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[Music] this episode is brought to you by element spelled l m NT what on Earth is element it is a delicious sugar-free electrolyte drink mix I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this it was one of the first things that I bought when I
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again check it all out drink element.com Tim drink LM nt.com this episode is brought to you by eight sleep I have been using eight sleep pod cover for years now why well by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like a fitted sheet you can
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automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed eight sleep recently launched their newest generation of the Pod and I'm excited to test it out pod 4 ultra it cools it Heats and now it elevates automatically more on that in a second first pod 4 ultra can cool down each side of the bed as much as 20° fight below room temperature keeping you and your partner cool even in a heat wave or you can switch it up depending
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for a half mile before my hands start shaking can I ask you a personal question now we the SE BR time what if I did the oppos I'm a cybernetic organism living dissue over metal endoskeleton hello boys and girls ladies and germs
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this is Tim Ferris welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to sit down with worldclass performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits routines favorite books and so on that you can
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apply and test in your own lives this episode is a two for one and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary which is insane to think about and P 1 billion downloads to celebrate I've curated some of the best
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of the best some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes and internally we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is
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to encourage you to yes enjoy the household names the super famous folks but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars these are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for
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many of you perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle perhaps you missed an episode just trust me on this one we went to Great pains to put these pairings together and for the bios of all guests you can find that and more at tim. blog combo and now without further Ado please enjoy and thank you for listening first up Tony Robbins entrepreneur philanthropist and the nation's number one life and business strategist and the number one New York
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Times bestselling author of of money Master the game Life Force and awaken the giant within you can find Tony on Twitter and Instagram tonyrobbins looking at the longevity of your career the scope and scale of the Tony Robbins Empire so to speak your endurance has really impressed me and so I'm wondering after these decades what are your some of your daily routines my regimen is I start with something to strengthen adolt my nervous system every
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freaking day I well sometimes ease into it I'll go in the hot pools and you I'm fortunate enough to have multiple homes my home in Sun Valley I have natural hot pools that come out of the ground just steaming hot and I go in the hot pools
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and then I go there in the river here I go in a 57 degree plunge pool that I have and I have on every home I have everyone immediately upon waking up waking up it's just like boom every cell in my body wakes up and it's also just
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like training my nervous system to rock that there is no I don't give a [ __ ] how you feel this is how you perform what you do do even when I'm taking vacation I do it it's just I don't know now I like it I like that simple discipline
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that reminds me the level of strength and intensity that's available any moment even if I'm relaxing I can bring that up it will it's sming right and I also have a cryotherapy unit in all my homes have you tried cryotherapy I
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haven't you know what it is uh maybe you could elaborate I me I can I can put the two words together and probably oh my God with all that you do you're going to love this I'm surprised I'm I'm glad I'm teaching Tim Ferris something I've done ice bath not the first time ice bath suck ice bath suck trust me I'm on stage in a weekend I do my un Unleashed power within program 3 days it's 50 hours yeah you been to an event you you got to come
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as my guest to an event sometime I would love to but I'm going give you an idea people won't sit for a three-hour movie that somebody spent $300 million on and I got like Usher or Oprah going you know T I love you but two hours most like I
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do and 12 hours later Oprah standing on a chair going this is the most incredible experience in my life on camera and Usher was like dude I'm in for all three days but for me one of those days alone I'm I you know I wear
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odometer and I'm Fitbit and it's 26 and half miles on average wow we start at 8:30 in the morning I finish at 1:30 or two there's one one hour break people can vote with their feet and no one leaves you know there's on average 20
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minutes of just crazy ass standing ovations music stuff that happens at the end because people are just it's like a rock concert it's so much fun but the wear and tear of doing you know basically marathon after marathon after
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marathon on the weekend back to back it's pretty intense and so over the years like the inflammation in my body the demands I've had to do everything I can to reduce it nothing has come close to cryotherapy cryotherapy was developed
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in Poland and Eastern Germany and the Eastern block countries and what it does is it uses nitrogen so there's no water and unlike an ice bath what you do you know you get spasms and you got to do them still right if you're a boxer
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you're a runner you're an athlete which is what I would do before hated them none of that process but it reduces your body temperature to minus 220 Fahrenheit and you do it three minutes and it's mindboggling in fact I have one here and I'll throw you in at the end if you want I would to I have a unit here I'll do it for you but what it does is and I do it about three times a week usually when I come back for an event I do it you know
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a couple days in a row and what it does is it takes all the inflammation out of your body and you know what inflammation does to every aspect of the body and the break down but it also it sends emergency signals to your brain it's
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like resetting your neurological system because your brain's going you're going to freeze to death sounds horrific it really isn't you'll find out it's not that painful going in my cold Plunge at 57° feels more Jo in than this does even
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though it's colder cuz you know the fluid of water versus the nitrogen around is different right the contivity the connectivity exactly right well what happens is your nervous system gets the signal so it's like everything in your body connects because it's like emergency every part it's a reset of your nervous system you get an explosion of endorphins in your body which is really cool so you get this natural high you feel this physiological
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transformation and you get the reduction of inflammation what it was used for originally is for people with arthritis and I found my first one CU my mother-in-law was be calling up and she she was just crying in pain and no medication was enough for her and I hate somebody medicated anyway and so I started doing this research and it just started come to the US and now the LA Lakers most football teams it's it's spreading like wildfire amongst the
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sports teams and so that's where it took off so I went and got her one and I mean it took her I think three sessions and she's out of pain and now there's not a day she's in pain now most people can't afford to go buy a unit but there are
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local places now they're popping up all over the United States where athletes go where people go where people go for rejuven it's amazing for the skin but it's one of the great things I got it for her I got it for me and now I'm
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addicted but other than that I didn't do much unique or different with my life I don't believe that entirely I'll keep digging how far after so what is if you were to kind of Speck out the first hour of your day the first every day I
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do the water I take in the environment and then the first thing I do for I do anything else in my day is I I do what I call priming and priming to me is different than meditating I've never been really a meditator per se I know
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the value of it but the idea for me of sitting still and having no thoughts it just didn't really work out for me I was just a pain in the ass and I just thought it's not natural right it's like that's what works but when I'm in nature
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I feel that form of meditation when I stand on stage and someone stands up and my brain it's done I don't even know what it is but person's suicidal I've never lost a suicide for example in 37 years knock on wood doesn't mean I won't
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someday but I never have it a thousand and we followed up with them so it's like there's something that comes through me and it's quite meditative it's like I experience it as a witness you know afterwards it's it's one of the most beautiful gifts in my life so I know that meditation but for me what priming is if you want to be have a prime life you got to be in a prime State and weeds grow automatically I don't give a damn what it is my teacher
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Jim rone used to say that and so what I do is I get up and I do a very simple process I do an explosive change in my physiology I've done the water already right cold hot then I do it with breath I know you know all forms of Eastern meditation all understand that the mind is the kite and breath is the string so if I want to move that kite I move the breath so I have a specific pattern of brething that I do I do 30 of these
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breaths and I do them at three sets of 30 that creates a profound physiological difference in my body and from that altered state I usually listen to some music and I go for I promise myself 10 minutes and I usually go 30 and you do
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that in this room that we're sitting in I no I do it all up this one room is where I do it this got a great Vibe I'll do this one I do it at night I usually will go outside because I love the wind on my face and I love taking the
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elements and so forth but I do it in multiple places I'm on the road I do it doesn't matter what day I always I do not Mis priming the reason is you don't get fit by getting lucky you don't get fit by working out for a weekend you
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know you live your life that way Fitness is cu it's becomes just part of who you are so what I do during that time is I do three simple things and I do it minimum 10 minutes three minutes of it is just me getting back inside my body
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and outside of my head feeling the Earth my body experience and then feeling totally grateful for three things and I make sure one of them is something very very simple the wind on my face you know the reflection of the clouds that I just
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saw there but I don't don't just think gratitude that's like I let gratitude fill my soul because when you're grateful as we all know there's no anger it's possibly angry and grateful simultaneously when when you're grateful
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there is no fear you can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously so I think it is one of the most important power emotions of life and also to me there's nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman you know somebody who's got
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everything and they're pissed off I want to surprisingly High number though yeah it is because they develop a life that's based on expectation instead of appreciation agreed I tell people you want to change your life fast thing
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trade your expectation for appreciation you have a whole new life so every day I anchor that in and I do it very deeply emotionally then the second three minutes I do is a total focus on feeling U presence of God if you will and
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however you want to language up for yourself but this inner presence coming in and feeling that heals everything in my body my mind my emotions my relationships and my finances I see it is solving anything that needs to be
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solved I experience the strengthening of my gratitude of my joy of my strength of my conviction of my passion and I just let those things happen spontaneously and then I focus on celebration and then service because my whole life is about
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service that's what makes me feel alive so I flood myself with that with a breathing pattern that I take that does the opposite takes the breath down through my body and back up again and then the last three minutes are me
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focusing on three things I'm going to make happen my three to thrive I have some big things that I'll do and sometimes I'll do things that are smaller but I see them feel them experience them so it's a really
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simplistic process it's 10 minutes but I come out of it it in my power it doesn't matter if I had two hours sleep I'm now ready and I do this even when I have no sleep I that's how committed I am and as I say I've always said there's no excuse
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not to do 10 minutes if you don't have 10 minutes you don't have a life right and that's how I got myself to do it and now that I've done it you know 20 to 30 minutes is almost always what it is because it actually feels extraordinary
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I have to ask what type of music do you usually listen to during uh I have a variety but for that meditation I have one in particular which is a Oneness meditation that a friend of mine made it who's from India that I find really
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profound has no uh singing in or things like that it's just a sound of a vibration that's going on and I just love it but that's what I'm doing currently in the past over the years I've used all kinds of different piece
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of music but I don't use modern music or pop music or Rock mus I do that to work out you know rap I don't know it just feels weird to be doing rap while you're meditating but again what's different is I don't look as meditation because I
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look at it as it's priming courage love joy it's priming gratitude it's priming strength it's priming accomplishment it's priming you know when I'm doing my gratitude be so I'm doing the circle of who's closest to me and you know
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circling that out to everybody I love and sending that energy and healing out to them as well so to me that's if you want Prime Time Life you got to Prime daily I like the term priming also because I think that most people who
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struggle with meditation or even attempt to use meditation are utilizing it for that purpose they're doing it first in the morning and you know when you said if you don't have 10 minutes you don't have a life it reminded me of something that Russell Simmons said to me which was if you don't have 30 minutes to meditate you need three hours and I don't always do 30 minutes but I do meditate in the morning and it's been a very consistent pattern
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among all the people that I've interviewed so far on the podcast I tell you four things I saw that stood out and one is overly simplistic and that's why people don't pay attention to it but these guys pay attention to it they don't lose half the
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key Awakening is not losing and they are obsessed every single one of is obsessed and not losing money I mean a level of obsession that's mindboggling it isn't just these investors you know Sir Richard Branson for example you know
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people see Richard and he's such an outgoing playful crazy guy he's kind of an introvert in not some areas but when it comes to Athletics and taking on challenges he's out in the world but you know his first question every business
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is what's the downside and how he protect it right like when he did his peace with Virgin I mean that's a big risk and to start an airline he went to Boeing and negotiated a deal that he could send the planes back if it didn't
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work out and he wasn't liable that's the level these guys think at so they look to see how do I not lose money first because the Irish person has no clue if I lose 50% in 2008 well guess what you to make 100% to get even not 50% cuz
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your principal's gone down so much so it's like people don't understand you lose 60% it's 200% to get even and so the average person you know lives in a world where they try not to lose money but they're not obsessed these are
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obsessed second thing they all have in common every single one of them is obsessed with asymmetrical risk reward which is a big word it simply means they're looking to use the least amount of risk to get the maximum amount of
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upside and that's what they live for here's what I found with in the very beginning getting back on track when he was at his best he made sure every single trade had what he called a 5 to one that means if he was going to risk a
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dollar he wasn't about to risk it unless he was certain he was going to make five you're not always right so guess what if I risk a dollar make five and I'm wrong I can risk another dollar and still make four I can be wrong four times out of
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five and still break even their secret is not that they don't they're not wrong it's they set themselves up where they risk small amounts for rewards proportionately Paul you know if he's right one out of three times he still
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makes 20% so the average person risks a dollar trying to make how much dollar 10 that's right about buck 10 if I could get 10% wow my dollar right 20% would be unbelievable how often can you be wrong not very often not at all right you're in the hole you're starting from the hole you got to build back up so they're asymmetrical Wars like I was with Kyle bass and Kyle bass risked check this out in the middle of subprime Crisis he made
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$2 billion out of million because he risked for every six cents he risked he had an upset of a dollar yeah 6 cents for 100 well you could be wrong 15 times yeah and you're still okay in that area I mean he was brilliant to figure it out
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he's a genius figure it out but that risk reward is why it is he showed his kids he taught I said how do I teach us the average investor and he said uh well you can teach the way I taught my kids and I said how'd you do he goes we
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bought nickels I said what do you mean you bought nickels he said well I did research I have this question that's another thing that all these guys do they ask a better question that we talked about they get better answers right better quality question better quality answer what's wrong with me you'll come up with stuff how do I make this happen no matter what you'll come up with different answers so his question was where in the world is there
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a riskless trade with total upside yeah and he started looking around and he said I'm worried about inflation so he decided well gosh of all the currencies in the world a nickel what it's made of today it's not made mostly of nickel by
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the way he said it's costing the US government n and a. half cents to make a nickel that's how our government functions I'm spend almost 10 cents to make something worth half as much right the Pentagon plan yeah that's right it's
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the perfect plan so he said but you know what just the actual material value right is 6.8 or whatever it was six something six and a half I call for round numbers so he said if I buy a nickel it's never going less than a nickel unless you believe the US government's gone so I've got something never goes down in value so I got a guaranteed return you know I'm not going to lose my principal but day one it's worth 36% more than the day I bought it
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how many Investments can you have 100% guarantee of no loss and have 36% I said yeah but that's smell value and I saw they passed the law a few years ago I think Charlie Wrangle whoever was was the one who pushed it through he goes
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yeah but Tony said that doesn't matter he let me tell you why he said look at pennies when they changed it from Pure copper to 10 and all things they changed what happened to the old pennies there's a scarcity of them and now a penny from
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those days is worth two cents it's 100% more valuable so he said that at some point the government cannot continue to do something cost twice as much some point Point they'll make a change in the materials and then all these nickels are worth the unbelievable amount so he said I was just showing my kids here's a you need to think different than everybody else don't think I have to take huge risk for huge rewards they how do I take
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no risk and get huge rewards and because you ask that question continuously and you believe an answer you get it so he said listen if I could convert my entire wealth in nles right now said I do it I said you're insane he goes I am insane
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but it's the best possible fundamental investment he started telling me how to do it he bought 40 million nickels wow he has 40 million fills up a room bigger than this right on the ground floor and he had his kids
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dragging them in everything else laughing having fun I mean it's like their little treasure so he can legitimately do like the Scrooge McDuck backstroke through a PO full of Nick real Nick so that's asymmetrical I'll give
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you one more and I'll shut the hell up I you're ask me what the you tell me the differences I want you know there are differences we can spend hours and hours on the differences but what think's useful is what's align because that
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gives something Universal that can be applied abut the other one for them is they AB absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know they're going to be wrong you look some these Talking Heads on television and people screaming you and
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hitting bells and telling you what to buy and they're right right right the best on Earth the ray Doos right the Pebbles the you know I don't give who you talking about you want to look at Carl icon they all know they're going to
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be wrong so they set up an asset allocation system that will make them successful they all agree asset allocation is the single most important investment there wasn't one person in terms of your vehicle that it wasn't the most important thing no matter how they attacked it AET elocation was the element there and the last one is they are lifelong Learners I mean these people are machines like you like me like Peter like most of the people you
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and I share as friends they just are obsessed with knowing more and because the more they know the more they realize what they didn't know and then they apply that and they go to another level and every time you think you're the best
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you can be in anything in life your body your emotion Spirit your finances there's always another level and these guys live by it and the last one that I found almost all of them were real givers not just givers on the surface
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like money givers that's wonderful but really passionate about giving and it showed up once they saw what I was doing was legitimate and was really real that I mean then they're opening up three hours of their time with something none of these guys will never go just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show this episode is brought to you by ag1 the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body
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health I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement and the true answer is invariably ag1 it simply covers a ton of bases I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the
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check it out and now Jerry Colona co-founder and CEO of Executive coaching and leadership development firm reboot.com ship and the Art of growing up you can find Jerry on Twitter at Jerry Colona Jerry welcome to the show hey Tim
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it's great to be here I'm really excited to talk to you we have so much we could possibly talk about you and I have have spoken before had quite a few conversations over the last God knows how many years with particular density a
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handful of years ago and I thought we could start with the spider tattoo which you just showed me over a video it is not a small tattoo so perhaps much like a novel I greatly enjoy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo this would be the
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coach with the spider tattoo but I don't know the story why do you have a gigantic spider tattoo on your chest yeah so spider is a good friend of mine spider is my um spirit guide so in 2007 I went on a retreat led by a yian
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echo Co psychologist named Bill Plotkin p l o t k i n and on that Retreat there's a long story Tim you ready for it oh I'm ready we have nothing time on that Retreat I started to go really deep into some of the important structures of
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my life and I had a dream and it was after a night of ecstatic dancing in which I danced nearly naked in a drum circle and I'd fallen asleep and I had this dream in which I was going to a house that I owned on Long Island and I got to the house and the house was completely white and I was really terrified and I went into the house and it was supposed to be my house but it didn't feel right and I ended up in the basement and in
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the basement the basement floor was covered with this sort of like the floor of a forest and these mushrooms were sprouting up and I got very scared and I tore the mushrooms from the ground and I ran out of the house so the next morning
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I went into Circle again and I shared that dream and Bill turns to me and he says go leave leave the circle right now I want you to go into the forest I want you to find those mushrooms and I want you to apologize to those
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mushrooms and ask it what it was that you were supposed to hear from them that you were too afraid to hear so I left the circle and I started wandering around and I'm like what the [ __ ] am I doing I'm walking around this Forest
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trying to find these mushrooms and I actually have to have a conversation with these mushrooms and to be clear I was not ingesting the mushrooms okay because I know who I'm talking to okay so I'm walking around and all of a
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sudden I see on the ground the exact same white long stringy mushrooms and I'm like freaked out and I dropped to my knees and I start crying and I said I'm so sorry I'm so sorry what were you here to teach me and they said the mushroom
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said to me you're too afraid go into the forest and find your place and now I'm like freaking out even more so I just standing up and I'm like stumbling around and this is a time period in my life where I'm just a freaking wreck and
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I'm crying and I'm wandering through the forest and I find this little sort of indentation this little spot and I sit down and I'm like sitting on my rump and I've got my hands in my on my knees and my head and I'm just crying and I look
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up and of to my right is this gorgeous spider web and it actually has Little D Drops glistening on it and it's like okay this they look like crystals and this little spider comes walking out and this Virginia garden spider and I look
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at it and I said okay I give up what the [ __ ] are you here to teach me cuz I have no idea and the spider says to me you worry too much your children are going to be fine and I just start shaking because there's no message that I needed to hear more than that and so I came out of that Forest I came out of that Retreat and a few weeks later was my 45th birthday there about the actual year doesn't matter so much as the fact that it was
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my birthday and on my birthday I got this spider tattoo above my heart so that I can never forget the fact that I worry too much and that my kids are going to be all right so that's the spider has it remained relevant to you is it something that you consciously notice or because it's so continuously present do you find yourself sometimes losing sight of it both meaning I'm often reminded as I was when you asked and you said oh I'm going
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to ask you about the spider I'm often reminded so thank you for reminding me that the point of that spider's visitation to me was to remember who I am and I can use that reminder every day because I forget every day not only do I
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forget who I am but I forget that my kids are all right and that I worry too much thank you for the story and it makes me think of given the spider Lakota mythology and iomy there are various names for iomy but iomy is a spider Trickster Spirit
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bit of a hero and perhaps one of the ways that you are a productive trickster is by asking questions that are very uncomfortable or that can be very uncomfortable and I think that's one of your arts and we're going to come back to that for sure but I thought we could revisit another perhaps chapter or event in your life that seems to have been very impactful could you talk to to I believe it was February 2002 M after something involving the
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Olympics or the Olympic bid meeting if you know what I'm referring to so February 2002 I was working at JP Morgan at the time I was co-leading the technology investment practice for a fund that was about $23 billion on a management so a
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large fund and this was after having left flat iron partners in I think around the middle of 2001 and just for clarity that was billions with a B that was billions with a B yeah that's a that's a large fund it's a large fund I
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mean but we were very Diversified we did everything from Brazilian railroads to you know funding the launch of JetBlue Airlines to the latest web-based startup in some capacity anyway a few months prior it had been cleared that my
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previous fun flat iron Partners needed to be wound down and Fred and I needed to make some decisions about what to do and I was in the midst of trying to sort through what I was going to do with the rest of my life I did not have the
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internal capacity to raise a new fund I know now that I was in the midst of a very impr profound depression that was exacerbated by the attacks on 911 and one of the ways I responded to the attack on 911 was to throw myself into the Olympic bid effort we were bidding to bring the 2012 games to New York and for me this was a profoundly important effort because now you're going to make me cry my city was attacked the city that I love and where
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you grew up up really the city where I grew up the city of Brooklyn the place that had so much meaning for me was attacked and I remember the feeling helpless during the fall following the attack anyway around the same time I had to decide
32:36
whether or not I was going to accept an offer to join JP Morgan which had been one of the funders and the funding partners for flat iron partners and eventually I did that and Fred linked up with Brad Burnham and they launched
32:50
Union Square Ventures by the way worst decision of my life but anyway um to join GP Morgan and not go to unions wor venters anyway so he went off and did that I joined JP Morgan and by February 2002 I was a wreck and what you're referring to is February 2nd 2002 I left an Olympic bid committee meeting which was being held downtown not far from ground zero and I found myself outside of the stinking smoking hole that was the pile as they
33:30
referred to it of ground zero and I remember feeling completely overwhelmed and feeling like there were ghosts flying around that area and I wanted to die and I was obsessed with the idea of running down to the Wall Street subway station and leaping in front of our Subway and I ended up deciding not to do that but wisely and thankfully instead called my therapist Dr sers Who said to me promptly get in a cab and come out and see me and I did
34:06
just that and uh saved my life at that point what did your therapist do when you arrived what was that session like can you describe that session so Dr sers was a psychoanalyst and so I very traditionally almost like a New Yorker cartoon would lay on the couch and I can't help but think of that and think of like somehow it's a dog sitting in the therapist chair so it's like that's some sort of New Yorker thing anyway so I'm laying on the couch
34:38
staring up the ceiling as I did all the time and I remember saying to her just stick a fork in me I'm [ __ ] done put me in the hospital throw away the key and you know to be clear the threat was real because when I was 18 I did try to
34:55
kill myself and so no fooling around here right I mean this isn't just some Idol ideation going on here this was like I was in it I was 38 I was being cooked and I was declaring that I was done and Dr sers Who was also from
35:13
Brooklyn said the most magical thing possible she said what the hell do you want to go to a hospital for the food sucks go to Canyon Ranch you'll get a massage every day you'll be so much better what is what is Canyon Ranch Canyon
35:30
Ranch is a health spa and uh it's a very nice place I loved it was really sweet but it's about as far removed from a psychiatric hospital as you can imagine Because by the way I I did spend three months in a psychiatric hospital so I
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sort of knew what I was getting what I was asking for if you will so that's what I did I made plans to go down to Arizona I think it was the the Arizona branch of Canyon Ranch and that moved was the beginning of me being
36:01
rebuilt when and why did you spend time in a psychiatric hospital I mentioned uh the suicide attempt right I was 18 and I had on January 2nd something about the number two right January 2nd I guess was 1981 I'm losing track of the time I had
36:22
just turned 18 and I tried to kill myself I cut my wrists and uh first went to I was taken to the emergency room Jamaica Hospital the Trump Pavilion that's all I'm going to say and then I was transferred from there to Creed more
36:43
State Hospital which is just this s of hell and then from there after three days a Creed more I was transferred to a hospital that actually is no longer a hospital Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan where I was there for 3 months
37:01
I'd love to I think this is a good point to come back to questions and good questions and you're very skilled in this department so I'm going to pose one of your questions to you and you can feel free to tweak it paraphrase it correct it any way you like but if you look back to 2002 how were you complicit and creating the conditions in your life that you would have said you didn't want nice turn which is a great question
37:37
so maybe you could repeat it for folks because it is so important and this is something that has greatly aided me when you introduced it to me many moons ago yeah and then if you could speak to that as it applies to that particular period
37:52
in your life I'll unpack the question so the way I usually ask the question goes like this how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want and the reason for the language is very very purposeful I like
38:07
to use the word complicit and not responsible 90% of the time when I first asked that question people hear the word how have I been responsible for the conditions complicitness is important because it's not it's relieving the
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person from the burden of feeling responsible for all the [ __ ] in their lives because that's not fair to carry that responsibility but it's helpful to think of ourselves is somehow being served by the challenges that we're going through
38:41
the second piece of that is that I say I don't want and that sort of unpacks that notion even further which is there's something often times about the way in which we operate and the way we set up the conditions of Our Lives to be in
38:57
conscious service to us the psychological term is secondary gain but there are ways in which we find ourselves repeating patterns in our life we always date the same type of person we are always finding ourselves in the
39:11
same kind of job we're always frustrated by the same sorts of situation and so it's really useful to sort of start to unpack that so that's that question and before I even answer your question I I want to say one other thing the
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discomfort of difficult and Powerful questions reminds me of something my daughter Emma likes to say about me which is that imagine growing up with a man who asks you questions that you really rather not answer so shout out to
39:45
Emma so I think that the way I was complicit I guess we should thank Emma for being the crash test dummy for the questions that you use now in your career you got it well Emma Michael Emma and her brothers Michael and Sam
40:01
for sure for sure God Lov them they put up with so much with me oh my god dad stop coaching me so before I can answer that question honestly what I would say is Dr seers taught me three additional questions and those questions are what
40:23
am I not saying that needs to be said what am I saying that's not being heard and what's being said that I'm not hearing so again what am I not saying that needs to be said what am I saying that's not being heard and what's being said that I'm not
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hearing and so for me the way I was complicit was I wasn't speaking I wasn't saying what I needed to say and more often than not Tim the suffering that I encounter can almost always be rooted back to somebody not saying something
41:00
that needs to be said and if there's a little correlate to that and not saying it or not saying it in a way that it can be heard because often times we speak without words but by our actions and we go unheard could you give
41:17
an example of something that you needed to say during that period of time that you didn't say or it wasn't heard yeah yeah something very very simple I wasn't happy that despite all the outward trappings of success I was empty and
41:35
hollow inside that I wasn't speaking truthfully that I wasn't living in integrity and that I was too afraid of losing the good graces and esteem of everybody around me to actually talk about the fact that I did not want to do
41:55
what I was doing with my life at that point oh by the way I didn't know what else I was going to do but that's a separate issue right I mean I knew when I decided not to continue working with Fred Wilson stupid man that I was I knew that it was
42:11
actually the right thing for me to do but when I agreed to take a job at JP Morgan it wasn't because I wanted to continue doing that work it's because I was too terrified to do anything other than that and I certainly didn't want to lose the esteem and the good wishes I mean think about your reaction just a few minutes ago when you pointed out that it was a 23 billion dollar fund and even in that moment I felt a little bit of that Pride
42:40
mixed with a little bit of the shame because I walked away from that and I didn't want to lean into that space of like what if I don't matter anymore what if nobody calls me how did you get over that what are the things
42:56
that contribute to you making it through those questions because a lot of people seemingly don't make it through those questions right they stay in a given track in a given relationship they stay stuck exactly for 5 10 15 20 or more
43:14
years so what our life lifetime what what did Emerson say the vast majority of men let's update the vast majority of people lead lives of quiet desperation mhm so how did I get out of it I guess your question implies an agency that I didn't
43:35
feel at the time meaning huh I wake up one day and I decide I'm going to be different no it wasn't that it was that I ran out of the ability to continue to operate anymore it was that moment above the lip of ground zero and that moment
43:57
where I chose not to LEAP in front of the subway but to get into the cab and go to see Dr sers and it was that moment where I decided to follow her advice and go to Canyon Ranch it was the series of moments where it was like okay I know
44:13
it's not working I admit it's not working I don't know what I'm going to do but what I have been doing hurts too much and if I have to suffer the consequence of the loss of status approbation affirmation all the external
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trappings so be it it's like my soul basically said listen [ __ ] you better sit down and pay attention to your life because the stakes are too high I think I read that in the bhagvad G if I'm correct Brooklyn Edition it's the Buddha from Brooklyn yeah now how did you find your way to I'll use this term it may not be the best term but how did you find your way to coaching so on that plane ride from New York to Arizona to Canyon Ranch I read
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three books When Things Fall Apart by Anie pemma children Faith by Sharon salsburg and let your life speak by Parker Palmer and before fully answering your question I'll give you this I must have done something really really good
45:33
in a past life because I have the benefit of considering all three of those people Anie pemma Sharon solsberg and Parker Palmer as my friends I didn't know them at the time but I have the good grace and the incredible Good
45:49
Fortune to say I'm friends with them they are my teachers so what was your question the question was how did you find your way to coaching and just to reiterate something that you just said at the time they were not your friends that's right
46:06
but you had the books and so I asked how you found your way to coaching you went back to the plane ride right and so in Reading those books and those those three books were really important because they did lead indirectly to me
46:20
becoming a coach each one of those books presented something different to me Faith presented this notion of real really being honest with myself with what was going on when Things Fall Apart was the first laying out of Buddhist
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Dharma as a path but it was let your life speak which is a brilliant beautiful short little collection of essays that really shifted the dialogue for me partially because Parker is so open and honest and authentic about his
46:49
own struggles and depression okay so to your question now let me fast forward it probably four or five years later I'm still working my way through all of the issues that I'm carrying at that point and trying to sort myself out I'm in an
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office I'm sharing office space with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham from Union Square Adventures but I have a little sub office within their space and I'm doing a bunch of different things I'm serving on a bunch of boards of
47:17
directors I'm making little angel Investments here and there but I'm just sort of hanging around the hoop if you will and this young guy comes to see me he's there to wrote Network you know this is the thing everybody is supposed
47:29
to do network is way to a new new job and you know you ask about questions so here here's the story so he comes in and he's a lawyer and he wants to get a job in the startup industry so he wants to find a way to get some sort of position
47:44
and I turned to him and he's probably in his late 20s and I said I'm happy to help you but just answer a question for me it's kind of my first coaching question right and I said what made you to become a lawyer in the first place and he starts crying to me and he starts telling me about pleasing his father and about how it was you know his father had taught him that if all else fails at least he could make a living as a lawyer
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and the kid was just miserable just miserable and so I reached up to the shelf and I pulled down a copy of let your life speak and I said here read this and then get back to me he left the office and I turned around and I said
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[ __ ] think I need to be a coach I need to do that more frequently and So within a few days I'd signed up for a coach training program okay let me pause for one second so what did you feel what did you experience what was it about that
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encounter that made you so decisively say that to yourself a couple of things I could see relief in his eyes the first thing I felt was empathy I knew his feelings because even though the content of the story was different my experience
49:04
was so similar I had been so ruled by fears that I was living in a box I had lived in a box that was not of my making it was somebody else's box it was the wrong box it was the wrong suit of clothes it was not me and I could feel
49:22
all that and when I reach for let your life speak I was reaching for the very same thing that had gotten me out of the box and I said here here's a path and there was just relief relief not that he had read the book yet but just relief that somebody actually understood his feelings and had given words to his feelings that he hadn't been able to give to remember that question what have I not been saying that I need to say
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there was that going on for him so then I said wait a minute dude you can do something about relieving suffering you're not the mess and it's not always just your prefrontal cortex that's going to figure everything out because I
50:04
didn't have an answer for him I didn't say here here's the job you should do that's perfect for you so that you no longer go to bed at night feeling like crap wondering whether or not you should wake up in the morning I just had to
50:16
listen to my heart and I did something completely non-intuitive I reached onto my bookshelf and I gave him a book and the feeling that I had was poignant pain coupled with a sense of being able to do something I could be helpful this may be overreaching but how much of your call to coaching do you think if any was Finding relief and taking the focus outside of yourself it wasn't just the call to begin coaching this helps me every day I mean
50:56
this this is the craziness about the work that I do about living my my vocation like this even today in my worst moments when I can be with another person's pain by the way which is the root eological meaning of the word compassion to be
51:15
with someone else's feelings I magically feel relief from my own unbearable feelings because I think I think that's the essence of Being Human together we get to actually oh geez we look at each other across the the campfire I keep
51:32
imagining Us in sort of pre- civilization going like looking across a campfire and again must be in Brooklyn and going dang it's hard right isn't it hard being human yeah it's really hard okay let's do this together so I think
51:48
the call was that but if I if I may I think the call was also to retroactively go back back in time and save myself interesting see this makes a lot of sense to me in saying that do you mean and I don't know if you've ever heard of
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ifs internal family systems in so much as by helping people who are in similar positions with similar States or pains as you experienced earlier you are healing that younger version of yourself in some capacity well first of all to
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answer your quick question I have heard of ifs I have not been trained in ifs and I know a few of my clients have benefited from it but broadly speaking you want to understand Buddhism it's what we're talking about right now yeah
52:37
you want to understand wisdom Traditions across the world it's what we're talking about right now it's like even the best of Christianity even the best of what Jesus taught it's like God I mean I just imagine him exasperated sitting there saying for God's sake love one another just you know come on can you just stop the nonsense and just reach across and just be with each other think of it this way Tim there's almost like a universal
53:04
Wellspring of pain that you and I share and in the similar fashion there's a universal Wellspring of happiness and joy that you and I share and so if you're in this painful spot I can tap that Universal Wellspring of happiness
53:21
and joy and point it a little bit more at your suffering and you can do the same for me so let me ask you a question and you and I have spent a good amount of time on the phone together and to those people listening who are self-described high
53:38
Achievers who don't want to lose their Edge who are looking for the Tactical practical if they hear that and they're kind of rolling their eyes and they're like all right you had me at 9/11 you had me at the books but I don't see how
53:53
this applies I'm too busy for that [ __ ] I don't have time to go to bir Burning Man and do fire dancing like this this is serious business I have serious work to do sorry how do you relate that to someone who in their first meeting fits
54:06
that profile perhaps what do you do with them in a first meeting my job isn't to necessarily convince people that they need help and so the first thing I say is and the first thing I would say to anybody who's listening is if
54:20
everything's working for you go at it have a great time go enjoy yourself go ahead but you know there a simple little trick you know I have this little reputation that I make people cry and all this stuff you know what I do I ask
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them a simple question how are you and I often follow it up with like no really don't [ __ ] me how are you how are you really feeling because here's the thing you described this would be resistant person as a high achiever
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here's the thing about high Achievers in my experience High Achievers early on in their life figure out how to get an A they figure it out because the whole system is geared towards that great and then we take that entire system from our
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childhood and we move it into work and it's just getting a getting a getting a getting a and the highest achieving people often times come into me scared because there's a little whispery voice in your ear that says you are a [ __ ] fraud you have no idea and when they figure out that all you're doing is reading the tea leaves and what it takes to get an A they're going to toss you out of the tribe they're going to toss you out on your
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ass they're going to push you away or they say to themselves because they haven't experienced loss or they haven't experienced failure they think they haven't experienced failure they're just waiting they're just playing a waiting
55:44
game they're just waiting for something for fate to catch up to them and bang the Ham's going to come down now if this resonates with you you might also then recognize the anxiety that comes in where you put your head down at the
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pillow at night and you go my God I don't know if I can do it again tomorrow maybe they'll catch me tomorrow and if that's what you're working with then there's an opportunity in all that we're talking about forget Universal suffering
56:16
forget about Wellsprings forget about spiders forget about burning man which I've never been to by the way and I don't believe in substances but that's a whole different issue forget about all that stuff I've been three times I I'm a
56:29
fan at least once in your lifetime but we God bless separate SE separate conversation so continue the truth is I'm probably too scared to ingest any material inside of my body but leave that aside for a moment forget all that
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okay all the esoteric stuff like that here's the simple question how's it working for you cuz if it's not working for you why are you in pain why are you doing doing it and would you like a little relief and here you want to know
56:59
the secret like nasty little trick that I play yes I get them if they either have children or hope to have children someday I will ask them what would they like their children to feel when they're at the same age because if they would like them to feel something other than what they're feeling Now's the Time to start changing the way they organize their lives yeah that's a really good question what if and this could combine with what
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we're talking about right now someone comes in they don't feel imposter syndrome necessarily but they are simply overwhelmed you ask them how they are no really and they're like I'm good I'm just busy I'm stressed I just have too much I'm overwhelmed if that's the breed of client that shows up how do you begin to work with that well one you've established a certain level of trust and relating through empathy and you know don't necessarily
58:04
try to step in and fix it the first question I would start to ask or elicit is how is that being busy serving you remember that how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want right here's the thing about
58:19
busyness busyness can feel [ __ ] awesome it can feel so amazing amazing internally like look at all the great stuff I got done externally look at how busy I am I must be important that's an interesting statement busyness can also
58:38
serve to distract you from those voices inside that say Hey I'm not happy hey I'm not happy hey I'm serious I'm going to throw you down on the ground with some sort of sematic illness lower back problem irritable bowel syndrome migraine headaches that was my specialty I'm going to throw you down until you pay attention to me oh okay you're too busy okay I got you okay because you know here's the thing too somewhere around 35 to 50 years old the
59:15
systems start to break down the systems that got you out of childhood that got you into adulthood that got you established that got you to the point where you think you got it all figured out and then all of a and holy [ __ ] the
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whole thing starts to collapse now what do I do and when I see someone who's busy who's kind of in the early 20s I see a striver trying to establish themselves but when I see somebody who's busy who actually doesn't need to be that way I
59:47
get really really curious what internal need is trying to be met by all that busyness and that's the place to inquire what are some of the more common patterns that you see with that busyness I'm very curious about this I promise not to coach you but why is it so curious no just kidding I I can tell you no I can tell I can tell you why it's curious or interesting to me we can jump into some I'm I'm game I'm game to I'm gam to hit
1:00:15
some volleys if you want well for instance I'm looking at an apologies to everyone I have not replied to but that that is sort of my ethos and the gist of everything I've written so I feel like I've bought some permission but I I
1:00:30
currently have 68,9 52 unread email and combination on two different tracks of 165 plus 255 under text messages and that's the tip of the iceberg so I actually feel surprisingly low anxiety about that nonetheless a small amount of anxiety
1:00:51
and in the process of literally rebooting those various phone numbers and addresses because it's not physically possible to address that right and it's perhaps similar to many of your experiences it's given me an opening line or
1:01:11
common sentiment of commiseration that opens up the floodgates to similar types of problems in other people so they confess I'm like the the productivity guy in the confessional box for people who want to tell me about similar things
1:01:27
and those are a few things that come to mind when you ask me why is that curious and I think and I think it's very common I just think it's very common I think it's hugely common and I think that you asked the question by using a particular
1:01:39
descriptive word you described it as feeling overwhelmed and you know if we were to do a dream analysis we might talk about being flooded that's typically the psychological signal that the system is overwhelmed so again use our
1:01:56
construction and we talk about complicitness not necessarily responsibility I'm going to use you as an example is a high achiever who is incredibly busy and so busy that he has over 600,000 unanswered emails and we'll just
1:02:13
sck on that one for a moment by the way you're allowed to declare bankruptcy at that point okay you're done oh yeah and what I hear you say is I no longer you said I don't feel anxiety just a small piece of it I would AR that you probably
1:02:27
have been so overwhelmed by it that you've actually given up feeling anxious about it and it's just like forget it I'm not going to get to it so here's the question for you and you don't have to answer it but but hang out with it a
1:02:38
couple questions the first would might be something like when did you start feeling overwhelmed and how long have you felt overwhelmed and while feeling overwhelmed did you take on more tasks right in your case Tim did you sign up
1:02:55
for another book and another show or another thing which only produce more stuff CU that's what I do if there's a tiny bit of open space in my life I tend to fill it and then the magical question is how familiar is that feeling and how does that feeling serve you I'm willing to play on this one and I will say before I get started that I do think I have much better systems and rules and perspectives in place now but I but to answer your questions
1:03:27
I'd say it started probably middle of undergraduate college right this feeling of overwhelm or at least that's when it was most noticeable and the feeling of overwhelm was then kind of ebbed and flowed but certainly up until at least
1:03:47
2004 my solution to feeling anything I didn't want to feel was to add more activities and can you just pause and say that again mhm Your solution to feeling anything I didn't want to feel in retrospect I recognize that's what it
1:04:01
was so if I felt anything I didn't want to feel I would add more activities to drown it out some people use heroin some people use Coke some people use work and I used activities at the time I also used stimulants so I was in fact using both but that changed quite a bit in 2004 by building in empty space and I think that still now there are vestages of behaviors that in some sense helped me to find a tow hold in Financial Security
1:04:37
that are no longer serving me that are nonetheless default gears if that makes sense and to that extent the vast amount of my focus for the last year has been on saying no to practically everything more than a year I mean the last several
1:04:54
years nonetheless there is a part of me I think you had a was it a crow a raven on the shoulder Crow we'll come back to the crow uh and no it's not another dream sequence for people wondering no drug induced dream sequence yeah we'll
1:05:09
come back to the crow something on my shoulder saying you might need this person you you might need this person this person in reference to Any Given email that might come in and so for what I find in my life is that the vast
1:05:25
majority of stuff is clearly noise and I can ignore there are categories of activities I'm not particularly good at moderation whether that's with chips or chocolates or speaking engagements or fill-in the blank there's certain things
1:05:42
where I need to either be considering each item that presents itself or not consider them at all as a category so I've decided certain things just from a binary perspective like speaking I will not do any of unless they happen to be 10-minute drive from my house and fit 20 other parameters otherwise it's an automatic no and I don't even see it where I think I find more difficulty is where there are people who have been very helpful in the
1:06:12
past who perhaps were very supportive in the early days who now have lots of favors to ask but if I'm listening to my body it's absolutely not a full body yet there's a large part of me that knows I do not want to acquas I do not want to
1:06:29
agree I do not want to accept I do not want to do whatever it is they're asking me to do because it doesn't feel right and or it's unreasonable nonetheless those are the types of emails that tend to pile up and those are the types of
1:06:43
emails also that even if I have someone like an assistant or multiple assistants filtering the names are probably noticeable enough or old enough that they'll get brought to my attention so let's see here is it familiar yes it's
1:06:58
familiar how does it serve me this I have more trouble with so maybe you could walk me through I would imagine many people I'm not going to say it doesn't serve me because I'm willing to at least as a thought exercise to accept
1:07:13
that if it didn't serve me I would have already found some clean solution or I wouldn't have any emotional difficulty fixing it how would you walk me through figuring out how it serves me well I want to reflect back a couple of things
1:07:26
that I'm hearing so that we can just sort of establish it the first thing I would say is I really admire all the filtering that you've put into your life and the structures that you put into your life to create boundaries and
1:07:38
saying no and I think that the rules as you define them and they might be rules for like hey every morning I'm going to do X and every afternoon I'm going to do why or I'm only going to work from hours those are all important But ultimately insufficient for complete relief from some of these feelings they're really really helpful they've reduced your anxiety from overwhelming to small but 620,000 emails right and so I want to bring your
1:08:15
attention to two other feelings one was you said something about missing something that might be important to you seeing some that that has been helpful to you in the past or something that's important to you that you might miss
1:08:32
something so that's one fear is that right I would say so I think the greater fear is that people who would at least believe that they have supported me without asking for a quid proo in the past would get upset and this does
1:08:49
happen it has happened where people take things very personally and I recognize I can't take responsibility for everyone else's feelings and responses to things I do think that's a fear more than missing an opportunity because I'm not
1:09:04
concerned about missing Financial opportunities not anymore not not not anymore I once was but I I also you know I stopped startup investing completely in 2015 because the noise simply wasn't worth it the cortisol fueled unnecessary
1:09:25
hurrying associated with that culture was causing more harm than good so I stopped in 2015 so I missed a pretty pretty decent bull run which I'm okay with so it's not a financial concern so much as social cost and Fallout if that
1:09:42
makes sense yeah yeah what I'm hearing is a fear of disappointing someone who matters to you yeah yeah that would be a piece of it that would be a piece of it and this is helpful to me to talk through because it's it's not just
1:09:56
disappointment in some cases I can't I actually really dislike interacting with some of these more recent acquaintances but for whatever reason they view their position as very entitled in so much as they expect a fast and very compliant response from me on many things and they know a lot of people in the same circles and that causes concern so there's an implicit internal EX po ential threat I think that's fair I think that's fair to say
1:10:28
yeah if I could say one more thing just just so I don't sound totally uh like I'm living in a Land of Make Believe I have run into many many instances this is you know more than a dozen at least where say someone will
1:10:43
send me an email they want a blurb for new book they want this this this this this and this and by the way it's coming out in 4 weeks or whatever it is there's some set of requests SL demands I don't reply this has happened with journalists
1:10:58
as well where for whatever reason I won't help them and then a hit piece comes out or then there's some type of blowback SL vengeful Behavior whether that's shitalking me on stage or whatever might be so there's evidence to
1:11:13
support the fear but here I am I've survived I'm fine that is also true so I just wanted to add that color right and so I want to reflect back to you empathetically and ration you're not nuts the threats are real at least not at least not in that
1:11:30
department that's right that's right so what I often say is that there are three basic risks that we're all trying to manage all the time love safety and belonging we want to love and be loved we want to feel safe physically emotionally spiritually and we want to feel that we belong and what I'm hearing so if you resonate with those at all the exist ential threat and I want to bring your attention to existential because I think
1:11:58
that the threat is to the essence of who you are or at least the perceived threat and when someone trash talks you on stage what they're trash talking is you the you not the meat bag but the essence of you and so I think that the fear I
1:12:20
know for myself that the fear of disappointing others is a threat to my belonging I'm not going to be in my family anymore my children won't love me my partners won't love me and so therefore I will be unsafe I will be bereft I'll be by
1:12:40
myself I'll be alone in the woods fending for myself and there are few things that threaten me more than the threat to belonging I don't know does that resonate with you it does resonate I think that a lot of what I've done and been able to do has been dependent on maintaining very longterm relationships with people who I enjoy being friends with who happen to also be very very good at what they do whatever that is and so I think there's
1:13:13
a bit of you know what got you here won't get you where you want to go or won't get you there and that does resonate and we don't have to jump to this but what I'd love to talk about or listen to you describe because I think a lot of people
1:13:26
would benefit from it is when you run into someone who like me is Fielding a lot of inbound and it could be from one person but they for whatever reason are having difficulty saying no or establishing boundaries what are tools
1:13:43
or books or approaches that you found helpful for people in that position whether it's nonviolent communication or Fillin the blank anything at all or questions anything at all how do you begin to advise someone like that well
1:14:01
there's a couple of things come to mine and I'm going to reference two friends of ours Seth Goden and Sharon salsburg the first thing was when I was really struggling with this early on in my career my Adult Career Seth Goden gave
1:14:15
me some wonderful advice which boiled down to this phrase I wish I could but I can't and that became a kind of interesting little fence around my life boundary marker and so the idea was that you would be able to say to someone
1:14:30
someone who reaches out can you do this favor for me this thing for me and you get to say I wish I could but I can't so you just pause around that problem is of course there's an inauthenticity that can set in which is I actually don't
1:14:43
wish I could and I can but I and I can but I really don't want yeah that's a whole another L like can but I won't and so then it becomes a little bit of like listen I'm trying to take my own advice to heart and the advice I give clients is to take care of themselves first and so that becomes a kind of useful tool but then you referenced something before about not being responsible for someone else's feelings and that brought to mind
1:15:12
a teaching that Sharon salsburg gave me which goes like this all beings own their own Karma they happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions not my wishes for them say that one more time please yeah so all beings own their
1:15:29
own karma karma being the cause and effect the consequences of their actions their happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions not my wishes for them or the corollary to that is not the actions that I take or don't take now
1:15:45
they may say to you when they're reaching out to you Tim Tim if you don't do this thing that I'm asking you to do then I will be unhappy and if I'm unhappy I will be mean to you I mean that's essentially the existential threat I wish they would actually just send that email because then I would say gotcha [ __ ] I have a Blog shouldn't have sent that email uh which has actually happened with writers from The New York Times Believe It or
1:16:14
Not which is horrible to say explicit in their threat right oh yeah yeah and then as soon as they realize what they've done they're like ah [ __ ] and then they cool their Jets but yeah yeah oh yeah so here's a little tool that I have come up
1:16:28
with that helps me is I often think of creating these little fences and I often visualize a chain link fence so that I can see through it and it has a gate in it and the gate only opens One Way Inward and I get to control whether or
1:16:43
not the gate opens and so then I can see someone on the other side and then the phrase that comes up is love them from afar be kind to them in my heart set clear boundaries I have as your friend as your guide as somebody hopefully is
1:17:00
standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you is sort of in this crazy journey I really feel for all the people who have reached out to you 620,000 times in your inbox and all of that stuff and I feel for you and I would advise you to delete
1:17:17
every one of those things yeah and to basically love all of those people who are going to get unanswered from afar and be kind to them in your heart and recognize that on the whole you're doing the best that you can because you are I
1:17:34
wish I could give you like here's the tool you know like NVC nonviolent Communications has some brilliant tools or here's the book that magically unlocks that to me the challenge isn't not having the tool the challenge is in
1:17:48
the meaning that we put into the situation that is the hardest thing to come over and to recognize that you're okay even if you're not necessarily being at your kindest or at your best because like you like everybody else
1:18:03
like me we all get resources that are thin at times my God and so you know if you've not answered a text message from me Tim or if you've not answered an email from me I am never ever ever going to think ill of you well I appreciate
1:18:17
that wish I could transmit that composure to all of my 600 20,000 senders let me ask you a uh a situational question and this is true in my life and I'm sure it's true for many people listening that I have a handful of
1:18:39
people who are kind of close to me very much in the same circles playing at a high level who tend to reach out to me only when there is an Ask of some type and there tends to be some great degree of discomfort associated with the ask in
1:18:59
so much as perhaps they have two or three people who are close friends of mine attending an event of theirs or investing in blah blah whatever it might be so that it is there's a great degree of discomfort that I feel in ignoring
1:19:16
the email maybe I actually get texted by one friend and then the email from this person there are a few people who are repeat characters kind of like like Newman and Seinfeld and Seinfeld shakes his fist Newman Newman yeah so I have I
1:19:31
have at least a half a dozen newans who are pretty tough to get rid of and they're not very good at reading hints or they deliberately ignore hints that I don't want to do things that I don't want to respond have you coached people through breaking up with friends or having direct conversations with their own newans and then maybe the Newman is a co-founder maybe the Newman is a someone on the board of directors maybe fill in the blank
1:20:00
for having a really direct conversation about this type of dynamic sure can we put aside just for a moment co-founder and and board member because there totally there are power dynamics there that are different than the newans that
1:20:16
you've been talking about yeah let's leave out co-founder and board member I agree that adds a l of complexity or we can Circle back to it separately but here's the thing if we start with a basic basic basic basic premise it goes
1:20:29
like this am I a good person am I doing the best that I can and if I can answer that question relatively straightforwardly and honestly then I don't have to feel guilty because that's what we're talking about right that's the emotion that gets
1:20:45
manipulated I don't have to feel guilty saying to somebody I don't have the space to do the thing that you would like me to do which might include maintaining this contact and there's an image that I often use whether it's with
1:20:59
a client or with my own self and it's come to me as I've gotten older and I'm obsessed right now with myself being old and the image is of a bonide tree which over its lifetime you know you can see this one foot tall bonide tree and it could be anywhere from 10 years old to 300 years old you have really no idea and what I see is is something that has been carefully pruned into a thing of beauty and I think that that's our
1:21:30
opportunity in life now if we start with the supposition that we are never enough that we are not good enough and that we therefore not only you said before become addicted to busyness in order to make ourselves not feel the things that
1:21:46
we don't want to feel remember that well one of the things that we do is we maintain unhealthy relationships in order to not feel the things that we don't want to feel even when those unhealthy relationships make us feel
1:22:00
other things we don't want to feel whereas if we start with the basic premise that we are enough just as we are and that there is no great loss to you him if over time you lose some connection and you use this term several
1:22:17
times to some high powerered person oh my goodness this High achieving person this High performer person there's no real great loss like think of the people that you have interviewed over the years the people that maybe began in some powerful
1:22:33
position and that have gone on to some powerful position oh my God if I lose that connection that I once had to them then somehow I'm at a loss we take a breath we breathe into that the Buddha taught us one thing you are basically good just as you are not because of the connection that you have maintained and those people who love you and care about you and understand the essence are going to be fine even if you say hey I'm sorry I actually can't
1:23:08
maintain this connection may I ask a question sure all right so I agree with everything you just said and what I'd love to hear you elaborate on is any practices or tools that you use or recommend people use to get
1:23:29
from intellectually agreeing with what you just said to embodying that in some way that translates to different Behavior does that make sense because I me one of my favorite quotes is I guess it's Ted geil but Dr Seuss which is the people who
1:23:45
matter don't mind and the people who mind don't matter I mean I love that quote I remind myself of it all the time nonetheless I do have this guilt that crops up on occasion that I recognize is counterproductive nonetheless it crops
1:24:01
up and causes me to behave in ways that I know are not necessary nor productive and I'm wondering how you help people to make that leap from kind of the intellectual uh-huh yep I get it to the other Lily Pad of Behavioral change well
1:24:21
the first thing I would say is that the practice that you just described embodying the Ted geel Dr Seuss quote that is a practice and the first thing to do is to remember that the thing about the word practice is that we actually never achieve we're always moving towards we're always going there but often times achieving it permanently sustained persistently yeah that's a tough one so in those moments when we fail to understand and remember that
1:24:57
those of us who those who love us won't mind when we fail to remember that it can be helpful to remember what I was saying before about I am enough and I'm doing the best that I can or as Dr sers once taught me not bad considering not
1:25:16
bad considering how rough you may have had it not bad considering how hard your life is right now you're okay you're okay and if I can say that to myself every day in one form or another bringing a kind of mindful attention to
1:25:32
the points when I fail with a kind of forgiveness to myself well then wow okay that can be helpful do you use journaling for this I know journaling is very important to you and I want to discuss that as a topic and there are a million in one ways to
1:25:52
journal so i' like to learn more about how you use journaling but is is journaling one of the ways that you remind yourselves of these things yes yes and if so what does it look like down to the mundane details do you write
1:26:07
down I am enough as a prompt and then write for two paragraphs on why that is the case or how does one implement this so just to for context I have been journaling consistently since there was about 13 years old daily and I'm 55 so
1:26:24
hell of a lot of journals and again to be consistent and I think you do the same thing I handw write I do yeah and what may be unusual is I never go back and reread because it's not about figuring [ __ ] out it's about the
1:26:40
experience and so my general prompt the thing I almost always start with is right now I'm feeling and I simply bring my attention to it and so I might be feeling to talk about this very specific situation guilt so for example and I'll
1:27:00
use this sort of mindful attention if I were to journal about our conversation one of the things I might Journal is about the guilt that I have felt over the years as to whether or not I was reaching out to you when you might be in
1:27:13
trouble or if I was one of those folks who put you in an uncomfortable situation and I bring that up not to elicit a response from you but as an example of an exploration of the guilty feelings that I might have where are they coming from what are they doing was I kind that sort of thing and then I blow a kiss to myself easy there buddy boy easy this is all a journaling exercise I'm just talking it out and I remember something
1:27:45
that's really important about that word guilt guilt is self-focused remorse is about the other remorse is oh I hurt someone's feelings and I would like to not be hurtful so I'm going to try not to be hurtful guilt is oh my God I can't
1:28:04
believe this I'm ruminating ruminating ruminating ruminating I find myself journaling in a ruminating kind of way I try to bring attention to that and that's the moment where I say easy boy easy you're a good man who sometimes
1:28:21
fails to live up to your aspirations that's it that's simple I also promised I would return to the crow this might be a good place yeah now I'm going to get the pronunciation Wrong Mary help me with the last name p ponet poet yeah and it's Marie Marie Marie always always a tricky one all right so Marie ponet ponet and and she's still with us thank God and the crow what does she describ in terms of the crow this that might fit might
1:28:57
not but I I want to make sure I fulfill my promise to return I think it does fit I think it does fit so Marie was one of my professors in college she taught poetry but I also took a particular track in teaching writing and so she was
1:29:12
also my mentor and she used to talk all the time about the crow who sits on your shoulder telling you what a piece of [ __ ] you are that's a piece of [ __ ] I can't believe you wrote that you know it's like I hear that voice and it sits on
1:29:26
your shoulder and it tells you all the things that you have done wrong and all the things that is happening and often times in my journal sometimes I'll take a second pen so that there are two different colors I will allow the crow to speak this is really important this isn't a Jiu-Jitsu move because the mistake I think a lot of people make is they try to throw rocks at the crow and shut the crow up and that Crow is a really interesting
1:29:59
voice that Crow tells us all the things that we are doing wrong and the ways in which we are not enough and that's the linkage back to what we were just talking about this notion that we are not enough just by ourself that's the
1:30:14
fuel by which the crow is there now this is the move to make the Crow's mission is to preserve your ability to be loved to feel safe and that you belong what it makes you feel like [ __ ] though yes it makes you feel like [ __ ] but its
1:30:32
motivation is for you not to feel ashamed and so the crow is doing you a favor the crow is trying to keep you safe the problem is the crow is so attentive and so Vigilant that it's a little too active and so what we want to
1:30:50
say at that moment is thanks a lot buddy I really appreciate it but all those people who might be angry with me because I didn't respond to them or do the thing they wanted me to do they actually don't really see me and if they
1:31:06
don't see me they don't know that I'm doing the best that I can so I'll blow him a kiss I'll put them on the other side of that chain laying fence and I'll love them from afar this is really important and by this I mean everything
1:31:18
that we've been talking about pretty much since the getg go but especially I'm referring to the J journaling and creating an outlet for the crow or the monkey mind or what Tim Urban of waight but why would call the mammoth and I
1:31:33
highly recommend that everybody check out an article he wrote called taming the mammoth which is on this subject that if you hate that part of yourself and try to contain it at least in my experience that does nothing but
1:31:49
exacerbate it does nothing but worsen the problem but along the lines of say morning Pages you know Julia Cameron and so on writing freehand in the morning and providing that monkey mind and opportunity to fix itself on paper at least for me gives me
1:32:08
tremendous amount of increased levity during the day it removes a huge burden do you tend to journal first thing upon waking up could you walk us through when you are at your best when do you wake up what is your first kind of 60 to 90
1:32:24
minutes look like or two hours whatever you choose it's two hours and when I'm at my best I wake I clean up so I shower and stuff like that and I have caffeine because you do not want to be around me without caffeine what time do you wake
1:32:39
up generally between 5 and 6 almost without fail usually without an alarm clock so I'm really awful around 9:00 at night I'm a very boring person I do not look at my phone let me say that again I do not look at my phone I do not look at my phone because it's just too painful and with a cup of coffee coffee not coffee as I say from Brooklyn and then I Journal usually for an hour and then I sit in meditation usually for an hour a half hour
1:33:15
sometimes 45 minutes it sort of depends on how the day is going and what's going on but the entire period feels like one quiet meditative period so that's me at my best the journaling for an hour I want to dig into that a bit because I
1:33:31
think it's such a powerful tool and I'd like to hear more about how that hour is spent so I'm looking at a page in the new book appropriately named ReBoot and you have in this book different journaling invitations so you might have
1:33:53
I'll just give a few examples in what ways do I deplete myself and run myself into the ground where am I running from and where to why have I allowed myself to be so exhausted you mentioned earlier that you often start the journaling with right now I'm feeling dot dot dot are there other prompts that you personally tend to use more than others well I would never say that I would use the prompts like I'm going to use the same
1:34:19
prompt every time the one thing that I do consistently is write now I'm feeling and then generally speaking I might review the past 24 hours almost in a diary kind of fashion you know so yesterday I woke up and then I also
1:34:35
don't worry about explaining people so I might say and then I met with Mary Jane and I don't have to explain who Mary Jane is because who cares I'm never going to read it again and nobody is ever going to read it I get rid of all
1:34:47
that monkey mind [ __ ] chatter right and I just go right into it and I presume that the journal knows all sees all has been there with me all along that's an important point secondarily I will ask myself many questions like how
1:35:05
long have I felt this way which will then bring me back to some early memories and I will start to be able to elucidate the patterns of my life and that's really important because it's the patterns that actually point out where
1:35:23
we have some struggles can I Circle back to a point that you were making before about accepting the totality of what's going on because the journaling can help me in that can help one in that so I mentioned before about maybe utilizing different pens to speak for the different parts of ourselves before I even go further let me make this observation I think it's super helpful for you Tim to speak openly about the ways in which there are
1:35:53
different part parts of you you know for those of us who are mildly curious about this space that's an obvious fact but there's still very much a point of view in the world that there's just one mind that there's just one point of view and
1:36:08
all those other voices we pretend aren't there they're not part of ourselves and you are absolutely right when those voices are not given airtime they get really pissed off really really angry and the energy that they hold is really
1:36:26
important and so if we go back to journaling For a Moment by giving voice to those other voices by giving air time to those other voices we get to lay out in fact all of the conflicts that exists within us in Buddhism that we're taught
1:36:42
that there are seven layers of Consciousness seven there's an observer observing observing observing observing there all these layers of what's going on right and by taking the time in a good journaling session you can allow
1:36:57
you don't even have to swap all these pens you can allow dialogue you can allow conflict you can allow argument and it's in that expression that's a manifestation of that full acceptance that you were talking about before Oh wait I can
1:37:16
contain multitudes isn't that what Whitman said do I contradict myself I do I am large I contain multitudes amen whether we aware of it or not we all do a book that helped me a lot with this and I found so much value
1:37:33
in the first I want to say 50 to 100 pages that I wanted to get to work immediately I was like okay that's plenty of Grist for the mill let me get started was Radical acceptance by Tara Brock oh God what a great bucket yeah and I think the title is fairly sterile or milk toast but the book is so good and in my particular case my default emotional home in a way was anger and the way I dealt with that was by fighting anger if that makes sense and
1:38:07
trying and trying to cage and contain it and radical acceptance offered me an entirely different way of relating to that which I found extremely valuable are there any other tools meditations books anything at all that might be helpful in
1:38:29
assisting people to accept or reconcile with different parts of themselves at the very least recognize different you you know how before you were saying like you you know you take a breath because you wanted to jump in I'm having all
1:38:43
those same feelings yeah so much here first of all shout out ter Brock for radical acceptance what a what a brilliant book and what a gift she is as a teacher yes yes yes on the acceptance you know you talked about anger being
1:38:57
your default mechanism for me growing up with the violence that I experienced as a kid rage was a major part of my childhood but the challenge that I experienced was that anger rage was so dangerous that I actually turned it into
1:39:14
anxiety all the time and so actually you can't see it because the video is off but on my desk are two little action figures one is Hulk and the other is Thor and one part of me that I learned to accept was the Hulk because the Hulk
1:39:33
when I was a kid I remember this one time uh I have a younger brother named John and in my mind's eye he's still 10 years old even though he's in his 50s so hey John anyway when I was a kid we lived in a part of Brooklyn where called
1:39:48
Benson her and I we lived in the second floor of a two family house and I remember looking out the window and one day this kid was throwing rocks over the fence at my brother John and I went ballistic and I ran downstairs and I grabbed this kid and I pulled him over the fence and I threw him on the floor and I pounded the crap out of his face because here's the thing you do not [ __ ] with my people you do not [ __ ] with
1:40:14
Hulk's people the problem was that Hulk was often dangerous and would often lead to something negative happening to me so I would shut him up and i' pretend that he's not there and he would show up in all sorts of ways like really cleverly
1:40:32
dissecting somebody's argument and being really wordy and verbose and shutting people down and all these awful behaviors and what I had to do was radically accept that that guy that big green guy exists in me for one reason
1:40:51
only to keep myself and those who love me safe and by loving Hulk I transformed him into Thor who just as strong just as powerful less likely to be out of control and motivated by Justice better hair too and much better hair much better
1:41:12
skin so that radical acceptance that accepting the fullness of of ourselves oh my God it's so liberating isn't it it is and what's liberating also is simply the realization that you can in some fashion reconcile these different parts of you
1:41:34
and that they serve a purpose not only did they serve a purpose but that they were probably in some way fundamental to your survival whether that's physical emotional or otherwise and that they were incredibly incredibly important and may still be very important for certain things certain situations that's right and you know that recalls Carl Young's notion of the Shadow which is the place he described as the place we put the dismembered
1:42:05
parts of ourselves and this is really important not only do we put the parts of ourselves that Society may say are obviously not good let's say a rage like anger but also the parts of ourselves that are actually quite powerful quite positive quite lovely but because they threaten say are belonging they have to actually be put in the shadow as well well they too get really pissed off right and they too cause trouble and so you might put into
1:42:39
the shadow your intellect or your capabilities or your ability to write a book and you might sit for two or three decades knowing that you want to write a book and not doing it because it might threaten you in some way way or another
1:42:54
this is a good segue for difficult decisions and by difficult I mean emotionally difficult right so the for instance sitting on the desire to write a book for 10 20 years and then finally taking whatever the steps are
1:43:10
the first steps to finally write that book potentially maybe that's leaving a job maybe that's starting a job could be any number of things could you speak to you can choose which of these questions you would like to answer when did you
1:43:23
say no to something that was at the time very difficult to say no to which in retrospect was very important to your life and then the other is when was a time when you decided to kind of block out all the noise block out everything
1:43:38
else and focus on something very narrowly and that ended up being extremely important in retrospect what occurs to me is that the answer to both questions is the same meaning probably the most consequential career choice that I made the consequential saying no that I ever did was to walk away from the Venture business and to stop being a professional investor and the rest of my life unfold it and I'm sitting here talking to you
1:44:11
today I mean we might have been friends Tim had I taken that path who knows but I'm sitting here talking to you about something that feels like the most profound fruition of who I am my vocation my belief systms all of this because I said
1:44:30
no to the thing that I was actually really successful at um which is a mind [ __ ] if you think about it right because because like if I was failing as an investor you could sort of say well of course walked he walked away haha he
1:44:45
failed but I actually walked away when I was successful because it was too painful can you walk us through had that happened because you had to have this feeling for I would imagine more than 20 minutes maybe it was days maybe it was weeks maybe it was months what was the kind of 24-hour period the dinner the conversation the 48 Hours whatever it might have been when you were like enough is enough I'm actually sending the email having the
1:45:13
conversation and walking it was actually years in the making I would have to go back to 99 2000 right around that time period where if you recall the market crashed the NASDAQ crashed I forget the absolute numbers because they would be minuscule compared to the numbers we're dealing with now but the market crashed around March 1999 and I remember it because I was on a family holiday to Washington DC when Fred I think texted me said did you
1:45:44
see the NASDAQ you I like oh my God you know and I think it had dropped like 700 points or something which at the time was like a phenomenal number anyway right around that time I started having this I just couldn't sleep I was just
1:45:58
not happy I was 37 38 years old so in hindsight I was clearly entering midlife and like the systems were collapsing all around me and then I thought I couldn't go out and fund raise with Fred and raise a new Venture Capital fund for
1:46:14
flat iron and so I decided to leave the fund but I decided to leave the fund and go to JP Morgan because I thought that the problem was changing the externalities and so then I took a position starting January 1st 2002 and
1:46:30
as we were talking about before by February it was just not working and I remember going in to see my boss at the time a guy named Jeff Walker who's Vice chairman of the bank he's still a very very close friend and I remember saying
1:46:43
I can't do it I just can't do it and I think it was probably a few months after the Canyon Ranch visit and I said I'm not going to renew my contract the end of this year and he said well what are you going to do and I said I
1:46:56
don't know but for the first time in my life I'm going to be without a job since first time since I was about 13 and I'm going to be liberated from this definition from remember I you know this notion of like wearing somebody else's suit of
1:47:11
clothes it was incredibly scary it was incredibly hard was the trigger I hate to interrupt it was the trigger that you had a preset scheduled meeting for the renewal of the contract it was kind of like [ __ ] or get off the pot in the sense no so
1:47:27
you no it was a dinner it was a dinner okay it was a dinner it's like Jeff I need to have a dinner I need to talk about this because the presumption everybody renewed their contract did something prompt was there like a
1:47:40
particular day or moment that prompted you asking him out to dinner you know so I went down to to Canyon Ranch and I read these books let your life speak holy [ __ ] I've actually not been listening to my life and I started to spend the next few months that was the beginning of my meditation practice I first meditated a Canyon Ranch and I would argue I first began listening to my life to my heart and over the next few months up until
1:48:11
November that year I think we had dinner right around November 2nd or so there's that number two again I never noticed that pattern before we had dinner and I said to him you know it was like of those moments do I say it at the
1:48:24
beginning of the dinner or do I say it at the end you know like yeah just one last small thing before we go by way I'm not going to be your partner anymore and I said it at the beginning and I knew in my heart that he would still be my
1:48:37
friend in fact we remain super close but the fear was like what was I going to do and I didn't know and no idea thank you for bringing me back to that time because it's important for me to remember that I'm feeling that right now
1:48:54
what was the day after you walked like do you remember what that what you did on the first one or two days after you walked out I remember starting to tell people I told uh the woman who's my assistant at the time she remains a very
1:49:10
close friend see there's a pattern Carrie racklin and I said you know Carrie I'm not going to do it I don't remember all of the details it was so long ago this is you know 17 years ago now but I remember the feeling and the
1:49:25
feeling was a combination of utter relief and absolute Terror both feelings simultaneous what's your advice to someone who's in that position and I could phrase it as what advice would you have given yourself when feeling those
1:49:43
two things at that point in time which you can answer or since you have experience with so many Executives Founders and so on when people are experiencing this sense of relief combined with abject Terror of facing the unknown what's your advice
1:50:04
the first thing I would say and I would have said to myself is that welcome to midlife for sure and I say this often now because I often can see the connection to I was talking to this to the CEO of a very successful company who
1:50:24
I was just talking to him this morning he's 39 years old and it's like everything's working why do I feel groundless he like well let's talk about that so what I often say is remember you're not alone and the second is that
1:50:38
there are adults men and women who are on the other side of that Gulf and we're fine and you'll be fine and they have trod the path before you and and you're going to be okay how many references to books have you made Tim those were all
1:50:58
written by people you know Tara's book was written just as much for herself as it was written for anyone else you know and all of those people they're there they're like ancestors guiding us through that period and saying come on over the water's fine you're gonna be okay don't be so scared what has helped most with or what helped most if it's past tense with your anxiety with your worrying when you transmuted rage into anxiety or if
1:51:37
anxiety bubbled up is from other sources what are some of the things that have helped you most with that I'll speak about the rage for a moment the rage and then turned into anxiety it would often turn into anxiety but it would equally
1:51:53
as often turned into migraines and that's when Dr SE first taught me the first of those three questions which is what am I not saying that needs to be said and by linking speaking to the rage and to the migraines and to the
1:52:10
anxiety I gave voice to the feelings and that didn't magically make them go away but it lessened the power of that anxiety it lessened the power of all of those feelings so learning to speak whether it's in my journal or actually
1:52:28
learning to speak like an adult with another human being hey that hurt me or hey I'm scared that thing that you said last night scared me and as a result I want to do the thing that I would normally do which is withdraw and cut
1:52:42
off connection to you but I'm going to stay here and be an adult and engage with you that move it doesn't make the anxiety go away but it puts me back in control puts the adult me back in control the other thing that I do is I
1:53:00
start to ask the anxiety questions like you really want to work with what's going on in that amydala which is where that source of anxiety tends to be right the M ask it questions what's the threat what am I afraid of have I heard this
1:53:16
before those questions fire off the prefrontal cortex which can relieve the anxiety do you personally tend to ask those questions before meditation in journaling what form does the asking take yeah I do well remember I Journal before I meditate so a lot of times I will be sitting down at the cushion Going H this is what I'm working with and you know I'll tell you what happened this morning in my meditation session I was working with some really
1:53:44
difficult feelings that came up over the weekend and I was sitting in meditation I had had a conversation with Sharon salsberg today and it was really helpful and all of a sudden she came back and just as I sat down I'm a very ritualized
1:53:58
meditator right so I have candles I have incense you know I'm I'm a former Catholic so I like all of that ritual stuff you know if somebody could ring a bell it makes me happy right so I'm doing all that stuff I'm sitting on the
1:54:10
cushion and all that's emerging and all of a sudden I start visualizing the area of my chest where my heart is and the object of my meditation this morning was open your heart open your heart your heart's closing stay open stay open and
1:54:29
in that moment I realized that what I was continuing to work with was the impulse to close down this weekend that I was feeling in response to the fears and so the naturally arising thought that came from that session in
1:54:47
that moment was open open open which very very quickly turned into love and kindness meditation for myself for people who don't know correct me if I'm wrong here but loving kindness meditation if you want to learn more about it would highly
1:55:06
recommend diving into that also known as meta mea meditation to folks worth checking out Jack cornfield who's been on this podcast before specifically speaking about meta and loving kindness Sharon's also spoken
1:55:22
about it on the podcast and those are good those are great places to start very very effective short at least can be short meditation that really punches above its weight class in a sense and I think in part for me I'm really glad we're talking about this cuz it's a type of meditation that I haven't used in a while and I I really should is at least for me it's a vacation from obsessing on myself if it is directed to other people now as
1:55:56
was pointed out to me during my first ever extended Meditation Retreat I was talking about loving kindness and how much I enjoyed it and they asked on the way out just a quick suggestion have you applied this to yourself at all and it
1:56:09
was so nonsensical to me like it didn't like they might have been speaking to me and cling on I was like loving kindness to myself what like that doesn't make any sense and lo and behold I did find it very valuable I really enjoy
1:56:25
combining that with also loving kindness meditation for other people and if you're just kind of rolling your eyes at the sort of a new age hippie sounding wording of loving kindness then we can switch to a different language and look
1:56:39
up meta me meditation same same but different Jared let me ask you just a couple more questions we could go for many many hours more and we certainly have spoken for many hours before but for the purposes of right now I think
1:56:54
we're getting close to a really good getting reacquainted chat and round one of the podcast I'll ask you just a few more questions one is what is the new behavior in the last handful of years it could be anytime really or belief that
1:57:13
is most or I should say greatly improved your life quality of your life new Behavior or belief in the last fill in the blank number of years that has significantly improved the quality of your life the main one that comes to
1:57:29
mind is that I am a good man the belief that's a belief I believe that I am a fundamentally good person and that I accept the fact that I often fail to act in accordance with that but that feels to this guilt-ridden
1:57:53
anxious ridden angry child from Brooklyn way back when that feels radically transformative what I'm good just as I am no yeah I'm good that's huge hard to imagine something bigger by the way I it I have to practice it every day but you know I'm a
1:58:19
good enough partner I'm a good enough business person I'm a good enough coach I'm good enough parent that's the hardest one for me have I wounded my children yes does that undermine whether or not I'm a good man and a good father
1:58:36
no and that allowance has done something really magical it's allowed them to accept themselves so yeah it's a big move that is a big move the next question might segue might be completely different but if you could put a message on a
1:58:54
billboard metaphorically speaking to get a quote a word a question anything non-commercial out to billions of people what might you put on such a billboard I'm going to add two sentences the first big billboard so there's plenty it's a
1:59:09
big billboard so it doesn't say impeach Trump just kidding it says you're not alone and just because you feel like [ __ ] doesn't mean you are [ __ ] the You are not alone is really really important because we feel so broken because we
1:59:25
question our worthiness all the time we exacerbate the feelings of I must be the only one who is going through this and this is crazy because despite all the evidence whether it's myths whether it's stories whether it's religions whether it's
1:59:44
philosophical traditions everybody's saying the same thing you're fundamentally good yeah there are things you can do to improve your life but you're fundamentally good relax it's okay that's that equinity that I often
1:59:58
talk about it's like okay so I guess you're not alone and just because you feel like [ __ ] doesn't mean you are [ __ ] and if I'm not [ __ ] then this feeling of it being crappy right now well this will pass so let's add another one this two Shall Pass can I add onto that you can add you can keep adding Tim think of the times in which you have struggled you've been very open about your struggles and by the way thank you for doing that
2:00:26
because you model something that's really important think about when you've been at your worst and how alone it feels and how it becomes this self-reinforcing negative view that you must be crap because you feel like crap it's like no stop you must be human because you feel struggle and there are billions of humans and have been billions and there will be billions more and struggle is universal it is part of the amusement ride that's
2:01:00
right yeah and you bought a ticket so you might as well go for a ride can't be on Magic Castle indefinitely you're going to go through the haunted house occasionally amen Jerry thank you so much for taking the time today to share and to catch up
2:01:18
and to teach I always enjoy our convers ation so Point number one thank you very much well thank you and thank you for giving me the opportunity and thank you for asking gorgeous questions that really help me think and feel and uh
2:01:35
thank you for doing what you do every day it really means a lot to the world my pleasure I really appreciate you saying that and it helps me as much as I hope it helps other people there's that weird crazy esoteric thing that all those people High
2:01:52
achieving people say oh there he goes oh helping me helps other people helping other people helps me yeah right Tim's living proof of that so there it's true it's true I mean I I think that I've been very fortunate to
2:02:07
somehow stumble my way like a drunk in the dark into a career that involves having conversations like this so thank you lady Fortune for that and it's also just a tremendous opportunity to explore some of these things that perhaps aren't explored as often as they should be and you are great companion on the path with that so thank you again and where are the best places to say hello to you online or to learn about what you were
2:02:43
up to of course the book reboot subtitle leadership and the Art of growing up is available and certainly something I would recommend people people check out has the many of the prompts and more that we've talked about a lot of case
2:02:56
studies the personal history and distillation of a lot of what you've learned working with hundreds thousands of clients at this point yeah and what else should people know anything else yeah I mean probably the best way to
2:03:12
sort of follow what's going on is reboot.com a bunch of resources podcasts self-guided courses journaling exercises all sorts of things designed to help folks all for free because you know hey what the heck you know let's help each
2:03:35
other out and that's probably the best way you can also follow me on Twitter at Jerry Colona you mentioned that earlier but pick up the book I'm pretty proud of it and I hope it makes a difference makes a dent in the world that's the
2:03:51
that's what we can hope for and for people listening I'll link to everything that we've discussed the website book website Twitter and everything else that came up in this conversation in the show notes as always at tim. Blog podcast you
2:04:08
can just search Jerry j e r r y or Colona if you want to take the Black Diamond route instead of using the easy option and you will be able to find it very very quickly Jerry any other comments requests anything at all you'd like to
2:04:25
say before we wrap up no just that it was a real heart-filled pleasure it was really a blast likewise thanks so much Jerry and everyone out there thank you so much for listening and until next time pick up a damn Journal amen that's right and real pens real pens give it a shot it's amazing what you can discover when you take what you think or clear thoughts and put them on paper and that's it for now so until next time thanks again for
2:04:56
listening hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between 1 and A2 and
2:05:10
2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday easy to sign up easy to cancel it is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or
2:05:24
discovered or have started exploring over that week it's kind of like my diary of cool things it often includes articles I'm reading books I'm reading albums perhaps gadgets gizmos all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent
2:05:37
to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you so if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of
2:05:52
goodness before you head off for the weekend something to think about if you'd like to try it out just go to tim. blog Friday type that into your browser tim. blog Friday drop in your email and you'll get the very next one thanks for
2:06:06
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