Kristoffer Carter on Permission to Glow

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opens up. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Christopher Carter, a spiritual teacher at the intersection of consciousness and business. He's a frequent speaker, author, and founder of This Epic Life,

a website and podcast devoted to contest living. He's also a previous guest on the One You Feed podcast. Today, Christopher and Eric discuss his book Permission to Glow, A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership. Hi, Christopher, welcome to the Show's it to be back with you, Eric, You were on the show a long time ago. I mean we maybe had been doing the show a year at that point, which boggles my mind that we're at like seven and a half years that we would have done it that

long ago. We did it at your house in Akron. We played music, we ate dinner with your family, we looked at your altar. We had a great time. Uh. This time we're doing it via zoom, which is not quite as fun, but still fun. It's lovely to see you again. We're gonna be talking about your book, which is called Permission to Glow, A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership. And before we do, let's start like we always do

with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild thinks about it, looks up at their grandparents as well, which one wins, and the grandparents says the

one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I've always loved this parable you use. I think about it lately through this lens of just conscious awareness. Inside the book and inside my coaching practice, I'm always trying to encourage leaders to feed that good wolf of their conscious awareness versus the default settings that we all operate by, fear

and greed and so forth. So I know you're a fan of the word discernment you mentioned, and I think that one you feed is that discernment of our conscious awareness to feed kind of the essence of ourselves, the best of us versus those finicky, tricky, greedy, needy parts

of us. Yeah. I want to get into discernment a little bit more later, but let's hit what you just said there for a second, which is increasing that conscious awareness, because the longer I'm sort of in this space doing this sort of work, the more I realized that is the foundational step is we have to realize what's going on inside of us. And then if we can realize it from a conscious place, then there's a thousand strategies we can employ to work with it more skillfully. But boy,

learning to realize it is so hard. So what are the ways in your own life and in the book or in your coaching practice that you help people develop that ability to have some conscious awareness of our internal experience. I think it's a hugely important conversation because it is so foundational. You know, we're alive at an age where

it is truly volatile. Our ability to navigate through that and get to the other side, not only get to the other side, but to thrive through it, or to figure out what we're here to do it all requires conscious awareness of what's driving us, which wolf we're feeding

at any moment. And how we develop that in my practice is through meditation, creating a habit out of the meditation practice, and I'm always trying to get my leaders to get to a fifteen minutes a day minimum, non negotiable, seven days a week, three sixty five days a year.

It doesn't work for everybody, but the ones that that get it down definitely report back huge shifts and just their ability to make better choices, whether it's at the grocery store, the check outline, on Tinder, all these all these ways that that could benefit us or hold his back. I'm glad I don't have to make those kind of choices. So totally mean to go. I've been out of that

game for twenty two years. Yeah, the number of ways that I've made bad choices in that department is right up there with the number of ways I've made bad choices about substances. I think, you know, I've got it. Luckily, I'm with a wonderful partner now, and yeah, it's all wonderful. But yeah, well, just just even taking the split second and kind of this maelstrom of life that's coming at us, to take a split second and ask does this serve me? What?

Am I so desperately trying to distract myself from that level of awareness. It's kind of uncommon, but when people get a taste of it, it becomes a dragon they chase, and that's very interesting, And those are the flames that I'm here to fan is keep moving towards that because all the good stuff is in there. I love that. So I think meditation is a powerful practice. It's one

that's been foundational in my life. I've become really interested in what are the ways after we meditate that we bring that conscious awareness into more moments of our lives. And I know that meditating, just the very active doing it, it trains that muscle and it makes it more likely it's going to happen. But I'm curious if you've got other approaches for how do I just wake up out of that default, that trance of thought into like, oh yeah, here's what's happening inside me, and I can choose to

react to that more skillfully. Well, let me start by saying, if you ask any of my children or my wife of twenty two years, the work continues. You know, like none of us except maybe I car totally live fully awake all the time. Uh So, you know, depending on when we're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you probably know that from recovery service the halt gronym, we are going to

dip into that unconscious place. So your question around what practices work the meditation habit over time just strengthens that muscle of the meta attention, our ability to bring our focus back. So in meditation it's to the breath or to the mantra, in waking life or in mindfulness, it's okay, I'm not going to eat that. I want to eat something that nourishes me. I'm not gonna say that harmful thing. I'm going to say something that nourishes my partners. Um

just that more mindful behavior. And you know what I get into in the book through the four Permissions is once people give themselves that first permission to chill and to just create stillness, they're more likely to listen to some of the wisdom their body is speaking. So they could tune into this really highly tuned instrument of our feelings and our emotions to ascertain like what we need in the moment and then navigate accordingly. So lately I've

been really geeking out on that. We know people that seem to be divinely internally guided by that, and they've just developed that capacity to listen to that inner voice and to act on it, you know. And we could call it intuition, we could call the gut to whatever. But I think there is a connection between stilling practice and listening to our feelings and emotions. So let's move into the book. You have a phrase that you use called the frenemies within. Let's talk about that. What does

that mean? Yeah, so if we don't have two wolves in a battle royale at all times, we we have these I call him friend of mees jokingly because in high school we have certain parts of our friends circle that we can't be sure if they're with us or against us. You know, we tolerate them, we sometimes listen to them, but they sometimes do more harm than good.

So these friend of me is that I refer to our kind of our default settings, these internal saboteurs that get spooked by external circumstances or they just act on these practiced internal stories that we all carry around with us. And there's four of the most common ones that I see in all of my coaching clients. And I'm usually working with executive leaders or conscious leaders of different types

of organizations or founders. And but it's important to point out that it doesn't mean that these freenemies are bad. They're they're there to protect us, and we have to listen to them and work with them and That's part of the reason why they are partially our friend. You know, they're protecting our hearts or protecting our interests in some way.

But also we have to see them for what we are what they are if we're going to be able to move towards the thing we want to create, because make no mistake, they will stop you from creating whatever dream you want to create. So what are some of the most common for enemies. The ones that I call out in the book are speedy Rabbit. Speedy Rabbit moves faster than everybody else, judges everybody for not keeping up. You could usually recognize them because they're pitting out in

their shirt or their pants suit. Game face is one we all I think no pretty well in America. It's it's that mask that we wear over our authentic emotions, like masking any vulnerability. I call that game face. The phantom pest is like the classic swooper, like the micromanager that comes out of nowhere when it's time to, you know,

step up and go big with their power. They're confronted by their own power, so they stay up all night obsessing over things like power point fonts or something irrelevant, and then dark Star, which is that person at the far end of the galaxy that refuses to accept help or support from anybody else. So Dark Star, Speedy Rabbit, game Face, Phantom Past, those are great names. Reminds me a little bit of the concept in Buddhism of near and far enemies. You know, take a trade like equanimity.

The far enemy is you know, you just get shook up all the time and you have no center. The near enemy is indifference. Oh beautiful. Yeah, it's a continuum. So what you're saying, there's in each of those friend of mees right, there is a positive quality in there,

hence the name friend of me. One of the central themes in the book that I call out a little bit is some of this problematic stuff that came out of nine eighties personal development, and I loved all of it, by the way, Like I I used to download Tony Robbins programs off a napster back in the day when on the thing, and I was I was so into it. But that achiever consciousness, it reinforces this I got this and the eye got this. Is this overcorrected self confidence,

which is good. It serves us, but it makes us move fast. We assume we're always in competition with others. We we can't let anybody into you know, our fear or you know, our sadness that that that looks weak. Uh So, yeah, I blame and thank personal development for the freenemies. I listened to a bunch of those things on cassette tape. You know, for me it was it was early nineties, but I think there's still a theme of that that runs through personal development to this day.

Brings me to sort of one of the things in my own spiritual path that I wrestle with, which is that sense of wanting to achieve something, whether that be a state, whether that be the realization, whether that be a certain state of consciousness. You know, that desire to achieve something that can then you say, become very goal oriented um and also becomes very dependent on me. Yeah. Well, gosh,

you know what it brings up from me. It's about seven or eight years ago when I was taking my vows in Crea Yoga, which is uh parmajant Ci Yogananda's path. You study for about a year and a half and then you apply to take these vows and it's a very serious ceremony. But I was holding getting to that ceremony, getting that point in my path as this achievement like a certification or some sulf something, and and through no

fall to my own. That's how we're kind of brought up in this country to work for the degree or whatever. And I was working towards that at the exclusion of all the important things like actually practicing the path and being a yogi. I just wanted the thing. And I remember this monk, one of the last gatekeepers, just smacked me down and I already had airfare books to go out to California to do this, and he's like, you're not ready, And I thought, okay, you know, this was

a big lesson learned. And you know, I think there is a natural tension there between what is our work to push for to achieve that masculine aspect of achievement, and then the divine feminine, which is about allowing and the unfolding and the embodiment. And I think all of us, if we're honest, are constantly in that tension. Yeah. I just had a conversation with my spiritual director yesterday about you know, sort of the messiness of spiritual life and

the nonlinear path of growth. And what came up in that was a word that we referenced earlier, that's in your book a few times, and it's a word that has become really important to me. And the word is discernment. You know, how do I know what the right answer is? I'll give an example. I was practicing in Zen Buddhism very seriously for a few years. I was working with a teacher, I was doing co on practice, you know,

and then a couple of different things happened. I passed my hundredth coon, which is the end of like a collection of coons, and the group there started to meet in Colorado again. They've been all virtual and now they were starting to get together in person and caused me to feel a little so I've kind of I kind of wandered away for a little bit. And I also

getting pulled towards certain other spiritual paths. And so the discernment of am I just naturally being called to a different place in a different area of growth, or am I up against resistance there and I'm running away from it? So discernment is a really important thing. And I'm just kind of curious how you work on discernment for yourself

and discernment for the people you work with. Yeah, well that's a really important exploration I think for people, because I think most great things in our life come from devotion, like long term devotion, whether it's a marriage or sobriety or meditation practice or you know, heightened states of awareness. Um, that's a long game. It's not a short game. And what Yoga Nanda taughts was that all true paths will get you to the goal, whether that's enlightenment or to

God whatever. That back to source connection is right yoga. And it's very natural on the path to get spooked or to question and to keep, you know, like a little bumble bee, going from teacher to teacher to path to path to exploring, leaving all your options open. Because as we move further down that path, we start to

realize the path is very narrow. It's almost like a razor's edge, and you can slip off and lose an arm, but also all the good things remain on that path and uh, and as you travel further so it has been the same. I really share your experience on that is that I knew very early on I felt a lightning bowl connection to my guru's path, and as I travel further down it, at different times it's confronting. It makes me question every fabric of my previous identity and

what I know to be true. And also through practice, I keep coming back to the kind of that safe fold of wow. Even being the small percentage of people on earth that that have an inkling of what their path could be, You're doing great, you know. But as it relates to discernment, I think that that's why the meditation practice is so key through all of it, is that ability to navigate back to the path when a million things are vying for our attention, you know, old distractions.

I mean, I haven't had a temptation to consume alcohol in about ten years until the pandemic. And then whether it was boredom or monotony or whatever, I thought, wow, you know, a beer would be pretty good right now. And it was the first time that thought even crossed my mind. I thought, Okay, this is where I need to be vigilant. So I noticed it because of my discernment, and then I acted accordingly. I didn't drink the beer, but I see how people can slip very easily back

into things, and if I'm not relapsing on booze. Trust me, I'm relapsing on sugar or impatience or you know, throwing a mantram once in a while around my children. It's it's all, you know, a path of refinement over time. I think I want to circle back to a part of this discernment. And you use this word a little bit earlier when we were talking about this, I got

this nature of the personal development path. And for me, this is where every conversation with my spiritual director, every single one, even when he wasn't my spiritual director, he was a supervisor in a spiritual director training program I was in every single conversation ended up back at trust. What do you trust in? Eric? What do you trust in? And I think that I got this in order to let go of the I've got this a little bit, We've got to think about some of what is it

we trust? Beautiful? I mean I kind of use I got this in the book to set up the real goal that I think God or our creator is asking of us, which is we got this, which is to surrender the ego, move past that, achieve our consciousness and two more of a collaborative approach to life. You know, transcend competition for collaboration radical concept. I know, trust others, and in trusting others, we could trust our creator to hold us and to support us when we only have

trust in ourselves. I don't know, I think that's kind of a brittle framework, you know. I'm I don't know about. But my autopilot's a little sketchy, you know, I don't know if I trust them to fly me from point A to point B. It doesn't mean I don't have belief in myself to achieve things I've proven to myself. I have personal integrity to deliver, but that is in no way equal to the power of the collective or the power of you know, certainly the divine you know,

for us in our lives. Yeah, I agree with you, And it is probably the most challenging part for me because my spirituality is less about there being a creator of being, but it does believe in things like the underlying unity of things and think you know, you know, things that I've experienced. So so it's a little bit

more tricky to trust. But I love that we got this, you know, because when I came back to a A the second time, I realized I couldn't do the higher power in the way that most of the people in a A were using it as, which was there is a being out there that will intervene in my life and help. And so I really like, what do I you know, what do I believe in? What is my

higher power? And I ended up with certain spiritual principles like if I live according to these principles, And then the other one was other people, you know, the power of the group, the power of the support around me. My understanding of those things and the things I trust in and deepened. But it does remain an area that is challenging. So I want to use this to jump to for you, because what you are doing is you're

writing a book on leadership. You do a lot of leadership consulting, you work with executives, and you're talking about God, the Divine. You don't tiptoe around that, you go right into it. So just talk a little bit about that. How do you do that? Why do you do that? I'm sure it costs you clients to do that, you know, or maybe you don't think that, but but just say a little bit about that because you are brave for it.

I've always admired that thank you. I mean, you know, in the corporate circles, we soften even meditation practice because people we call it mindfulness or or presencing or something ridiculous, because we're afraid to like imply that hindu has brought this to the country and it's an Eastern religious philosophy and tradition. Well, the yoga that I practice and study through yoga Nada's path has been an ancient science for thousands of years, and it's scientific. I'm wired and was

raised to be a skeptic. I'm like, prove it, you know, arms crossed, you know. But through direct practice you get an inkling of some direct experience, and then I can't avoid kind of evangelizing the power of that. The way I take that conversation into me that the doorway into that conversation is every leader I coach, no matter how accomplished or how much smarter than me, or better schools, they went to Ivy League schools, whatever it is, all of us have to face capacity issues at some point

in our leadership. The capacity issue usually shows up of I don't have enough time to do what I'm required to do, I don't have enough money or resources or funding or venture capital to do what I need to do, and I don't have the space in my life to hold this responsibility for this many people who have families and whatever. Those are all capacity issues and there's there's a lot of different ways to expand that capacity, but none more powerful and my experience than through spiritual practice.

And I probably said it on the podcast, you know, many years ago when I was on is that I I kind of figured out early on that I felt like the personal development path ended where the spiritual path began. The personal development path is great, and there's a lot of value in it, and I still love love it dearly, but so much of it is about the personal. It's

about me, you know. The spiritual development is getting that you know, figment of our imagination, our ego, out of the way so we could surrender into caring for the collective. And that has been my experience. And I say very early in the book, I make that big, bold disclaimer. You know, in the beginning there were capitalized words, because I knew it would turn people off and they see,

oh my god, this guy's on the God squad. I'm done with this, you know, and uh, and that's fine, but I wanted to incite them to go further because whatever that thing is, you and I have different names for it. Whatever that thing is, it doesn't necessarily care what we call it, but I think it does reward us for doing that work. And you said it's basically principles and practice. It's the exact same thing. You know, We're talking about the same thing in different language. That's right.

And I think at the core of any of those. To me, the thing that exists in the center of all of the great traditions is the idea that the small self ego has to be transcended. Yeah, you have to go beyond that. And they have different ways of dissolving that, different ways of seeing through that, different approaches. That's the work. Well, I think the work is dissolving that and also, as you said, just conscious awareness. Once you dissolve that ego. And I'm not claiming I have

dissolved that ego once and for all. I have had experience as though where that thing is gone and what rushes in is stunning. So for me, it's it's all about how do I lessen my attachment to that, how do I see through that more? And then to your point.

When you do that, it's capacity. It's funny you mentioned capacity, because I'm just thinking about one experience I had on retreat where I had sort of the real big mystical experience and it kind of all vanished, and I thought about every difficult thing in my life and I went, I can do that. It was like if I had to do that every day the rest of my life, fine, because all of a sudden there was room for it. You're capassing in that moment was wider to include those

things and to not resist them exactly. Yeah, how Yogaata describes it. As you know, Yoga at its core just means union, union with something bigger than ourselves. And when when you said, when you dissolve that kind of membrane, whatever that invisible membrane is between our little self and our much bigger self, the soul or God consciousness, whatever

that is. I always love the analogy Yogata use of all of us being individualized waves on a vast ocean of consciousness, and we could dissolve into that ocean and let it hold us, and in doing so we could increase our capacity to hold more and more and more of what that ocean will give and give and give versus what we typically do, which is resist and resist

like I can't handle it. I can't do it, And I think personal growth and leadership for that is in a lot of ways for me a spiritual conversation to just increase that capacity. This segment is sponsored by Novo Nordisk. It came acrost some interesting facts that really struck me. It said the average person with excess weight makes seven serious attempts to lose weight over time, yet only about ten percent succeed at keeping the weight off over time.

This highlights the real tug of war that exists between weight loss and weight regain. I've experienced this myself for really most of my adult life, this struggle of losing weight only to gain it right back. But it reminded me of a conversation we had about the upward and downward spiral of weight loss and weight regain, which I think is a useful idea. You want to share a little bit about that, sure. The idea is that positive

actions build on each other. If I exercise and I feel a little bit better about myself, so I might be more likely to eat better, And then if I eat better, I might be getting a better night's sleep, and since I get a better night's sleep, I have more energy the next day, and so positive actions increase and we spiral upwards. In that case, this can all so happen in reverse the downward spiral. Let's say I'm

trying to lose weight and it's not going well. So maybe I feel discouraged and I don't take positive actions to continue my weight loss routine. Or you may look at your weight numbers on a scale and if the scale didn't move the way you wanted it to, you feel discouraged and you don't continue the positive actions that support your weight loss. And this is really common because as we lose weight, there are changes inside the body that try to push back, making maintaining that weight loss

harder and harder. So the spiral continues downward. But the good news is it's possible to break the cycle and reverse the trajectory. Right, It's important to understand the science and what's really going on in our bodies when we lose weight and regain it, making weight and management more approachable. In fact, there is more at play here, like appetite hormones. Your appetite hormones can change following weight loss, making you feel hungry and less full, which can lead to weight regain.

And this has nothing to do with will power, but rather our biology. That's when you need a different approach to weight management. Working with your healthcare team, you can form a plan to end the cycle of weight regain. By working together, you can champion your weight loss journey while improving weight related conditions. Right. I think what I've learned is it's not just about willpower. Diet and exercise

are not the only keys to success. A lot of us feel that failure is inevitable, but we can have a more holistic approach to weight loss that looks at the science behind it, that looks at behavior change, and that also looks at community support. We encourage you to explore the science behind weight management and partner with your healthcare provider to develop a weight management plan that works for you. Let's move into the permissions in the book.

But before we talk about what the four permissions are, why are you calling them permissions? Well, first of all, I'm in no way qualified to give anybody permission, including my own children. They are far more capable than me to have a gate this world. Uh, it's not my permission to give. I am encouraging people to give themselves permission because we practice and we grow up in a society that is kind of training us to do anything. But you know, we learned these questions the imposter syndrome,

who am I to dot dot dot? That's like a not giving myself permission for full expression. So I wanted to just light a path through these ascending gates of claiming your own power permission by permission, you will do it the same way anybody else on this path has done it, but it starts at a very individual level of consent. So let's start with the first permission, then,

which is permission to chill. What more radical first permission could there be in a speedy rabbit culture of high octane caffeine and more is more and you know, energy drinks at all hours of the day, than to just chill the hell out and stop once in a while. Because when we hit the pause button, it's represented by that pause button symbology that when we hit pause, we

can actually see what we're doing. We could see things as they are, which is the virtue of sobriety, you know, to actually be with and see things as they are, and we could make peace in that moment with what is being asked of us versus the just unconscious resistance to everything. So I encourage ivery want to start by slowing the hell down, and I know radical idea stopping in that section, you say, our head and our heart are both vital and navigation. We tend to defer to

the head when receiving guidance from both simultaneously. Wisdom is the integration of both. Yeah. Yeah, And then I say, the kind of the punchline on that section, I believe is something like one of those is literally keeping us alive and the other one only thinks that it is. You know, and it's true, you know, my my brain. When I default to my brain, I'm I'm an angiogram seven type, which is on the higher end of the

mind type. So I'm always spinning a lot of ram and so I'm naturally going to defer to that because it's my logical, rational thinking mind. But when are able to get into the heart and figure out what that heart wants, there's so much more wisdom to guide us. What are some of the ways that we can give ourselves permission to chill? Yeah, So the obvious one that I really push on is creating the meditation habit bar none. It's the most powerful. It has a compounding return on

our time over time. It's all about consistency and not about how long you meditate. But if you consistently make those deposits, it will come back to you in huge, huge ways. Even before that, just the four seven eight breathing, you know, to enforce breathing patterns and yoga it's prana yama breathing, but these four seven eight breathings, you know. Dr Andrew Wile is a huge proponent of this breathing in for four accounts, three four, hold for seven counts,

exhale through the mouth for eight counts. Just enforcing specific breathing patterns on the involuntary nervous system tells our body to chill. It reminds our body, our brain is part of our body. It reminds this unconscious thing that we are the ghost in the machine and that we can be conscious. So I encourage and my executives to really pause a minimum four times a day to do four

cycles of four seven eight, which takes about one minute. Okay, So there's another way of sort of going from just the meditation cushion to four minute long breaks, you know, like a reboot, you know, for four cycles takes fifty seven seconds, about two in for four, hold for seven, exhale through the mouth for eight, and increases that discernment in the moment. And it just gives you a way to stop because we're all dragging the last crisis around

with us into every new interaction. Totally. You've mentioned meditation a bunch of times, and I'd just be curious on your path, describe a little bit about what the practice of meditation is in the beginning and does it evolver change. Yeah, I think it's always evolving and changing based on life circumstances. I think it's truly something that the more you get a taste of, the more you crave it, you know,

which is exciting. You know. That's why I was able to turn some of my earlier addictions into addiction for meditation, which I think has been a good choice. I would make a good swap, I'd make any day of the week. But how it's evolved for me, I mean, I break it down in the book is every meditation session has

basically three phases. There's the getting our own attention, which four seven eight works great for just to wrangle in the snow globe of our scattered thoughts, and then once we have that attention, to spend the bulk of our time bringing that attention back as many times those are the reps of our meta attention muscle at the gym, you know, bringing it back to the mantra, back to our breath, and then at the end of the session,

directing our attention into loving kindness, gratitude, using that focused power of our attention that we worked on for that time to put it towards, you know, something bigger than ourselves. But yeah, my practice has evolved a lot over time. You know, right now, my duration has struggled through the writing of the book. What served me well was about an hour every single morning, no excuses, and then thirty minutes at night. And you know, it's it's not as

consistently strong as that lately. But I'm also making room for a lot of other things that at the time. But yeah, I look forward to getting back into my you know, my groove with it because it's it's so key to who I am. Is the basic practice remain coming back to a mantra or breath for you. Is that still with the basic practice in the bulk. I know, the experience of it evolves in changes, but the basic

instruction remains the same essentially, you know. So if you look at transcendental meditation, it's all mantra based and it's very powerful for a lot of people. And the mantra gives the mind something to focus on. It gives it

like an anchor point to come back to. So some of the simple mantras I use with my students that have been very successful are this is what it feels like to be free, Just to say that over and over, this is what it feels like to be free, and you start your mind starts looking at that phrase from every possible vantage point and interpreting it until it embodies it. And it just to focus on the gaps between those words, gaps between the letters. Just the repetition of that is powerful.

Or the other one is I am the sky watching all weather move through me. That's literally li I meta meditation, because we're not the storm of our thoughts and the clouds of our emotions. We are that sky watching the weather move through us. And just that reminder that we have this awareness, I think is powerful in repetition. So you're not then necessarily a believer in the specialness of the sound of certain mantras, because in in certain Eastern traditions,

transcendental meditation puts a big emphasis on this. You know, you get this very secret, very special mantra. It's beautiful. Yeah, and there's something about the vibrational quality of it. Those are beautiful mantras, but they're not that sort of one or two syllable Yeah. So this is my equivalent of being their meditation teacher in America. One for for busy leaders, I am the dad holding the two wheeler bike seat.

You know, I don't encourage guided meditation. I've produced guided meditation with this intent to let go of that bike seat, and I start them off with those simple mantras. But in my own tradition with Yogan and is work, Oh man, it's all about residence. It's it's about chanting home for hours. It's about we'll do a Christmas meditation for eight hours

and we're chanting home. A good portion of that. We're doing a lot of chance and curtains because that resonance of music is just so powerful to open the consciousness. So yeah, I'm a huge proponent of that, and it's been interesting. The four permissions have started to evolve into mantras and into chance, and I'm happy to chant one

for you so you could hear it. But when I'm starting people out, I want them to have the most accessible entry point into it, and it's usually just everyday language. This is what it feels like to be free. I am the sky watching all weather move through me. And the reason why that later one works is because I

think it gives them that higher advantage points their meta attention. Ye. Just that analogy in general of the sky and the weather is is such a powerful reminder reminder of what's happening and what consciousness can be like or actually is like, and we can recognize. Yeah, So let's move on to permission to Permission to is my final frontier and my own personal growth. It's the one I butt up against all the time with my own coach and in my own inner work. It's permission to feel all the fields.

So on one side, it could be looked at is just increasing your emotional intelligence, your ability to read others and to share authentically where you are in any given moment. That takes a lot of honesty and and a lot of ability to see what we're feeling. And also on the other side of that, it's deepening our intuition and using that as data to navigate, and I think it's

incredibly powerful. So it's it's symbolized in the book by the unicorn, and I had a lot of fun with this because I tried to write a lot of nineteen eighties pop culture references into it. But the reason I chose the unicorn is because the horn of the unicorn comes out of what we call in Hinduism or in Yoga the kutasta titania, the seat of consciousness, the seat of concentration, also called the third eye or that point

between the eyebrows. But when we're able to focus there, we're able to tune into this portal of divinity in yoga that this is where you know, spirit speaks to us. And I think that that arrives from most of us, first as our feelings and our emotions, and later as our intuition, and then later, if we're really clear and we could really hear what's going on, maybe it's the silent speaking voice of God. What part of permission to

feel all the fields is hard for you. I'm gonna I'm gonna frame that up with a personal reflection, right, Yeah, what's hard for me with feel all the fields is to feel anything. Yeah, I'm pretty good if a strong emotion arises in me. I am pretty good with a lot of years of practice and training and allowing it and going into it. Yeah. For me, it's more I think years of deadening myself left a more often than not,

a flatness. Yeah, you know. So, I'm curious for you, is your challenge with permission to feel all the fields more one of the strong emotion and just sweep you away and you try and damn them down? Or is it more of what I'm describing. Well, first of all, I think that what you have serves you well on your spiritual path. We could redeploy those at at the any point that was a shortcoming of sorts to be you know, muted on that level. It serves us in

other ways when we're pursuing equanimity, you know. Yeah, it's that what I said earlier. I'm familiar with the near enemy of equanimity, right, because I'm naturally equanimious. I don't I don't think I pronounce that a plommonious. I don't know. Yeah, I am naturally that way, but it's you know, taken too far, it ends up in indifference or sort of flatness. Yeah, my challenge with it is embracing my full, messy humanity, you know, and so being um, you know, a white

privileged male and modern America. We're not likely to cry around our children. We're not likely to share when we're scared shitless by certain life circumstances. And the more that I've leaned into that in my entrepreneurial journey here the last five six years, the more magic opens up, the more willing I am to embrace my humanity and share it. The more it invites others in to step forward and help. It attracts the right allies, coaches, teachers, and my team

to support me. So yeah, that's been my biggest challenge is just like most modern males, is just being honest

about what is coming up. Again, like most males, I think I'm pretty attuned to my anger and rage and when it's boiling and brimming over and when I'm about to blow my stack like his Yosemite Sam and start firing my little emotional pistols in the air, and that awareness has been deepened over the last few years through this work around permission to and noticing it, like the work of Tick not Han, his incredible book on anger,

Cooling the Flames. I believe it's called just that ability to notice it before you're at the boiling point is powerful because then you're able to redirect it, let it inform you, versus just create a lot of destruction all around you. Let's talk about that a little bit more. What is your process for allowing yourself to feel the anger and to work with it skillfully without venting it and causing destruction. What's your internal process of working with

anger look like? Yeah, so I'll give you a common scenario for I think most parents. There's a witching hour for parents that happens between like five and six pm. It's when you're standing at the sink washing the dishes maybe from the day before, the night before. You've got to get food on the table. The dog is at your ankles, the kids are acting up because they're starving, and you're just about to blow because you have work bouncing around your head. You're not quite in the family

game yet. It's a transition point. It's an important transition point that decides whether you're going to have a great evening with your family or create some irrevocable damage from your anger. At least that's how it shows up for me. I don't something that's going to make your child listen to the one you feed podcast in twenty years exactly. You know, it'll just increase those later therapy bills. It's

a real inflection point. So as I'm washing dishes, I'm trying to get really mindful of the warmth of the water on my hands. You know where my emotional game is in that moment. How hungry, angry, lonely tired am I in that moment, and noticing the feeling becomes just this real anchor point, Like what am I going to take with me into preparing the food? What am I going to take with me into sitting with my family? I work all day to get back to the table.

You eate dinner with my family. You know that's something we do to touch stone with one another every single night. We don't miss dinner. I don't want to ruin it, as can happen when I'm full of anger or full of just distracting thoughts. So you know, I make it that time at that sink to really get clear of what I'm bringing in, and then I'll use my words when I sit down. Like last night, it was a

very agitated type of day. I sat down and said, Hey, I just wanted to let you know I'm coming in a little hot tonight, you know, so just be easy with me, be patient with me, and cop to it. And I think that that's forming a different type of bond with my kids than I would have maybe even a few years ago. Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom and all of it, but that very last part of sharing what we're feeling, you know, with partners or with kids with kids, I really see what you're saying about

your showing your children. You have emotions. They are difficult to work with and there are ways of being skillful about it. So you're you're modeling skillful emotional regulation. Well, I mean the generation ahead of us was great at modeling blowing the stack, you know, the mantram I jokingly call it like the clear the tables. And I'm just gonna be piste off for a while. And and don't get me wrong, that could come up for me in

different ways. But what What I think is important to underline about what you just shared is that it's a part of non violent communication to identify the feeling and attach it to a need. We have a need inside us in that moment that's being unmet. That's why that emotion is there. And if we could cop or even identify what that need is and share it with others, a powerful opportunity opens up where you know, even your son saying, oh, Daddy, why are you so sad or

what's making so angry? I didn't have those conversations with my parents. Me neither, And I think my son is a little older than your kids. I often wish, you know, i'd had him a little bit later. Yeah, I did more of that stuff at the tail end, and I do it now. It's not like the game is over. But he's twenty three, so it's a very different environment. Yeah, I gotta share something I think is important for both of us is that my friend Eric Klein, who's a

great Buddhist teacher. He has a great company called Wisdom Heart, written written a bunch of books, but he's raised two amazing sons. They're in their mid twenties. They're both yoga teachers. These kids both glow, they're both amazing boys. And I said, how did you do this? How did you not screw them up? You know? And he said, the good news is your kids tune into the long arc of your transformation, the long vibe of what you put out over time.

So if you're if you're somebody like yourself committed to constantly improving and gaining wisdom, that's who they become. They don't remember these moments of terrible fathering or whatever. Thank God, Let's try and hit the other two permissions quickly, and then maybe in the post show conversation we'll talk about the seven compassionate laws of personal change. That sounds good

to you, Yeah, it's perfect alright. Permission three. Permission three the reason why most of us get into the personal development game or hire a coach. Permission to glow in the dark, to self actualize with witnesses, to get paid for who we are in the world. In writing the chapter, I realized it's just as much, if not more, about the darkness befriending the darkness and the ever present fear

that travels with us every where. That audacity muscle we built to throw the damn switch anyway and to glow in that darkness because of it. I always feel it in my body every time I talk about it, because it's a beautiful thing to witness as a coach of others. Yeah, so it's less about the self actualization unapologetically and more about dancing with that fear to get to the self actualization. Yeah,

it strikes me. It's so interesting that you know, you talk about one of the things that you did that you work on consciously, and this is back to the previous permission, is you know, sharing the fears that you have on your entrepreneurial journey. Oh man, Yeah, what could be more terrifying than having a family of five in tow and doing this freaking entrepreneur thing. It's like, but that's my story. It's not for some people, but yeah

that's my fear. Yeah. Yeah, that's part of the going in the dark piece, right, is recognizing that darkness that's around, because you definitely are a glower, you know, like you have that energy of like you know, boom here I am. Yeah. I call it the I say we do it you guys, Like, that's who I brought to Camp Good Life Project for five years. If I put on a towel cape around my neck and I say, I say we do it.

You guys, let's go jump in the lake. Four people will follow me into the lake because that level of whatever glow or enrollment isn't you know, it gives other people permission to follow suit. But what I realize is that thing is connected to moving past that fear because I was always scared shitless to go out on stage and be unapologetically myself where unicorn yoga pants or be ridiculous in front of a large group of people. But the reward was always that being seen at a different

type of level, that bravery piece. And you know, I say it in a lot of different ways in the book, but bravery is not the absence of fear. It's the muscle we build by doing the damn thing anyway, even though we're terrified. And uh, I think that's just another way to go. So you do get afraid by doing that sort of thing. Oh man, I live in a perpetual state of being mortified. Eric, My kids will verify this.

And I've gotten good at doing the damn thing anyway through practice, through being in bands, being a performer or whatever, stepping out into rooms feeling completely unprepared. That's a great venue to unleash your light. Absolutely, yeah, Okay, permission four. We were glowing in the dark in Permission three and Permission four, we're glowing in the light. Yeah. One of my shiroes, Annie de Franco, who I grew up idolizing, just a huge influence, you know, as a crafts person

around lyrics and activism and everything else feminism. She asked me why, She's like, what if glowing in the dark is not enough, what does glowing in the light look like, you know, unapologetic glowing, you know, no fear around. Just what what could that look like? And I had to go to kind of a higher place in my meditations during writing this part of the book, because I had to really try to perceive like a truly unlimited vibration

of what that could be. And I did my best, and what I came to is that this would be like armies of lighthouses, unapologetically glowing, the people that have done the earlier work of chilling, feeling, glowing in their own darkness and then choose to stand together in one another's light, unprovoked, un triggered by competition, or that person's that color or they're that sexual orientation, just being fully

willing to glow in the light of others. And I truly believe that that's what our creator is asking of us right now, with climate change, with pandemics, with political division, is to transcend that competition to collaborate and to uplift one another. And so that that's where I got on that fourth permission so far. But but it's always kind of developing that perception of what that could look like.

What what do you think it could look like? I mean, I think you say it very well, and you say to be with our full power while standing in the full power of others. Right. I think we talked a little bit about this before the conversation in a completely different thread, but it was the ability to sort of stand on an equal level with people makes me think about something we used to say in a a slightly different but we would say, humility is not thinking less

of yourself or thinking more of yourself. You know, it's just sort of an accurate assessment. And I think that you know that glowing in the light is I'm glowing, You're glowing, And I don't feel like you said I don't feel a need to compete with that. We also, at the same time are helping each other. And I've become so much more convinced of the importance of community and doing this work. Yeah right, It's the thing we all crave, you know, is that connection to others and

not being threatened by others. And we're alive in this age of social media where it's such a comparison platform, so triggering. But those moments that we find where we're truly happy for our friend being married, or getting that big job, or or doing something amazing in their community, that that is true inspiration and it's what we need because I don't see the big media ever covering that truly. You know, they're not in the game of talking about

collaboration versus, you know, fostering outrage and division. They're going to focus on what's wrong. Um. It reminds me of a Buddhist concept called moodita, which means sympathetic joy, and the idea is you take joy in other people's good fortune. You know, you're probably familiar with meta meditation, where you sort of sit there and you wish well to others, right, but moodita meditation, as you actually sort of visualize someone

else getting everything they want. It's beautiful. The Dalai Lama said something like, you know, Moodita just makes sense because there's what seven billion people in the world, so that's seven billion opportunities for joy. You have one opportunity for joy. So if you're only focused on your ability to feel joy, that's pretty limited field of it, right, This is an unlimited field, and I think that's a vision that for me that aligns with sort of glowing in the light.

That's so beautiful. Thanks for sharing that moodtail Moodita. Yeah, sympathetic joy. I finally found my tattoo. Eric. It's taking me forty five years, but I'm not that's awesome. Well, you and I are going to continue in the post show conversation and we're going to talk about the seven

compassion Laws of Personal Change. I think these are awesome and listeners, if you'd like to get access to that, as well as a host of other membership benefits and the joy of supporting something you care about, go to one you feed dot net slash joint. Christopher, Thanks so much, it is such a pleasure to reconnect. Congratulations on a really wonderful book. Um will have links to it in the show notes and all that and how people can find your website and all your work. So thank you,

Thanks so much, Eric, It's been a pleasure. I loved our conversation. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We are so grateful for the members of our community.

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