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Episode: #742: Tony Robbins and Jerry Colonna

Author: Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig
Duration: 02:10:14

Episode Shownotes

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed one billion downloads. To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best—some of my favorites—from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. The episode

features segments from episode #37 "Tony Robbins on Morning Routines, Peak Performance, and Mastering Money" and #373 "Jerry Colonna — The Coach with the Spider Tattoo."Please enjoy!Sponsors:LMNT electrolyte supplement: https://drinklmnt.com/Tim (free LMNT sample pack with any drink mix purchase)AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.)Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: https://eightsleep.com/tim (save $350 on the Pod 4 Ultra)Timestamps:[00:00] Start[05:00] Notes about this supercombo format.[06:03] Enter Tony Robbins.[06:27] Tony’s daily routines.[07:28] Cryotherapy.[10:55] Priming.[15:04] Tony’s ideal music for meditation.[16:20] Richard Branson’s first pre-investment questions.[17:05] What a 50% investment loss actually means.[17:42] The Paul Tudor Jones 5:1 strategy.[18:36] How Kyle Bass taught his kids about investing with nickels.[21:34] What the world’s best investors know for certain.[24:00] Enter Jerry Colonna.[24:21] Jerry’s spider tattoo origin story.[30:03] The 2002 Olympic bid meeting that changed Jerry’s life.[35:47] Jerry’s suicide attempt at 18 and his psychiatric hospital stay.[37:06] The difference between responsible and complicit in Jerry’s life in 2002.[39:55] Three important questions from Jerry’s therapist.[41:02] Something important Jerry needed to say but didn’t during this time.[42:39] How Jerry overcame self-doubt and unanswerable questions.[44:46] Jerry’s path to coaching and three influential books.[51:46] How much of Jerry’s coaching stemmed from focusing outside himself and healing his younger self.[53:12] Convincing high-achievers of the importance of self-discovery.[54:10] Jerry’s first question: “How are you really feeling?”[57:11] Working with the chronically busy.[59:40] Examining my handling of busyness, saying “No,” and related difficulties.[1:09:40] Three basic risks we all try to manage: love, safety, and belonging.[1:13:06] Tools, books, and approaches for setting boundaries and saying “No.”[1:14:50] “All beings own their own karma. Their happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions, not my wishes for them.”[1:16:11] A boundary tool that acknowledges compassion from a distance.[1:17:30] The challenge is in the meaning assigned to a situation before applying a tool.[1:18:11] Dealing with vexing “Newman” personalities in our lives.[1:22:56] Moving from intellectual agreement to behavioral change.[1:25:26] Benefits of journaling for personal growth.[1:27:33] Guilt vs. remorse.[1:28:12] Marie Ponsot, the crow, and letting the crow speak in the journal.[1:32:00] Jerry’s bedtimes, mornings, and journaling process.[1:35:09] Journaling for accepting life’s totality and our inner “multitudes.”[1:37:14] Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance.[1:37:41] Using Marvel’s Hulk and Thor to understand and reconcile parts of oneself.[1:42:39] A difficult but life-changing decision Jerry made to say “No.”[1:49:19] Advice for anyone at a similar junction.[1:51:07] Using journaling and meditation to cope with anxiety and inner turmoil.[1:54:43] Learning about loving kindness (metta) meditation.[1:56:49] A new behavior or belief that improved Jerry’s quality of life.[1:58:36] Jerry’s billboard.[2:00:55] Parting thoughts.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
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00:00:30 Speaker_03
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00:02:39 Speaker_03
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00:02:53 Speaker_03
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00:04:15 Speaker_03
They currently ship to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

00:04:26 Speaker_02
Can I ask you a personal question? Now or the sooner the better.

00:04:30 Speaker_00
What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

00:04:45 Speaker_03
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss.

00:04:48 Speaker_03
Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives.

00:05:01 Speaker_03
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 passed 1 billion downloads.

00:05:11 Speaker_03
To celebrate, I've curated some of the best 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.

00:05:23 Speaker_03
And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes, because my goal is 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.

00:05:36 Speaker_03
These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode.

00:05:46 Speaker_03
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 slash combo. And now without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening.

00:06:03 Speaker_02
First up, Tony Robbins, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the nation's number one life and business strategist, and the number one New York Times bestselling author of Money, Master the Game, Life Force, and Awaken the Giant Within.

00:06:21 Speaker_02
You can find Tony on Twitter and Instagram, at Tony Robbins.

00:06:27 Speaker_03
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 some of your daily routines?

00:06:42 Speaker_00
My regimen is I start with something to strengthen and jolt my nervous system every freaking day. I will sometimes ease into it. I'll go in the hot pools. I'm fortunate enough to have multiple homes.

00:06:52 Speaker_00
My home in Sun Valley, I have natural hot pools that come out of the ground, just steaming hot. I go in the hot pools, and then I go there in the river. Here, I go in a 57-degree plunge pool that I have, and I have one in every home I have.

00:07:01 Speaker_00
This will be immediately upon waking up? Waking up. Boom, every cell in my body wakes up. And it's also just like training my nervous system to rock, that there is no, I don't give a shit how you feel, this is how you perform. That's what you do.

00:07:15 Speaker_00
Even when I'm taking a vacation, I do it. It's just, I don't know, now I like it. I like that simple discipline that reminds me the level of strength and intensity that's available at any moment, even if I'm relaxing, I can bring that up at will.

00:07:27 Speaker_00
It's the myelin. I also have a cryotherapy unit in all my homes. Have you tried cryotherapy? I haven't. You know what it is? Maybe you could elaborate a minute. I can put the two words together and probably guess.

00:07:39 Speaker_00
Oh my God, with all that you do, you're gonna love this. I'm surprised. I'm glad I'm teaching Tim Ferriss something for the first time. I've done ice bath. Oh, not the first time. Ice baths suck, trust me. I'm on stage in a weekend.

00:07:49 Speaker_00
I do my Unleashed Power Within program three days. It's 50 hours. You know I've been to an event. You gotta come as my guest to an event sometime. I would love to. But I'm gonna give you an idea.

00:07:58 Speaker_00
People won't sit for a three hour movie that somebody spent $300 million on and I got like Usher or Oprah going on. You know, Tony, I love you, but two hours, most like I do.

00:08:06 Speaker_00
And 12 hours later, Oprah's standing on a chair going, this is the most incredible experience of my life on camera. And I was just like, dude, I'm in for all three days.

00:08:12 Speaker_00
But for me, one of those days alone, I wear odometer and I'm Fitbit and it's 26 and a half miles on average. Wow. We start at 8.30 in the morning. I finish at 1.30 or 2. There's one one-hour break. People can vote with their feet. No one leaves.

00:08:27 Speaker_00
You know, there's on average 20 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.

00:08:37 Speaker_00
But the wear and tear of doing basically marathon after marathon after marathon on the weekend back-to-back, it's pretty intense.

00:08:43 Speaker_00
And so over the years, it's 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 in Poland and Eastern Germany and the Eastern Bloc countries.

00:08:55 Speaker_00
And what it does is it uses nitrogen, so there's no water. And unlike an ice bath, what you're doing, you know, you get spasms and you've got to do them still, right?

00:09:01 Speaker_00
If you're a boxer, 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 mind boggling.

00:09:14 Speaker_00
In fact, I have one here and I'll throw you in at the end if you want. I would love 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.

00:09:22 Speaker_00
Usually when I come back from an event, I do it, you know, a couple of 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 in the breakdown.

00:09:31 Speaker_00
But it also, it sends emergency signals to your brain. It's like resetting your neurological system. Because your brain's going, you're going to freeze to death. It sounds horrific. It really isn't. You'll find out it's not that painful.

00:09:41 Speaker_00
Going in my cold plunge at 57 degrees feels more jolting than this does, even though it's colder. the fluid of water versus the nitrogen around you is different. Right, the connectivity. The connectivity, exactly right.

00:09:52 Speaker_00
But what happens is your nervous system gets a signal, so it's like everything in your body connects because it's like emergency. It's a reset of your nervous system. You get an explosion of endorphins in your body, which is really cool.

00:10:02 Speaker_00
So you get this natural high, you feel this physiological transformation, and you get the reduction of inflammation. What it was used for originally is for people with arthritis.

00:10:11 Speaker_00
And I found my first one because my mother-in-law was calling up and 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 to come to the U.S.

00:10:22 Speaker_00
And now the Lakers, most football teams, it's spreading like wildfire amongst the 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.

00:10:34 Speaker_00
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 local places now that are popping up all over the United States where athletes go, where people go, where people go for rejuvenation.

00:10:44 Speaker_00
It's amazing for the skin. But it's one of the great things. I got it first, I got it for me, and now I'm addicted. But other than that, I don't do much unique or different with my life.

00:10:52 Speaker_03
I don't believe that entirely. I'll keep digging. How far after, so what is, if you were to kind of spec out the first hour of your day?

00:10:59 Speaker_00
The first, every day. I do the water, I take in the environment, and then the first thing I do before I do anything else in my day is I do what I call priming. And priming to me is different than meditating.

00:11:10 Speaker_00
I'm never really a meditator per se, I know the value of it. But the idea for me of sitting still and having no thoughts just didn't really work out for me. It was just a pain in the ass. And I just thought it's not natural, right?

00:11:20 Speaker_00
It's like that's where it works. But when I'm in nature, 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 a person's suicidal.

00:11:30 Speaker_00
I've never lost a suicide, for example, in 37 years. Knock on wood, it doesn't mean I won't someday, but I never have out of thousands and we followed up with them. So, it's like there's something that comes through me, and it's quite meditative.

00:11:40 Speaker_00
It's like I experience it as a witness, you know, afterwards. 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 have a prime life, you've got to be in a prime state.

00:11:51 Speaker_00
And weeds grow automatically. I don't give a damn what it is. My teacher, Jim Rohn, 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.

00:12:03 Speaker_00
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 breathing that I do.

00:12:14 Speaker_00
I do 30 of these 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.

00:12:28 Speaker_00
And you do that in this room that we're sitting in? No, I do it all up. This one room is where I do it. This has got a great vibe. I'll do this when I do it at night.

00:12:35 Speaker_00
I usually will go outside because I love the wind on my face and I love taking the elements and so forth. But I do it in multiple places. I'm on the road. I do it. It doesn't matter what day. I always, I do not miss priming.

00:12:45 Speaker_00
The reason is you don't get fit by getting lucky. You don't get fit by working out for a weekend. You know you live your life that way. Fitness is because it becomes just part of who you are.

00:12:54 Speaker_00
So what I do during that time is I do three simple things, and I do it minimum 10 minutes.

00:12:57 Speaker_00
Three minutes of it is just me getting back inside my body and outside of my head, feeling the earth in my body and experience, and then feeling totally grateful for three things. And I make sure one of them is something Very, very simple.

00:13:10 Speaker_00
The wind on my face, you know, the reflection of the clouds that I just saw there. But I don't just think gratitude. It's like I let gratitude fill my soul. Because when you're grateful, as we all know, there's no anger.

00:13:20 Speaker_00
It's possibly angry and grateful simultaneously. But when you're grateful, 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.

00:13:30 Speaker_00
And also, to me, there's nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman. You know, somebody's got everything and they're pissed off. I want to stop them. Surprisingly high numbers. Yes, it is.

00:13:38 Speaker_00
Because they develop a life that's based on expectation instead of appreciation. Agreed. I tell people, you want to change your life fast, then trade your expectation for appreciation and you have a whole new life. So, every day I anchor that in.

00:13:50 Speaker_00
And I do it very deeply emotionally. Then the second three minutes I do is a total focus on feeling presence of God, if you will, however you want to language that for yourself.

00:14:00 Speaker_00
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 as solving anything that needs to be solved.

00:14:10 Speaker_00
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 service.

00:14:22 Speaker_00
That's what makes me feel alive. So I flood myself with that, with a breathing pattern that I take that does the opposite. It takes the breath down through my body and back up again.

00:14:30 Speaker_00
And then the last three minutes are me 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.

00:14:40 Speaker_00
So it's a really simplistic process, 10 minutes. But I come out of 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. That's how committed I am.

00:14:51 Speaker_00
And as I say, I've always said, there's no excuse not to do 10 minutes. If you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life. And that's how I got myself to do it.

00:14:59 Speaker_00
And now that I've done it, 20 to 30 minutes is almost always what it is, because it actually feels extraordinary. I have to ask, what type of music do you usually listen to?

00:15:07 Speaker_00
I have a variety, but for that meditation, I have one in particular, which is a oneness meditation that a friend of mine made at Foos from India that I find really profound. It has no singing in it or anything like that.

00:15:17 Speaker_00
It's just the 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 pieces of music, but I don't use modern music or pop music or rock music.

00:15:27 Speaker_00
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 at it as meditation because I look at it as it's priming courage, love, joy.

00:15:37 Speaker_00
It's priming gratitude. It's priming strength. It's priming accomplishment.

00:15:41 Speaker_00
It's priming, you know, when I'm doing my gratitude piece, I'm doing the circle of who's closest to me and, you know, circling that out to everybody I love and sending that energy and healing out to them as well.

00:15:49 Speaker_00
So, to me, if you want primetime life, you've got to prime daily.

00:15:53 Speaker_03
I like the term priming also because I think that most people who struggle with meditation or even attempt to use meditation are utilizing it for that purpose. They're doing it first in the morning.

00:16:02 Speaker_03
And 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.

00:16:10 Speaker_03
And I don't always do 30 minutes, but I do meditate in the morning. And it's been a very consistent pattern among all the people that I've interviewed so far on the podcast.

00:16:20 Speaker_00
I'll 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 key to weakening is not losing, and they are obsessed.

00:16:31 Speaker_00
Every single one of them is obsessed with not losing money. I mean, a level of obsession that's mind-boggling. It isn't just these investors, you know, Sir Richard Branson, for example, you know.

00:16:41 Speaker_00
People see Richard, and he's such an outgoing, playful, crazy guy. He's kind of an introvert in some areas, but when it comes to athletics and taking on challenges, he's out in the world.

00:16:50 Speaker_00
But you know, his first question to every business is what's the downside and how do you protect it? Right. Like when he did his piece with Virgin, I mean, that's a big risk going to start an airline.

00:16:58 Speaker_00
He went to Boeing and negotiated a deal that could send the planes back if it didn't work out and he wasn't liable. But that's the level these guys think at. So they look to see how do I not lose money first? Because the average person has no clue.

00:17:10 Speaker_00
If I lose 50% in 2008, Well, guess what? You've got to make 100% to get even, not 50%, because your principal's gone down so much. So it's like, people don't understand. You lose 60%, it's 200% to get even.

00:17:22 Speaker_00
And so the average person lives in a world where they try not to lose money, but they're not obsessed. These aren't obsessed. Second thing they all have in common, every single one of them is obsessed with asymmetrical risk-reward, which is a big word.

00:17:35 Speaker_00
It simply means they're looking to use the least amount of risk to get the max amount of upside, and that's what they live for. Here's what I found with Paul Tudor at the very beginning getting back on track.

00:17:46 Speaker_00
When he was at his best, he made sure every single trade had what he called a five to one. That means if he was going to risk a 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?

00:17:59 Speaker_00
If I risk a dollar to make five and I'm wrong, I can risk another dollar, I still make four. I can be wrong four times out of five and still break even. Their secret is not that they're not wrong.

00:18:10 Speaker_00
It's they set themselves up where they risk small amounts for big rewards proportionally. Paul, if he's right at one out of three times, he still makes 20%. So the average person risks a dollar trying to make how much? That's right, about $1.10.

00:18:24 Speaker_00
If I could get 10%, wow, my dollar, right, of 20% would be unbelievable. How often can you be wrong? Not very often. Not at all. You're in the hole. You're starting from the hole. You've got to build back up. So they're asymmetrical worth.

00:18:36 Speaker_00
Like I was with Kyle Bass and Kyle Bass risked. Check this out. In the middle of the subprime crisis, he made two billion dollars out of 30 million because he risked for every six cents he risked. He had an upside of a dollar.

00:18:49 Speaker_00
Well, you could be wrong 15 times, and you're still OK in that area. I mean, he was brilliant to figure it out. He's a genius to figure it out. But that risk-reward is why it is. He showed his kids. I said, how do I teach this to the average investor?

00:19:02 Speaker_00
And he said, well, you can teach them the way I taught my kids. And I said, how'd you do it? He goes, we bought nickels. And so what do you mean you bought nickels? He said, well, I did research. I had this question.

00:19:12 Speaker_00
That's another thing that all these guys do. They ask a better question. 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?

00:19:20 Speaker_00
No matter what, you'll come up with different answers. So his question was, where in the world is there a riskless trade with total upside? And he started looking around and he said, I'm worried about inflation.

00:19:31 Speaker_00
So he decided, gosh, of all the currencies in the world, a nickel, what it's made of today, it's not made mostly of nickel, by the way, he said, it's costing the US government nine and a half cents to make a nickel.

00:19:43 Speaker_00
That's how our government functions. It's been almost 10 cents to make something worth half as much, right? The Pentagon plan. Yeah, that's right. It's the perfect plan. So he said, but you know what? Just the actual material value

00:19:55 Speaker_00
Right, it's 6.8 or whatever it was, something, six and a half 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 that never goes down in value.

00:20:06 Speaker_00
So I got a guaranteed return. I'm not going to lose my principal. But day one, it's worth 36% more than the day I bought it. How many investments can you have 100% guarantee of no loss and have 36%? I said, yeah, but that's smelt value.

00:20:18 Speaker_00
And I saw they passed a law a few years ago. I think Charlie Rangel, whoever it was, was the one who pushed it through. He goes, yeah, but Tony said, that doesn't matter. He said, let me tell you why. He said, look at pennies.

00:20:28 Speaker_00
When they changed it from pure copper to tin and all things they changed, what happened to the old pennies? There's a scarcity of them, and now a penny from those days is worth two cents. It's 100% more valuable.

00:20:38 Speaker_00
So he said that at some point the government cannot continue to do something that costs twice as much. At some point, they'll make a change in the materials. And then all these nickels are worth an unbelievable amount.

00:20:47 Speaker_00
So he said, I just showed my kids, here's a risk. You need to think different than everybody else. Don't think I have to take huge risks for huge rewards. How do I take no risk and get huge rewards?

00:20:56 Speaker_00
And because you ask that question continuously and you believe in the answer, you get it. So he said, listen, if I could convert my entire wealth in nickels for I said, you're insane. He goes, I am insane.

00:21:06 Speaker_00
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 nickels. It fills up a room bigger than this, right? He better be on the ground floor.

00:21:17 Speaker_00
And he had his kids dragging him in and everyone else laughing, having fun.

00:21:20 Speaker_03
I mean, it's like their little treasure room. So he can legitimately do like the Scrooge McDuck backstroke through a pool full of nickels.

00:21:28 Speaker_00
So that's asymmetrical. I'll give you one more and I'll shut the hell up. You're telling me the difference. There are differences.

00:21:35 Speaker_00
We can spend hours and hours on the differences, but what I think is useful is what's aligned because then it gives something universal that can be applied.

00:21:41 Speaker_00
The other one for them is they absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know they're going to be wrong.

00:21:46 Speaker_00
You look at these talking heads on television and people screaming you and hitting bells and telling you what to buy, and they're right, right, right. The best on earth, the Ray Dalio's, right?

00:21:55 Speaker_00
The Pebbles, the, I don't give a who you talk about, you wanna look at Carl Icahn, they all know they're gonna be wrong. So they set up an asset allocation system that will make them successful.

00:22:04 Speaker_00
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, asset allocation was the element there.

00:22:13 Speaker_00
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 and I share as friends, they just are obsessed with knowing more.

00:22:24 Speaker_00
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.

00:22:28 Speaker_00
And every time you think you're the best you can be in anything in life, your body, your emotions, your 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.

00:22:39 Speaker_00
not just givers on the surface like money givers, that's wonderful, but really passionate about giving. And it showed up once they saw what I was doing was legitimate, it was really real.

00:22:47 Speaker_00
I mean, then they're opening up three hours at a time with something that none of these guys will ever get.

00:22:55 Speaker_03
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 health.

00:23:06 Speaker_03
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 road.

00:23:19 Speaker_03
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00:23:33 Speaker_03
You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash tim That's DrinkAG1, the number one. DrinkAG1.com slash Tim.

00:23:51 Speaker_03
Last time, DrinkAG1.com slash Tim. Check it out.

00:24:00 Speaker_02
And now, Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO of executive coaching and leadership development firm, Reboot.io, and author of Reboot, Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. You can find Jerry on Twitter, at Jerry Colonna.

00:24:21 Speaker_03
Jerry, welcome to the show.

00:24:23 Speaker_01
Hey, Tim, it's great to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you.

00:24:26 Speaker_03
We have so much we could possibly talk about. You and I have spoken before, had quite a few conversations over the last God knows how many years, with particular density a handful of years ago.

00:24:39 Speaker_03
And I thought we could start with the spider tattoo, which you just showed me over video. It is not a small tattoo, so perhaps much like a novel I greatly enjoy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

00:24:51 Speaker_03
This would be The Coach with the Spider Tattoo, but I don't know the story. Why do you have a gigantic spider tattoo on your chest?

00:24:58 Speaker_01
Yeah, so spider is a good friend of mine. Spider is my spirit guide. So in 2007, I went on a retreat led by a Jungian eco-psychologist named Bill Plotkin. P-L-O-T-K-I-N. And on that retreat, this is a long story, Tim, you ready for it? Oh, I'm ready.

00:25:24 Speaker_03
We have nothing but time.

00:25:25 Speaker_01
On that retreat, I started to go really deep into some of the important structures of 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.

00:25:44 Speaker_01
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.

00:25:57 Speaker_01
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.

00:26:03 Speaker_01
And in 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.

00:26:15 Speaker_01
So the next morning 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.

00:26:25 Speaker_01
I want you to go into the forest and I want you to find those mushrooms and I want you to apologize to those mushrooms. and ask it what it was that you were supposed to hear from them that you were too afraid to hear.

00:26:36 Speaker_01
So I left the circle and I started wandering around and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm walking around this forest trying to find these mushrooms and I actually have to have a conversation with these mushrooms.

00:26:46 Speaker_01
And to be clear, I was not ingesting the mushrooms, okay, because I know who I'm talking to. So I'm walking around and all of a sudden I see on the ground the exact same white, long, stringy mushrooms. And I'm like freaked out.

00:27:03 Speaker_01
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 said to me, you're too afraid. Go into the forest and find your place.

00:27:17 Speaker_01
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 I'm crying and I'm wandering through the forest and I find this little sort of

00:27:30 Speaker_01
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 up and often to my right is this gorgeous spider web and it actually has little dew drops glistening on it and it's like okay this they look like crystals and this little spider comes walking out it's this Virginia Garden spider

00:27:56 Speaker_01
And I look at it and I said, OK, I give up. What the fuck are you here to teach me? Because I have no idea. And the spider says to me, you worry too much. Your children are going to be fine.

00:28:11 Speaker_01
And I just start shaking because there is no message that I needed to hear more than that. And so I came out of that forest. I came out of there at retreat. And a few weeks later was my 45th birthday there about.

00:28:25 Speaker_01
The actual year doesn't matter so much as the fact that it was 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 alright.

00:28:42 Speaker_03
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?

00:28:57 Speaker_01
Both. Meaning I'm often reminded as I was when you asked and you said, Oh, I'm going 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.

00:29:16 Speaker_01
And I can use that reminder every day because I forget every day. Not only do I forget who I am, but I forget that my kids are all right and that I worry too much.

00:29:27 Speaker_03
Thank you for the story. And it makes me think of, given the spider, Lakota mythology. And Iktomi, there are various names for Iktomi, but Iktomi is a spider trickster spirit, bit of a hero.

00:29:45 Speaker_03
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.

00:30:03 Speaker_03
But I thought we could revisit another perhaps chapter or event in your life that seems to have been very impactful.

00:30:12 Speaker_03
Could you talk to, I believe it was February 2002, after something involving the Olympics or the Olympic bid meeting, if you know what I'm referring to.

00:30:24 Speaker_01
February 2002, I was working at J.P. Morgan at the time. I was co-leading the technology investment practice for a fund that was about $23 billion in management, so a large fund.

00:30:40 Speaker_01
This was after having left Flatiron Partners in, I think, around the middle of 2001.

00:30:46 Speaker_03
And just for clarity, that was billions with a B. That was billions with a B. Yeah, that's a large fund.

00:30:53 Speaker_01
It's a large fund. I 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.

00:31:08 Speaker_01
Anyway, a few months prior, it had been cleared that my previous fund, Flatiron Partners, needed to be wound down, and Fred and I needed to make some decisions about what to do.

00:31:21 Speaker_01
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 internal capacity to raise a new fund.

00:31:30 Speaker_01
I know now that I was in the midst of a very profound depression that was exacerbated by the attacks on 9-11. And one of the ways I responded to the attacks on 9-11 was to throw myself into the Olympic bid effort.

00:31:48 Speaker_01
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.

00:32:05 Speaker_01
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.

00:32:19 Speaker_01
Anyway, around the same time, I had to decide 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 Flatiron Partners.

00:32:30 Speaker_01
And eventually I did that, and Fred linked up with Brad Burnham, and they launched Union Square Ventures. By the way, worst decision of my life, but anyway, to join J.P. Morgan and not go to Union Square Ventures.

00:32:43 Speaker_01
Anyway, so he went off and did that, I joined J.P. Morgan, and by February 2002, I was a wreck. And what you're referring to is February 2nd, 2002,

00:32:57 Speaker_01
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 referred to it, of Ground Zero.

00:33:18 Speaker_01
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 a subway.

00:33:37 Speaker_01
And I ended up deciding not to do that, but wisely and thankfully instead called my therapist, Dr. Sayers, who said to me promptly, get in a cab and come out and see me. And I did just that. And saved my life at that point.

00:33:56 Speaker_03
What did your therapist do when you arrived? What was that session like? Can you describe that session?

00:34:04 Speaker_01
So Dr. Sayers is a psychoanalyst. And so I very traditionally, almost like a New York cartoon would lay on the couch. I can't help but think of that and think of like, somehow it's a dog sitting in the therapist's chair.

00:34:18 Speaker_01
So it's like this some sort of New Yorker thing. Anyway, so I'm laying on the couch, staring up the ceiling, as I did all the time. And I remember saying to her, just stick a fork in me, I'm fucking done. Put me in the hospital, throw away the key.

00:34:35 Speaker_01
And you know, to be clear, the threat was real, because when I was 18, I did try to kill myself. And so no fooling around here, right? I mean, this isn't just some idle ideation going on here. This was like, I was in it.

00:34:51 Speaker_01
I was 38, I was being cooked, and I was declaring that I was done. And Dr. Sayers, who was also from 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.

00:35:08 Speaker_01
You'll get a massage every day. You'll be so much better.

00:35:13 Speaker_03
What is Canyon Ranch?

00:35:15 Speaker_01
Canyon Ranch is a health spa, and it's a very nice place. I loved it, it was really sweet. But it's about as far removed from a psychiatric hospital as you can imagine.

00:35:27 Speaker_01
Because by the way, I did spend three months in a psychiatric hospital, so I 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.

00:35:40 Speaker_01
the Arizona branch of Canyon Ranch and that moved, was the beginning of me being rebuilt.

00:35:48 Speaker_03
When and why did you spend time in a psychiatric hospital?

00:35:50 Speaker_01
I mentioned the suicide attempt. Right. I was 18 and I had, on January 2nd, something about the number two, right? January 2nd, I guess it was 1981. I'm losing track of the time. I had just turned 18 and I tried to kill myself.

00:36:12 Speaker_01
I cut my wrists and 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 Crete Moore State Hospital, which is just this side of hell.

00:36:33 Speaker_01
And then from there, after three days at Creedmoor, I was transferred to a hospital that actually is no longer a hospital, Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan. where I was there for three months.

00:36:46 Speaker_03
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.

00:37:01 Speaker_03
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 in creating the conditions in your life that you would have said you didn't want? Nice turn. Which is a great question.

00:37:22 Speaker_03
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.

00:37:33 Speaker_03
And then if you could speak to that as it applies to that particular period in your life.

00:37:38 Speaker_01
I'll unpack the question so the way i usually ask the question is like this how have i been complicit in creating the conditions i say i don't want.

00:37:48 Speaker_01
And the reason for the language is very very purposeful i like 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.

00:38:03 Speaker_01
Complicitness is important because it's not it's relieving the person from the burden of feeling responsible for all the shit in their lives because that's not fair to carry that responsibility but.

00:38:18 Speaker_01
It's helpful to think of ourselves as somehow being served by the challenges that we're going through.

00:38:26 Speaker_01
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 oftentimes about the way in which we operate and the way we set up the conditions of our lives to be in unconscious service to us.

00:38:44 Speaker_01
The psychological term is secondary game but there are ways in which we find ourselves repeating patterns in life we always date the same type of person we're always finding ourselves in the same kind of job we're always frustrated by the same sort of situation.

00:39:01 Speaker_01
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 want to say one other thing.

00:39:11 Speaker_01
The 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'd really rather not answer. So shout out to Emma.

00:39:31 Speaker_01
So I think that the way I was complicit

00:39:35 Speaker_03
I guess we should thank Emma for being the crash test dummy for the questions that you use now in your career.

00:39:42 Speaker_01
You got it. Well, Emma, Michael, Emma and her brothers, Michael and Sam, for sure, for sure. God love them. They put up with so much with me. Oh my God, dad, stop coaching me.

00:39:55 Speaker_01
So before I can answer that question, honestly, what I would say is Dr. Sayers taught me three additional questions. And those questions are, what am I not saying that needs to be said? What am I saying that's not being heard?

00:40:13 Speaker_01
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 hearing? And so for me, the way I was complicit was I wasn't speaking.

00:40:33 Speaker_01
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 that needs to be said.

00:40:47 Speaker_01
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 oftentimes we speak without words, but by our actions, and we go unheard.

00:41:02 Speaker_03
Could you give an example of something that you needed to say during that period of time that you didn't say or wasn't heard?

00:41:11 Speaker_01
Yeah. Yeah. Something very, very simple. I wasn't happy that despite all the outward trappings of success, I was empty and hollow inside that I wasn't speaking truthfully, that I wasn't living in integrity.

00:41:28 Speaker_01
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 what I was doing with my life at that point.

00:41:43 Speaker_01
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 actually the right thing for me to do.

00:41:58 Speaker_01
But when I agreed to take a job at J.P. 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.

00:42:14 Speaker_01
I mean, think about your reaction just a few minutes ago when you pointed out that it was a $23 billion fund. And even in that moment, I felt a little bit of that pride

00:42:25 Speaker_01
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?

00:42:39 Speaker_03
How did you get over that? What are the things that contributed 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.

00:42:54 Speaker_03
They stay stuck exactly for five, 10, 15, 20 or more years. So what... A lifetime.

00:43:03 Speaker_01
What did Emerson say? The vast majority of men. Let's update it. The vast majority of people. lead lives of quiet desperation. So how did I get out of it? I guess your question implies an agency that I didn't feel at the time.

00:43:22 Speaker_01
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.

00:43:41 Speaker_01
And that moment where I chose not to leap in front of the subway, but to get into the cab and go to see Dr. Sayers. And it was that moment where I decided to follow her advice and go to Canyon ranch.

00:43:54 Speaker_01
It was the series of moments where it was like, okay, I know 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.

00:44:07 Speaker_01
And if I have to suffer the consequence of the loss of status, approbation, affirmation, all the external trappings, so be it.

00:44:19 Speaker_01
It was like my soul basically said, listen, motherfucker, you better sit down and pay attention to your life because the stakes are too high.

00:44:29 Speaker_03
I think I read that in the Bhagavad Gita, if I'm correct.

00:44:36 Speaker_01
It's the Buddha from Brooklyn.

00:44:46 Speaker_03
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?

00:44:55 Speaker_01
So on that plane ride from New York to Arizona to Canyon Ranch, I read three books. When Things Fall Apart by Ani Pema Chodron, Faith by Sharon Salzberg, and Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer.

00:45:13 Speaker_01
And before fully answering your question, I'll give you this.

00:45:16 Speaker_01
I must have done something really, really good in a past life because I have the benefit of considering all three of those people, Ani Pema, Sharon Salzberg, and Parker Palmer, as my friends. I didn't know them at the time,

00:45:31 Speaker_01
But I have the good grace and the incredible good fortune to say I'm friends with them they are my teachers so.

00:45:40 Speaker_03
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.

00:45:51 Speaker_01
That's right.

00:45:51 Speaker_03
But you had the books. And so how you found your way to coaching, you went back to the plane ride.

00:45:58 Speaker_01
Right. And so in reading those books and those, those three books were really important because they did lead

00:46:04 Speaker_01
Indirectly to me becoming a coach each one of those books presented something different to me faith presented this notion of really being honest with myself with what was going on when things fall apart was the first.

00:46:18 Speaker_01
Laying out of buddhist dharma as a path but it was like your life.

00:46:24 Speaker_01
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 own struggles and depression.

00:46:36 Speaker_01
Okay, so to your question, let me fast forward it. Probably four or five years later, I'm still working my way through all the issues that I'm carrying at that point and trying to sort myself out. in an office.

00:46:51 Speaker_01
I'm sharing office space with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures, but I have a little sub-office within their space. I'm doing a bunch of different things. I'm serving on a bunch of boards of directors.

00:47:03 Speaker_01
I'm making little angel investments here and there, but I'm just sort of hanging around the hoop, if you will. This young guy comes to see me. He's there to, quote, network. This is the thing everybody is supposed to do. Network is way too new job.

00:47:18 Speaker_01
You ask about questions so 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.

00:47:29 Speaker_01
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?

00:47:42 Speaker_01
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.

00:47:55 Speaker_01
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.

00:48:07 Speaker_01
He left the office and I turned around and I said, fuck, I 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.

00:48:21 Speaker_03
Okay. Let me pause for one second. So what did you feel? What did you experience? What was it about that encounter that made you so decisively say that to yourself?

00:48:34 Speaker_01
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 was so similar. I had been so ruled by fears that I was living in a box.

00:48:55 Speaker_01
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 all that.

00:49:08 Speaker_01
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.

00:49:17 Speaker_01
And there was just relief, relief, not that he'd 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?

00:49:30 Speaker_01
What have I not been saying that I need to say? 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.

00:49:43 Speaker_01
And it's not always just your prefrontal cortex that's gonna figure everything out.

00:49:48 Speaker_01
Because i 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.

00:50:00 Speaker_01
I just had to listen to my heart and i did something completely non intuitive i reached out to 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.

00:50:21 Speaker_03
This may be overreaching, but how much of your call to coaching do you think, if any, was finding relief in taking the focus outside of yourself?

00:50:34 Speaker_01
It wasn't just the call to begin coaching. This helps me every day i mean 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.

00:50:54 Speaker_01
By the way which is the root etymological meaning of the word compassion to be with someone else's feelings. I magically feel relief from my own unbearable feelings. Because I think that's the essence of being human together.

00:51:11 Speaker_01
We get to actually, oh, geez, we look at each other across the campfire. I keep imagining us in sort of pre-civilization going, like looking across the campfire, and again, must be in Brooklyn, and going, dang, it's hard, right?

00:51:26 Speaker_01
Isn't it hard being human? Yeah, it's really hard. Okay, let's do this together. So I think the call was that, But if I may, I think the call was also... to retroactively go back in time and save myself.

00:51:44 Speaker_03
Interesting. See, this makes a lot of sense to me.

00:51:46 Speaker_03
In saying that, do you mean, and I don't know if you've ever heard of 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.

00:52:07 Speaker_01
Well, first of all, to 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.

00:52:19 Speaker_01
It's what we're talking about right now. 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,

00:52:31 Speaker_01
even the best of what jesus taught it's like god i mean i just imagine him exasperated sitting this thing 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 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

00:52:59 Speaker_01
And so if you're in this painful spot, I can tap that universal wellspring of happiness and joy and point it a little bit more at your suffering. And you can do the same for me.

00:53:12 Speaker_03
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 achievers, who don't want to lose their edge, who are looking for the tactical practical,

00:53:29 Speaker_03
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 this applies. I'm too busy for that shit.

00:53:40 Speaker_03
I don't have time to go to Burning Man and do fire dancing. This is serious business. I have serious work to do. Sorry. How do you relate that to someone who in their first meeting fits that profile, perhaps? What do you do with them in a first meeting?

00:53:55 Speaker_01
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 everything is working for you go at it have a great time go enjoy yourself.

00:54:10 Speaker_01
But you know there's 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.

00:54:18 Speaker_01
I asked him a simple question how are you and i often follow it up with like no really don't bullshit me how are you.

00:54:25 Speaker_01
How are you really feeling because here's the thing you described this would be resistant person is a high achiever here's the thing about high achievers.

00:54:34 Speaker_01
In my experience high achievers early on in their life figure out how to get in a figure it out because the whole system is geared towards that great.

00:54:44 Speaker_01
And then we take that entire system from our childhood and we move it into work and it's just getting is getting is getting is getting is the highest achieving people oftentimes come into me.

00:54:55 Speaker_01
Scared because there's a little whispery voice in your ear that says you are a fucking fraud.

00:55:02 Speaker_01
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 in a. They're gonna talk to you out of the tribe they're gonna talk to you out on your ass they're gonna push you away or.

00:55:17 Speaker_01
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 game.

00:55:30 Speaker_01
They're just waiting for something, for fate to catch up to them, and bang, the hammer's gonna come down. Now, if this resonates with you, you might also then recognize the anxiety that comes in.

00:55:45 Speaker_01
where you put your head down at the 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.

00:55:59 Speaker_01
Forget universal suffering, forget about well springs, 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.

00:56:12 Speaker_03
I've been three times. I'm a fan, at least once in your lifetime. God bless. Separate conversation, so continue.

00:56:20 Speaker_01
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. Okay. All the esoteric stuff like that. Here's the simple question. How's it working for you?

00:56:36 Speaker_01
Cause if it's not working for you, why are you in pain? Why are you doing it? And would you like a little relief? And here you want to know the secret, like nasty little trick that I play? Yes. I get them.

00:56:50 Speaker_01
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?

00:57:01 Speaker_01
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.

00:57:09 Speaker_03
That's a really good question. What if, and this could combine with what we're talking about right now, someone comes in, they don't feel imposter syndrome necessarily, but they are simply overwhelmed.

00:57:23 Speaker_03
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?

00:57:40 Speaker_01
Well, once you've established a certain level of trust and relating through empathy, and you know, don't necessarily 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?

00:57:59 Speaker_01
Remember that how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? Here's the thing about busyness. Busyness can feel fucking awesome. It can feel so amazing internally. It's like, look at all the great stuff I got done.

00:58:16 Speaker_01
Externally, look at how busy I am. I must be important. That's an interesting statement. Busyness can also serve to distract you from those voices inside that say, hey, I'm not happy. Hey, I'm not happy. Hey, I'm serious.

00:58:37 Speaker_01
I'm gonna throw you down on the ground with some sort of somatic illness, lower back problem, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, that was my specialty. I'm gonna throw you down until you pay attention to me. Okay, you're too busy.

00:58:53 Speaker_01
Okay, I gotcha, okay. Here's the thing too. Somewhere around 35 to 50 years old, the systems start to break down.

00:59:02 Speaker_01
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 sudden holy shit the whole thing starts to collapse.

00:59:14 Speaker_01
Now what do i do and when i see someone who's busy who's. Kind of in the early twenties i see a striver. Try to establish themselves but when i see somebody who's busy who actually doesn't need to be that way.

00:59:32 Speaker_01
I get really, really curious what internal need is trying to be met by all that busyness. And that's the place to inquire.

00:59:40 Speaker_03
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 can tell you. No, I can tell you.

00:59:55 Speaker_03
I can tell you what's curious or interesting to me. We can jump into some. I'm game. I'm game to hit some volleys if you want. Well, for instance, I'm looking at an apologies to everyone I have not replied to, but.

01:00:07 Speaker_03
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 currently have 618,952 unread email and combination on two different tracks of 165 plus 255 unread text messages.

01:00:20 Speaker_03
And that's the tip of the iceberg. So I actually feel surprisingly low. anxiety about that, nonetheless, a small amount of anxiety.

01:00:36 Speaker_03
And in the process of literally rebooting those various phone numbers and addresses, because it's not physically possible to address that. And it's perhaps similar to many of your experiences, it's given me an opening line

01:00:55 Speaker_03
or common sentiment of commiseration that opens up the floodgates to similar types of problems in other people. So they confess. I'm like the productivity guy in the confessional box for people who want to tell me about similar things.

01:01:12 Speaker_03
And those are a few things that come to mind when you ask me, why is that curious? And I think it's very common. I just think it's very common.

01:01:19 Speaker_01
I think it's hugely common. And I think that you asked the question by using a particular 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.

01:01:32 Speaker_01
That's typically the psychological signal that the system is overwhelmed. So again we use our construction and we talk about complicity is not necessarily responsibility i'm gonna use you as an example is a high achiever.

01:01:49 Speaker_01
Who is incredibly busy and so busy that he has over six hundred thousand unanswered emails. We'll just stick on that one for a moment. By the way, you're allowed to declare bankruptcy at that point. Okay, you're done.

01:02:04 Speaker_01
What I hear you say is, you said, I don't feel anxiety, just a small piece of it. I would argue that you probably have been so overwhelmed by it that you've actually given up feeling anxious about it.

01:02:16 Speaker_01
And it's just like, forget it, I'm not gonna get to it. So here's the question for you, and you don't have to answer it, but hang out with it. A couple questions. The first might be something like, when did you start feeling overwhelmed?

01:02:29 Speaker_01
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 for another book, and another show, or another thing? which only produce more stuff, because that's what I do.

01:02:48 Speaker_01
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?

01:02:58 Speaker_03
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 to answer your questions, I'd say it started

01:03:14 Speaker_03
probably middle of undergraduate college, this feeling of overwhelm, or at least that's when it was most noticeable.

01:03:23 Speaker_03
And the feeling of overwhelm was then kind of ebbed and flowed, but certainly up until at least 2004, my solution to feeling anything I didn't want to feel was to add more activities.

01:03:38 Speaker_01
Okay, can you just pause and say that again?

01:03:41 Speaker_03
Your solution to... Feeling anything I didn't want to feel. In retrospect, I recognize that's what it was. So if I felt anything I didn't want to feel, I would add more activities to drown it out.

01:03:52 Speaker_03
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.

01:04:09 Speaker_03
And I think that still now there are vestiges of behaviors that in some sense helped me to find a toehold. in financial security that are no longer serving me that are nonetheless default gears, if that makes sense.

01:04:27 Speaker_03
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 years,

01:04:40 Speaker_03
Nonetheless, there is a part of me, I think you had a, was it a crow, a raven on the shoulder? We'll come back to the crow. And no, it's not another dream sequence for people wondering. We'll come back to the crow.

01:04:56 Speaker_03
Something on my shoulder saying it, you might need this person. You might eat 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 majority of stuff is clearly noise and I can ignore.

01:05:15 Speaker_03
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 where

01:05:28 Speaker_03
I need to either be considering each item that presents itself or not consider them at all as a category.

01:05:36 Speaker_03
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.

01:05:49 Speaker_03
Where I think I find more difficulty is where there are people who have been very helpful in the past, who perhaps were very supportive in the early days, who now have lots of favors to ask.

01:06:05 Speaker_03
But if I'm listening to my body, it's absolutely not a full body yes. There's a large part of me that knows I do not want to acquiesce, I do not want to agree, I do not want to accept, I do not want to do whatever it is they're asking me to do because

01:06:20 Speaker_03
It doesn't feel right and or it's unreasonable. Nonetheless, those are the types of emails that tend to pile up.

01:06:28 Speaker_03
And those are the types of 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?

01:06:43 Speaker_03
Yes, it's familiar. How does it serve me? This I have more trouble with.

01:06:49 Speaker_03
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 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.

01:07:05 Speaker_03
How would you walk me through figuring out how it serves me?

01:07:09 Speaker_01
I wanna reflect back a couple of things that I'm hearing so that we can just sort of establish it.

01:07:14 Speaker_01
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've put into your life to create boundaries and saying no. And I think

01:07:26 Speaker_01
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 y 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

01:07:56 Speaker_01
what six hundred twenty thousand emails right so i want to bring your attention to two other feelings one was you said.

01:08:04 Speaker_01
Something about missing something that might be important to you seeing someone that that has been helpful to you in the past or something that's important to you that you might miss something. So that's one fear. Is that right?

01:08:20 Speaker_03
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 pro quo in the past would get upset. And this does happen. It has happened where people take things very personally.

01:08:38 Speaker_03
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 concerned about missing financial opportunities. Not anymore. Not anymore.

01:08:55 Speaker_03
I once was, but I also stopped startup investing completely. in 2015 because the noise simply wasn't worth it. The cortisol-fueled unnecessary hurrying associated with that culture was causing more harm than good. So I stopped in 2015.

01:09:17 Speaker_03
So I missed a 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 makes sense.

01:09:28 Speaker_01
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.

01:09:36 Speaker_03
And this is helpful to me to talk through because it's not just disappointment. In some cases, I can't. I actually really dislike interacting with some of these more recent acquaintances.

01:09:50 Speaker_03
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 so that causes concern.

01:10:07 Speaker_01
So there's an implicit internal existential threat.

01:10:11 Speaker_03
I think that's fair. I think that's fair to say. Yeah, if I could say one more thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just just so I don't sound totally like I'm living in a land of make-believe. I have run into many, many instances. This is, you know, more than

01:10:26 Speaker_03
a dozen at least, where say someone will send me an email, they want a blurb for a new book, they want this, this, this, this, this and this.

01:10:33 Speaker_03
And by the way, it's coming out in four weeks or whatever it is, there's some set of requests slash demands, I don't reply This has happened with journalists as well, where for whatever reason, I won't help them and then a hit piece comes out.

01:10:48 Speaker_03
Or then there's some type of blowback slash vengeful behavior, whether that's shit talking me on stage or whatever it might be. So there's evidence to support the fear. But here I am, I've survived, I'm fine. That is also true.

01:11:04 Speaker_03
So I just wanted to add that color.

01:11:06 Speaker_01
Right, and so I want to reflect back to you empathetically and rationally, you're not nuts. The threats are real. At least not, at least not in that department. That's right. That's right.

01:11:17 Speaker_01
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.

01:11:28 Speaker_01
We want to feel safe physically, emotionally, spiritually, and we want to feel that we belong.

01:11:35 Speaker_01
And what I'm hearing, so if you resonate with those at all, the existential threat, and I want to bring your attention to existential, because I think that the threat is to the essence of who you are, or at least the perceived threat.

01:11:49 Speaker_01
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 know for myself, that the fear of disappointing others is a threat to my belonging.

01:12:11 Speaker_01
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 myself. I'll be alone in the woods, fending for myself.

01:12:31 Speaker_01
And there are few things that threaten me more than the threat to belonging. I don't know, does that resonate with you?

01:12:39 Speaker_03
It does resonate.

01:12:40 Speaker_03
I think that a lot of what I've done and been able to do has been dependent on maintaining very long-term relationships with people who I enjoy being friends with, who happen to also be very, very good at what they do, whatever that is.

01:12:58 Speaker_03
And so I think there's 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.

01:13:04 Speaker_03
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 would benefit from it, is when you run into someone who, like me, is fielding a lot of inbound.

01:13:20 Speaker_03
And it could be from one person, but they, for whatever reason, are having difficulty saying no or establishing boundaries.

01:13:27 Speaker_03
What are tools or books or approaches that you've found helpful for people in that position, whether it's nonviolent communication or fill in the blank, anything at all, or questions, anything at all? How do you begin to advise someone like that?

01:13:46 Speaker_01
Well, there's a couple of things come to mind, and I'm going to reference two friends of ours, Seth Godin and Sharon Salzberg.

01:13:52 Speaker_01
The first thing was when I was really struggling with this early on in my career, my adult career, Seth Godin gave me some wonderful advice, which boiled down to this phrase, I wish I could, but I can't.

01:14:05 Speaker_01
And that became a kind of interesting little fence around my life, a boundary marker. And so the idea was that you would be able to say to someone, someone who reaches out, can you do this favor for me, this thing for me?

01:14:19 Speaker_01
And you get to say, I wish I could, but I can't. There's an inauthenticity that can set in, which is, I actually don't wish I could. And I can, but I really don't want that. Yeah, that's a whole nother level. I can, but I won't.

01:14:35 Speaker_01
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.

01:14:50 Speaker_01
But then you referenced something before about not being responsible for someone else's feelings. And that brought to mind a teaching that Sharon Salzberg gave me, which goes like this. All beings own their own karma.

01:15:03 Speaker_01
Their happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions, not my wishes for them. Say that one more time, please. Yeah. So all beings own their own karma. Karma being the cause and effect, the consequences of their actions.

01:15:20 Speaker_01
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.

01:15:30 Speaker_01
Now 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.

01:15:46 Speaker_03
I wish they would actually just send that email because then I would say, gotcha, bitch. I have a blog. Shouldn't have sent that email, which has actually happened with writers from the New York Times, believe it or not. Which is horrible to say.

01:16:01 Speaker_01
So they're explicit in their threat, right? Oh yeah.

01:16:04 Speaker_03
And then as soon as they realize what they've done, they're like, ah, shit. And then they cool their jets. But yeah.

01:16:10 Speaker_01
So here's a little tool that I have come up 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.

01:16:27 Speaker_01
And I get to control whether or 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.

01:16:36 Speaker_01
Be kind to them in my heart set clear boundaries i have as your friend is your guide to somebody hopefully standing shoulder to shoulder with you is sort of in this crazy journey i really feel for all the people who reached out to you six hundred twenty thousand times in your inbox and all of that stuff and i feel for you.

01:17:00 Speaker_01
And I would advise you to delete every one of those things.

01:17:05 Speaker_01
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.

01:17:19 Speaker_01
I 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.

01:17:30 Speaker_01
To me the challenge is not having the tool the challenge is in 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 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

01:17:58 Speaker_01
I am never, ever, ever going to think ill of you.

01:18:01 Speaker_03
Well, I appreciate that. Wish I could transmit that composure to all of my 620,000 senders. Let me ask you a situational question, and this is true in my life, and I'm sure it's true for many people listening.

01:18:20 Speaker_03
that I have a handful of 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.

01:18:41 Speaker_03
associated with the ask in 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, blah, whatever it might be.

01:18:53 Speaker_03
So that it is, there's a great degree of discomfort that I feel in ignoring the email. Maybe I actually get texted by one friend and then the email from this person.

01:19:06 Speaker_03
There are a few people who are repeat characters, kind of like Newman and Seinfeld and Seinfeld shakes his fist.

01:19:13 Speaker_04
Newman, Newman.

01:19:15 Speaker_03
I have I have at least a half a dozen Newman's who are pretty tough to get rid of. And they're not very good at reading

01:19:24 Speaker_03
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?

01:19:35 Speaker_03
direct conversations with their own Newman's 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 or for having a really direct conversation about this type of dynamic.

01:19:51 Speaker_01
Sure. Can we put aside just for a moment, co-founder and board member, because there are power dynamics there that are different than the Newman's that you've been talking about.

01:20:02 Speaker_03
Yeah, let's leave out co-founder and board member. I agree that adds complexity.

01:20:06 Speaker_01
Or we can circle back to it separately. Here's the thing if we start with a basic basic basic basic premise it goes like this am i a good person am i doing the best that i can and if i can answer that question.

01:20:20 Speaker_01
Relatively straightforwardly and honestly then i don't have to feel guilty. That's what we're talking about right that's the emotion that gets manipulated i don't have to feel guilty saying to somebody i don't have the space.

01:20:36 Speaker_01
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 a client or with my own self.

01:20:47 Speaker_01
And it's come to me as I've gotten older, and I'm obsessed right now with myself being old. And the images of a bonsai tree, which over its lifetime, you know, you can see this one foot tall bonsai tree, and it could be anywhere from

01:21:03 Speaker_01
Ten years old to three hundred years old you have really no idea and what i see is something that has been carefully pruned.

01:21:13 Speaker_01
Into a thing of beauty and i think that that's our opportunity in life now if we start with the supposition that we are never enough that we are not good enough.

01:21:23 Speaker_01
And that we therefore not only you said before become addicted to business in order to make ourselves not feel the things that we don't want to feel remember that.

01:21:34 Speaker_01
What are the things that we do is we maintain unhealthy relationships in order to not feel the things that we don't want to feel.

01:21:42 Speaker_01
Even when those unhealthy relationships make us feel other things we don't want to feel where is if we start with the basic premise that we are enough just as we are and that there is no great loss to you.

01:21:57 Speaker_01
If over time you lose some connection and you use this term several times to some high powered person. Oh my goodness this high achieving person this high performer. There's no real great loss.

01:22:12 Speaker_01
Like think of the people that you have interviewed over the years. The people that maybe began in some powerful position and that have gone on to some powerful position.

01:22:22 Speaker_01
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.

01:22:38 Speaker_01
Not because of the connections 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 maintain this connection.

01:22:54 Speaker_03
May I ask you a question?

01:22:55 Speaker_01
Sure.

01:22:56 Speaker_03
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 from intellectually agreeing with what you just said

01:23:18 Speaker_03
to embodying that in some way that translates to different behavior. Does that make sense?

01:23:25 Speaker_03
Because I mean, one of my favorite quotes is, I guess it's Ted Geisel, but Dr. Seuss, which is the people who 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,

01:23:39 Speaker_03
I do have this guilt that crops up on occasion that I recognize is counterproductive. Nonetheless, it crops up and causes me to behave in ways that I know are not necessary nor productive.

01:23:53 Speaker_03
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.

01:24:06 Speaker_01
Well, the first thing I would say is that the practice that you just described, embodying the Ted Geisel, Dr. Seuss quote, that is a practice.

01:24:17 Speaker_01
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.

01:24:28 Speaker_01
But oftentimes, achieving it permanently, sustained persistently, yeah, that's a tough one.

01:24:36 Speaker_01
So, in those moments when we fail to understand and remember that 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.

01:24:57 Speaker_01
Or as Dr. Sayers once taught me, not 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.

01:25:15 Speaker_01
Bringing a kind of mindful attention to the points when i fail. with a kind of forgiveness to myself, well then, wow, okay, that can be helpful.

01:25:26 Speaker_03
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 and one ways to journal, so I'd like to learn more about how you use journaling, but is journaling helpful?

01:25:43 Speaker_03
one of the ways that you remind yourselves of these things?

01:25:47 Speaker_01
Yes, yes.

01:25:48 Speaker_03
And if so, what does it look like down to the mundane details? Do you write 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?

01:25:59 Speaker_01
So just for context, I have been journaling consistently since I was about 13 years old, daily. And I'm 55. So, a hell of a lot of journals. And again, to be consistent, and I think you do the same thing, I hand write. I do, yeah.

01:26:16 Speaker_01
And what may be unusual is I never go back and reread. Because it's not about figuring shit out. It's about the 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.

01:26:37 Speaker_01
And so I might be feeling, to talk about this very specific situation, guilt.

01:26:43 Speaker_01
So for example, and I'll 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 trouble, or if I was one of those folks who put you in an uncomfortable situation.

01:27:05 Speaker_01
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.

01:27:22 Speaker_01
Easy there, buddy boy, easy. This is all a journaling exercise. I'm just talking it out. And I remember something that's really important about that word guilt.

01:27:33 Speaker_01
guilt is self-focused remorse is about the other remorse is i hurt someone's feelings and i would like to not be hurtful so i'm gonna try not to be hurtful guilt is all my god i can't 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

01:28:03 Speaker_01
You're a good man who sometimes fails to live up to your aspirations. That's it. That's simple.

01:28:12 Speaker_03
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-O-N. Ponset. Poet. Yeah.

01:28:28 Speaker_01
And it's Marie, Marie Ponset.

01:28:31 Speaker_03
Always a tricky one. All right, so Marie Ponset. And she's still with us, thank God. And the crow, what does she describe in terms of the crow? That might fit, might not, but I want to make sure I fulfill my promise to return to the crow.

01:28:45 Speaker_01
Oh, 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 also my mentor.

01:28:59 Speaker_01
And she used to talk all the time about the crow who sits on your shoulder telling you what a piece of shit you are. That's a piece of shit. I can't believe you wrote that. You know, it's like I hear that voice.

01:29:10 Speaker_01
And it sits on your shoulder and it tells you all the things that you have done wrong and all the things that are happening. And oftentimes in my journal, sometimes I'll take a second pen so that there are two different colors

01:29:25 Speaker_01
I will allow the crow to speak. This is really important. This isn't a jujitsu 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 voice.

01:29:45 Speaker_01
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.

01:29:55 Speaker_01
This notion that we are not enough just by herself that's the 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.

01:30:12 Speaker_01
What it makes you feel like shit though yes it makes you feel like shit but it's 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.

01:30:27 Speaker_01
The problem is the crow is so attentive and so vigilant that it's a little too active. And so what we want to say at that moment is thanks a lot, buddy.

01:30:38 Speaker_01
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.

01:30:50 Speaker_01
And if they don't see me, they don't know that I'm doing the best that I can. So I'll blow them a kiss, I'll put them on the other side of that chain link fence, and I'll love them from afar.

01:31:00 Speaker_03
This is really important.

01:31:01 Speaker_03
And by this, I mean, everything that we've been talking about pretty much since the get go, but especially I'm referring to the journaling and creating an outlet for the crow, or the monkey mind, or what Tim Urban of Wait But Why would call the mammoth.

01:31:18 Speaker_03
And I highly recommend that everybody check out an article he wrote called Taming the Mammoth, which is on this subject.

01:31:24 Speaker_03
that if you hate that part of yourself and try to contain it, at least in my experience, that does nothing but exacerbate, does nothing but worsen the problem.

01:31:39 Speaker_03
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 an opportunity to fix itself on paper, at least for me, gives me

01:31:53 Speaker_03
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're at your best? When do you wake up?

01:32:08 Speaker_03
What is your first kind of 60 to 90 minutes look like or two hours, whatever you choose?

01:32:13 Speaker_01
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 up, generally? Between five and six.

01:32:27 Speaker_01
Almost without fail, usually without an alarm clock. So I'm really awful around nine o'clock 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.

01:32:41 Speaker_01
I do not look at my phone because it's just too painful.

01:32:46 Speaker_01
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, sometimes 45 minutes.

01:33:02 Speaker_01
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.

01:33:13 Speaker_03
The journaling for an hour, I want to dig into that a bit because I 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.

01:33:33 Speaker_03
And you have in this book different journaling invitations. So you might have, let's 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?

01:33:45 Speaker_03
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?

01:33:59 Speaker_01
Well, I would never say that I would use prompts like I'm going to use the same prompt every time. The one thing that I do consistently is right now I'm feeling.

01:34:10 Speaker_01
And then generally speaking i might review the past twenty four hours almost in a diary kind of fashion you know so yesterday i woke up and then i also don't worry about explaining people so i might say.

01:34:24 Speaker_01
And then I met with Mary Jane, and I don't have to explain who Mary Jane is, because who cares? I'm never gonna read it again, and nobody is ever gonna read it. I get rid of all that monkey mind bullshit chatter, right? And I just go right into it.

01:34:37 Speaker_01
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 long have I felt this way? Which will then bring me back to some early memories.

01:34:58 Speaker_01
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 we have some struggles.

01:35:09 Speaker_01
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. You don't want that.

01:35:20 Speaker_01
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.

01:35:31 Speaker_01
I think it's super helpful for you, Tim, to speak openly about the ways in which there are different parts of you. You know, for those of us who are mildly curious about this space, that's an obvious fact.

01:35:45 Speaker_01
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 all those other voices, we pretend aren't there. They're not part of ourselves. And you are absolutely right.

01:36:00 Speaker_01
When those voices are not given airtime, they get really pissed off, really, really angry. And the energy that they hold is really important.

01:36:12 Speaker_01
And so, if we go back to journaling for a moment, by giving voice to those other voices, by giving airtime to those other voices, we get to lay out, in fact, all of the conflicts that exist within us.

01:36:26 Speaker_01
In Buddhism, we're taught that there are seven layers of consciousness. Seven. There's an observer observing, observing, observing, observing. There are all these layers of what's going on, right? And by

01:36:38 Speaker_01
Taking the time in a good journaling session you can allow you to swap all these pens you can allow dialogue. You can allow conflict you can allow argument anything that expression.

01:36:53 Speaker_01
That's a manifestation of that full acceptance that you were talking about before oh wait. I can contain multitudes is that what whitman said. Do I contradict myself? I do. I am large. I contain multitudes. Amen.

01:37:11 Speaker_03
Whether we are aware of it or not, we all do. A book that helped me a lot with this, and I found so much value 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.

01:37:27 Speaker_03
Let me get started, was Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.

01:37:31 Speaker_01
Oh God, what a great book.

01:37:32 Speaker_03
Yeah. And I think the title is fairly sterile or milquetoast, 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. Yeah.

01:37:53 Speaker_03
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.

01:38:04 Speaker_03
Are there any other tools, meditations, books, anything at all that might be helpful in assisting people to accept or reconcile with different parts of themselves, or at the very least recognize

01:38:23 Speaker_01
You know how before you were saying you would take a breath because she wanted to jump in? I'm having all those same feelings. Yeah, so much here. First of all, shout out to Tara Brach for Radical Acceptance.

01:38:34 Speaker_01
What a brilliant book and what a gift she is as a teacher. Yes, yes, yes, on the acceptance. You talked about anger being your default mechanism. For me, growing up with the violence that I experienced as a kid, rage was a major part of my childhood.

01:38:52 Speaker_01
But the challenge that I experienced was that anger, rage, was so dangerous that I actually turned it into 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.

01:39:07 Speaker_01
One is Hulk, and the other is Thor. And one part of me that I learned to accept was the Hulk. Because the Hulk, when I was a kid, I remember this one time, younger brother named John.

01:39:23 Speaker_01
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 called Bensonhurst, and we lived in the second floor of a two-family house.

01:39:37 Speaker_01
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

01:39:45 Speaker_01
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 fuck with my people. You do not fuck with Hulk's people.

01:40:01 Speaker_01
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.

01:40:13 Speaker_01
And he would show up in all sorts of ways, like really cleverly dissecting somebody's argument and being really wordy and verbose and shutting people down and all these awful behaviors.

01:40:26 Speaker_01
And what I had to do was radically accept that that guy, that big green guy exists in me for one reason only, to keep myself and those who love me safe.

01:40:41 Speaker_01
And by loving Hulk, I transformed him into Thor, who's 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 skin.

01:40:58 Speaker_01
So that radical acceptance, that accepting the fullness of ourselves, oh my god, it's so liberating, isn't it? It is.

01:41:07 Speaker_03
And what's liberating also is simply the realization that you can, in some fashion, reconcile these different parts of you and that they serve a purpose.

01:41:20 Speaker_03
Not only do they serve a purpose, but that they were probably in some way fundamental to your survival, whether that's physical,

01:41:29 Speaker_03
emotional or otherwise, and that they were incredibly, incredibly important, and may still be very important for certain things, certain situations.

01:41:40 Speaker_01
That's right. And you know, that recalls Carl Jung's notion of the shadow, which is the place he describes as the place we put the dismembered parts of ourselves. And this is really important.

01:41:53 Speaker_01
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, and quite lovely.

01:42:10 Speaker_01
But because they threaten, say, our belonging, they have to actually be put in the shadow as well. Well, they too get really pissed off

01:42:20 Speaker_01
Right and they to cause trouble and so you might put into 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.

01:42:36 Speaker_03
because it might threaten you in some way or another. This is a good segue for difficult decisions. And by difficult, I mean, emotionally difficult.

01:42:46 Speaker_03
And so the, for instance, sitting on the desire to write a book for 10, 20 years, and then finally taking whatever the steps are 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.

01:43:03 Speaker_03
Could you speak to, you can choose which of these questions you would like to answer. When did you say no to something that was at the time very difficult to say no to, which in retrospect is very important to your life?

01:43:17 Speaker_03
And then the other is, when was a time when you decided to kind of block out all the noise, block out everything else and focus on something very narrowly? And that ended up being extremely important in retrospect.

01:43:30 Speaker_01
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.

01:43:51 Speaker_01
And the rest of my life unfolded. And I'm sitting here talking to you today. I mean, we might have been friends, Tim, Had I taken that path, who knows?

01:44:02 Speaker_01
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 systems, all of this, because I said no to the thing that I was actually really successful at.

01:44:20 Speaker_01
Which is a mind fuck, if you think about it. Because if I was failing as an investor, you could sort of say, well, of course, He walked he walked away haha he failed but i actually walked away when i was successful. because it was too painful.

01:44:37 Speaker_03
Could you walk us through how 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.

01:44:47 Speaker_03
What was the 24 hour period, the dinner, the conversation, the 48 hours, whatever it might've been when you were like, enough is enough. I'm actually sending the email, having the conversation and walking.

01:45:00 Speaker_01
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.

01:45:12 Speaker_01
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, D.C.

01:45:25 Speaker_01
when Fred, I think, texted me. I said, did you see the NASDAQ? And it's 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.

01:45:37 Speaker_01
Anyway, right around that time, I started having this, I just couldn't sleep. I was just not happy. I was 37, 38 years old. So in hindsight, it was clearly entering midlife and like the systems were collapsing all around me. And then I thought,

01:45:55 Speaker_01
I couldn't go out and fundraise with Fred and raise a new venture capital fund for Flatiron. And so I decided to leave the fund. But I decided to leave the fund and go to J.P. Morgan because I thought that the problem was changing the externalities.

01:46:10 Speaker_01
And so then I took a position starting January 1st, 2002. And 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.

01:46:24 Speaker_01
Who's vice chairman of the bank he's still very close friend and i remember saying i can't do it i just can't do it and i think it's probably a few months after the canyon ranch visit and i said i'm not gonna renew my contract. The end of this year.

01:46:39 Speaker_01
Anything what are you gonna do and i said i don't know but for the first time in my life i'm gonna be without a job since first time since i was about thirteen.

01:46:48 Speaker_01
And I'm going to be liberated from this definition, from this notion of like wearing somebody else's suit of clothes. It was incredibly scary.

01:46:59 Speaker_03
It was incredibly hard. Was the trigger, I hate to interrupt, but was the trigger that you had a preset scheduled meeting for the renewal of the contract? It was kind of like shit or get off the pot in the sense? No.

01:47:12 Speaker_01
No, it was a dinner.

01:47:14 Speaker_03
It was a dinner. Okay.

01:47:16 Speaker_01
It was the dinner, it was like, Jeff, I need to have a dinner. I need to talk about this. Because the presumption, everybody renewed their contract.

01:47:22 Speaker_03
Did something prompt, was there like a particular day or moment that prompted you asking him out to dinner?

01:47:29 Speaker_01
You know, so I went down to Canyon Ranch, and I read these books, Let Your Life Speak, Holy Shit, 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.

01:47:45 Speaker_01
I first meditated at Canyon Ranch, and I would argue I first began listening to my life, to my heart. And over the next few months, up until November that year, I think we had dinner right around November 2nd or so. There's that number two again.

01:48:02 Speaker_01
I never noticed that pattern before. We had dinner. And I said to him, you know, it was like one of those moments. Do I say it at the beginning of the dinner? Do I say that? You know, cause like, Oh yeah, just one last small thing.

01:48:15 Speaker_01
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 friend. In fact, we remain super close, but the fear was like, what was it going to do? And I didn't know. I had no idea.

01:48:32 Speaker_01
Thank you for bringing me back to that time because. It's important for me to remember that. I'm feeling that right now.

01:48:39 Speaker_03
What was the day after you walked like? Do you remember what you did on the first one or two days after you walked out?

01:48:48 Speaker_01
I remember starting to tell people. I told the woman who was my assistant at the time. She remains a very 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.

01:49:03 Speaker_01
It was so long ago. This is 17 years ago now. But I remember the feeling and the feeling was a combination of utter relief and absolute terror. Both feelings simultaneous.

01:49:19 Speaker_03
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 two things at that point in time, which you can answer.

01:49:31 Speaker_03
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?

01:49:49 Speaker_01
The first thing I would say, and I would have said to myself, is that welcome to midlife for sure.

01:49:56 Speaker_01
And I say this often now, because I often can see the connection to where I was talking to the CEO of a very successful company, who was just talking to him this morning. He's 39 years old, and it's like, everything's working. Why do I feel groundless?

01:50:15 Speaker_01
It's like, well, let's talk about that. So what I often say is, remember you're not alone. And the second is that there are adults, men and women, who are on the other side of that gulf. And we're fine. And you'll be fine.

01:50:33 Speaker_01
And they have trod the path before you. And you're going to be okay. How many references to books have you made, Tim? Those were all written by people. Tara's book was written just as much for herself as it was written for anyone else.

01:50:50 Speaker_01
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.

01:51:07 Speaker_03
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 anxiety bubbled up from other sources, what are some of the things that have helped you most with that?

01:51:30 Speaker_01
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 as often turn into migraines.

01:51:40 Speaker_01
And that's when Dr. Sayers 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 anxiety, I gave voice to the feelings.

01:51:59 Speaker_01
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.

01:52:09 Speaker_01
So learning to speak, whether it's in my journal or actually 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.

01:52:23 Speaker_01
And as a result i want to do the thing that i would normally do which is withdrawing cut off connection to you but i'm gonna stay here and be an adult and engage with you.

01:52:34 Speaker_01
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 start to ask the anxiety questions.

01:52:48 Speaker_01
Like, you really want to work with what's going on in that amygdala, which is where that source of anxiety tends to be, right, the amygdala? Ask it questions. What's the threat? What am I afraid of? Have I heard this before?

01:53:01 Speaker_01
Those questions fire off the prefrontal cortex, which can relieve the anxiety.

01:53:06 Speaker_03
Do you personally tend to ask those questions before meditation, in journaling? What form does the asking take?

01:53:14 Speaker_01
Yeah i do remember i journal before i meditate a lot of times i will be sitting down at the question this is what i'm working with you know i'll tell you what happened this morning in my meditation session i was working with some really difficult feelings that came up over the weekend.

01:53:32 Speaker_01
And I was sitting in meditation. I had had a conversation with Sharon Salzberg yesterday, and it was really helpful. And all of a sudden, she came back, and just as I sat down, I'm a very ritualized meditator, right? So I have candles, I have incense.

01:53:47 Speaker_01
I'm a former Catholic, so I like all that ritual stuff. If somebody could ring a bell, it makes me happy, right? So I'm doing all that stuff. I'm sitting on the cushion, and all that's emerging.

01:53:57 Speaker_01
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.

01:54:13 Speaker_01
And 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.

01:54:26 Speaker_01
And so the naturally arising thought that came from that session in that moment was open, open, open, which very, very quickly turned into loving kindness meditation for myself.

01:54:43 Speaker_03
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 recommend diving into that, also known as Metta, M-E-T-T-A, Meditation.

01:54:56 Speaker_03
Two folks worth checking out, Jack Kornfield, who's been on this podcast before, specifically speaking about Metta and Loving Kindness. Sharon's also spoken about it on the podcast. And those are good. Those are great places to start.

01:55:12 Speaker_03
Very, very effective, short, at least can be short meditation that really punches above its weight class in a sense.

01:55:20 Speaker_03
And I think in part for me, I'm really glad we're talking about this because it's a type of meditation that I haven't used in a while and I really should, is at least for me, it's a vacation

01:55:33 Speaker_03
from obsessing on myself, if it is directed at other people. Now, as was pointed out to me during my first ever extended meditation retreat, I was talking about loving kindness and how much I enjoyed it.

01:55:48 Speaker_03
They asked on the way out, just a quick suggestion, have you applied this to yourself at all? And it was so nonsensical to me. They might have been speaking to me in Klingon. I was like, loving kindness to myself? What? That doesn't make any sense.

01:56:07 Speaker_03
And lo and behold, I did find it very valuable. I really enjoy combining that with also loving kindness meditation for other people.

01:56:15 Speaker_03
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 up meta meditation. Same, same, but different.

01:56:28 Speaker_03
Jared, let me ask you just a couple more questions. We could go for many, many hours.

01:56:32 Speaker_03
More and we certainly have spoken for many hours before but for the purposes of right now I think we're getting close to a really good getting reacquainted chat and Round one of the podcast.

01:56:46 Speaker_03
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 a anytime really, or belief that is most, or I should say greatly improved your life, the quality of your life.

01:57:04 Speaker_03
New behavior or belief in the last fill-in-the-blank number of years that has significantly improved the quality of your life.

01:57:12 Speaker_01
The main one that comes to 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.

01:57:34 Speaker_01
But that feels, to this guilt-ridden, anxious-ridden, angry child from Brooklyn way back when, that feels radically transformative. What? I'm good? Just as I am? No.

01:57:53 Speaker_03
Yeah, I'm good. That's huge. Hard to imagine something bigger.

01:58:00 Speaker_01
By the way, I have to practice it every day, but you know, I'm a 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.

01:58:17 Speaker_01
Does that undermine whether or not I'm a good man and a good father? No. And that allowance has done something really magical. It's allowed them to accept themselves. So yeah, it's a big move.

01:58:31 Speaker_03
That is a big move.

01:58:32 Speaker_03
The next question might segue, might be completely different, but if you could put a message on a 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?

01:58:50 Speaker_01
I'm gonna add two sentences. The first is- It's a big billboard, so there's plenty of room. It's a big billboard, so it doesn't say impeach Trump, just kidding. It says you're not alone, and just because you feel like shit doesn't mean you are shit.

01:59:03 Speaker_01
The you are not alone is really, really important. Because we feel so broken, because we question our worthiness all the time, we exacerbate the feelings of

01:59:18 Speaker_01
I must be the only one who's 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 philosophical traditions, everybody's saying the same thing.

01:59:33 Speaker_01
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 equanimity that I often talk about. It's like, okay, so I guess

01:59:47 Speaker_01
You're not alone, and just because you feel like shit doesn't mean you are shit. And if I'm not shit, then this feeling of it being crappy right now, well, this will pass. So let's add another one. This too shall pass. Can I add onto that?

02:00:03 Speaker_01
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, because you model something that's really important.

02:00:14 Speaker_01
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.

02:00:29 Speaker_01
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.

02:00:40 Speaker_03
It is part of the amusement ride. That's right.

02:00:46 Speaker_01
Yeah, and you bought a ticket, so you might as well go for a ride.

02:00:49 Speaker_03
Can't be on Magic Castle indefinitely. You're going to go through the haunted house occasionally.

02:00:53 Speaker_01
Amen.

02:00:56 Speaker_03
Jerry, thank you so much for taking the time today to share and to catch up and to teach. I always enjoy our conversations. So point number one, thank you very much.

02:01:11 Speaker_01
Well, thank you. And thank you for giving me the opportunity. And thank you for asking gorgeous questions that really helped me think and feel. And thank you for doing what you do every day. It really means a lot to the world.

02:01:25 Speaker_03
My pleasure. I really appreciate you saying that. And it helps me as much as I hope it helps other people.

02:01:32 Speaker_01
Well, there's that weird, crazy, esoteric thing that all those people, high-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.

02:01:46 Speaker_03
It's true. It's true. I mean, I think that I've been very fortunate to 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.

02:02:02 Speaker_03
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 a great companion on the path with that. So thank you again.

02:02:20 Speaker_03
And, where are the best places to say hello to you online or to learn about what you're up to? Of course, the book, Reboot, subtitled Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, is available and certainly something I would recommend people check out.

02:02:37 Speaker_03
It has many of the prompts and more that we've talked about, a lot of case studies, personal history, and a distillation of a lot of what you've learned working with hundreds, thousands of clients at this point. And what else should people know?

02:02:54 Speaker_03
Anything else?

02:02:55 Speaker_01
Yeah, I mean, probably the best way to sort of follow what's going on is reboot.io slash book. But also, if you just go to the reboot.io website, we've got

02:03:07 Speaker_01
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 other out. And that's probably the best way.

02:03:24 Speaker_01
You can also follow me on Twitter at Jerry Colonna. 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 best that we can hope for.

02:03:39 Speaker_03
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 forward slash podcast.

02:03:53 Speaker_03
You can just search Jerry, J-E-R-R-Y, or Kelowna if you want to take the black diamond route instead of using the easy option. And you'll be able to find it very, very quickly.

02:04:05 Speaker_03
Jerry, any other comments, requests, anything at all that you'd like to say before we wrap up?

02:04:11 Speaker_01
No, it's just that it was a real heartfelt pleasure.

02:04:14 Speaker_03
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.

02:04:26 Speaker_01
Amen. That's right. And real pens, real pens.

02:04:31 Speaker_03
Give it a shot. It's amazing what you can discover when you take what you think are clear thoughts and put them on paper. And that's it for now. So until next time, thanks again for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again.

02:04:44 Speaker_03
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?

02:04:54 Speaker_03
Between one and a half and two 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

02:05:05 Speaker_03
that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things.

02:05:13 Speaker_03
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 to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

02:05:25 Speaker_03
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 goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

02:05:40 Speaker_03
If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by 8Sleep.

02:05:54 Speaker_03
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02:07:28 Speaker_03
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02:07:44 Speaker_03
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