S11e8: Nichol Bradford – Technology, AI, & the Hoffman Process

I think it makes a lot of sense to talk about technology AI and Hoffman in the same conversation because it's a part of the same solution set. What we have to do is to understand how we can actually, like, change these systems and bring these things together so that we actually create the system that allows humanity to shift in the way that we need to to live with the tools that we've built and also our curious natures.

Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius. It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute and its stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world radiating love. Everybody. Welcome to the Hoffman podcast. Nicole Bradford is with us. Thank you for being with us, Nicole. I appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure. I love the work that Hoffman does. I love the impact that it has on people.

I have seen Hoffman always always create positive effects in people's lives, so I'm really happy to be here. Wow. I hear the always there. Thank you. Can you introduce yourself a little bit? Let us know who you are. Yes. My name is Nicole Bradford, and I am completely focused on human potential. And my specific approach to it, though, is the question of how do we leverage technology to support human potential and to unlock human potential.

I think there's many applications, but the way that I do that is in three ways. One, I am a cofounder of a early stage venture fund that invest in what we call human tech, and I'll explain in a moment what that is. The second thing is I gather. So I organize a conference called Human Tech Week, which is an evolution of a conference that used to be called transformative tech. And it also is about human tech, which I'll

explain what it is. And then the third thing I do is I work with the Society of Human Resource Management, advising on and doing thought leadership around human and AI enablement at organizations. And SHRM has 340,000 members who take care of 362,000,000

people globally every Monday. And so it is also absolutely as these organizations are beginning to use AI, it absolutely is a environment where the question of how we leverage AI or leverage technology to actually unlock true human potential, you know, something that leaders are focused on every single day. So that's the portfolio of what I do. But for me, the thread is really humans fulfilling their potential.

And the way that I think about it in transformative tech when I started, it was about, you know, how do we help humans heal, grow and thrive and how can technology support that? And so human tech is really the evolution of transformative tech just to make it less abstract for people. Basically, there's six focus areas. The first one's called vital. That's preventative health and wellness because you can't separate the mind and the body. Mesh, that's mental, emotional, and social health.

The next one is peak. That's individual and organizational performance. After that is sync. That's collective intelligence, collaborative, collaboration at scale, digital well-being. Like, how can we make sure that we can be well with all of these tools that we have? And then soul, which is purpose, meaning, and consciousness both from a science neuroscience standpoint and from a spiritual standpoint. Spiritual defined as a better relationship to self, other, and the environment.

And the last one is city, which is the built environment, both physically and metaphorically. How can we leverage technology in the spaces around us in order to enable and empower all of the areas that I described before? We'll put those six categories along with other things we talk about today in the show notes. So if people wanna follow-up and dig in a little bit, there'll be a place to go deeper.

You know, it's interesting. You're talking about humans, and yet it's through this thing that is very unhuman, which is technology. So how does that tension go between working with humans on behalf of humans, but with this place in space that is very unhuman like? Well, humans have always had tools, and this is just our newest tool. There's this beautiful quote about cities that, you know, we build our cities and then our cities build us.

And so there is an interplay between the tools that we build and then how those tools affect us. Also, I'm interested in technology for humans because my father was a plumber. We were middle class, but just middle class. You know? And I grew up in a neighborhood where really no one looked like me. I was always a child that really paid attention to things for a lot of reasons. I was sort of, like, hyper aware. Some might say hyper vigilant, but really aware of what was going on

around me. And so, you know, I always a long time ago thought about like, why do people do the things that they do and where are they really coming from? And then I volunteered with my family very early as a child. And so I always had this sense of, you know, we're connected to one another. Humans should take care of one another. And, you know, my family, my aunts and, other people used to always say like to whom much is given much

is expected. So if you have talents of any kind, there's a part of us that I really believe and have the DNA to really, to look to how we can leverage our gifts to support not just ourselves, but other people. So that was kind of like my core function or my core thinking. But what I love about technology is that it does make things accessible, affordable, and available. You know, the world has pockets of really good things. And how do we make that and take that really broad?

A story that many people are unaware of is that when aluminum was first developed, and I'm not saying an aluminum's, you know, the most awesome thing ever, but when it was first developed, the process was so difficult that it was considered more valuable than gold because we didn't really know how to do it. But now people listening to this show have wrapped a sandwich in it and thrown it away later. You know, it's sort of this point that tools can make things available to all people.

So my take on technology is not that it's bad necessarily. It's that it's not good enough. And the good enough comes from how we design it, what are our goals, our understandings are, the ethics that we put in it, and what are our ambitions. The ambition around Human Tech Week is that it's the thesis that humans should be at the center of the tools that we build. You know, human should be at the center of AI and technology.

That one of the roles we should insist that it has is that it's here to help us heal, grow, and thrive, and that there is value in gathering founders, investors, scientists, workplace innovators, and creatives to create the future we actually really want. I think one of the things that's happening, and I think this speaks to the tension that you've described, is that the inhumanity of technology has everything to do with how we design the technology and what our ambition is

for it. And so I think, especially with AI and in AI conversations, you hear so much ambition for tools. There's very little ambition for humans. Think about the headlines and the messages and the things you hear people say. And there's not this sort of like ambition for humans, for our transformation, for our healing, for our creation, for our imagination. It's kind of an afterthought that they tack on the end after a bunch of other things with a lot of buzzwords.

Part of what I hear is deep intentionality to technology that isn't inherently bad. It's just not good. We need to make it better. So how do we take the intentionality, the goals, the focus to be better in technology also to humans so that humans have that same kind of focus to improve, to grow, to heal? Yeah. Just to give another example to make it less abstract, one of my obsessions is microbiome.

I think that the next era of health is going to be the biomes that we have in our gut, on our skin, in our mouths. That is very nature. A fun game. Anytime you're talking to someone who's interested in uploading themselves to a computer, you know, and they're like, oh, we can do this. Or if you're in a conversations where people are like, well, why will people need people if AI can tell you all the great things about yourself and that kind of thing? When I'm in that situation, I just say

one word. I go, okay. Microbiome. We don't even understand how our gut biome affects our cognition. This huge chunk of your serotonin is made in your gut. There's interactions. We have trillions of creepy crawlies that are all over us interacting with our bodies and each other. It is very natural. It doesn't get more natural than that. It doesn't get more than that. It doesn't get more dirt under their fingernails and that, and we don't

really understand it. And I think it's gonna be the next era of medicine. And so, you know, what technology to give a technology example, and it's still the very beginning. A schizophrenic can be identified almost 100% from their stool. That's been around for a long time, and now there's been some papers a few years ago where depression can be identified from stool. That's because of the gut biome and what's happening in your gut, that those fingerprints are there.

On the flip side is that the ability to sequence, the ability to, for us to use our tools to begin to understand ourselves better, ultimately, how extraordinary would it be if some chunk of depression you know, I am not anti SSRI or anything like that. People who need

them really need them. But if some chunk, some supportive holistic situation includes being able to use the grocery store or use a garden to be able to support our mental health and not anecdotally, but scientifically, I invested in a great company that does this sort of thing that's looking into it. And so I think that's a really great example. When people think of technology, what they really mean is social media. Like,

that's really what they mean. And when they think of AI, they really think of chat g p t, and that's kind of it, but there's much, much more. And so the intersection, the layering of humans and AI and technology and this ambition that we're used this technology to support us mentally and emotionally, that doesn't mean, you know, that we replace therapists with AI therapists. It means that we understand and develop really holistic solutions

about how it really can be designed. And I'll just say one more thing before I stop. It's like you push a button and it's just like, I have so many thoughts, but I think that in mental health, there is a role for a companion that you can speak to outside of speaking to your therapist. You know, your therapist is not available or your psychiatrist or therapist, they're not available at 3AM. You know, because they need to have a

life. Right? Like, they need to have a life, and we don't have enough of these people anyway. They're precious, and they're not available at 3AM. And so does that mean someone should suffer all night long and not be able to talk to anyone at 3AM? No. They they should have something. We should have something. So what are the parameters? So design would be being able to understand how

we should use these things. So you have a tool, you know, you have a therapist and you have a cadence with that therapist. You have a tool that allows that therapist to get a bigger picture of who you are to support what they're doing. And then at 3AM, you have support. So that's what I mean by it's it's not that it's bad. It's that it's not good enough. And we have to look at it holistically and design things that support us. That's how I see things. I love it. So how is that going?

How is it to I mean, it feels like we're at the forefront not just of AI technology and development and the better usage of it, but also understanding the body and the psychology and the human biome. And there's so much that we're learning both in these parallel tracks towards wellness, if you will. Yeah. I think, I heard a term the other day that I quite love. It's called a snow leopard. And what a snow leopard is is something that has been there all the time, and then suddenly you see it.

A snow leopard is like it's there, but then you really see it when things sort of align. And so a possible snow leopard is if we actually get it right with some of these tools, then we have the ability to have a mass healing for mental and emotional health, just like the level of personalization and all of the things that are possible. Like, we're right on the cusp, being able to really help humans heal, grow, and thrive. But we have major issues that we have to solve today.

And so I'm not saying those issues don't exist. I don't like utopia or dystopia. I don't feel like I'm in either camp. I'm a middle class kid child to a plumber. I'm a planner. You know what I mean? So it's like, I think we have to acknowledge the issues and then we have to build plan and we have to design, we have to actually get our hands dirty and do it. And if all we do is talk about what's gonna go wrong, then we won't take the action to build the things that give us the upside.

And if all we do is talk about how amazing it is, then we don't look closely at things. You know, a good example would be what's called neuro atrophy. The study that people were talking about with that is in Patty Maze's lab at MIT. They did a thing where they were looking at people while they were basically interacting with CHAT GPT. They were looking at brain activity. One group was using it in a certain way. They basically didn't really show that much

brain activity. They couldn't remember anything that they did. Like, the next day was like, what did you write? And they couldn't remember it. They didn't have any authorship or ownership over it. There's lots of downside. We have to learn ways of using it. Meanwhile, Khan Academy, Kamigo, the bot does not give the child the answer when it's in sort of like an educational standpoint. It's a Socratic method. It's a questioning method.

The child sort of goes through it. They are showing incredible success in learning, but that's because since they were approaching it from that standpoint, they built it in a way for those

outcomes. So we just have to understand what's wrong, what the challenges are, and then we need to design holistic solutions that are include tech, non tech, etcetera, that allow us to support humans in the ways that we really need in ways that could fundamentally improve people's ability and capacity to live in this world.

You know, part of what I hear, Nicole, is acknowledging the power of technology, but also saying we need to meet that power with a focus and intentionality that harnesses it for good and not to sit around and fear it or the opposite, which is laud its incredible skills and value without channeling some of that and being aware of

the harm it can do. Yeah. If the people listening to this podcast, if you have a question and you're not building a solution and you're worried about bad actors, but you aren't acting, then the bad actors are going to do whatever they're going to do, and there will be no alternative. So it's like if we want it, we have to build it. The way that I gather, the way that I, you know, move through the world is really all about if we want things, we have to create them.

So I'm thinking about you in your process at Hoffman and wondering, is this like activating all kinds of ideas about how technology can help? Were you also having a parallel experience about how not just your personal work that you're doing at Hoffman, but ways in which you can apply some of this stuff out in the world? The beauty of the Hoffman process is that, you know, I put my phone in the bag and left it. The Hoffman process is extraordinary,

so I wasn't out of the process. In fact, what I do, you know, I give people advice. I recommend the Hoffman process at least three times a month, and I feel passionately and strongly about it. I can think of at least 16 people since I did the process that I have been like, let me tell you about this thing. You know, like I hear what's going on in your life over and over and over again. Let me tell you about this thing that many people find quite helpful.

The next thing I say is I talk about how, what I love about Hoffman is one, it's not an experiment. It is not the Hoffman experiment. Hoffman has been at it for over fifty years. I I think over a 100,000 people have gone through it at this point. You know exactly what you're doing in sort of taking people through that process. And then I've had some people say, well, my particular thing that I need the process for is such a unique and horrible thing. And I'm like, trust me, it's not.

Like it is to you, but they've seen absolutely everything. And the way that the facilitators adapt the process for the person who's in it within that container, that's tried true and tested. It's just good. The other thing is that I have I have total faith when I recommend people to go to Hoffman. I know that the way that they are cared for, I know it's safe. Everybody gets the level of, change that they're, I think, consciously and unconsciously ready for.

You know, now that I've been in deep work communities for a long time, I have a lot of trust in people's internal system breaking at the level that they're able to go to for things like this. So I have total faith and trust in Hoffman. I think there's some other healing modalities that, you know, I don't necessarily know. People ask me about, you know, this tool or that medicine or that teacher or whatever. And it's like, sometimes you don't know, but I have absolute faith in Hoffman.

I know it works. I've seen it work. I've seen it work in people's lives. There was one person that I had known socially, and I didn't know that they had gone to Hoffman, but they were so different from the person that they were that I'd maybe seen four or five months before that I actually thought this person was high because they were so relaxed. I was like I was in my mind, I was like, is he high? You know? But it was like, no. No. He was just like he was just free.

And, so I love Hoffman. And then the last thing I'll say, which sort of ties up the question, is that when I find out that people are going to Hoffman, I give them one piece of advice. One, trust the process, and two, be like Daniel. Daniel wrestled with the angel until the angel gave him his blessing. And, oh, I'm getting a little emotional. Be like Daniel. Give it your all. Just

give it your all. If you have a critical mind, take it and put it to the side for that week and go all in because whatever point of view you're bringing, you can pick that up at the end of the week. That's been with you forever. You can pick it back up, but just go all in, leave nothing on the table. Be like Daniel, get your blessing. You're spending a lot of time. It's a big time commitment. It isn't inexpensive and Hoffman is wonderful and gives lots of scholarships, but it is not

inexpensive in terms of time or money. So go there, trust the process, leave everything on the table, be like Daniel, and do not leave without your blessing. And then at the end, if you wanna pick something up again, you can, but your perspective will probably be different. Beautiful. Beautiful, Nicole. Yeah. I love Hoffman. That's why when you said, can we interview? I was like, absolutely. Now what is it about the emotion that emerged? It must have touched something inside you.

What was moved in that moment earlier? Well, I mean, part of it is Hoffman had a huge effect on me. I remember my before and after. How did you know? What were the indicators of that that you said to yourself, wow, I I am different? I think that's a really good point is that the way that we know that we've changed is when we're in the same situation, we make a different choice.

That's when you know that you've changed. And so I had those experiences where I just was a different person in the same situation. Once you're a different person, the same situation, once or twice, you don't end up in the same situation. Then the other thing is that I love humans. I love humans. I love our creativity and our curiosity, and I love hope and faith. And when someone gets their freedom, it moves me, you know, and I'm also really inspired by what they might do with that freedom.

It's also like how it also ties back to AI and technology is that one of the things these tools are doing, AI is going to make competence a commodity. Because when these things can do the spreadsheets or count the inventory, etcetera, Like, you could take a photograph, like, I just something crazy. Like, I'm going to an international meeting of telecom regulators to speak on digital well-being and AI and the visa. I have to list all my travels for the last five years for this visa. I

feel like it's a pain. You know, I'm like, I don't remember. Last year, I took 55 flight because I am talking to people about what we are discussing. And so I basically just took photos of every page of my passport and then loaded it up, and it gave me my entry exit, and it took moments. That's something that would have taken a really

long time. And so as that competency line goes up, there's probably someone you know who you tolerate because they're really good at doing something you don't wanna do or you don't know how to do. And that's gonna go away because the competency floor of being competent, that's not gonna be enough. And so as this floor rises, you know, really where we're going is that work is going to be about human beings creating things together. That's what jobs will be. That's what work will be.

And in that place, like, you know, the way to be irreplaceable is it's really all about, are you adaptable? Can you adapt? Can you change? Are you a person who can lead change, inspire change during this incredibly difficult time that we're going through? And so they're they're really human attributes and elements, and it has everything to do with who you're being and who you're being stands right on top of the types of things that Hoffman gets right at as well as other deep work.

The person at work who takes everyone's credit, I believe if you follow them home and into their past, you'll likely find a family where only accomplishment secured love in this world that's coming where the key to value will be creating things with other humans and unlocking the potential of other humans and being the kind of person that can inspire and create change and lead from whatever place you have on any team. The level of freedom you have internally, I think will have a big impact on

people's ability to do that. So I think this work is going to become ever more important. Yeah. So I'm just passionate about it. You're saying something really interesting, and that is that we could focus on developing the technology itself. We could focus on being happy or being content.

But you're saying that what the world needs and what technology will specialize in what the world needs is adaptability, teamwork, and that those things will elevate those who can show up in the ability to pivot, the ability to be resilient, and that Hoffman is part of the foundation that creates that. Yeah. I which we get just a little bit in that we're going to have to become deeper, freer, better humans.

And by better, I mean, I'm not using it judgmentally or in sort of continuous self improvement, which I think is also a cul de sac. But I just mean it's like getting to that deep human place where we are in good relationship with ourselves, like real, true, deep, good relationship with ourselves, which includes everything from being able to set a boundary. That is deep, beautiful relationship with self. Are we capable of being in good deep relationship with others? That's conflict resolution.

And are we able to be in good and deep relationship with our environment, which is also like our machines? How do we think about these things? How do we build them? How do we design them? The age of AI is anything. It's the age of relationship, which is a little bit counterintuitive because of this importance of having these very human skills. All of humanity's knowledge is on the internet. So owning facts that used to give people an edge. There's no edge in owning a fact.

The evolution of this is that there are a set of things that there's sort of like no edge in doing it. Having information doesn't make you special. Yeah. Being able to go through a passport and pull out things does not make you special either. What makes you special is what really makes you special, which is, like, who are you, and are you in deep relationship with yourself? Can you be in deep relations with others? And do you know how to use the tools in a way that is beneficial to you?

Nicole, you spoke earlier about the cul de sac of continuous self improvement. And I've just noticed a trend recently where it's been around, but it just seems like it's coming more and more, and that is the people who come to Hoffman to optimize. They're in the podcast, and they're in the optimization world, and Hoffman is just a step in that.

And so can you just share and distinguish between this deep relationship with yourself that you referenced as so important and the difference between that and this optimization that is a cul de sac. It's not the same thing. Can you talk about that a little bit? Why are they not the same thing? Well, just to prepare you on the other side, I'm gonna ask you, how does

Hoffman deal with that? Because it used to be a well kept secret with Hoffman making that decision to not do the equivalent of multilevel marketing. That ethos of Hoffman made it so, like, you weren't out there before. And I was actually really glad when you started to because I'm African American and people in different communities are hearing about it now. So I think that's wonderful, but it's like the way that you do it is so elegant. I have a lot of respect for Hoffman.

The tagline is like when you're ready for change and people will hear about it because they're ready for improvement. The eggs that you're getting are different than the eggs that you got before when, like, you know, people found you when they were truly desperate. I mean, I would say that the difference is that and just to give some context is that I love deep work. Part of

it is that I'm an explorer. So, you know, initially I did deep work for some very specific issues and some very specific things that I wanted to experience differently in the world. I'm always curious. And so I became really curious about understanding myself more. It started out like I was talking to someone about meditation. I said, it's meditation started out as medication to like manage my stress and then ended up being the way that I understood the pure nature of reality.

Now meditation is like holding space and time. But in the beginning, it was medication and now it's folding space time. When I started doing deep work, I wanted to have a better relationship with myself, with others. I did a big chunk for about ten years. Also, the other thing that I'll bring to it before I answer that question is as I've seen the optimizers in many different categories, and certainly I've had that element, and I know lots of people who are. I think there's, like, three styles.

I call it the growth pyramid. On one side, there's capacity builders. Meditation is a ongoing capacity builder. Emotional release work is a capacity builder. And then there's pattern breakers, therapy, and things like that. Like, there's things that really break patterns, and then there's paradigm shifters. And so paradigm shifters are things like, you know, when people do psychedelic assisted therapy or other things like that, it's like a

fence with a trampoline next to it. And so you jump on the trampoline and you get to see above the fence, but those aren't maintainable. A meditation retreat is a paradigm shifter on par with psychedelics. By day four of a silent retreat, it is a psychedelic experience for many people. I think that's why they make them silent because it's like, if you knew how many people were tripping out by day four of just air, you know, you might run from the space. I've done a lot of work with Art

of Accomplishment. I love Joe Hudson and and that whole community. And then also, I took the coaching training for, a conscious leadership group and, CLG and Diana Chapman. I love Diana and Jim. Love, love, love, love, love. I've done a ton of meditation. I spent thirty three days in the jungles of Myanmar with the Mahasi Sayadaw. I sat with Dan Brown before he passed. For those who are listening, he was one of the greatest Western teachers of Tibetan Bonn.

So as we are on this journey, like, I think when someone shows up at Hoffman, there might be an optimizer showing up at Hoffman. There's a soul and intuition in that, and it's just I'm about to get emotional because it's like you just like, seeing people do deep work is so beautiful, and it's basically it's just like, you know, it's a racket. And it's just it's like we're just trying to be safe. You know? We're just trying to feel safe and be loved. And so that optimization is a racket.

And so, like, when I see it happening, I actually just feel love and compassion and the people, they just work it. You know, I think for me, one of the things that really changed for me too is that it was actually through meditation that I fell into a deep, extraordinary love of myself. I just, I love myself so much. And I remember, you know, when I was a younger woman, I remember mentors telling me, oh, you just have to love yourself. And I remember thinking,

like, what? Like, how do you do that? Like, what? Tell me. Just tell me how. Tell me how. I think that the optimization, it eventually works itself out of the system. And it's just one of those things. It's like, oh, that's what they're doing right now. Eventually, we get to a point that those coping mechanisms because that optimization, it is a belief that if I can optimize myself, then I will be safe. It's just a coping mechanism, and it worked when they

first picked it up. All of our coping mechanisms, we have them for a reason. They worked until they didn't. And so I think if they keep doing the deep work, eventually, the racket breaks. That's what I think about it. It relates so much to, kin to what we do at the process in terms of understanding that patterns are coping mechanisms, and they work until they don't. They have a shelf life. They have an expiration date. And we all have patterns, but we are not our patterns.

And so if we can continue to peel away those layers, then you work with the shame that drives that. So to answer your question earlier that you said we would get to, which is what is Hoffman doing with those optimizers, we're trying to help them understand the shame that can drive so much of the optimization behavior.

If they can keep going underneath the shame, to really understand shame is to know that underneath it, on the other side of it, is your essence, that deep soulful place that we all want to get to. When you say, I mean, I love myself. I love myself. That's that's our spiritual self, unconditionally self loving, such a beautiful place to be. Yeah. And I think Hoffman, it does such a great job. There's a moment where you see yourself doing the thing that you do, and instead of cringing,

you're like, oh, look at me. I'm doing it again. You know? I'm doing the thing. There's a point where you get to the love of it. The riddle that is embedded in all of this is that in order to truly change, we have to love that thing that we do unconditionally. But if you love it unconditionally to change it, you're not loving it. So it keeps dragging around and you have to optimize around it. You have to rule base your psychology to make that thing not happen.

When you get to the point where whatever that thing is, you actually can love it as it is, love yourself as you are with that thing, then it's like they just sort of melt away. It's a puzzle of the ages. And it's one of those things that's like before you have the experience, you're like, but tell me how. And then on the other side of it, you're like, oh, yeah. It's the journey. It's the journey to freedom.

So good, Nicole. So good. I see why you're in this work helping bring everything you're sharing about humans, which is such a deep, nuanced understanding and that relationship to change. Humans change technology. Wow. What a great one, two, three, out of the park combination. Thank you for your work. I believe that these next ten years really matter.

I will say for the deep meditators out there, one of the places where I'm at right now is that a little while ago, probably it was a couple of years ago, I was in a meditation experience and I was so deep. I was so deep in the fabric. I was in the understory, deep down there. You know? No place, no time, timeless, that place that is empty and full simultaneously, that there's absolutely nothing. I had the experience of becoming aware of the observer.

I witnessed the witness, and I observed the observer. It wasn't that the observer finally saw me. It was that I finally was aware of the observer and the witness that is there. And then the next sense I had was it was like an image of a drop of water, and it was close-up. My perspective was right at the water drop. And, with that, I had the understanding that we've always been together. We all have always been together, all of us, all of us. We're all together

all the time. On this level, I feel that this particular puzzle that we have around how do we live with technology and how does humanity evolve and who are we going to be over this next chapter? Do we solve the puzzle of how we show up with each other in this particular version? And I think we have about ten years to know if this is going to be more like Hunger Games or Star Trek. This is really the moment. This is the moment. I'm in my fifties, and I did a great deal of work.

I have a lot of capabilities and capacities. There is nothing that anyone could do to have me go back to my twenties now, you know, and be 20 years old right now. And it's really because this is the time for all of us. I imagine many people who are listening to be an adult, to be aware, awake, talented, capable at this moment. Oh, I'm getting chills. Like, this is the moment. This is the moment for us to bring our freedom to the problems, the intractable problems.

For anyone who's listening, I did air quotes, like the intractable problems that have been facing us as a species. And so it is the most exciting time to put you alive. It's the most amazing time to be be alive, and it is the time where bringing a healed internal state to these challenges

is important. So for people who have kids and look at the news and you have the question, what's gonna happen to college students, what's gonna happen to children, then it's really like, if you have any unfinished business internally, get that done, get that done because now is the time we're shaping it. The things that Hoffman helps people get out of the way in how they deal with themselves and deal with other people, how they relate to themselves and relate to

other people. These are the leadership skills. These are the present skills that allow us to adapt in the moment. When people are running scripts, they get very rigid. You can't have a new piece of information come in and respond to it in an elegant way if you're running scripts. And so these childhood scripts gotta do the work to get rid of the scripts, to not be ruled by the

scripts. If you want to lean towards the side of humans, our species, evolving to the place that we can solve these problems, some of which are existential. Nicole, so good. I can feel the passion and the importance of what this means for you and what it means for us as humans and then the collective us as a society. Thank you for this conversation. What's it like to talk about Hoffman and the work you do and who you are? How do you feel as we wrap up here? I feel great.

I love the puzzle, and I love how I show up to the puzzle in that I'm actually unattached to the outcome. Also, because I know that we've always been together, sun up to sun down, every moment, every day. I am working on the problem of how we help people heal, grow, and thrive at scale. And scale's become a dirty word because of how it's affiliated with social media, but it really just means for everyone

and what might be possible. And so the way my brain works and my superpower has a lot to do with seeing things that look unrelated and pulling them together. I think it makes a lot of sense to talk about technology AI and Hoffman in the same conversation, because it's a part of the same solution

set. What we have to do is to understand how we can actually, like, change these systems and bring these things together so that we actually create the system that allows humanity to shift in the way that we need to to live with the tools that we've built and also our curious natures. Well, thanks for your curious nature today, Nicole, and people can check out your website, nicolebradford.com. And, look at the show notes because we'll have lots of links to all the good stuff you talked about.

Human tech week is going to be April 27 through May 2, and it's going to be all about this technology and all across San Francisco. Awesome. Nicole, thanks for your time. Really, really appreciate you and this conversation. Likewise. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Razzi Grassi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access

to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.