Jerry Colonna: How to Reboot Yourself

0:00 my son Sam who's 33 was in the audience and there was this incredible moment right so I read people like oh dude this guy came to you know he's he he don't play he's being real and I and there's that moment after a talk where people gather at the front and I look up and my son's fairly tall and he's standing in the back of the room and he Ms to me I am so proud of

0:29 you dude as a father nothing can replace being proud of your children except when your children are proud of you sure that's an extrinsic motivation but I'll take that one

1:01 you were a great VC you became Rich you accomplished all of your goals that you thought you wanted and yet you wanted to kill yourself you felt hollow inside indeed what happened well that's quite a way to to start the conversation I think that if if you if you disconnect for a moment what one does from how one is and how

1:36 one has been and I want to be clear because though there's a relationship between those two but if you disconnect it for a moment it becomes a little bit easier to see through the myth that we all carry which is that if I achieve a certain Pinnacle of success then it it's milk and honey and sunshine and rainbows for the rest of my life and of course as soon as I say that

2:09 we know that that's not true so for me that moment and and you're right I describe it as feeling hollow inside a a a way to see it is that I walked around with a shell that was tailored to other people's projections of who I should be and my skill set and my intellect and

2:42 my work ethic still shown through but I wasn't necessarily doing the thing I was put on this Earth to do and that led to this disconnect between the in me and the outer me which on a prolonged period of of time leads to depression I think we all feel that to some extent I really want to dive into two aspects of that the first is you

3:13 said you were playing by other people I'm going to use the term scoreboard you're playing by what other people expected of you you're playing by these are the things that Society or culture or friends and family tell me that I should want and I feel like we're we're all doing that to some extent how do we how do we get out of that how do we recognize when we're doing that in the moment because it's all unconscious

3:37 we're unconsciously doing this and then we we it's like we reached the top of the ladder and we realize we climbed the wrong ladder like I didn't want to play that game but it's too late because by the time most of us realize that we're you know 70 80 90 it's near the end of our life how do we how do we switch out of that zone so that we can recognize am I doing this consciously because I want

4:00 to do it or am I doing it because other people want me to do it okay so the first thing I want to say is that it's never too late and I think that that's a really important message you know the Buddha had a teaching which basically goes like this if you spend 20 if you sit down to meditate with the intention of meditating for 20 minutes and spend 19 minutes wo Gathering but in the last minute wake up

4:30 congratulations you had a wonderful meditation session so even at 70 or 80 it's not too late and that's a really important message because part of the myth is that it's always too late oh it's not I'm 19 years old it's too late I'm 30 years old it's too late I'm 50 years old it's too late it's not too late it's not too late to wake up to realize that for The Pursuit Of Love safety and

5:04 belonging we shape our sh ourselves we shapeshift ourselves kind of like a Marvel Superhero to fit the expectations of others and to be clear you you you you you you named all the forces at work the forces at work are Insidious and Relentless and

5:36 ubiquitous and so you could argue right I mean there's a lot of conversation about what is the purpose of life one can make the argument that the real purpose of life boils down to discovering who you really are and living into that and then you inject a little bit of kindness into that and then we have a fully actualized person now I I I I know that was a

6:09 long-winded answer I just want to put a pin in the fact that you also asked how do we get there and that's a different question but I did want to give enough space to the folks who might listen to this and and recognize just the way you did recognize this per inity that we have I once had a client say to me I was bred to make my family members feel better I mean what a powerful statement

6:43 yes yeah yeah yeah so and and this is important to understand that this is part of a family Legacy right if we grow up in an environment where where in order to say make our depressed father less depressed or our anxious mother less anxious by shapeshifting the likelihood is that we

7:15 will pass that pattern on to our descendants and so your your core question which is how do we shift this how do we change this is quite profound because what you're really talking about is breaking lineage breaking ancestral patterns you know if you go back to your first question and about the hollow oness because this is what prompted the question you know at

7:46 3839 it felt like I had been hoodwinked because I did the things that one is supposed to do according to those external forces and I still wasn't happy so this isn't just like I'm in the wrong job or I'm in the wrong career although those are manifestations of that experience it's the I don't I felt

8:22 Hoodwinked I felt tricked I felt I'd been sold a bill of good and and to be clear it wasn't purposeful it wasn't like hey let's screw with this guy's head it was a function of the the way that families operate the way societies operate that creates this phenomena of shapeshifting our the

8:57 person away from who they were born born to be I think that's really powerful in terms of understanding where we start to go astray I think one of the other things that I wanted to dive into that you mentioned in the the opening answer was the relationship we have between work and identity why do we get caught up

9:27 thinking that our job or our title is who we are and then when that gets taken away or we're not as successful as we want to be somehow we feel less than we should feel and I would imagine this is especially true for entrepreneurs and Founders where you're just expected to keep going and keep growing and push and struggle and endure and then when you when you leave and walk away for your whole life if

9:59 you've been I am the CEO of X I am the founder of Y and then all of a sudden you're you're left with I'm just a person and there's a sense of loss I'll give you insight into the way I work and the way I think about things and and this may be part of the path to coming back to answer that question that you were asking before you asked why why is it that we attach a sense of self to an

10:28 externality and once you begin to see that pattern you can see the roots of it it might happen in school and and it might happen Even in our family system Dynamic where I am the peacemaking youngest child I am the one who has been early parentified or I am the student who gets A's or I am the athlete right and

11:00 so what happens is very early on we start to attach our sense of self to that and in and in a way all of the struggle is a struggle to free that sense of self that identity from all the different mechanisms and I think what happens is is that we get to around midlife which is where I was and the system starts to break

11:30 down and it's no longer sufficient so that feeling of feeling Hoodwinked you know I'm 40 years old I did everything right you know what the hell sets in so one of the most important ways to unpack the unconscious structures is to ask ourself what is the benefit

12:00 which is a a non-intuitive question so for example Shane I'm imagining you can relate to this structure do you have your own story of Outsourcing your identity and sense of self-worth onto something else do you have that yeah and what was it just so I have some context well sort of I get wrapped up in this right like I'm I am fum Street I am am okay so so what is

12:35 the benefit to you for me to see you not as Shane the the just the nice guy who's struggling to you know balance good and bad behavior and just trying to be a human being what is the benefit to you for me to see you as farum street it's almost like an alter ego right like it's almost like a different Persona and that can be good and bad I would imagine

13:07 and and but what's the benefit to you to having say me have a positive view of you through me personally or through me as like fum Street you as farum Street yeah it's just because it's a protective shield right so it's like you can have a positive view of fum street but it also protects me from all the the negative reviews and all the people who don't have a positive view of it so it it's sort of like I wouldn't say an

13:37 alter ego but it it's it allows me to protect myself and have the shield around me right so you you you you know go to the Head of the Class right you identified that right one of the things I you you asked is why would I attach my sense of self to phum Street for example yeah well because it's a protective move right and so the benefit to you and

14:09 you learn this as a child you learn this as a skill as a child the benefit to you more often than not if you go back to to the construct that I've written about in reboot my first book Is Love safety and belonging right the benefit is if I shapeshift in a particular way I'm G to feel loved I'm not going to get kicked out of

14:41 the family or you know extent in this case it might be the community and I'm going to feel safe now it's really important to understand that the mechanisms we're talking about more often than not were created to keep you safe now why do I say this I say this because when we start to unpack these unconscious patterns one impulse is

15:13 to criticize ourself look at me I operate behind a false front I'm such a bad person hint that's another false front okay that's also designed to protect you from getting to the core issue the real benefit of being curious about these structures goes to the heart of the question that you asked before which is

15:44 how do I transform this yeah because until you see it until you see that there's a benefit to you let me give you an example I was working with a a woman who's a CEO of a small company last week we were at a an offsite a retreat and she was talking about you know she has 15 employees and she was talking about one of the you know how the employees just drive her crazy and you know nobody works as hard as she

16:14 does and what's the problem here and all this and I said well who hired them and she smiled just the way you did and she's like oh well yeah I said okay so you're in charge yes and I can't stand it I said but what's the benefit to you for being in charge and this sneaky little grin kicked in and she said well I'm the bus okay now until we get to the point where we're willing to risk the thing

16:47 that this system was set up to protect we're not going to change see it was really important to me to be perceived as as a financial wizard as a really successful VC it was really important because it overcame Decades of a sense of poverty that I grew up with I had to be willing to be

17:18 poor in order to be free does that make any sense I think so does that relate to one of the questions in reboot was I want to make sure I get this right how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want you got it that's the core organizing question and and it's really important to unpack that question carefully I chose the word complicit for a reason I often talk

17:50 about being the accomplice in a bank job not the one who sticks up the teller okay because the respon responsibility more often than not becomes part of that family lineage well this is the way we do things right and so for in order for me to belong I adopt a methodology and I become an accomplice in those conditions so that's part one of the unpacking part two of

18:22 the unpacking is I say I don't want so if we go back to the to the woman CEO that I was talking about that I I spoke with last week she says she doesn't want the staff to always turn to her but boy howdy does it make her feel good is she aware that it makes her feel good like are we aware of that consciously or is that like an unconscious sort of dopamine almost response that we have well I I'll tell

18:52 you there was this funny moment where she's aware now yeah how do we get that awareness like you you telling somebody that there're you know you're you're creating the conditions that you say you don't want but those conditions are giving you a positive benefit well okay what's happening for you right now because we started making the connection between your identity and faram Street yeah what's the benefit to what's the downside let's talk about that for a

19:23 moment how anxious do you get if a podcast guest doesn't show up or conversation doesn't go well or how anxious do you get oh I don't get anxious about that I think I get anxious maybe about I think one of my big fears is like disappointing people like I don't want to disappoint people what would happen if you disappoint what would happen if you disappoint them I was St there I let them down so what so

19:48 you let them down what's the risk I don't I don't like feeling like I let somebody down like I don't like feeling I wasted somebody's time or okay so do you hear the little voice in your head that says Shane come on you wasted my time yeah right now notice the feelings feelings might be shame really powerful feeling might be guilt and without unpacking it so deeply

20:20 as that it feels like a JPY session right how old are those feelings as long as I can remember there you go now let's name a truth okay as a bunch of protoplasm in embryo in uterus you didn't have shame so somewhere between conception and today you learned to feel shame if you wasted someone's

20:55 time okay now you you asked how unconscious is this we just spent three minutes on this issue so it's not as deeply unconscious as we think it is right but it's not common that we talk about it right right what is more common is you might say to your team on the podcast you might get nervous about whether

21:26 or not it was a good episode and I don't want the listener to feel that they wasted time and they could sense what's going on around you family members might respond to it and then all of a sudden you as someone who holds power within your organization are starting to impact the psychological safety of those around you because you're not really talking about what's going on what's really going on is God I would feel so ashamed if all the effort that went into

21:56 this episode and and listeners sat there and saidh what a waste of time I can't believe this guy I mean he used to be good but he's gone off the rails here right that totally is a loop in my head yeah right that song is on rat a l see now what you're doing with a little laughter and a little levity is starting to release yourself from the grip of it

22:31 now imagine every time that Loop starts to play you get to blow it a kiss because here's the truth people don't listen to a podcast like this for one episode they develop a relationship with you and through your skillful questioning they come to understand people and you make their lives a little

23:01 bit better not every book we write not every song we write not every painting we do is going to move people in the exactly the same way okay but that doesn't mean you failed so it's interesting when you say that my typical reaction including right now my default if you will is I don't hear any of that none of those positive things they're

23:32 not like in my head they just go in one ear and out the other they don't there's no sticking so it's a little Teflon yeah but negative oh like those stick why do I remember those so much more or those feelings and sometimes they're super positive I want to preface this with sometimes they're motivating and they drive me and they give me energy and it's I don't think it's a bad energy but maybe it is in talking with you like

23:55 there was this time comment on the New York Times profile that they wrote on me and it literally you know I framed it and I put it in the office and it was like this guy's enjoying his 15 minutes of fame and it drove me to to be better and to work harder and to pursue more of what I was doing in a way that I thought was healthy but maybe it's not well let's just for this conversation

24:24 let's put aside the discussion of whether it's positive or negative okay yeah okay because I want to really unpack it so we've been talking about what a psych psychologist would call the secondary benefit what is the benefit of a particular Behavior okay so in this case you've got a Teflon coding inside and so when a positive statement comes in like you know a fried egg it just slips right off the bottom of the

24:54 pan it it cannot stick all right right what is the benefit of not being able to hear positive at praise what's the benefit to you because you just touched a little bit on it I don't know I don't know if I see it because I what the benefit to me of not hearing it would be it serves no purpose I don't need positive reinforcement I want to know

25:24 what I'm doing that I can do better so that you can do better yeah but the positive offers know sort of like what I can do better maybe I don't know like I'm just thinking out loud here I've never actually explored these questions yeah well and and I I feel honored that you're allowing me to explore these questions with you because we're backing our way into some of the qu the answers to some of the questions that you have

25:49 which is what is what you know how how does this start to get unpacked you said to me that you framed that snarky comment he's enjoying his 15 minutes of fame and you use it as motivation yeah tell me again that you don't know what the benefit is oh that's just total motiv it's a fire that doesn't go out like it burns okay it's a fire that doesn't go out it burns and the result

26:21 is you get better and better and better at what you do so that you could quiet the voice in your head that might say yeah he used to be good but he's not good anymore or any other feeling right I you know you might feel competitive you might feel like I need to be the best all all of those feelings and like many of us you have been socialized to use negative to

26:52 motivate do we get socialized or is that like inherent because I can remember doing this as a child from the time I was like five or six okay so now we get to the nature versus nurture question which which I'm not really sure okay but I will tell you it's really hard for me to imagine when I picture a little baby yeah sitting there saying I'm gonna not poop I'm gonna right I'm like making these decisions now is there an

27:21 evolutionary benefit to to this kind of thinking possibly possibly I can definitely see family cultural benefits right so for example if and I notice this a lot with the descendants of immigrants or the descendants of those who might have survive pilgrams or the descendants of those who might have experienced famine there's a particular

27:53 attachment to holding on to the possibility of negative outcome catastrophizing to drive themselves further and further because in the the the psychological construct of the being if you relax then fill in the blank something bad will happen and I want to be clear remember before I said let's let's remove positive and negative just for a

28:25 moment I can see how this drives outcomes that we want right I grew up terrified of not having enough money and I got to the point where like my grandfather I felt I finally had enough money and it was The Emptiness in that moment that shattered me because the the the negative belief system which was I

28:56 will never have enough money to feel safe was so positive in driving me and so effective in driving me that it literally drove me crazy okay now let's put this construct to the side for a moment and take it again out of positive and negative realm and let's go into this other realm that we've been talking about which is what I would call conscious adulthood

29:29 okay so like it or not Shane you're starting to wake up it's the last five minutes of your 20 minute meditation session and you're starting to wake up and you're sitting there going there's a cost associated with not hearing the positive isn't there yeah what's the cost to you of not being able to take in the positive well all the benefits right like knowing that I help people and knowing that I impact

30:01 people and feeling like I'm doing something meaningful and rewarding and offering something into the world that people resonate with okay I want you to hold that thought and let's imagine forgive me I can't tell how old are you 44 okay let's imagine you're 84 and it on your Deathbed you are still unable to take in the positives of your

30:32 life but boy you were really driven by those negatives how does that feel feels pretty Hollow I would imagine what word Hollow say that again you see what I'm talking about yeah it's like you were your whole life and you you got to this place that similar to you right like you got to

31:02 this place and you help people and you but you didn't appreciate or like you didn't feel like you did you didn't have any of the rewards of doing that I guess the internal rewards not the external rewards the the the the intrinsic sense of selfworth right yeah that's that's it's it's you know I I'll be one of those annoying authors who will speak about my book for a moment in the last chapter of

31:33 reboot what I referred to is the Good Man chapter where I'm using I'm in the hills in North San Francisco I'm in Marin County I'm going on a hike and I'm musing on this question have I been a good man have I been a good man and I encounter this toppled over oak tree and it occurs to me that this tree is now dying and decomposing back into the Earth and I liken myself to this tree and I realize

32:05 that I have been a good man that doesn't mean that every action I've taken has been positive and it doesn't mean that I haven't disappointed people including myself but regardless not bad considering there's an aspect to that of like forgiving yourself right for your mistakes for your flaws for your slip ups for your how do we do that like how

32:37 do we learn to forgive ourselves I think this process that we're talking about really unpacking notice when I said what is the benefit and I moved away from the impulse which is to to see the benefit we're seeking as something negative M oh I'm just trying to feel safe yeah now if we can project into little munchkins in our lives Rugrats people that we love

33:07 who are just kids and we see them struggling what is it we want them to feel about themselves I want to take away that like I think of my kids right my my intuition which I often have to consciously overrule but my first gut instinct is to like jump in to save them to make things easy for them and I would imagine that a lot of people are like that yeah snowplowing just you know clearing the road but but the feeling I

33:39 think how old are your kids 13 and 14 so oh God bless Preen teen years two boys self yeah self-esteem really challenged yeah really really challenged and what is it that you want them to feel about themselves when they're 45 oh resiliency right like I want them to be able to handle all the ups and downs of life and feel good about and how do you want and feel good about themselves yeah okay so now I'm going to

34:11 activate the super beast mode for you you said how can we forgive ourselves well when we we're stuck in this mode of using the negative to motivate ourselves it's really really hard to let go of the negative and forgive ourselves yeah totally okay so here's the unlock you have to do that for yourself first because the Teflon rejection of

34:43 the negative that motivates you they're learning every day these are one of the unconscious rules that we pass down to our kids that we we get as as kids well that hold us back or hold us that's right cuz what do they want more than anything else in the world other than pleasing their parents I'm gonna be just like him or for those of us with negative

35:16 situations I'm going to be anything but that person I think that's in part where where I come from right anything but there was a person in my life I don't want to get into too many details but anything but that person sure that's that's that but notice the the positive and negative positive and negative you know we we talk about resilience I often talk about equinity and equinity as the the real

35:47 goal that resilience is the path being able to be resilient against the forces is a wonderful adulting skill but what we're really after is the equinity that I projected onto that toppled over oak tree the equinity that

36:20 says I may have made a mistake and and I regret making that mistake and with remorse I will learn from that mistake but my sense of selfworth is not at risk I will use the positive experience of that mistake to learn and grow and do

36:52 a better job for the joy of doing a better job not because I'm being chased by a demon that says right you're a piece of crap I think that's a different way probably a lot more positive way for people to be motivated and driven I think it's hard for me to relate to that because you know for my entire memory MH it's like a chip on my

37:23 shoulder yeah right and that has served me very well right like in life and it's sort of I always view that as a positive I always thought chip you know a chip on your shoulder would be oh that's not bad that motivates you it drives you it doesn't like get in the way of you it doesn't get in the way of you yeah but like it doesn't get in the it can it can cause you paralysis right like it can also just

37:52 cause you to do nothing so I think you know chips on shoulders tend to go in two different ways right they tend to end up being like Tom Brady or they tend to end up being you know people who struggle through life and blame it they're a victim and you know sort of blame it on those circumstances that's the fear yeah the fear is if you acknowledge the chips on your shoulder you're going to somehow come

38:24 across as if you were a victim and you can't stand people who go through life as victims am I right about that yeah totally so that that's also another belief system okay if I pause if I let the negative if I let the positive in in a sense the risk is that I'm going to be complacent I'm going to be the victim

38:54 I'm going to be sort of drifting through life and I won't accomplish anything and I get that Josh Wolf who is a a VC at Lux Capital likes to say chips on shoulders put chips in pockets and he is right when he speaks about that and I am less focused on

39:27 helping people become outwardly wildly successful then I am focused on people including people who are outwardly wildly successful people feeling resilient and feeling that equinity so that they don't wake up at 45 years old feeling Hollow because I don't I I think that

39:59 the the marriage of these two things is not impossible here's the truth right I coach I'm the CEO of a company I've written two books I work really really hard I feel that I am doing the work that the Divine the good Lord whatever Force you want to say put me in this body to do and are there times when I look at

40:30 friends who have more money than me and I worry oh how come I don't have the the same amount of money and I just I cannot express enough the joy that comes from doing the work that you were born to do can you walk me through this a little bit so you get a negative comment on a book or you you catch yourself thinking friends who have more money than you and you you should have you

40:56 should have like more money or work harder or however you feel less of yourself in that moment what is the internal voice in your head saying how do you get out of that Loop well you you you hit upon and and probably because I gave them to you two different vulnerabilities that I carry one is I I'll speak about money for a moment you know my best friends in in

41:29 business and my best friends in in many ways are Fred Wilson and bradf felt two of the most successful VCS in the world and I walked away from the business when it was the three of us making hay you know do doing some good work in the world and so I can sort of look at them and go oh God why did I walk away look at look at look at the their life and yet

41:59 what constantly comes back I mean I had lunch with Fred a couple months ago and he made me cry because he looked at me and he said you know Jerry you you you are on fire you you do work that you were literally born to do and you know it's one thing to feel that about yourself it's another thing to have somebody whom you love say that about you okay and that's quite powerful

42:31 so there's a there's there's there's there's a feeling that comes in which is oh if only had stayed in the Venture business right I'd be you know mountain of gold and mountain of gold and then what would happen is oh you know I would do such good work in the world and I would help this person and I would do because I don't want to be motivated by greed right right so then what happens is and literally this

42:59 will happen in a journaling session and I'll say to myself but dude you have enough you literally have enough and so for that experience enough is a powerful antidote because enough was an elusive concept enough was something that just never seemed

43:31 possible right and and for teachings on that the Buddhists have this notion of a Hungry Ghost who wanders the world never quite satiated and wraithlike figure who eats and eats and eats and never feels satiated and Shane dude there are millions of hungry ghosts in power positions right now MH right they could have all the money

44:04 in the world they could win the game of Monopoly they could Bend The Game of Life with all the toys and they're still hungry ghosts and so those Notions are really really powerful for me on the writing question that's the hardest one for me that's actually harder than money and it's hard because the little boy in me values so much the ability to write

44:36 well it motivated me as a child it to to to know that my words impact positively other people gives me a sense of meaning and purpose and so if I hear a negative comment it can be really hard and

45:06 you know you're a creative as a creative you put yourself out there and you wonder oh how are people going to react and what I have learned over time is to lean into that edge and ask myself am I proud of what I've written and I'm I'm a I have pretty high

45:39 standards and so if I can get to a point where I feel proud there's a Liberation that comes from that and reminding yourself that you're proud of that in the moment I think helps you sort of not get caught in in the Trap of listening to that comment I want to go back to the word enough I think that's a really important word that people struggle with because it goes back to what we originally talked about in terms of playing by other

46:10 people's scoreboard you know bigger houses better cars we live in a world where Instagram and all these other social media apps feed us the very very best moments of other people's lives it used to be we would live on this street in like 1920 and maybe somebody would get a new car but our our comparison group was sort of our neighbors and you know we were socioeconomically pretty close we were politically probably politically

46:41 aligned you know we had a lot in common with people and people got further ahead together and now it seems like we can see everybody in the world we can see the best most happiest moments of their life or maybe not happy moments maybe just just the moments they want us to think are happy right it's that Persona that they're projecting that Persona that that Alter Ego maybe perhaps but it makes us feel as we don't have enough

47:08 and that we should be doing that or you know we should be why aren't I on vacation now why don't I have a new car why aren't I flying around in a private jet how do we how do we learn to come to grips with enough I think that you you hit upon a core motivation that really distorts almost everything that we do and and there's a poem I don't remember it but I think it's called

47:35 The Tyranny of more and that's the the the contrary message and and we do live in a society and social media is like gasoline on the on the Embers that constantly burn all right and our children are growing up in a world where they are repeatedly shown a message which is that they are

48:05 not enough and there's a lot in our economic systems that are built on this right advertising activates that effective advertising says you you may be great but you'd be much better if you had this car versus that clunker that you're driving right and we know that that that this is true right we we have myths and stories

48:38 that we we teach use to teach Parables that that that try to reinforce the message that just as you are you are enough just as you are you are enough and but it is for all the reasons that we talked about before the Teflon that exists with inside of you there is this subtle secondary

49:09 benefit which is if I feel that I am enough then I will somehow be a complacent slug sloth likee and what the you know fail to redeem my ancestors I mean what what is It ultimately right now again I want I'm going to do something unfair I want you as a parent as a

49:41 father imagine your two sons never feeling that they are enough when you say this what comes to mind is that individually this is terrible mhm collectively it leads to a lot of progress right so as an individual human it really sucks I don't want my kids to ever feel that but you want the

50:14 society but if we zoom out yeah not feeling enough not feeling like we have enough not feeling it drives us to innovate it drives us to do new things it drives us to take risks and chances and those risks and Chances Make medical advances they you know send satellites into space they start electric car comp you know that feeling also propels Society for it or am I wrong or or or take over some

50:45 pre-existing electric car company I didn't mean that but like somebody started an electric car company right because they were motivated to do so I wasn't specific mentioning you asked or or am or am I wrong okay I think that you're partially right I think and again we go back to sort of negative in extrinsic motiv motivation or positive intrinsic

51:15 motivation but let's let's take a step back think of the most brilliant ideas that you have ever had think of the R moments that people often have in my experience those real Innovative moments actually occur when the brain is relaxed when the heart is relaxed okay when we are not terrified

51:48 that we are not enough yeah okay now if if if we know that that's true the individual basis what is the expression of that on a communal basis and the the expression of that I think is when we feel collectively whether it's at a country level or a company level when we can

52:18 relax into the joy of doing something magnificent or as I often will say to my startup clients something magical greater Innovation comes now you you look at you know a classic example of a community coming together would be the United States Space

52:49 Race okay and that was motivated by a lot of fear of not being enough and being competitive okay but for most of the what's it been 50 60 years for most of that time we have balanced both the negative aspects of that oh my God it's a cold war and we've got to compete with the Soviets with the

53:22 Positive reaching for the Stars creating something extraordinary in fact I would say what has sustained us is the Reach for the Stars experience right you know Robert Browning the poet has a wonderful couplet he says Man's Reach should exceed his grasp or else what's a heaven for and I think that the the the

53:54 counterbalance to using I'm not enough as motivation is reaching for heaven okay so I am enough I don't have to write another book I'm enough but what if I wrote a book that changed the world what if I wrote a book that made somebody who's struggling feel a little

54:25 bit better about themselves what if I reach for those Stars I mean I get goosebumps just saying it yeah you know that's when I think the better angels of our nature come forward what does that mean better angels of our nature well remember when we were kids and we'd watch Like The Flintstones and Fred Flintstone would have a devil on one shoulder shoulder

54:55 and an angel on the other yes well it's actually a phrase from Lincoln okay in which he talks about the better angels that exist within us there are better aspects of our personality right and when we acknowledge the negative forces when we acknowledge the the negative selft talk acknowledge it thank it for doing it job

55:25 of keeping us safe but let it know that you're okay you're an adult you got this you start to give space for the better angels of your nature to come forward and say to you Shane you've accomplished amazing things you never have to record a great podcast again but imagine this new conversation that you're going to have that that's going to reach out and someone who's never

55:56 listened to your podcast before is going to be motivated and they're going to write to you and they're going to say dude you really made me think and I went back and I listened to old episodes and blah blah blah right that's the better angel of your nature different sorts of motivation towards the same sort of goal it's re it's reaching for the Stars yeah you know and and you know there was a moment I was

56:27 reading from a draft of my new book last summer I was at the do lectures in Wales and it was an early draft so I was kind of freaked out like can't believe that people letting me read from this but my son Sam who's 33 was in the audience and there was this incredible moment right so I read people like oh dude this guy came to you know he's he he don't play he's being

57:00 real and I and there's that moment after a talk where people gather at the front and I look up and my son's fairly tall and he's standing in the back of the room and he mouths to me I am so proud of you dude as a father nothing can replace being proud of your children except when your children are proud of

57:33 you sure that's an extrinsic motivation but I'll take that one that's a powerful powerful moment it it to to earn the look in their eye for them to feel that what I have done is

58:08 important I think if that's the only motivation I have then it puts too much of a burden on them but if I deny the power of that motivation I deny a source of love I deny a source of motivation and intent you know in the new book I referenced this

58:40 you know this internet cartoon this New Yorker cartoon yeah where you know you see these kids sitting around a fire and one kid is sitting in a you know ragged old suit or one adult is sitting in a ragged old suit and he says but for one brief Shining Moment you know our prophets were through the roof right and he's referencing climate change and the crazy state of the world and all of this stuff and implicit in that cartoon which is

59:12 poignant and bitter and is this notion of what did you do with the life that you were given right now that's a that's a hard thing to be motivated by and it's an ex an extrinsic voice but I will tell you I'd rather be motivated by that voice than the the

59:45 extrinsic voice that says if you don't succeed you're somehow a piece of crap I think I think that is a powerful motivator in terms of and I often catch myself thinking about this and I don't it motivates me and it also sort of like it's the gap between where I am and where I see my potential yes and on a community basis my friend

60:16 Parker Palmer often speaks about the the phrase the tragic Gap and the Gap is between the world as it is and the world that could be right and there is something powerful and Purpose Driven in acknowledging and living in that gap between who we are and who we'd like to be without getting sucked into guilt without getting sucked into shame

60:48 because we're not living amongst the stars and we're not you know manifesting everything that our heart would like us to manifest but I'll be damned if I leave this earth not having tried and that to me is a perfect antidote to the hollow and the depression that I experienced in my late 30s you mentioned

61:20 journaling do you have a ritual around journaling do you ask yourself this same questions what does your your routine of journaling look like and how is it powerful well to be clear I've been journaling since I was 13 okay and I turned 60 this year so journaling is a fundamental part of who I am I was journaling before I was in therapy okay so and my routine is is very similar and that has been very

61:52 very similar which is aside from making coffee it's the first thing I do in the morning and right now I live on a farm outside of Boulder Colorado and so I often Journal as the sun is rising and with a cup of coffee next to me and what I do is I take stock of myself I take there's a memoirist

62:26 Louise do Salvo in her book vertigo she calls it I take a fix on myself and I it's kind of like I figuring out where I am in the world and the kinds of questions or the kinds of statements I often open up with is right now I'm feeling and I just go through a kind of inventory I'm tired or my back is

62:57 hurting or I had a Wonder like yesterday I had a wonderful phone call with my sister an and I told her about having visited our home our childhood home in Brooklyn last weekend and that brought up all sorts of feelings and we shared feelings of that and I wrote about all of that this morning in the journal and in and in a way it's kind of like

63:28 processing what happened for me and then it clears the day and and then I meditate so my morning ritual is inclusive of all of this and then I will exercise right and that tends to be the the ritual now I hesitate because I I've often spoken about journaling and morning rituals and there is a a little bit of a

64:02 tendency in our world right now to place a little too much emphasis on the form well where do you where do you Journal oh do you meditate where and I just want to bring people back to the function because the function is taking a fix on your life so I meditate using a pen and a journal and I don't go back and reread

64:33 it or I journal and and I do that and I meditate without guidance but just a timer but I don't care how you do any of those things what I care about is take a fix on your life how are you feeling right now and how is it impacting your life these

65:04 days so that we're raising Consciousness so that we're not operating on autopilot I want you to go deeper on two things there not operating on autopilot and processing emotions when you say that the the words I just sort of understand them but when I think about what that means I don't know if I do understand that what does it mean to process your emotions well what it me in this case yeah yeah so and what you're hitting

65:35 upon Shane is the fact that we're not socialized to pay attention to feelings I'm going to say this again we are not socialized to pay attention to feelings but feelings have consequences in our life regardless of whether or not we pay attention to them so for example you might be feeling afraid of the market going down and you've lost money and you're carrying that feeling

66:08 and you open you start your day and then your son comes to you and says Dad I need 20 bucks you know I'm going out like oh what am I made of money right okay so now what we've just done is asked your child to Bear the burden of your anxiety about money for which he is ill-prepared and totally at not at fault because you didn't take the time to say God the Market's down and I'm off

66:43 7% for the year and oh my God and all the stories that you tell yourself that's what I mean by processing it or it could be job related or could be the world related or could be that you had a fight with your spouse or it could be and what ends up happening is this unprocessed stuff spills out and impacts other people right you could you could without processing it you could go to the gym and be feeling really like and

67:17 you're not paying attention and then you do a deadlift and all of a sudden you blow out your back because you're not PR present right I'm I'm really trying to make pedestrian examples of unprocessed to so that we could make sense of what it means you ask the question what does it mean to process the feelings it means to take them down to examine them and then to put them back so they don't plague you for the

67:49 rest of the day so that you can then be fully present for your colleagues for your spouse for your children so that you can be the adult you want to be you leave them on the page you feel them and that's what you're doing when you're breing them so you let yourself feel them rather than suppress them that's right by feeling them they sort of dissipate because there's a natural dissipation to feeling our feelings and if we suppress them

68:18 then they they sort of boil over in these weird moments where we overreact to Everyday situations like the child in the 20 you you just got it you just got it what other morning rituals do you have well my partner Ally would say don't talk to him so silence is really important for me it's part of the way that I process you know when I was in

68:49 college I was so busy I worked three jobs and going to college at the same time and it was I I didn't take enough time in the morning and so I would always feel like I was just like running at Full Steam full speed and so I'd say RIT large the larger ritual for me is taking a few hours of just not engaging with the world you know I I

69:22 typically wake ear somewhere between 5 and 6 but I don't wake with like oh I'm going to be super productive and you know drink my Bulletproof Coffee and you know like I don't do any of that stuff you know I just I I have normal coffee and I I try as best as I can to just like this morning when I was meditating we have a 100 plus year old cottonwood tree on our

69:53 farm farm and there's a nice little platform underneath and so that's where I meditated this morning and I noticed that I had a particular nut hatch Bird come visit which is relatively rare in our part and it was kind of neat to listen to its song so what's my ritual paying attention that's a good way I think to

70:25 start wednes day yeah so often we don't pay attention right and we don't even mean to pay attention we ask people how they're doing and we don't pay attention to the response they don't know it you know they know it unconsciously they don't say anything you have to ask them again if you want to pay attention and you know we slide over these things because we have this narrative or story running in our head about what we need

70:45 to accomplish so we forget to pay attention to these little moments where we could have learned something or we could have intervened or we could have made a difference in somebody's life we could have connected yeah we could we could have to use a Buddhist term alleviated suffering theirs are own right we could have made the world just a little bit better for somebody you know I want to come back to a word that has come up a lot in this

71:19 last hour or so which is resilience and how do we as parents go about developing that in our kids and more importantly I think you're going to turn this around to we have to exemplify how do we how do we do that in ourselves how do we build our resilience well let's start with the goal why do you want them to be resilient what is it that you want for them to handle the ups and downs of

71:49 lives with equinity so resilience isn't the goal Equanimity is the goal okay okay resilience in terms of perseverance and keep going and being able to well what if they keep going on the wrong thing okay so what is resilience and how does it help us okay so resilience without discernment can create stubbornness okay oh I love that go

72:21 deeper on that all right so in reboot I have this construct that I play with between True Grit and false grit okay and false grit is this notion of I've attached a certain secondary meaning to an accomplishment of a goal and without Discerning that I've done that I am susceptible

72:54 to persevering for the wrong reason right and you know I know some of the folks who listen might be entrepreneurs I see this in entrepreneurs all the time right I'm Gonna Keep with this business even though all of the indicators are that there's no product Market fit or that there's no customer base or that it's a lousy business

73:24 model because I am so terrified of failure that I'm going to fail in a different way okay we see nation states do this communities do this individuals do this so resilience by itself is a it's a wonderful attribute right you know I used to box and I have a number of

73:57 people who used to say resilience is the ability to take a punch and any boxer any martial artist will tell you it sucks to get punched in the face the real goal is to not get punched in the face the real goal is to endure the expenditure of energy to outlast your opponent I like that definition of resilience more than I like standing

74:27 there getting punched in the face because being punched in the face sucks and if you don't know how to slip a punch you are not going to make it as a fighter period so resilience with discernment and skill means being able to apply stick tutiven perseverance in the right

74:58 ways okay so you might have a son who wants to play hockey and the first game he goes to he he does poor job okay do you force your son to go back on the ice or do you help your son understand what's really at play well I feel shame because I'm not as good as well maybe you can contribute to the team even though you're not as good as

75:28 Johnny or maybe you just enjoy playing hockey and so you're not going to play for the an NHL that's okay you see the opportunity to really unpack that and that creates what I think is the resilience that extends beyond the individual moment the realization that things can go not as you planned and you're still

75:58 okay and that is equinity and so we develop that by shifting our Focus understanding what the benefit is and the cost do I have that right that's discernment yeah what's really motivating me why do I do this and if we go back to journaling for a moment journaling is an opportunity to

76:30 say okay I feel really anxious what am I so anxious about oh it's that old childhood fear of mine that I'm not going to be good enough what am I doing what am I okay let me process that put it in the journal not carry it into my day discernment is the underutilized tool I like that a lot I want to I want to take that to relationships and talk to me about how

77:03 stubbornness manifests itself in a relationship where we end up sort of butting heads with somebody we love and we care about and we don't intend to we're not consciously thinking about it how do we get out of this Loop where we're we're both being stubborn about something I I promise I won't ask you about your relationships but I think you're absolutely right that this shows up in there and and there's a couple of things that I would say about

77:31 that one again using the same tools of unpacking and understanding what's important to you so for example in my own life one of the trigger points for me that's very well known in my partner Ally knows this very very well is when I I I a i it's very important for me to be generous and if I feel that my generosity is being taken advantage of

78:03 I go from being Spider-Man to being the Hulk and that goes back to Childhood where I felt that my compassionate gentle nature was taken advantage of okay so that is programming that lies deep with inside of me and I'm fully conscious of it and it will still run occasionally so you asked how does this discernment show up in in good

78:36 relational skills and by the way a good book on this is how to be adult in relationship by a fellow named David ricko r i c ho it's Buddhist by its nature but there are a lot of wonderful books books on this but one thing that my partner Ally and I practice that is very very helpful and this is a line that comes from brne Brown and

79:08 it and it's simply the story that I'm telling myself so so imagine Hulk in me gets triggered okay and with discernment with the self- knowledge with what I call radical self-inquiry I know that that Hulk lives within me and rather than naming that with shame which I used to oh you're right oh

79:39 it's to terrible I I've welcomed in that part of me and understand that that part of me shows up so that I don't feel taken advantage of so that I feel safe I now layer in a new line which is okay the story I'm telling myself is that you're about to take advantage of me and the concominant reaction the supporting reaction from

80:10 Ally will be she'll look at me and she'll say if you don't want to do this you don't have to do this I'm not manipulating you I love you and and I appreciate your generosity and all of a sudden Hulk is just sniffing flowers and is happy and returns to Bruce Banner state right because oh okay because the real fear is I'm going to be taken advantage

80:41 of now I think we all have those old programming right you're you're nodding and you're like you got yours your partner's got hers or his you know know it's like we all have ours for sure the key is taking a fix on those and really understanding where they're operating and being gentle with yourself when they show up so they don't have to have the power to overwhelm

81:12 you and then you give your partner a tool when you say the story I'm telling myself you're going to leave me you're attracted to that other person you're going to spend all our money we're going to be homeless right cuz usually the stories we tell ourselves are really pretty extreme I really think that's a powerful tool what's required to do that is psychological safety in a relationship

81:43 and I don't think many of us feel completely safe in a relationship okay so I'm not speaking about myself here I'm just you notice my my impulse yeah I saw that no a few years ago I had a breakthrough thought and that is that love is safe and if it's not safe it's not

82:15 love it may be attachment but love is safe and this is also a lesson that many of us grew up with without really understanding now you I agree with you we need to be psychologically safe in the

82:46 relationship and that safety is not just a respon responsibility of the other person for example if I was socialized and raised as many young boys are to be distant from my feelings when my partner says to me well how do you feel about and I can't answer that question that may feel

83:21 unsafe just by itself yeah and so part of the work of adulthood is overcoming and really working with these constructs what I often refer to as subroutines that we grow up with so that we can then approach the relationship from a more adult self perspective

83:53 I guess I just want to make it clear that it's not always the other person's responsibility to make you feel safe no totally yeah I don't I think I'm wondering you know how you you have to come to that through yourself right like you have to address yourself and then you're trying to create safety with another person MH and those are sort of two different things and you can't be safe

84:24 with somebody else if you're not safe with yourself like if you don't accept yourself you know another person is not going to give you what you need because then you're you're so you're codependent like you're totally dependent on them too yes and that's unfair to them and that's unfair to the relationship and if you and unfair to your children because you're modeling something that's not a healthy relationship but keep going if you want to trust the relationship you

84:51 have to have the psych ological safety together and that that psychological safety allows you to be vulnerable it allows you to tell your partner what you're feeling allows you to tell your partner the story you're telling yourself and it allows you to be your whole self what are the steps that couples can take if they're in a good place individually to create that space together and build that safety no matter where they're at whether they're at the

85:16 beginning of the journey or you know sort of like they've been together for 20 or 30 years how do you Main M it with your wife how do you coach people to sort of develop that at the you know we just got married how do we develop this yeah so again I by way of a story yeah a couple years ago my partner Ally and I and we really developed this this phenomena of

85:47 the story I'm telling on myself in response to this thing thing that happened what happened was I was sitting at the dining table and or she was sitting at the dining table and I passed behind her with a load of laundry in my hands and I was headed down to the basement to do the laundry and she poked her head up and said the story I'm telling myself is that you're leaving me and I said hun I'm just doing the

86:15 laundry and it was a funny moment but in that moment she was able to reveal something that might have been shameful like what are you crazy what she just named the feeling that came up for her because part of her old trigger is being abandoned okay now I'll I'll turn it around and I'll tell a story about myself just two years ago you you you read reboot so you know that I grew up

86:47 under pretty adverse childhood circumstances a lot of violence in the family which led to a very I I wouldn't call it full-on body dysmorphia but a really complicated relationship with my own body and manifesting in wanting to be a boxer okay one day I'm in the our closet and I'm getting dressed and I pull on a pair of jeans and Ally who loves me looks me up and down right in

87:19 her mind she's saying do those jeans look good on him and what triggered in me was shame because and it went it was like a lightning bolt it went right back to Childhood and all sorts of negative experiences I had as a child now I had a moment I had a choice remember that line that is in inaccurately attributed to Victor Frankle between stimulus and response as

87:51 a choice Choice okay so stimulus response my response was going to be hulk-like and it was going to be what's the matter with you what and she would have said totally unsafe what the hell's going on this guy's a crazy man but instead I put my hand on my heart and I said I just went right back to Childhood you did nothing wrong you did nothing wrong but I just

88:22 had a visit from a ghost of childhood past now I'm 60 it took me a long time to develop that skill but I will tell you that when we can live our life with that kind of discernment we can create our own psychologically safe moments so what could have been a really difficult conversation became

88:56 an opportunity to bond even more because her response was loving and caring oh I'm so sorry that happened for you you know I think you're hot right and the smile you just said that was the smile yeah right this is hard I know anybody's listening to this is saying this is really impo hard but I will tell you it's not

89:26 impossible and man's reach should exceed his grasp or El what's a heaven for don't give up on growing up don't give up on being a better person that's where happiness is do you think a lot of people are scared to be vulnerable Because deep down they don't think they're lovable if somebody saw all of them yes they wouldn't be that's the

89:57 lesson they learned as a child yeah and more than anything they probably inherited that belief system from one or both of their parents or caregivers and they in turn probably inherited it and so on and so on and so on and so on the question for all of us is what do we want to pass on what is the lineage we would like to leave whether we're talking about the

90:29 planet or we're talking about Society or we're talking about our internal family Dynamics what do you want to leave your descendants when I think about that as purpose it overcomes all of that mishas good Yiddish word

90:59 foolishness that says you didn't do enough you didn't make enough money you didn't have enough success your book's not a bestseller whatever it is the story you tell yourself H enough sorry that's the Brooklyn and coming out with the I like it you can swear you can just be all of you we use the word discernment a lot

91:30 and we've used that in sort of like the context of you know choosing and that that's part of being an adult but also part of being an adult which we haven't talked about that involves discernment is the people you surround yourself with your friends and why do we keep people in our lives that bring us down or that we know aren't aren't right but we're scared to

92:02 detach and let go and how do we how do we I think you just answered your own question we're scared to detach and let go right because the first question I was going to when when we look at patterns in our lives and maintaining relationships that are not good for us is a good example of a pattern right I remember working with a client who was complaining to me about her boss and her boss's name was John and one day I I

92:34 said wait wasn't your last boss named John she goes yeah and the boss before that wasn't he named John yeah what's your father's name John when when we look at those patterns it is so useful to ask ourself without inducing shame or blame what is the benefit why do I keep this relationship

93:04 going when they hurt me why do I drink alcohol at night before going to bed when my aura ring tells me I'm going to have a terrible night's sleep right it's like what we need to develop is a kind of you know body hacking device that tells us don't do that you you do that and you see this

93:37 friend and all you feel is terrible about yourself a why do you persist in seeing this friend and B what is it about the relationship with this friend that makes you feel bad about yourself you see that discernment coming in again that what what I call that radical self-inquiry yeah you know we we go see that friend that makes us feel bad and then we come home and we feel bad and we take it out on our

94:08 spouse we don't ask the question why did I go in the first place like like I asked that that that CEO well who hired all these people who can't make a decision on their own and what was the benefit to you so when you think about those relationships ask yourself the question what is the benefit what do I get out of this no matter how much shame the answer

94:45 produces I like hanging around with that person because it makes me feel like I am just as rich as they are right and I like to be cool I want to be a member of the cool kids club or I like hanging out with that person because I can drink and I'm not drinking alone so I feel better about myself brilliant nicely done nicely done so the real issue isn't the friend right the real issue is your relationship with alcohol

95:14 or your relationship with money or or there you go yeah how do you end that relationship in that like if you're an adult like how do you end that do you have a conversation with them do you just stop inviting them to things what do you do it kind of depends on the situation how conscious are they how open are they my impulse would be always to have a conversation because the practice of having the conversation even if the

95:45 conversation isn't well received is a good muscle for you to develop mhm but you let go of the hope of quote unquote changing the other person you're not in the fix people business but you can start the conversation that says Hey Joe I was thinking about our relationship and I realized that one of the values I get out of the relationship is that it feeds a part of me that I

96:16 don't really want to feed anymore the part of me that feels like it's to party and and and drink and there are aspects of our relationship that I really enjoy and I don't really enjoy that aspect and you do not have to change Joe but I'm changing my relationship with that part of me so if we're going to get together

96:47 we're not going to drink see what I did I took responsibility and I shifted the dynamic now if Joe says well that's boring I don't have any desire to get together with you well isn't that revealing okay remember love is safe and if it's not safe it's not love because if that was really love it would be safe enough for you to say hey

97:17 I don't feel like drinking right and there you can share if it's safe enough the complicated reasons that it might be that you don't want to be drinking I mean my father was alcoholic I don't like to be in even social drinking situations that's me I'm not judging somebody else yeah that's what I bring to the equation

97:50 that's my responsibility is that helpful I think so yeah I think it's helpful for a lot of people it's a very it sounds weird but a lot of us don't have practice with that conversation yeah right so we we we have these competing things going on in our head which is I want to be a good person I want to be a good friend I want

98:22 to be there for people I know this relationship isn't serving me but I also don't quite know how to end that and maintain the I'm a good person I'm a good friend I'm a like so Shane in your observation I think you you see something really profound which is that we talked about socialization as children and what we learned we learn

98:55 about Outsourcing if you will a sense of self-worth to objects to accomplishments to goals we we talked about internalization of patterns in order to keep ourselves safe or loved or that we belong we talked about inheriting certain P patterns now you're talking about the fact that we tend not to teach our children how to

99:26 speak in a way that is lifegiving and life affirming yeah right and then we wonder why relationship struggle or we wonder why you know I mean my realm is Executive coaching right we wonder why we have toxic workplaces well because we give power to people who don't know how to use their words think about our kids when there

99:58 are kids we don't hit we use our words but we don't teach them how to use their words and and for many folks especially folks socialized as men as boys we don't even give them the words for their feelings 100% oh you're angry oh that's the word oh you're sad oh that's the word we just feel the violence the

100:28 physical and oh you're crying I'll give you something to cry about right rather than creating these conditions where we raise humans who can say the story I'm telling myself is that you're going to leave me or this relationship isn't working for me and it's not because you're a bad person or I'm a bad person but because

100:59 this relationship isn't working for me for all sorts of reasons that I can now name yeah because I have words it's powerful but we don't get taught that I'm just speaking of myself I mean maybe other people do but like nobody sort of modeled how to end a relationship nobody sort of modeled how to have a difficult conversation with the friend nobody sort of modeled in fact it was just the opposite right it was like you avoid

101:27 difficult conversations you you don't have them you and I think that the teenage boy thing is like you become an until the woman breaks up with you exactly it we we have two choices basically that we present mostly males of the species but a lot of folks say nothing and passive aggressively act out mhm until you can't take it anymore and you

101:57 act of aggressively act out and we have these two choices okay and there's a whole range of human experience in between that is bypassed right we don't teach children to say I'm scared mhm or that we we allow it until a certain age and then our expectation is

102:28 somehow they're going to self sooth their way from fears this you know the last line of reboot is and with this I mastered the art of growing up Okay the reason I site this is because it's really important in this moment to recognize that what we're talking about is the practice of growing

103:00 up there is no moment in time where we say I'm done fully realized adult maybe the Buddha is maybe the Dal Lama is but I don't know many people who are totally free of these things but the practice of growing up the practice of becoming the adult that we want to be you want to know a secret Shane it's

103:36 glorious yeah because every day a little bit better every day just feeling a little bit better I mean I turned 60 this year I am feeling my age I'm feeling like I'm entering elderhood and I got to tell you it feels magnificent and I don't pretend that I have it all right I don't far from

104:09 it but it's like after years and years and years of sitting on the meditation cushion 18 years now I'm finally understanding what it means to meditate I'm finally internalizing what discernment really looks like you know in in my bunis lineage one of the Saints is is a Buddha name

104:40 manery and manery is often depicted wielding a flaming sword it's called The Sword of prajna it's wisdom that cuts through delusion I'm finally feeling like I have a little bit like I have a little flaming butter knife you know I can kind of see what that looks like I think that's I'm really happy for you I think that's what I'm feeling right

105:11 now one thing I would be remiss if we don't talk about because I found it super helpful and I'd love for you to explain people is ofnr oh sure so this is let's give credit where credit is due this is a foundational component of something called nonviolent Communications NBC and that was first promulgated by Marshall Rosenberg and my interpretation is

105:45 not 100% in compliance with traditional NVC training but you're right to make the link between ofnr and what we're doing here so ofnr is an acronym and the letters stand for four words observation feeling need and request and if we want to think about it

106:17 this we can think about it this way this is discernment in action and this is self-responsibility in action so to go back to an earlier story observation I was putting on my pants and Ally looked at me up and down okay that is a value neutral statement it is non assumptive right and a and an assumptive blaming observation would

106:49 be Aly judged me when she looked me up and down okay so the first molecule of this is a simple observation Jerry walked past alley carrying a load of laundry fact feeling when Ally looked Jerry up and

107:19 down it felt like she was judging his body that another feeling brings up old feelings of being hyper criticized Jerry has a need to feel safe in his body so in the future here comes the request when when you're judging whether

107:51 or not the genes fit can you tell me what you're doing so I don't have to go through the whole cycle you see how that works the problem is Shane that we confuse o and F all the time go deeper on that you're you don't care about our relationship you're always late to our lunches

108:21 that's a feeling that's a feeling and it's an interpretation it's an assumption so so being late is the observation but the all of the subjectiveness to that is and what do we react to the subjectiveness the story We react to the feeling the story we're telling ourselves I often say that the story We Tell ourselves is the most powerful story in the world and if we by breaking it up and this is why you responded to ofnr by

108:51 breaking it up we we we pull the action the stimulus yeah away from the response yeah and we create more space in that in that place and the more space we can create between the stimulus and the response the more beneficial our relationships are going to be the more we'll interrupt the story that that powerful story that we tell ourselves holy crap look at what I just did there I just told myself that you're leaving

109:22 me even though I know you're going down to the laundry room and in a way that the framework enables you to take the invisible and make it visible with your partner with whoever you're talking to right you're taking these invisible thoughts in your head which dictates so much of your behavior passive aggressive behavior active aggressive behavior yeah I interrupted you though yeah no no keep going yeah I mean you I think you said it well it makes visible the the

109:50 invisible it makes conscious the unconscious okay so so by making that visible you're allowing the other person to calibrate your V the visibility of these no that's not what I'm doing right so you're separating them into sort of like fact interpretation and then the other person they would agree with the facts because the facts are not subjective but the feeling which is the subjective part by making it VIs ible

110:20 you're allowing the other person to be like no they're calibrating sort of or they're giving you feedback on that feeling which is like you're responsible for your feelings but they can tell you their intent and their their sort of what they were yeah you're absolutely right and what do you do for yourself when you do that when you separate that because you went to what you're doing to the other person and how it allows them to

110:43 calibrate what are you doing for yourself well you're allowing yourself to distinguish between feeling and observation which then interrupts that story making that we do well it allows you to go from RE reacting without reasoning which is very animal which is what we are we are animals right so we do tend to react with reasoning in certain situations we get triggered right especially when it comes to Identity or territory or how we see ourselves right

111:15 safety and you're you're creating that pause between stimulus and response when you do it and you're allowing your your sort of self to take a a double double take or step on this yeah I mean I often visualize it as the prefontal cortex grabs the wheel away from the amydala yeah right and it's like oh wait my adult brain kicks in because I separated stimulus and

111:48 response and I can see how the more power I have maybe the greater responsibility I have to do that right let's take it up the level imagine a president with nuclear power operating on the merged observation and feeling oh your ship crossed one of our ships we're going to

112:19 go to war literally Wars happen yes yes they do yeah unfortunately right this is this is why this I I call this a really a tool of discernment and and being able to do that radical self-inquiry to be able to say what's actually going on for me is a necessary full first step to pulling apart observation feeling reaction I want to I'm conscious of time here and I'm super grateful that

112:51 we're going to talk again we always end on the same question which is I think a really I'm curious about your answer we've danced we've touched on it a little bit throughout the episode but it's what is success for you it's really really hard to at this stage in my life to disconnect the notion of success from equinity if I you know what did I do yesterday we have

113:24 two fountains on our property around the house and one kept shorting out and I went to Home Depot and I got a new plug and I found the short and the wire and I rewired that and I put it all together and the fountain's now working again without tripping the the ground fall interrupt why do I tell that story because it was so satisfying because it was and I had a conversation

113:54 with my son Sam that was philosophical nature he would love this podcast and it was so satisfying and I talked to my sister an who's got her own struggles right now and it was so satisfying and allly and I watched an episode the latest episode of alone season 10 alone in Saskatchewan and it was so satisfying right that is is a successful life it's filled with

114:25 enough it's filled with love and safety and belonging notice what I did not say the material stuff those things are important but but they are the container not the content sucess success for me is content that makes me feel at the end of the day not bad dude you did a you did a

114:58 pretty good job so long- winded response but a thoughtful question that's a beautiful response thank you for sharing that and thank you for the conversation today this has been one of the most incredible conversations I've ever had on the podcast or not well now you're going to make me blush because I thoroughly enjoyed it and you know as I said I was really excited about the prospect of talking to

115:30 you I I do admire your work and and I've really enjoyed the the thoughtfulness and the spaciousness to explore all these crazy interrelated thoughts so thank you for the work that you do as well as for the invitation to come on the show