speaker 1: becomes something now that's on paper, it's outside of me,
Speaker 1: it's out there, and it checks a box internally. So
Speaker 1: for people who are maybe less right brain dominant, it
Speaker 1: checks a box and it's like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: address that. I'm not just letting it sit back there
Speaker 1: and create anxiety. And then the magic question of what
Speaker 1: would I love or how would I love to feel
Speaker 1: when I'm going through if I haven't for a while,
Speaker 1: but if I'm going through times of real emotional turmoil
Speaker 1: or something kind of acute, is going on saying how
Speaker 1: would I love to feel right now? It might be
Speaker 1: I would love to feel more confident, I would love
Speaker 1: to feel more safe, But just getting that out there,
Speaker 1: and then a prompt that I use quite often is
Speaker 1: I am so happy and grateful now that and begin
Speaker 1: to write that, and it's interesting. I can show up
Speaker 1: sometimes to the journal feeling pretty anxious or pretty chopped
Speaker 1: up in some way. I've noticed though, that developing this
Speaker 1: as a daily practice actually does something, and it tunes
Speaker 1: me back in, and it also creates sort of a
Speaker 1: boundary around some of those things, which, in a practical way,
Speaker 1: eric allows me to go back to my life and
Speaker 1: feel like I'm not ignoring anything. I'm paying attention to
Speaker 1: these things. Carl Young might say, I'm paying out the
Speaker 1: shadow in an intelligent way, but it actually allows me
Speaker 1: to be more rational. And by the way, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hold up this poly vagel chart. Um, you've probably have
Speaker 1: seen this. It's something I use a lot in my work.
Speaker 1: It actually got cut from the book. I've put a
Speaker 1: lot of brain research and things, and the publisher cut
Speaker 1: a lot of that, which was fine. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: email a link to that if you want to put
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. But I use this as
Speaker 1: a visual sort of tattooed on the inside of my
Speaker 1: skull right now, because it's this curve of anxiety and
Speaker 1: at the bottom level, I call it the green zone
Speaker 1: because it happened to be green on this person's chart.
Speaker 1: But in the green zone, it's the ventral vagal nervous
Speaker 1: system state in there. And this is what's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: You and I have studied and been involved with various
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions and spiritual practices. But in this green zone
Speaker 1: is calmness, in connection, it's being settled. There's groundedness, safety, connection,
Speaker 1: safety oriented to the environment, curiosity and openness. There's compassionate
Speaker 1: experience there, and there's mindful and in the present. When
Speaker 1: I came across this study of the poly vagel nervous system,
Speaker 1: I began to realize, oh my god, this is the
Speaker 1: holy grail for personal development, self help, spirituality, Like this
Speaker 1: is the holy grail, and it's a nervous system state.
Speaker 1: There's some very proud to feel physical benefits like you know,
Speaker 1: better immune response, better digestion, it reverses aging oxytocin. We
Speaker 1: actually begin to feel connected to ourselves and to other
Speaker 1: people and feel safe in doing so. When I look
Speaker 1: at a practice like using a journal practice or and
Speaker 1: some version of meditation or mindfulness, I've come to call
Speaker 1: it a lot more deeply relaxing. What I've found is
Speaker 1: that as we get up out of the green zone
Speaker 1: into the higher levels of anxiety. Our left brain wants
Speaker 1: to interpret that as the place we're being the most
Speaker 1: sharp and the most effective making the executive decisions. But
Speaker 1: in reality, that five or ten minutes I spend writing
Speaker 1: down my thoughts and feelings and needs, and the five
Speaker 1: or ten minutes or twenty some days, it's five that
Speaker 1: I spend deeply relaxing. We might also call that meditating
Speaker 1: or mindfulness. Those actually move my brain waves and my
Speaker 1: nervous system into a state where my body is actually
Speaker 1: allowed to do what it's meant to do, and I
Speaker 1: actually see the results in my life. I find myself
Speaker 1: making better decisions. I am more curious, I'm more open.
Speaker 1: So I also call this the creative zone. It's the
Speaker 1: green zone as the creative zone. It's like, we want
Speaker 1: to find out how to be in better connection with
Speaker 1: all of that. These practices actually matter, and I'm loving
Speaker 1: that we're discovering more and more with brain research that
Speaker 1: it's it's very practical too. Yeah. I love to see
Speaker 1: the brain research, the neuroscience sort of come in and
Speaker 1: confirm and add insight to what a lot of wisdom
Speaker 1: traditions have been saying for a long time. I'm all
Speaker 1: for as many sources of you know, confirmation to something
Speaker 1: because it's hard, you know, life's hard to know, like
Speaker 1: what's the right thing to do? Do I have coconut oil?
Speaker 1: Or do I have coconut oil? I mean, the debate
Speaker 1: is out right, you know. So I'd love to have
Speaker 1: like fifty studies that tell me coconut oil is okay.
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna feel better, you know, so when the
Speaker 1: when the wisdom traditions and the modern science line up,
Speaker 1: I feel like, okay, good, I feel a little bit better.
Speaker 1: And then of course the ever important personal experience like okay,
Speaker 1: does this actually help me? You know? What's it do
Speaker 1: for me? Um? Tell me about your meditation practice? What
Speaker 1: what does it look like today? What do you do
Speaker 1: you you call it deeply relaxing. You've also called it meditation.
Speaker 1: What is it you're actually doing for that five to
Speaker 1: twenty minutes or thirty minutes? Well, I've created some meditation
Speaker 1: tracks or visualization tracks. I actually use my own sometimes,
Speaker 1: but really for me, even oftentimes it's settling down into
Speaker 1: my body. I'll take a lot of deep breaths for
Speaker 1: about five minutes. I will oftentimes start into that with
Speaker 1: a practice of breathing in, I'm loved, breathing out, I'm safe,
Speaker 1: breathing in, I'm seeing, breathing out, I'm enough. A lot
Speaker 1: of times I'll find myself sort of the parts of
Speaker 1: my psyche and self sort of recollecting themselves. And then
Speaker 1: I love meditation tracks. I find them on YouTube. There's
Speaker 1: this great oming one that I love at last for
Speaker 1: three hours, So generally I'm only listening to twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of that one. No, but I've found that just by
Speaker 1: keeping that so simple and and actually having in my
Speaker 1: brain and especially helps people like my brother Nate to
Speaker 1: have a chart like this to go, oh, that's why
Speaker 1: I'm doing this. But then just I'll sometimes visualize myself
Speaker 1: actually moving into the green zone and just allowing the pleasure. Um,
Speaker 1: so many of these things often feel like shoulds or
Speaker 1: feel like hard work, and the pleasure of deeply relaxing,
Speaker 1: of going oh, this feels so good, and having the
Speaker 1: intellectual side being supported by Oh, and there's all this
Speaker 1: information that say, this is the awesome stuff happening my body.
Speaker 1: That also can help when I'm feeling particularly you know,
Speaker 1: not present. But I just find that spending that five minutes,
Speaker 1: and Eric, I teach in my workshops, I'll teach you know,
Speaker 1: let's just close our eyes right now and breathe and
Speaker 1: count one finger at a time on our knees to
Speaker 1: tend one breath with each finger, and then do the
Speaker 1: same with their toes. And I'm like, with that simple
Speaker 1: practice that lasts about a minute and a half, you've
Speaker 1: actually moves yourself closer to the green zone, just with
Speaker 1: something that doesn't require any special mantras. I've done parts
Speaker 1: of that. It had stop lights sometimes when I was
Speaker 1: feeling particularly anxious, I said, you could do this during
Speaker 1: a phone call or a board meeting or something. It's like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to wait until you have the right
Speaker 1: pillow and the right meditation track. The benefit of coming
Speaker 1: back to yourself. And by the way, I feel like
Speaker 1: this comes back to the theme of your show. I
Speaker 1: know now from experience and all this wonderful research that
Speaker 1: as I do these things, I gain what Franco would
Speaker 1: talk about the difference between stimulus and response. I widened
Speaker 1: that gap and I begin to create a space of
Speaker 1: more choice. And so when people are like, how do
Speaker 1: I feed the good wolf rather than the bad one?
Speaker 1: The question is how can I gain more choice? How
Speaker 1: can I become conscious that I have a choice right now?
Speaker 1: And so for me, these practices are the things that
Speaker 1: create more more choice, more opportunity for choice toward listen.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a really rare human on the
Speaker 1: planet who would choose the bad wolf. I feel like
Speaker 1: many people have a very small gap between stimulus and reaction,
Speaker 1: and so find ways of creating a greater gap there,
Speaker 1: of finding like, oh, I am a powerful creator. I
Speaker 1: am a powerful creator, but you know what I'm not
Speaker 1: if I don't have enough space to make a choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. I've often when people ask me, like, what
Speaker 1: have you gotten out of meditating? You know why you
Speaker 1: do it? And the thing that I most often point
Speaker 1: to is exactly what you just said. I said. I
Speaker 1: feel like it has tangibly increased the space between stimulus
Speaker 1: and response. I feel like it increases that gap where
Speaker 1: I have more of a chance to say, Okay, how
Speaker 1: do I want to react? Not just externally that's part
Speaker 1: of it, but internally also internal stimulus okay and instantly
Speaker 1: right boom an internal stimulus, all sorts of cascades of
Speaker 1: thought jump in. But now you know, sometimes there's enough
Speaker 1: space to go hang on like, is that true? Do
Speaker 1: I really need to follow that? You know? And so,
Speaker 1: so it's not just space between stimulus and response externally,
Speaker 1: it's internally. You and I are out of time. It's
Speaker 1: snuck up on us. We're going to continue in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation briefly while I drag you back to
Speaker 1: your book again at least a little bit where I
Speaker 1: want to talk very briefly in the post show conversation
Speaker 1: at least about how to be both grounded and wildly imaginative,
Speaker 1: how to be creative and responsible, how to daydream and
Speaker 1: reach your goals direct lines from you, and the tools
Speaker 1: for fostering conscious creativity. So you and I will do
Speaker 1: that in the post show conversation listeners if you'd like
Speaker 1: access to that, as well as lots of other post
Speaker 1: show conversations, and an episode I do each week called
Speaker 1: a Teaching Song and a Poem, where I share a
Speaker 1: song I love, a poem I love, and UH and
Speaker 1: an idea that you might work with, and the joys
Speaker 1: of being supporter of the one you Feed. You can
Speaker 1: go to One You Feed dot net slash join Jacob,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much has been really fun. We could
Speaker 1: probably do it for another two hours, and we'll do
Speaker 1: it a little bit longer, but thank you. I've been
Speaker 1: looking forward to this and I enjoyed it too. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
Speaker 1: making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.
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