Taylor Jacobson on Tools to Find Focus and Accountability

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 direct, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Taylor Jacobson, the CEO and founder of focus Mate, a virtual coworking community with a mission to help everyone do their best work. Thousands of people in a hundred and ninety three countries worldwide sit side by side via video to keep each other company, cheer each other on,

and hold one another accountable. Tyler is a passionate voice on creating soulful work and workplaces and has been featured in The New Yorker, CNN, The Guardian, NPR, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Business Week, and I'll just add to that the One You Feed Podcast. Hi Taylor, Welcome to the show. Great to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on. We're going to to be talking about a variety of things today. We'll be talking about your company that you've

built called Focus Mate. We're gonna be talking about spirituality, we're gonna be talking about focusing routines, all kinds of different stuff. But before we get into all that, let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are 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 stops and thinks about it for a second. And looks up, but it's grandparents says, 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. Well. I just got chills in my body listening to tell that, even though I know it obviously thought about it. What it means to me, you know, is like good and evil are not these abstractions. They are our experience of ourselves in every moment. And I think evil is just the expression of fear. And we all have fear, you know, it's it's human nature. And then on the other side of fear, you know what is there. There's different words for it, but you

could say that's love or kindness or truth. I'm a fan of that is kind of the opposite of fear or the opposite of ego. So I think it's just it is a moment to moment discernment and effort for each of us to feel the kind of um reflexive or autonomous nature of our fears and the patterns that those have cultivated in us, and to just resist them, one tiny little choice at a time, and to find that what's on the other side of that, is this

an intrinsic goodness that wants to be expressed. I love that, and I'm gonna put a pin in coming back to truth because I think it's a big word for you and I want to make sure we get to it. But let's start by talking about focus Mate, the company that you've built. And I don't want to spend a ton of time here, but I'd like to know a little bit. First, maybe you could describe for people what you do and then secondly why you built it. Yeah, thanks for asking. So yeah, just really tangibly, what is

focused Mate? Let's start with what problem we solve. You know, a lot of us are, let say, distracted or have a hard time taking action on the things that we most want to be an action on, very universal experience. So I started focus Mate to help really myself first, but to help other people to be an action on

the things that matter to them. And I can talk about how that's evolved, but yeah, simply put, we create um the opportunity for you to meet up with one person, one partner, or a group of people to keep each other company and hold each other accountable while you take action on whatever it is that you want to be

an action on. And so after this, I could set up a focus Mate session because I want to write a blog post and I could get matched up with you and you want to edit a podcast episode, And so we share our commitments to what we want to work on, and we might write those down actually and post them in the chat interface, and then we hang out there on video while we work quietly together. And um, it's really an experience of not just accountability, but also camaraderie,

you know. And I'll say structure to like, it really helps us to have some kind of definitive start point and also endpoint for things. And so it's kind of this very light touch in all those ways. And I think people are surprised by how much those things can impact you. But it's enough to have a very transformational and often life changing impact on just your ability to

do the things you want to do. Yeah. I first heard of your organization through a coaching client of mine and had used it as a way of kind of, like you said, procrastinating known things. He could show up book of focus Mate session and log in and you know, have somebody there. Now. The first thing that a lot of people when they hear that think is like, I'm just gonna meet a complete stranger that I don't know and feel anxious about that. Talk about why and how

people get past that. Yeah, So that's totally the right question, in fact, because so much of the power of focus Mate is actually in the experience of feeling safe and being with other people. It's a facet of how our

nervous system works. Actually that we can't really reach optimal sense of embodied safety alone or if we're too isolated too often, and so one of the reflexive responses that our nervous system has to being around somebody that is not presenting a danger that feels safe to us is it actually helps to calm us down, help us feel grounded, and to help us focus. And it has an impact on even blood flow to the brain and you know,

so a direct impact on our ability to focus. So all that is to say, feeling safe is really critical, and so having those thoughts go through your mind, you know, and to be evaluating am I going to feel safe with this other person? And even the word stranger I think connotes danger. I think that's kind of what we mean when we say strangers like, I don't know if this person is safe, and so focus Mate we just put a tremendous emphasis on our culture and on creating safety.

So the culture of focused Mate is really the opposite of kind of hustle culture or grind culture, which might seem counterintuitive for a quote unquote productivity company. But I believe in my experiences that when we're in that headspace, we don't think is clearly and the ways we work, even the things we work on are not as true of expressions of ourselves, and our work isn't as creative,

so on and so forth. So there is a bit of a leap of faith when you try anything new, and I would say almost universally, what people find is it's like this really magical soft landing of safety and warmth and acceptance, and it's a declaration of vulnerability to join focus Mate, to say, you know what, I'd rather admit that I might be better off getting somebody else's help than continue to struggle, because it's more important to me to follow through on this thing, to be who

I really want to be, than it is to try to muscle through or or tell myself the story that I can do it on my own and and we really strongly reaffirm that in every touch point of your experience so that when you experience other members of the focus make community. It really is a lot of encouragements, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of like, wherever you're at, wherever you're starting point is is okay, you know. And we're also working on ways to give you preferences over

who you get to work with as well. So you know, one of the examples as gender based matching. You know, some people just would feel safer working with somebody of their own gender, for example, and if that's you, that's fine. And so when someone logs on, it's not like you're spending this time chatting with another person. There's a little

brief introduction and then it's kind of a work right. Yes, we say about sixty seconds you're saying hi or being friendly, but it's really you know, smile and then asked the other person, hey, what are you up to? What are you working on this hour? And then you get to work within sixty seconds. And then at the end it's similar, you know, chime goes off and you're just checking in how to go eric, you know, okay, I got distracted for a minute or so, but I got back to it,

and I'm really psyched about my progress. How to go for you? And so it's it's very um focused. What led you to create this product? It really came out of my own huge struggles, you know, I'm gonna say it, with being who I knew I could be or being who I wanted to be, and my whole life, I've

always been interested in, let's say, personal development. But about ten years ago, I almost got fired from a job and I chose to leave that job instead of getting fired basically, and it was just very demoralizing, and it was really a result of me not I was working from home and I just couldn't. I couldn't hack it with that kind of isolation, lack of accountability, I just couldn't do it. And leaving a job like that was

very demoralizing and also humiliating for me. And so it just kind of cast me into this dark place and I got a lot more serious about how do I get unstuck? You know, what do I need in order to bootstrap myself to a better place of being somebody I want to be? And so I just by and by got more and more passionate about all the things I was learning and sort of realizing I could use all this struggle to help other people. And and it was years later that I really stumbled on this technique.

But when I did, it was just so life changing for me that it clicked really quickly that there was an opportunity to help other people. Yeah, I mean, right off the top of my head, I see several core behavior change principles embedded right in focus mate, Right, like know when you're going to do something, Okay, you commit to a session that tells me I'm doing it at this time, know what I'm going to work on, you know, knowing what I'm going to do. I talked about it

with coaching clients. Is just basically like we want to be specific, like what, when, how, where? Any bit of ambiguity in those things is terrible for procrastinators, right, they can become roadblocks. And so with focus mate, immediately I know when I know where I'm gonna be in front of my computer, I know I've decided what I'm going to do in that period because I'm going to articulate it to someone else. Uh. The other big principle there is that we just tend to. It's just a facet

of human nature. Were often more accountable to others. You know, knowing that somebody is going to be sitting there without a partner if I don't show up, you know, enables me to try and take it to the session. Although maybe they wouldn't be without a partner because you'd rematch them. But the point being, I've got an accountability there, and I think you guys keep track of accountability also, right, And if you make sessions and you don't show up,

there is some penalty for that over time. Right, Maybe penalty is not the word you would use. Yeah, I mean we're really like a carrot not a stick kind of culture. That is one way to put it. Well, basically, just say hey, it looks like something came up. That's okay, we're not judging it, but we just if you have another session after that, we'll kind of freeze your account so that the next person has a partner and sort of say hey, just kind of wave your hand and

say hey, I'm back, I'm okay. Uh, let's reactivate your account and you know, and we trust you, And that seems to work better than the stick approach. You got it. That makes sense. So let's move on from the product and let's talk about focus. So you know, the goal of focus mate, and the problem you were solving was an inability to I would say it would be maybe an inability to get started and then actually focus. You know that you're sort of solving two things there, but

get started. Focus mate a clunky name. Talk a little bit to me about how you think about a getting started on a task, you know, for people who procrastinate. Let's start there and then we'll move to focus after that. How I think about getting started on a task? Yeah, Like, if somebody's a procrastinator, obviously focus mate is sort of your best answer for you know, how to work through that.

But do you have any other suggestions or ideas? Yeah, well, just taking a step back, Like I think that procrastination is an expression of feeling unsafe, and I'll explain that a little bit more. But like we are so perpetually stressed out and from a nervous system standpoint in fight or flight, you know, when we're distracting ourselves. It's kind of this expression of that constant low level agitation or

anxiety or whatever you want to call it. But stress, And we might think of fight flight as like I stepped into traffic and I like got a huge rush of adrenaline, But actually a more common experience of fight flight is much more subtle. It's just stress basically, or it's rumination or you know, like waking up early with thoughts about work or something, whatever it is. And when our body is in that state, we can't focus because our body is basically preparing to either fight or run.

It's optimizing for one of those functions. So there's a lot of agitation, there's a lot of energy to act, but it's not focus, it's not calm, right, So we're really bad at slowing down and being like, Okay, what do I really want to do with my time, and then doing that thing because the blood flow is not even in your brain, you know, it's just it's just moving you, and it's kind of grabbing for things that

can help to really numb that unwanted feeling. But what we really need is to slow down and feel grounded, and from that embodied safe place, what naturally is going to arise is a more authentic desire than Netflix or snacking or whatever myriad things we do. From from a procrastinating place, So that sort of indirectly speaks to what I'm talking about. But with getting started, I do think that addressing that experience in our bodies can be really important.

So when why is a morning routine such a popular thing. It's because when we say morning routine, we're not doing things that stressed us out. We're basically mourning. Routine is doing things that ground us, and even things like just brushing our teeth, are drinking a glass of water. It's having a slowed down experience of ourselves that that actually signals to our body, I'm safe. And so from that place we're able more easily to get started and something

like focus Mate. You might still feel a little bit of that agitated energy when you show up, but the commitment, as you said, like the accountability to show up. You've got a scheduled time that might be enough to get you over the hump as well. Right, and then once you're butts in the chair, you're already slowing down. Now there's a person there, they're helping you feel grounded to reflecting on what you want to do. So it's sort

of easing you into a into a safer space. But it doesn't have to be focused mate, you know, it's it's really how do we ground ourselves, how do we slow down, how do we set the intention? And so it's starting to feel slower and safer in our bodies, and and then how do we just get ourselves over the starting line to start that thing as well? And so you've got a line that I heard recently, it was design a life that demands what you want to give.

Say a little bit more about that. Yeah, you know, that's something we say internally on our team at Focus Mate. And the way that we think about ourselves as a company and our mission is it's actually not really about focus it's about being who you really want to be, or being who you truly are, and that starts with our team. You know, we think about serving ourselves on

our team before we think about serving our customers. And like how we interact with each other on our team is it's kind of the energy that we're putting out to our community. And so we have this mantra internally of that's what we're helping each other do, is to design a life that demands what you want to give. That's kind of one way of thinking about this and so we don't have a lot of hard and fast

rules about how we work. That focus mate. The starting point, you know, even in interviewing somebody is really let's let's really learn about you and what works for you, and we'll share about us as well and see if there's some real alignment there and see if this is a good environment to support you in designing the life that

you want to live. And are the things that we need, the roles, the skills that we need in our team, Are those things that you really want to give And it could be tactical stuff too, you know, the times of day that you want to be working. Do you want to be on a lot of calls or is that really not good for your energy and you'd like to you know, just kind of be a synchronous and whatever.

So that's where it comes from, you know. And actually I'll just share briefly like I'm in a very active like reinvention of my own role at the company, and it's really been enabled by the strength of that conviction

and commitment by the entire team. Where I was very scared, honestly to relinquish some of the responsibilities that I had, but I could also feel that I just no longer had the energy to keep like muscling through some of the things that I had been doing since we started the company, and the team and especially our head of operations, who has really taken a lot of this stuff off my plate, was just really adamant, like, we got you,

we got this, let's reinvent this. Let's design a life that demands what you want to give, and we all have faith that when we do that, and when I do that, it will serve the company as well. Yeah, I think what's interesting about that line is two things. One is my experience is no matter what you design to get a life you demand, there are still things that you don't really want to do. You know, there's

just some measure of that. You know that, at least the stage that our organization is right, there's just things I do that need to be done, and I don't love doing them. I outsource as much as that as possible, but as you know, you know, early on in the company's state, you don't have money to do all that. But I think the other thing that's really interesting about that is that it changes, you know, we design a life that demands what we want to give, and then

what we want to give. At least my experience is it can morph over time, and that maybe was your experience with focus Mate was early on you were giving what you wanted to give and then it transformed and you had to, as you say, kind of be willing to try and reinvent. And that word reinvent always sounds lovely, but it's rarely a lovely process. Yeah, that's just important observation, like or transformation. Like God, I would never wish transformation

on my worst enemy. It's like pain, you know, but yeah, I mean often the way we come to it is like burnout or something like this, where you get in a groove and hopefully it starts out being you know, you're doing something that's authentic, and then you just keep going and you make to start feeling some dissonance and you know, the like the thing starts to rattle a little bit, and maybe you start to get migrains or like chronic pain or like other signals that your body

is like, no, this isn't working for me anymore, for us anymore. Yeah, unfortunately, because of Categorically, I guess we'll say fear, like, oh my god, if I stopped doing this thing, it's not going to get done. The company is going to fall apart. You know. For me, it was real like if I tell my colleagues what's going on for me and that I need rest, everyone's gonna stop working If I need rest, our culture is suddenly be going to become lazy. And I'll come back to

that in a sect. We have all these stories that keep us from just noticing, like the moment that thing changes, it's like, whoa, I feel some strong resistance to doing this, and like can I make a shift? But instead we just kind of plowed through, and then we have burnout or other you know, injuries or other things that really force us to a halt and and kind of force the reinvention on us. But the stories are rarely true, you know. So like in this case, the whole team

was like really rallied around. They were like, oh my goodness, like you've worked so hard and let us take these things off your plate and find out, you know, what's on the other side of this reinvention. For you, you're in the startup world, which means you are trying to please a variety of people, right, I guess that's that's

not just a startup world right. Companies in general are trying to please their investors slash shareholders, they're trying to please their customer, They're trying to please their internal team. You know, it sounds like your internal team was behind you sort of saying all right, I'm going to slow down and get some rest. Did you find any pushback from any of your other constituents or stakeholders around that, because startup culture is very much grind, hustle, macho like.

You know, I can work more hours than you can work.

Did you find any or have any issues there? And you're welcome to say if your investor situations are once you don't want to talk about, I get it, so you're welcome to say past no. You know, for me being able and willing to have one truth for all audiences is it's really like I think the ultimate aspiration in some ways, I think for like a human being is to feel that peace that comes with being true in always with all people, there's nothing to hide, So

that's an aspiration. But um, I haven't experienced any of that pushback or tension, and I think it's because it's always been a core aspect of our ethos and even Our mission is really about paradigm shift, like creating a company in a different way and doing it at scale to really model that it's possible that you that hustle and grind isn't necessary, and to show to find out experiment with what happens when you do things this other way.

And you know, I imagine that scares our investors sometimes, just like it scares me sometimes. But it's just like, what are we here for? What is my life for? It's not to make a lot of money, and so yeah, the persons, I really hope not for me. It's like the point is to you know, find out as much as you can experience as much as you can of your your soul, your true nature, to really, you know,

experience that deeply. And so, yeah, how can our work and how can this company specifically for me, be kind

of the vessel to further that experiment. And so it's very authentic for me to say to an investor, Yeah, we want to make this as big as possible, and we really believe we can reach you know, tens hundred million people or more, and so this can be a great place to put some money to work, but we're going to do it our way, you know, And I also think we're at a moment in time where that's you know, the kind of gessault is is shifting the

collective consciousness. You know, we're all like the great resignation happening now, We're all feeling that inner pull for something different. And so I think that's also attractive to our customers and to our community. And you know, when we have an outage or something like this. You know, we had a seven hour outage a few months back, and we were very vulnerable about it and very apologetic about it. We did everything we could to provide alternate resources to

people who needed them. But people are also very understanding and we're kind of just like, you know, you got this. It's okay, because we're so actively creating that narrative, you know, in all facets of what we do. Let's go back to focus for a second, and let's go back to you said somewhere our ability to focus as a function of our nervous system state period, and you you hit

that a little bit. I'd like to dive in a little bit deeper there, and I'm gonna start by saying, I sometimes feel like we have hit a point where we need a different way of describing nervous system function then fight flight freeze. I heard recently flop, which crack

cracks me up. I sometimes feel like those terms point towards and you said it, it it doesn't have to be extreme, but they point towards an extreme, you know, they point towards a very heightened type of reaction, Whereas I think what's happening with a lot of us is what's happening nervous system wise is mild but chronic. I guess, first your thoughts on that, Oh, yeah, it's pretty interesting to

unpack a little bit. Actually, I'm thinking about it as you say it, Like I do think there's absolutely a need for a lexicon that resonates with people that like feels relevant to my life right because what I would love to see happen is for what we're talking about here and what we'll talk about more in a second, to become common knowledge, you know, for parents and teachers and just one workers, like to understand how your body works and how your nervous system works and what's really happening.

And this extent is far beyond focus. I mean, the implications for relationships are profound. So yeah, fight flight, it's like, yeah, no, I'm not like, I'm not about to have a fist fight with my colleague, and so you might just reject this is somehow irrelevant. On the other hand, I believe that part of why we are so stressed is that we repress the extent of the experience that we're having as one of fight or flee, and so we're trying

to here's the fun example. If you're experiencing fight flight, meditation might help you because you're slowing down your breath, You're sending signals to your body basically that I'm safe, right, But you might actually have enough pent up fight flight energy that you really need to get it out in a more aggressive way. And I'm a little bit reticent even use this language, but it's the truth is that when we're angry, it's a kind of murderous experience. You know.

The fight impulse is violent, and it's so taboo in our culture to name that, let alone to allow ourselves

to fully experience it. And I don't mean acted out of course at all, but to just experience the level of agitation, Like the directionality of that fight flight energy in us is immense, and I think why society we have so much angst is that we're collectively so repressed and we don't have the tools and also don't have the kind of shared understanding of what it actually means to release that fight flight energy in a healthy way.

Like some thing that I will often do is I'll do like primal screaming, you know, And sometimes I'll do it in a pillow if I'm in a place where that's necessary. But there's also a few things that are more liberating for me than like going up on a hilltop and just like you know, screaming and in a very literal way, that's vibrating your body and it's unblocking this stuck energy that's in your body. You know. If you're not releasing that, you're literally just holding tension in

your body, you know. And that's what we're walking around with when we feel stressed, when we feel anxiety, when we are procrastinating, whatever it might be. So I'm with you in terms of how do we make this common knowledge through through more accessible lexicon. And on the other hand, part of that is we can't nice it up and say we're just gonna do all these sweet, gentle practices. There's actually a need to fully embrace and and feel our anger so that we're not projecting it in all

these sideways ways. And you know, you can imagine like the term snide remarkus coming up, or s arcasm or some of these really low key things that most of us are doing constantly. It's just like these little pressure valve releases of anger. But it's not actually a release. It's a manifestation of this pent up, unexpressed, unfelt fight flight energy. And we don't want to be walking around, you know, getting pissed at every driver on the road and all these that's a really unpleasant way to live.

So you know, the antidote to that is like learning how to really fully feel and release the depth of those emotions. Yeah, as you're talking about that, it brings me right to I feel like one of the fundamental questions we wrestle with here at the one you feed, because it's a fundamental question I wrestle with, which is what do we do with negative emotion? What do we do with it? Do we experience it, do we feel it? Do we just really go into it and let it be?

Do we work to try and soothe it? Do we try and put it in perspective. I'll give you an example. The other day, I had a busy day, lots of calls, calls, calls, calls, and I've been having trouble with a prescription for like four days. The poor pharmacy is overworked. They don't have enough people. It's just been very difficult. So I had like fifteen to twenty minutes, and I was like, all right, it's a three minute drive. I'm gonna go to the pharmacy.

I'm gonna get there, I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna leave right And so I'm sitting there and I'm waiting in line, and it was supposed to be ready like four hours earlier. I finally wait in this whole line now the whole time, you know, talk about the sort of fight or flight. I'm like, oh god, I've got

a coaching call. I got a client in seven minutes, you know, And and I'm not freaking out, but you know, I'm feeling that energy bill did I get up there and the guy's like, yeah, we'll get that ready for you right now. They had not gotten it ready, even though I talked to somebody a few hours earlier. Then I just had to go, Well, I can't stay. I gotta go, and I wasn't going to be able to

get back there for another day because of my schedule. Anyway, long story short, I was leaving and I was feeling very angry, you know, anger out of proportion to the situation. Right. So there's a couple of ways to go there, Right. One way to go is to go and get in my car and bang on the steering wheel and scream for a while and let out a you know, a bunch of curse words and just vomit that energy out. That's one approach. Another approach, and it's the one that

I chose to go with this time. But I don't always was. I I really went, hang on a second, like, get this in perspective, Like you are an incredibly like privileged, lucky person, and if this is the worst thing that's happening in your life, you need to take it down a notch and recognize, like, hey, there's nothing to be that upset about here. But that points to two directions,

and sometimes they're compatible. Sometimes there's a way to do both those things, actually, but I think it does point to particularly as we look at spiritual literature, right, and we look at spiritual traditions, both those ways and psychological traditions. Both of the as ways are stressed at different times by different people. And I'm just kind of curious how you think about that. And that was a long set up for that question, but hopefully it's helpful. Such an

awesome illustration. Yeah, and I love the contrast between those two approaches. So yeah, I'm really glad you shared that. Yes, you know, it's an ongoing experiment for me, and I've I've learned a lot, as you've alluded to, from like different viewpoints in different traditions. So, like I read a book by David Hawkins called Letting Go that is profound, and you know, his view is basically, all emotion is projection.

And so the experience that you had in the pharmacy was sort of the world helping to needle some anger that is repressed within you, right, And you talked about the disproportionate magnitude of your anger. So you know, perhaps David Hawkins would say that once you've released all the old repressed anger, you might not even feel any anger

in that situation. It would just be kind of a ho hum, this is what is at other times there might be like a very small feeling in your body that you could label like the parts of your body that might heat up or feel tense or something that's anger, but it's just so momentary that it kind of just guides you back to here's my boundary, like something that

didn't work for me, you know. And then like Peter Levine, whose body of work is somatic experiencing, right, he talks about how you see dogs that uh, like a dog will just come in from taking a walk, it will come indoors and it'll just shake right. It's like we just went on this excursion, there was different stimuli happening now, and back in my nest, I feel safe. Whatever stress, whatever tension or emotion that dog is holding its body,

it just immediately releases. And that's the thing that all animals do, except humans, as they immediately release that fight flight energy or that stress, that tension. It's all emotional. I think all of these things are synonymous in some ways. So the trick thing for humans is that we have all this stored up tension. And so the technique that you chose in that moment, I would call that kind of a conscious dispersion of the anger, right, like, well,

I just don't need to be angry right now. But you also experienced the disproportionate, you know, experience of anger, which points to okay, I have repressed anger, and I would say this is universal, right, So I think the answer is really both. It's we don't have to We can choose to do the work to unearth these stuck, repressed, suppressed things in our body, and if we do that, then that situation will make you gradually less angry in

the future. Oftentimes I say to people, if you've got to choose between taking a perspective and feeling an emotion, to feel the emotion first, let it happen, let it be, allow it to be there, then move into taking a perspective on it right, then move into going, Okay, you know what, maybe it really isn't that big of a deal. You know, like, if you're unsure, that order of operations is probably best because then you're not repressing or bypassing.

To the same extent. What I think is interesting with what David Hawkins is saying, and I've seen that theory a lot of different ways in a lot of different places. What I sometimes wonder is a couple of things, is it bottomless? So I went through this at one point in my life when I was I don't know, thirty thirty years old, thirty two years old, my marriage split

up and I was separated from my son. And I certainly had a role in that happening, but my partner had left me for someone else, and I was really angry. It's interesting because that was a time that I expressed anger a lot. I took up boxing. I was so mad at her. I took up boxing and it was great, and I wrote hateful letters that I destroyed and I

allowed the anger to flow through. So I've had some experience with like and now, you know, a couple of years later, I went from wanting her to you know, burn and hell to being like, oh yeah, sure, I'll come over for Thanksgiving. That sounds nice, you know, So I do. I do agree with that. But at the same time, I started working with a therapist and we started doing inner child work. Right that phrase then and now still makes us a certain part of me inside cringe.

But the idea was, hey, look the things that happened to you as a child impact who you are today, your emotional reactions today. The way to work through that, is to go back if you can, and express the emotions that come up from that. And so I spent some time doing that, and then I hit a point where I felt like maybe I had more or less sort of gotten all there was to get out of that.

But there seemed to be from her perspect did like you just kept going, And in my perspective, I was like, it feels like I've done enough of that that there's not enough benefit. As I'm talking this through, I'm realizing that what was happening was I started to realize I didn't have the emotions anymore, so I had, in essence sort of work through them. All Right, that was a long way of answering my own question. Well, I do think you that, thanks so much for sharing that, and

like like my heart goes out to you. But also just like pulling the thread through to where you are now, and like going over Thanksgiving dinner, it's like such a amazing illustration of this. Oh yeah, it's just like it

kind of is bottomless. Like clearly you might be happy now, but the pharmacy still pisces you off, you know, So it's like there's no righteousness and like am I gonna keep working with my anger or am I gonna just say, you know what, I have really a healthy enough relationship to my anger right now that I want to focus elsewhere.

There's no like right or wrong about that. I think it's just understanding, like cool, like at that point in your life, it was getting in the way of everything that you wanted to do and who you wanted to be, and so that that was an urgent priority. And sometimes that's what life serves us up is these like unavoidable things to heal. Right, and then back to our point about transformation and invention, like, yeah, I transformed a lot

during that period. There's no doubt about that. I don't want to do it again exactly, and yeah, and then it's just like I think for me, it's have I reached a safe landing pad where I want to exert my effort elsewhere, or even things like doing yoga, you know, like if you're continuing to do I don't know if you do yoga. I do some yoga. Um, I'm very aware that the yoga I do is tapping into stuck energy,

stuck emotion in my body. So like I might be feeling really good, but at the same time, I'm like, I really want to keep feeling better and keep healing more and keep getting my deep seated we could say, inner child fears whatever healed and out of the way so I can experience more of my soul or true self or inner freedom or inner peace or whatever these things are. So speaking of yoga, right you are living

on an astroom right now. That was I'm assuming part of your getting rest from focus mate, anything you want to share about what that is, what you're doing there, what that's like for you. You know. I guess the first thing I'll say is that it wasn't just getting rest, It was really going through in my case also a breakup last year that just brought up a lot for me, you know, And really, I'll say the trauma that came up through that experience forced itself to be handled. You know.

I spent several months kind of muscling through or trying to do things the ways I knew how. But at some point I just I realized that I wanted to fully commit myself to you know, we talked about the nervous system that really became my lens, Like, what's the optimal environment to do this kind of work? And you know, nature is extremely nourishing. Living in community can really nourishing.

There's yoga classes every day here, there's healthy vegetarian meals cooked every day here, there's a shared commitment to personal growth here. There's a lot of ancient teachings that are really profound that we talk about on a daily basis here. So it was really for me, was I want to try an experiment in uh, what's the best? And I sort of joke it's like focus mate for my whole life, um as opposed to just you know, a one hour experience.

I want to see what this is like, you know, And I'll say it's It's been really a lifelong interest of mine to live in community and sort of experiment with what I feel are more intuitive, healthy ways of living that are just really hard to come by in modern society. So I guess I just I reached a tipping point within myself where I was like, screw it, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna try this, you know,

for my own sake. But it's also it certainly inspired me and provided a lot of learning in terms of, you know, stuff I want to take out into the world too. And is it the sort of situation in which you can also continue to work to some extent, or is it one of the spiritual communities that sort of asked you to withdraw from all that both? Uh yeah, yeah, yeah,

you know. Uh, It's actually been a really challenging and fun experiment in that regard, because I've been really playing with that edge of yeah, there's a way that they've sort of asked me to show up here that adheres to their way of doing things, and yet my commitment

to my own inner truth is higher than that. And so I'm really using this experience to try to thread that needle where I say, you know what, there's been moments where, you know, I skipped sat song, which is you know, like we all gather to meditate and chant and these things, and I skipped it, and I got some pushback, and immediately where my mind goes to is I'm going to get kicked out, you know. And then I kind of walk it back and I say, well, did they say anything about kicking me out? To like,

am I reacting to reality right now? Or am I just creating a fear based story that I can't live my truth and have it work here as well? And so you know, this is a thing that we all do in relationships. It's like we're so scared of abandonment or getting hurt, we run away from the dynamic rather than just saying, oh let me, let me like try to be true to myself, but in a very loving

and gentle way. And so it's helped that this is a short term residence for me with people I've never met before where I can say, all right, I'm really committed to that experiment. I'm not going to run away from this place. I want to be here, but I also want to skip thoughts on sometimes I want to you know, I have worked stuff that I that I want to do, and so how can I be very loving in communicating that rather than defiant or angry or pushing back against them. And honestly, it's shocked me in

some ways how well that's gone. Where I I will say, you know what, the really loving things to do here would be too communicate where I'm coming from and why I'm choosing this, not because I'm asking for permission to do this, but because I want this relationship to work.

Yeah yeah, And then to hear the responses back that's like, okay, cool, you know, like I never would have expected that, but so it's been it's been really eye opening for me in terms of this is healthy relating when you're there. Is it harder for you to put down work and go towards the spiritual or is it harder to put down the spiritual and go towards work or is it

just go back and forth. Well, to me, that's a false dichotomy, like because I think we have a lot of concepts about what spirituality is that we haven't directly experienced, and so I think those are just ideas. But to me, the strongest access point that I have to spirituality is this thing that I will often call my inner truth. And to me, that is spiritual because where does that come from? It's not something I analyzed. It's not not rational,

it's intuitive, but like what is intuition? Where does that come from? I don't know. But to me, there's a certain like what I would call divinity or kind of like inexplicable higher power that's at work in all of us. That is that voice, your inner compass, you know, whatever it is. And so to me, kind of the ultimate spiritual practice is I'm going to trust that inner GPS, I'm going to listen to that inner truth right now.

And you know, in spiritual communities people use the word ego a lot, which I think ego is just it's the collection of all of our fears and under one umbrella called ego. So when we choose our truth, the only reason it's hard is because we're scared to do it.

There's a fear that it's coming up against right So for me choosing to skip thoughts song, because what's authentic for me as I want to actually go take a hike up to the top of this hill and do you know whatever, that's the truth that's coming up for me right now. And in order to choose that truth, I have to face this fear that people are going

to be pissed that I skipped thoughts on. I'm gonna get kicked out, I'm gonna get scolded whatever, I'm not gonna have a home, like all these all these fears come up, And so how do you conquer your ego? Let's say to me, the answer is you just choose

your truth. Because in the process of choosing your truth over and over again, you're gonna experience fear and maybe you'll heal a little bit of it, your appeal, a little bit of it back, and you'll see that it's actually the thing that I was scared of isn't so scary after all. And in the process, Yeah, I think you get closer to ultimate truth. And to me, that

is spirit, that's God. To me, the words aren't so important. Boy, there's a lot in there that we're only going to get to a little bit of before we need to probably go into post show conversation. I'm trying to pick which part of that I want to grab. Let's start with this one. You talk about intuition, your inner gps, that inner knowing. Do you believe that there's inner characteristics that are true in you that are different than me

at the most basic level. Yeah, there's a notion I've heard at times of the idea of the healthy ego, which is it's sort of your individuality, your uniqueness, right. And so one way that I think about this is like all of the experiences that we've had, and especially the trauma that we've had, deeply inform the gifts that we can give to the world, and when we are living from the fear, we are not giving those gifts were basically just trying to protect ourselves. That's one of

our full time job unconsciously. But as we heal those things and we tap into those gifts, now we're tapping into what I would call, you know, your soul or your truth. And I think that true nature is intrinsically loving. Like that's just kind of what comes when you're not scared, is we just find that we want to love and

serve and give. And but the way that we do that sometimes it's like has the same shape, the same outline as our trauma, same outline as our fierce So like let's say it's you know, the shape of your handprint. It might start out being all fear, and it's an expression of fear, but as you heal those things, it's like now the light is coming through, but the light

is coming through in the same shape. Because your unique gift is a function of your history with addiction, or that traumatic breakup of your marriage, or or these other things that have helped you become who you are. I think of that the same way as like, you know, a fish and a dog are not the same thing. They're occupying what Bill Plotkin calls their unique eco niche. They don't have the same problems that we have in

doing that. But um, yeah, it's like when we're really being true to ourselves, were occupying our kind of correct role within the oneness of all things. It's a nice way to say it. And I would say, you know, our traumas and our fears maybe one of the major shaping forces of that role. But I certainly think everything that happens to us shapes us. And I think obviously

we're clearly shaped by some genetic capability. There is a unique creation here that is eric, and it is informed by everything that has ever happened to me, good and bad. It's informed by the genes that I got, It's informed by all those things. And then I do believe this is a zen idea emptiness and form form and emptiness right, that emptiness is pure potentiality, it's the it's the energy

underneath everything. But then it pops into form based on all sorts of things, you know, echo, niche, all these different things. So I think we're kind of talking about the same thing, and that there are versions of me that are or truer to essence. The more I'm healed, yeah, beautifully, But I hadn't heard some of those kind of zen concepts, but it really resonates. Yeah, you should look into, you know, the ideas of form and emptiness though they'll I think

they'll really resonate. They resonate very much with what you just said before I started talking, which is that idea. All right, we're gonna wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post show conversation because I want to talk about how do you know whether to

trust your intuition? A former drug addict like me is hesitant to trust strong inner feelings because you know, I had pretty strong feelings that we're coming from inside me that destroyed me, And so I think, you know, how do we know what inter voice to listen to, which inter voice to trust to think? We're going to pursue that in the post show conversation listeners. You can get access to that and um add free episodes and all kinds of other great things by going to one you

feed dot net slash Join Taylor. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's really been fun. Ah yeah, thank you so much for having me. Actus is awesome. 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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