#742: Tony Robbins and Jerry Colonna - podcast episode cover

#742: Tony Robbins and Jerry Colonna

May 30, 20242 hr 10 minEp. 742
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Episode description

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed one billion downloads. To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best—some of my favorites—from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. The episode features segments from episode #37 "Tony Robbins on Morning Routines, Peak Performance, and Mastering Money" and #373 "Jerry Colonna — The Coach with the Spider Tattoo."

Please enjoy!

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Timestamps:

[00:00] Start

[05:00] Notes about this supercombo format.

[06:03] Enter Tony Robbins.

[06:27] Tony’s daily routines.

[07:28] Cryotherapy.

[10:55] Priming.

[15:04] Tony’s ideal music for meditation.

[16:20] Richard Branson’s first pre-investment questions.

[17:05] What a 50% investment loss actually means.

[17:42] The Paul Tudor Jones 5:1 strategy.

[18:36] How Kyle Bass taught his kids about investing with nickels.

[21:34] What the world’s best investors know for certain.

[24:00] Enter Jerry Colonna.

[24:21] Jerry’s spider tattoo origin story.

[30:03] The 2002 Olympic bid meeting that changed Jerry’s life.

[35:47] Jerry’s suicide attempt at 18 and his psychiatric hospital stay.

[37:06] The difference between responsible and complicit in Jerry’s life in 2002.

[39:55] Three important questions from Jerry’s therapist.

[41:02] Something important Jerry needed to say but didn’t during this time.

[42:39] How Jerry overcame self-doubt and unanswerable questions.

[44:46] Jerry’s path to coaching and three influential books.

[51:46] How much of Jerry’s coaching stemmed from focusing outside himself and healing his younger self.

[53:12] Convincing high-achievers of the importance of self-discovery.

[54:10] Jerry’s first question: “How are you really feeling?”

[57:11] Working with the chronically busy.

[59:40] Examining my handling of busyness, saying “No,” and related difficulties.

[1:09:40] Three basic risks we all try to manage: love, safety, and belonging.

[1:13:06] Tools, books, and approaches for setting boundaries and saying “No.”

[1:14:50] “All beings own their own karma. Their happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions, not my wishes for them.”

[1:16:11] A boundary tool that acknowledges compassion from a distance.

[1:17:30] The challenge is in the meaning assigned to a situation before applying a tool.

[1:18:11] Dealing with vexing “Newman” personalities in our lives.

[1:22:56] Moving from intellectual agreement to behavioral change.

[1:25:26] Benefits of journaling for personal growth.

[1:27:33] Guilt vs. remorse.

[1:28:12] Marie Ponsot, the crow, and letting the crow speak in the journal.

[1:32:00] Jerry’s bedtimes, mornings, and journaling process.

[1:35:09] Journaling for accepting life’s totality and our inner “multitudes.”

[1:37:14] Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance.

[1:37:41] Using Marvel’s Hulk and Thor to understand and reconcile parts of oneself.

[1:42:39] A difficult but life-changing decision Jerry made to say “No.”

[1:49:19] Advice for anyone at a similar junction.

[1:51:07] Using journaling and meditation to cope with anxiety and inner turmoil.

[1:54:43] Learning about loving kindness (metta) meditation.

[1:56:49] A new behavior or belief that improved Jerry’s quality of life.

[1:58:36] Jerry’s billboard.

[2:00:55] Parting thoughts.

*

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Transcript

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They currently shipped to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. And this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I also request a question? Now I've seen it but can't tell you what it's like to be out of the world. I must have a netty body is living to show a metal.

Hello boys and girls ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to sit down with world class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits. Routines favorite books and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary which is insane to think about and past one billion downloads to celebrate.

I've curated some of the best of the best some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes and internally we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to yes enjoy the household names the super famous folks but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars.

These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle perhaps you missed an episode just trust me on this one we went to great pains to put these pairings together and for the bios of all guests you can find that and more at Tim.log slash combo and now without further ado please enjoy and thank you for listening.

First up Tony Robbins entrepreneur philanthropist and the nation's number one life and business strategist and the number one New York Times best selling author of money master the game life force and awaken the giant within you can find Tony on Twitter and Instagram at Tony Robbins.

Looking at the longevity of your career the scope and scale of the Tony Robbins empire so to speak your endurance is really impressed me and so I'm wondering after these decades what are your some of your daily routines my regiment as I start with something to strengthen the job and your system every second day I will sometimes ease into it I'll go in the hot pools and you know I'm fortunate to have multiple homes my home in sun Valley of natural hot pools that come out of the ground just to be hot.

I go in the hot pools and then I go there in the river here I go in a 57 degree plunge pool that I have and I have one every home I have everyone will be immediately upon waking up.

Just like boom every cell in the body wakes up and it's also just like training my nervous system to rock that there is no I don't even shit how you feel this is how you perform what you do even when I'm taking vacation I do I just I don't know now I like it I like that simple discipline that reminds me the level of strength and intensity that's available

any moment even if I'm relaxing I can bring that up at will it's my life right and I also have a cryotherapy unit all my home so I give you try cry therapy I have it you know it is maybe you could. I can I can put the two words together and probably get all that you do you're gonna love this I'm surprised I'm glad I'm teaching Tim Ferris up the first.

I'm done I should have not the first time I suck I'm not sucked recipe I'm on stage in a weekend I do my endless at least power then program three days 50 hours.

Yeah you're not going to be that I've got to come to my guest to an event some I would love to but I'm going to give you an idea people won't sit for a three hour movie that somebody spent 300 million dollars on and I got like usher Oprah going on you know time I love you but two hours most like you do in 12 hours later Oprah standing on a chair

going this is the most incredible experience in my life on camera and I should like dude I'm in for all three days but for me one of those days alone I'm I you know I wear a dominer and I'm fit that it's 26 and a thousand average wow started eight thirty in the morning I finish at one thirty or two there's one one hour break people can vote with your feet no one leaves you know there's on average 20 minutes of just crazy

as standing of Asian music stuff that happens the end is people are just like a rock concert it's so much fun but the wear and tear of doing you know basically marathon after marathon at the marathon on the weekend back to back it's pretty intense and so over the years like the inflammation my body the demands I've had do everything I can't reduce it nothing is come close to

craft therapy cry out there is developed in Poland and Eastern Germany and the Eastern block countries and what it does is it uses nitrogen so there's no water and unlike an ice bath what you're doing you know you get spasms and you got to do them still right here boxer your runner your athlete which is what I would do before hated them none of that process but it reduces your body temperature to minus 220 Fahrenheit and you do it three minutes and it's mind-boggling

in fact I have one here and I'll throw you in at the end if you want to love to have you to hear a little for you but what it does is and I do about three times a week usually when I come back from a vent I do it you know a couple days and what it does is it takes all the inflammation out of your body and you know what inflammation does to every aspect of the body in the breakdown but it also it sends and merges signals to your brains like

resetting your neurological system because your brain going you're going to freeze the death sounds horrific it really isn't you'll find out it's not that painful going in my cold plunge of 57 degrees feels more jolting than this does even though it's colder because you know the fluid of water versus the night you're trying to make it different right the connectivity the connectivity exactly right well what happens is your nervousness gets the signal so it's like

everything your body connects because it's like emergency on every point is a reset of your nervous system you get an explosion of endorphins in your body which is really cool so you get this natural high you feel this physiological transformation and you get the reduction of inflammation when it was used for originally is for people with arthritis and I found

my first one because my mother-in-law was be calling up and she was just crying and paying in no medication was enough for her and I hate somebody medicated anyway and so I started doing this research and it just started coming to the U.S. and now Valey Lakers most football teams it's spreading like wow for amongst the sports teams and so that's where it took off so I went and got her one and I

mean took her I think three sessions and she's out of pain and now there's no other days she's in pain now most people can't afford to go buy a unit but there are local places now they're popping up all of the United States where athletes go where people go where people go for a jubination it's amazing for the skin but it's one of the great things I got it first

I got it for me and now I'm addicted but other than that I'm too much unique or different with my life. I believe that I'm entirely I'll keep digging how far after so what is if you were to kind of spec out the first hour of your day the first every day I do the water I take in the environment and then the first thing I do for doing else my day is I do what I call priming and priming to me is different than

I'm not meditating I'm never really a meditator per se I know the value of it but the idea for me of sitting still and having no thoughts just didn't really work out for me I was just a pain in the ass and I just thought it's not natural I just like that's where it works but when I'm in nature I feel that form meditation when I stand on stage and someone stands up in my brain it's done I don't even know what it is but person suicide

I've never lost a suicide for example in 37 years not going to what does mean I won't someday but I never have a thousand so we followed up with them so it's like there's something that comes through me and it's quite meditative it's like I experience it as a witness you know afterwards it's one of the most useful gifts in my life so I know that meditation

but for me what priming is if you want to be have a prime life you got to be in a prime state and we'd go automatically I don't give a damn what it is my teacher Jim Roan should say that and so what I do is I get up and I do a very simple process I do an explosive change in my physiology I've done the water already right cold hot

then I do it with breath I know you know all forms of Eastern meditation I'll understand that the mind is the kite and breath is the string so if I want to move that kite I move the breath so I have a specific pattern of breathing that I do I do 30 of these breaths and I do them at three sets of 30 that creates a profound physiological difference in my body and from that altered state I usually listen to some music and I go for I promise myself 10 minutes and I usually go 30

and you do that in this room that we're sitting in I know I do it all of this one room is where I do it this has got a great vibe I'll do this one I do it night I usually will go outside because I love the wind on my face and I love taking the elements and so forth

but I do it multiple places I'm on the road I do it doesn't matter what day I always I do not miss priming the reason is you don't get fit by getting lucky you don't get fit by working out for a weekend you know you live your life that way fitness is because it's becomes just part of who you are so what I do during that time is I do three simple things and I do it minimum 10 minutes three minutes of it is just me getting back inside my body and outside of my head

feeling the earth and my body experience and then feeling totally grateful for three things and I make sure one of them is something very very simple the wind on my face you know the reflection of the clouds that I just saw there but I don't just think gratitude is like I let gratitude fill my soul

because when you're grateful as we all know there's no anger it's possibly angry and grateful simultaneously when you're when you're grateful there is no fear you can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously so I think it is one of the most important power emotions of life

and also to me there's nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman you know somebody's got everything and they're pissed off I want to thrive from the high number that it is because they develop a life that's based on expectation instead of appreciation

I agree I tell people you want to change your life faster than trade your expectation for appreciation and you have a whole new life so every day I anchor that in and I do it very deeply emotionally then the second three minutes I do is a total focus on feeling presence of God if you will however you want a language up for yourself but this inner presence coming in and feeling that heals everything in my body and my mind my emotions my relationships

my finances I see it as solving anything that needs to be solved I experience the strengthening of my gratitude of my joy of my strength of my conviction of my passion and I just let those things happen spontaneously and then I focus on celebration and then service because my whole life is about service

that's what makes me feel alive so I flood myself with that with a breathing pattern that I take that does the opposite takes the breath down through my body and back up again and then the last three minutes are me focusing on three things I'm going to make happen my three to thrive

I have some big things that I'll do and sometimes I'll do things that are smaller but I see them feel them experiencing so it's a really simplistic process 10 minutes but I come out of it in my power it doesn't matter if I had two hours sleep I'm now ready and I do this even when I have no sleep that's how committed I am as I say I've always said there's no excuse not to do 10 minutes

if you don't have 10 minutes you don't have a wife right and that's why I got myself to do it and now that I've done it you know 20 to 30 minutes is almost always what it is because it actually feels extraordinary I have to ask what type of music do you usually listen to I have a variety but for that meditation I have one in particular which is a

oneness meditation that a friend of mine made it foos from India that I find really profound as no singing and everything like that is just a sound of a vibration that's going on and I just love it but that's what I'm doing currently in the past over the years I've used all kinds of different piece of music but I don't use modern music or pop music or rock music I do that to work out you know rap I don't know it just feels weird to be doing rap while you're meditating

but again what's different is I don't like this meditation because I look at it as it's priming courage love joy it's priming gratitude it's priming strength it's priming accomplishment it's priming you know when I'm doing my gratitude piece I'm doing the circle of foos closest to me and you know circling that out to everybody I love and sending that energy and healing out to them as well so to me if you want primetime life you got a primed daily

I like the term priming also because I think that most people who struggle with meditation are even attempt to use meditation are utilizing it for that purpose they're doing it for the morning and you know when you said if you don't have ten minutes you don't have a life right to be

something that Russell Simmons said to me which was if you don't have 30 minutes to meditate you need three hours and I don't always do 30 minutes but I do meditate in the morning and it's been a very consistent pattern among all of the people that have interviewed so far on the podcast I'd say four things I saw it stood out and one is overly simplistic and that's why people don't pay attention to it but these guys pay

attention to it they don't lose half the key co-winking is not losing and they're obsessed every single one is obsessed they're not losing money I mean a level of obsession that's mind boggling it isn't just these investors you know Richard Branson for example you know

people see Richard and he's such an outgoing playful crazy guy kind of Richard and that's some areas but when it comes to athletics and taking on challenges he's out in the world but you know his first question every business is what's the downside how to protect it

like what he did is peace with Virgin I mean that's a big risk and start an airline he went to Boeing and negotiated deal they could send up planes back if it didn't work out he wasn't liable but that's the level these guys think that so they look to see how do I not lose money first because the average person has no clue if I lose 50% in 2008 well guess what you gonna make a hundred percent to get even not 50% because your principal's gone down so that's like people don't understand you lose

60% it's 200% to get even and so the average person you know lives in a world where they try not to lose money but they're not obsessed these are obsessed second thing they all have in common every single one of them is obsessed with asymmetrical risk reward which is a big word it simply means they're looking to use the least amount of risk to get the max amount of upside and that's what they live for here's what I found with Paul Tudor at the very beginning and back on track

when he said his best he made sure every single trade had what he called a five to one that means if he was gonna risk a dollar he was about to risk it unless he was certain he was gonna make five you're not always right so guess what if I risk a dollar make five and I'm wrong I can risk another dollar still make four I can be wrong four times out of five it's still break even their secret is not that they're not wrong if they set

themselves up where they risk small amounts for big rewards proportionally Paul you know if he's right at one out of three times he still makes 20% so the average person risk a dollar trying to make how much dollar 10 that's right about 10 if I could get 10% wow my dollar right of 20% would be unbelievable how often can you be wrong not very often not at all right you're in the hole you're starting from the hole they got to build back up so they're asymmetrical

worth like I was a Kyle Bass and Kyle Bass risk to check this out in the middle of the subframe crisis he made $60 billion out of 30 million because he risked for every six cents he risked he had an upside up a dollar six cents for 100 well you can be wrong 15 times and you're still okay in that area I mean he was brilliant to figure it out he's a genius figured out but that risk reward is why he showed his kids he taught I said how do I teach

us the average investors and then and he said well you can teach them when I taught my kids and I said how do you know he goes we bought and so what do you mean you bought nickels he said well I did research I have this question that's

another thing that all these guys do they ask a better question we talked about they get better answers right better quality question better quality answer what's wrong with me you'll come up with how do I make this happen no matter what you come up with different answers so his question was where

in the world is there a riskless trade with total upside and he started looking around and he said I'm worried about inflation so he decided gosh of all the currencies in the world a nickel what it's made mostly of nickel by the way he said it's costing the US government nine and a half cents to make a nickel that's how government functions right it's been almost ten cents to make something with half as much right depending on

plan yeah perfect plan so he said but you know what just the actual material value right is six point eight whatever was six something six and a half will come for round numbers so he said if I buy a nickel it's never going less than a nickel as you believe the US government's gone so I've got something never goes down in value so I got a guaranteed return you know I'm not going to lose my principal but day one it's

worth 36% more than the day I bought it how many investments can you have a hundred percent guarantee of no loss and have 36% I said yeah but that's smell value and I saw they passed the law a few years ago I think Charlie Wrangler was was one to push it through and he goes yeah but Tony said that doesn't matter he's let me tell you why you said look at pennies when they changed it from pure copper to ten and all things they change what happened to the old

pennies there's a scarcity of them and now a penny from those days there were two cents it's a hundred percent more valuable so he said that at some point the government cannot continue to do something cost twice as much some point they'll make a change in the materials and then all these nickels are worth an unbelievable amount so he said I just show my kids here's a risk you need to think different than everybody else don't think I have to

take huge risk for huge rewards they how do I take no risk and get huge rewards and because you ask that question continuously and you believe in answer you get it so he said listen if I could convert my entire wealth and nickels I do it I said you're insane because I am insane but it's the best possible fundamental investment he started telling me how to do he bought 40 million nickels wow for his 40 million nickels

fills up a room bigger than this right there's the only ground floor yet his kids dragging on the end of the house laughing having fun of me this like they're a little treasure so he can legitimately do like the Scrooge McDuck backstroke real

so that's asymmetrical I'll give you one more and I'll shut the hell up I'm not you're asking me what you tell me the difference is I want you know there are differences we can spend hours and hours and differences but I think it's useful what's a line because then I give something universal

that's absolutely the other one for them is they absolutely beyond a shot of it out no they're going to be wrong you look at these talking ads on television and people screaming you and hitting bells and telling you what to buy and they're right right right the best on earth the rain values right the pebbles the you know I don't give it who you talk about you want to look a car like on they all know they're going to be wrong so they set up an asset location system that will make them successful

they all agree asset allocation is the single most important investment there wasn't one person in terms of your vehicle but it wasn't most important thing about how they attacked it asset allocation was the element there

and the last one is they are lifelong learners I mean these people are machines like you like me like Peter like most of the people you not share his friends they just are obsessed with knowing more and because the more they know the more they realize what they didn't know and they may apply that and they go to another level and every time you think you're the best you can be in anything in life your body or motion spirit your finances there's always another level and these guys live by it

and the last one that I found almost all of them were real givers not just givers on the surface like money givers that's wonderful but really passionate about giving and it showed up once they saw what I was doing was legitimate it was really real that I mean then they're opening up three hours of time with something let me disguise will never give just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show

this episode is brought to you by AG1 the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement and the true answer is invariably AG1 it simply covers a ton of bases I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road so what is AG1 AG1 is a science driven formulation of vitamins probiotics and whole food source nutrients

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that's drink AG1 the number one drink AG1.com slash Tim last time drink AG1.com slash Tim check it out and now Jerry Colona co-founder and CEO of executive coaching and leadership development firm reboot.io

and author of reboot leadership and the art of growing up you can find Jerry on Twitter at Jerry Colona Jerry welcome to the show Hey Tim it's great to be here I'm really excited to talk to you we have so much we could possibly talk about you and I have spoken before had quite a few conversations

over the last god knows how many years with particular density a handful of years ago and I thought we could start with the spider tattoo which you just showed me over video it is not a small tattoo so perhaps much like a novel I greatly enjoy the girl with the dragon tattoo

this would be the coach with the spider tattoo but I don't know the story why you have a gigantic spider tattoo on your chest yeah so spider is a good friend of mine spider is my spirit guide so in 2007 I went on a retreat led by a Jungian echo psychologist named Bill Plotkin P L O T K I N and on that retreat this is a long story Tim you ready for it?

I'm ready we have nothing at all on that retreat I started to go really deep into some of the important structures of my life and I had a dream and it was after a night of ecstatic dancing in which I danced nearly naked in a drum circle

and I'd fallen asleep and I had this dream in which I was going to a house that I owned on Long Island and I got to the house and the house was completely white and I was really terrified and I went into the house and it was supposed to be my house but it didn't feel right

and I ended up in the basement and in the basement floor was covered with this sort of like the floor of a forest and these mushrooms were sprouting up and I got very scared and I tore the mushrooms from the ground and I ran out of the house so the next morning I went into circle again and I shared that dream and Bill turns to me and he says go leave, leave the circle right now I want you to go into the forest and want you to find those mushrooms and I want you to apologize to those mushrooms

and ask it what it was that you were supposed to hear from them that you were too afraid to hear so I left the circle and I started wandering around and I'm like what the fuck am I doing?

I'm walking around this forest trying to find these mushrooms and I actually have to have a conversation with these mushrooms to be clear I was not ingesting the mushrooms because I know who I'm talking to so I'm walking around and all of a sudden I see on the ground the exact same white long stringy mushrooms and I'm like freaked out and I drop to my knees and I start crying and I said I'm so sorry I'm so sorry what were you here to teach me?

and they said the mushrooms said to me you're too afraid go into the forest and find your place and now I'm like freaking out even more so I just standing up and I'm like stumbling around and this is a time period in my life where I'm just a freaking wreck

and I'm crying and I'm wandering through the forest and I find this little sort of indentation, this little spot and I sit down and I'm like sitting on my rump and I've got my hands and my knees and my head and I'm just crying and I look up and often to my right is this gorgeous spiderweb

and it actually has little doodrops glistening on it and I'm like okay this they look like crystals and this little spider comes walking out and this is Virginia garden spider and I look at it and I said okay I give up what the fuck are you here to teach me

because I have no idea and the spider says to me you worry too much your children are going to be fine and I just start shaking because there's no message that I needed to hear more than that and so I came out of that forest I came out of there at retreat

and a few weeks later was my 45th birthday they're about the actual year doesn't matter so much as the fact that it was my birthday and on my birthday I got this spider tattoo above my heart so that I can never forget the fact that I worry too much and that my kids are going to be alright so that's the spider has it remained relevant to you? is it something that you consciously notice or because it's so continuously present do you find yourself sometimes losing sight of it?

both meaning I'm often reminded as I was when you asked and you said oh I'm going to ask you about the spider I'm often reminded so thank you for reminding me that the point of that spider's visitation to me was to remember who I am and I can use that reminder every day because I forget every day

not only do I forget who I am but I forget that my kids are alright and that I worry too much thank you for the story and it makes me think of given the spider Lakota mythology and Ictomy they're various names for Ictomy but Ictomy is a spider-tricster spirit

bit of a hero and perhaps one of the ways that you are a productive trickster is by asking questions that are very uncomfortable or that can be very uncomfortable and I think that's one of your arts and we're going to come back to that for sure but I thought we could revisit another perhaps chapter

or event in your life that seems to have been very impactful could you talk to I believe it was February 2002 after something involving the Olympics for the Olympic bid meeting if you know what I'm referring to so February 2002 I was working at JP Morgan at the time

I was co-leading the technology investment practice for a fund that was about 23 billion dollars on a management so a large fund and this was after having left flat iron partners in I think around the middle of 2001 and just for clarity that was billions with a bee that was billions with a bee

yeah that's a large fund it's a large fund I mean but we were very diversified we did everything from Brazilian railroads to you know funding the launch of jet blue airlines to the latest web base startup some capacity anyway a few months prior

it had been clear that my previous fund flat iron partners needed to be wound down and Fred and I needed to make some decisions about what to do and I was in the midst of trying to sort through what I was going to do with the rest of my life I did not have the internal capacity to raise a new fund

I know now that I was in the midst of a very profound depression that was exacerbated by the attacks on 9-11 and one of the ways I responded to the attacks on 9-11 was to throw myself into the Olympic bid effort we were bidding to bring the 2012 Games to New York

and for me this was a profoundly important effort because now you're going to make me cry my city was attacked the city that I love and where you go right the city where I grew up the city of Brooklyn the place that had so much meaning for me was attack

and I remember the feeling helpless during the fall following the attack anyway around the same time I had to decide whether or not I was going to accept an offer to join JP Morgan which had been one of the funders and the funding partners for flat iron partners

and eventually I did that and Fred linked up with Brad Burnham and they launched Union Square Ventures by the way worst decision of my life but anyway to join JP Morgan and not go to Union Square Ventures anyway so he went off and did that I joined JP Morgan and by February 2002 I was a wreck

and what you're referring to is February 2nd 2002 I left an Olympic bid committee meeting which was being held downtown not far from ground zero and I found myself outside of the stinking smoking hole that was the pile as they referred to it of ground zero

and I remember feeling completely overwhelmed and feeling like they were ghosts flying around that area and I wanted to die and I was obsessed with the idea of running down to the Wall Street subway station and leaping in front of a subway and I ended up deciding not to do that but wisely and thankfully instead called my therapist Dr. Sayers who said to me promptly get in a cab and come out and see me and I did just that and save my life at that point what did your therapist do when you arrived?

what was that session like? can you describe that session? so Dr. Sayers is a psychoanalyst and so I very traditionally almost like a New York cartoon would lay on the couch and I can't help but think of that and think of like somehow it's a dog sitting in the therapist chair it's like this some sort of New Yorker thing

anyway so I'm laying on the couch staring up to ceiling as I did all the time and I remember saying to her just stick a fork in me, I'm fucking done put me in the hospital, throw away the key and to be clear the threat was real because when I was 18 I did try to kill myself

and so no fooling around here I mean this isn't just some idle ideation going on here this was like I was in it I was 38, I was being cooked and I was declaring that I was done and Dr. Sayers who was also from Brooklyn said the most magical thing possible she said what the hell do you want to go to a hospital for? the food sucks go to Canyon Ranch you'll get a massage every day you'll be so much better what is Canyon Ranch?

Canyon Ranch is a health spot and it's a very nice place I loved it, it was really sweet but it's about as far removed from a psychiatric hospital as you can imagine because by the way I did spend three months in a psychiatric hospital so I sort of knew what I was asking for if you will

so that's what I did I made plans to go down to Arizona I think it was the Arizona branch of Canyon Ranch and that moved was the beginning of me being rebuilt when and why did you spend time in a psychiatric hospital?

I mentioned the suicide attempt I was 18 and I had on January 2nd something about the number two January 2nd I guess with 1980 one I'm losing track of the time I had just turned 18 and I tried to kill myself I cut my wrists and first went to it was taken to the emergency room to make a hospital

the Trump pavilion that's what I'm going to say and then I was transferred from there to Creedmore State Hospital which is just this side of hell and then from there after three days of Creedmore I was transferred to a hospital that actually is no longer a hospital Cabrini Medical Center

in Manhattan where I was there for three months I'd love to I think this is a good point to come back to questions and good questions and you're very skilled in this department so I'm going to pose one of your questions to you and you can feel free to tweak it because your doctor is correct

anyway you like but if you look back to 2002 how are you complicit in creating the conditions in your life that you would have said you didn't want nice turn which is a great question so maybe you could repeat it for folks because it is so important this is something that has greatly aided me when you introduced it to me Yeah, and then if you could speak to that as it applies to that particular period in your life I'll impact the question so the way I usually ask the question goes like this

How have I been complicit in creating the conditions? I say I don't want and The reason for the language is very very purposeful. I like to use the word complicit and not responsible 90% of the time when I first asked that question people hear the word How have I been responsible for the conditions?

complicitness is important because it's not it's relieving the person from the burden of feeling responsible for all the shit in their lives because that's not fair to carry that responsibility but It's helpful to think of ourselves as somehow being served by

The challenges that we're going through the second piece of that is that I say I don't want and that sort of unpacks that notion even further Which is there's something oftentimes about the way in which we operate and the way we set up the conditions of our lives To be in unconscious service to us the psychological term is secondary gain

But there are ways in which we find ourselves repeating patterns in our life. We always date the same type of person We are always finding ourselves in the same kind of job We're always frustrated by the same sorts of situation and so it's really useful to sort of start to unpack that so that's that question and Before I even answer your question, I want to say one other thing the Discomfort of difficult and powerful questions reminds me of something my daughter Emma likes to say about me

Which is that imagine growing up with a man who asks you questions that you really rather not answer So shout out to Emma So I think that the way I was complicit I guess we should thank Emma for being the crash test dummy for The questions that you use now in your career you got it But Emma and her brothers Michael and Sam for sure for sure God love them

They put up with so much with me. Oh my god dad stop coaching me So before I can answer that question Honestly, what I would say is Dr. Sayers taught me three additional questions and And those questions are what am I not saying that needs to be said? What am I saying that's not being heard and what's being said that I'm not hearing? So again What am I not saying that needs to be said? What am I saying that's not being heard?

And what's being said that I'm not hearing and so for me the way I was complicit Was I wasn't speaking I wasn't saying what I needed to say and More if in the not 10 the suffering that I encounter Can almost always be rooted back to somebody not saying something that needs to be said and

If there's a little correlate to that and not saying it or not saying it in a way that it can be heard Because oftentimes we speak without words But by our actions and we go unheard Could you give an example of something that you needed to say during that period of time that you didn't say?

Yes, yeah, yeah, something very very simple. I wasn't happy that despite all the outward trappings of success I was empty and hollow inside That I wasn't speaking truthfully that I wasn't living in integrity and That I was too afraid of losing the good graces and a steam of everybody around me to actually talk about the fact

That I did not want to do what I was doing with my life at that point. Oh, by the way I didn't know what else I was gonna do, but that's a separate issue right I mean, I knew when I decided not to continue working with Fred Wilson stupid man that I was I

knew that it was actually the right thing for me to do But when I agreed to take a job at JP Morgan It wasn't because I wanted to continue doing that work It's because I was too terrified To do anything other than that and I certainly didn't want to lose the esteem and the good wishes

I mean think about your reaction just a few minutes ago when you pointed out that it was a 23 billion dollar fund Mm-hmm, and even in that moment I felt a little bit of that pride Mixed with a little bit of the shame because I walked away from that and I didn't want to lean into that space of like What if I don't matter anymore? What if nobody calls me? How did you get over that? What are the things that contributed to you making it?

Through those questions because a lot of people seemingly don't make it through those questions right they stay in a Give them track in a given relationship. They stay stuck exactly for 5 10 15 20 or more years so what life lifetime What did him what did Emma said the vast majority of men? What's updated the vast majority of people lead lives of quiet desperation?

Mm-hmm. So How did I get out of it? I guess Your question implies an agency that I didn't feel at the time Meaning huh I wake up one day and I decide I'm going to be different No, it wasn't that it was that I ran out of The ability to continue to operate anymore. It was that moment Above the lip of ground zero and That moment where I chose not to leap in front of the subway But to get into the cab and go to see Dr. Sares and it was that moment where I decided to follow her advice

And go to Canyon Ranch. It was the series of moments Where it was like okay? I know it's not working. I admit it's not working. I don't know what I'm going to do But what I have been doing hurts too much and if I have to suffer the consequence of the loss of status Approbation affirmation all the external trappings So be it. It was like my soul basically said listen motherfucker You better sit down and pay attention to your life

Because the stakes are too high. I think I read that in the Bhagavad Gita from correct? Brooklyn edition It's a Buddha from Brooklyn. Yeah Both of Now how did you find your way to I'll use this term. It may not be the best term, but how did you find your way to coaching? So on that plane ride

From New York to Arizona to Canyon Ranch. I read three books when things fall apart by Anni Pemma children Faith by Sharon Salisberg and let your life speak by Parker Palmer and before fully answering your question I'll give you this I must have done something really really good in a past life Because I have the benefit of considering all three of those people Anni Pemma Sharon Salisberg and Parker Palmer as my friends. I didn't know them at the time

But I have the good grace and the incredible good fortune to say I'm friends with them. They are my teachers So what was your question? The question was how did you find your way to coaching and just to reiterate something that you just said at the time

They were not your friends. That's right, but you had the books and so And how you found your way to coaching you went back to the plane ride Right, and so in reading those books and those those three books were really important because they did lead

Indirectly to me becoming a coach each one of those books presented something different to me Faith presented this notion of really being honest with myself with what was going on when things fall apart was the first laying out of Buddhist Dharma as a path But it was let your life speak which is a brilliant beautiful short little collection of essays that really shifted to dialogue for me partially because Parker is so open and honest and authentic about his own struggles and depression

Okay, so to your question, let me fast forward it probably four or five years later. I'm still working my way through all of the Issues that I'm carrying at that point and trying to sort myself out. I'm in an office I'm sharing office space with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures But I have a little sub office within their space and I'm doing a bunch of different things

I'm serving on a bunch of boards of directors. I'm making little angel investments here and there But I'm just sort of hanging around the hoop if you will and this young guy comes to see me He's there to quote network, you know, this is the thing everybody is supposed to do network is way to a new new job and

You know you ask about questions. So here's the story So he comes in and he's a lawyer and he wants to get a job in the startup industry So he wants to find a way to get some sort of position And I turned to him and he's probably in his late 20s and I said I'm happy to help you But just to answer a question for me It's kind of my first coaching question, right? And I said what made you to become a lawyer in the first place?

And he starts crying to me and he starts telling me about pleasing his father And about how it was you know his father had taught him that if all else fails at least He could make a living as a lawyer and the kid was just miserable just miserable And so I reached up to the shelf and I pulled down a copy of let your life speak and I said here I read this and they get back to me He left the office and I turned around and I said fuck I think I need to be a coach I need to do that more frequently

And so within a few days I'd sign up for a coach training program Okay, let me pause for one second. So what did you feel? What did you experience? What was it about that encounter that made you so decisively say that to yourself? A couple of things I could see relief in his eyes The first thing I felt was empathy I knew his feelings because even though the content of the story was different My experience was so similar. I had been so ruled by fears

That I was living in a box. I had lived in a box that was Not of my making. It was somebody else's box. It was the wrong box It was the wrong suit of clothes. It was not me and I could feel all that and when I reached for let your life speak

I was reaching for the very same thing that had gotten me out of the box and I said here. Here's a path And there was just relief relief not that he had read the book yet But just relieved that somebody actually understood his feelings And had given words to his feelings that he hadn't been able to give to remember that question What have I not been saying that I need to say There was that going on for him So then I said wait a minute dude You can do something about relieving suffering

You're not the mess and it's not always just your prefrontal cortex that's going to figure everything out Because I didn't have any answer for him. I didn't say here Here's the job you should do that's perfect for you so that you no longer go to bed at night feeling like crap wondering whether or not you should wake up in the morning I just had to listen to my heart and I did something completely

Non-intuitive. I reached onto my bookshelf and I gave him a book and the feeling that I had was Poignant pain Coupled with the sense of being able to do something. I could be helpful This may be overreaching, but how much of your call to coaching Do you think if any was Finding relief and taking the focus outside of yourself It wasn't just the call to begin coaching

This helps me every day. I mean this is the craziness about the work that I do about living my my vocation like this Even today in my worst moments When I can be with another person's pain by the way, which is the root etymological Meaning of the word compassion to be with someone else's feelings I magically feel relief from my own unbearable feelings Because I think I think that's the essence of being human together. We get to actually

Oh, geez. We look at each other across the the campfire. I keep imagining us in sort of pre-civilization going Like looking across the campfire and again must be in Brooklyn and going dang. It's hard Right isn't it hard being human yet? It's really hard. Okay. Let's do this together So I think the call was that But if I if I may I think the call was also To retroactively go back in time and save myself Interesting see this makes a lot of sense to me

In saying that do you mean and I don't know if you've ever heard of IFS internal family systems in so much as by helping people who are In similar positions with similar states or pains as you experienced earlier you are healing that younger version of yourself

In some capacity. Well, first of all to answer your quick question I have heard of IFS I have not been trained in IFS and I know a few of my clients have benefited from it But broadly speaking you want to understand Buddhism It's what we're talking about right now Yeah, you want to understand wisdom traditions across the world It's what we're talking about right now. It's like even the best of Christianity

Even the best of what Jesus taught. It's like God. I mean, I just imagine him Exasperated sitting is in for God's sake love one another just you know Come on can you just stop the nonsense and just read your cross and just be with each other think of it this way Tim there's almost like a universal

wellspring Of pain that you and I share and in the similar fashion There's a universal wellspring of happiness and joy that you and I share And so if you're in this painful spot I can tap that universal wellspring of happiness and joy And point it a little bit more at your suffering and you can do the same for me So let me ask you a question and Univ's been a good amount of time on the phone together and To those people listening who are self-described

High achievers who don't want to lose their edge who are looking for the tactical practical If they hear that and they're kind of rolling their eyes and they're like all right you had me at 9.11 You had me at the books, but I don't see how this applies. I'm too busy for that shit I don't have time to go to Burning Man and do fire dancing like this this is serious business. I have serious work to do Sorry, how do you relate that to someone who in their first meeting?

Yeah fits that profile Perhaps what do you do with them in a first meeting? My job isn't to necessarily convince people that they need help And so the first thing I say is and the first thing I would say to anybody who's listening is If everything's working for you go at it have a great time go enjoy yourself Go ahead, but you know, there's a simple little trick You know, I have this little reputation that I make people cry and all this stuff

You know what I do? I ask them a simple question. How are you? And I often follow it up with like no really don't bullshit me. How are you? How are you really feeling? Because here's the thing you described this would be resistant person as a high achiever Here's the thing about high achievers In my experience high achievers early on in their life figure out how to get in a they figure it out Because the whole system is geared towards that great

And then we take that entire system from our childhood and we move it into work And it's just getting a is getting a is getting a is getting a is in the highest achieving people oftentimes come into me Scared because there's a little whispery voice in your ear that says You are a fucking fraud You have no idea and when they figure out that all you're doing is reading the tea leaves and what it takes to get in a

They're going to toss you out of the trip. They're going to toss you out on your ass They're going to push you away Or they say to themselves because they haven't experienced Loss or they haven't experienced failure. They think they haven't experienced failure

They're just waiting. They're just playing a waiting game They're just waiting for something for fate to catch up to them and bang The ham is going to come down now if this resonates with you You might also then recognize the anxiety that comes in Where you put your head down at the pillow at night and you go My god, I don't know if I can do it again tomorrow Maybe they'll catch me tomorrow And if that's what you're working with

Then there's an opportunity in all that we're talking about forget universal suffering forget about wells brings forget about spiders forget about Burning man, which I've never been to by the way, and I don't believe in substances, but that's all in the foreign issue Yet about all that stuff. I've been three times. I'm a fan at least once in your lifetime what we

Separate separate conversations. So continue the truth is I'm probably too scared to ingest any material inside of my body But leave that aside for a moment forget all that Okay, all the esoteric stuff like that Here's the simple question. How's it working for you Because if it's not working for you Why are you in pain? Why are you doing it? And would you like a little relief and here you want to know the secret like nasty little trick that I play

Yes, I get them if they either have children or hope to have children someday. I will ask them What would they like their children to feel When they're at the same age Because if they would like them to feel something other than what they're feeling Now's the time to start changing the way they organize their lives Yeah, that's a really good question What if and this could combine with what we're talking about right now someone comes in they don't feel

Imposter syndrome necessarily, but they are simply overwhelmed you ask them how they are no really and they're like I'm good I'm just busy. I'm stressed. I just have too much. I'm overwhelmed if that's the breed of client that shows up How do you begin to work with that?

Well, once you've established a certain level of trust and relating through empathy and You know, don't necessarily try to step in and fix it the first question I would start to ask or elicit Is how is that being busy serving you? Remember that how have I been complicit in creating the conditions? I say I don't want right here's the thing about busyness Busyness can feel fucking awesome It can feel so amazing

Internally, like look at all the great stuff I got done externally look at how busy I am. I must be important That's an interesting statement busyness can also serve to distract you from Those voices inside that say hey, I'm not happy Hey, I'm not happy. Hey, I'm serious. I'm going to throw you down on the ground with some sort of somatic illness Lower back problem your irritable bowel syndrome migraine headaches. That was my specialty

I'm going to throw you down until you pay attention to me. Oh, okay, you're too busy. Okay. I got you. Okay Because you know, here's the thing too somewhere around 35 to 50 years old The systems start to break down the systems that got you ad childhood that got you into adulthood that got you

Established that got you to the point where you think you got it all figured out and then all of a sudden holy shit The whole thing starts to collapse Now what do I do and when I see someone who's busy who's Kind of in the early 20s. I see a striver Trying to establish themselves But when I see somebody who's busy who actually doesn't need To be that way I get really really curious What internal need is trying to be met by all that busyness and that's the place to inquire what are some of the

More common patterns that you see with that busyness. I'm very curious about this. I Promise not to coach you, but why is it so curious? It's not just kidding I can tell you no I can tell I can tell you why it's curious or interesting to me. We can jump into some I'm game I'm game to I'm game to hit some volleys if you want

Well, for instance, I'm looking at an apologies to everyone. I have not replied to but that is sort of my Ethos and the gist of everything I've written so I feel like I've bought some permission But I currently have 618,952 on red email and combination on two different tracks of 165 plus

255 on red text messages and that's the tip of the iceberg. So I actually feel surprisingly low Anxiety about that nonetheless a small amount of anxiety and in the process of Literally rebooting those various phone numbers and addresses because it's not physically possible to address that Right, and it's

Perhaps similar to many of your experiences. It's given me an opening line or common sentiment of commiseration that opens up the floodgates to similar types of Problems and other people so they confess I'm like the the productivity guy in the confessional box for people who want to tell me about similar things and Those are a few things that come to mind when you ask me why is that curious?

I think I think it's very common. I just think it's very common I think it's hugely common and I think that you asked the question by using a particular descriptive word you described it as feeling overwhelmed And you know if we were to do a dream analysis we might talk about being flooded

That's typically the psychological signal that the system is overwhelmed So again, we use our construction and we talk about complicitness not necessarily responsibility I'm going to use you as an example as a high achiever Who is incredibly busy and so busy that he has over 600,000 Unanswered emails and we'll just stick on that one for a moment by the way

You're allowed to declare bankruptcy at that point. Okay, you're done Oh, yeah, and what I hear you say is I know long you said I don't feel anxiety just a small piece of it I would argue that you probably have been so overwhelmed by it that you've actually given up feeling anxious about it

And it's just like forget it. I'm not going to get to it So here's the question for you and you don't have to answer it But but hang out with it a couple questions the first would might be something like when did you start feeling overwhelmed and How long have you felt overwhelmed and while feeling overwhelmed?

Did you take on more tasks right in your case Tim? Did you sign up for another book and another show or another thing Which only produce more stuff because that's what I do if there's a tiny bit of open space in my life I tend to fill it and then the magical question is How familiar is that feeling and how does that feeling serve you? I'm willing to play on this one and I will say before I get started that I do think I have

Much better systems and rules and perspectives in place now, but I but answer your questions. I'd say it started Probably middle of undergraduate college Rice this feeling of Overwhelm or at least that's when it was most noticeable and The feeling of overwhelm was then kind of ebbed and flowed But certainly up until at least 2004 My solution to feeling anything I didn't want to feel was to add more activities Okay, can you just pause and say that again?

Your solution to feeling anything I didn't want to feel in retrospect. I recognize that's what it was So if I felt anything I didn't want to feel I would add more activities to Drown it out some people use heroin some people use coke some people use work and I used

Activities at the time. I also use stimulants. So I was in fact using both but That changed quite a bit in 2004 by building in empty space and I think that still now there are vestiges of behaviors that in some sense helped me to find a toehold In financial security that are no longer serving me that are nonetheless Default gears if that makes sense and To that extent The vast amount of my focus for the last year has been on saying no to

Practically everything more than a year. I mean the last several years Nonetheless, there is a part of me. I think you had a was it a crow or Raven on the shoulder?

So you will come back to the crow And no, it's not another dream sequence for people wondering no drug and do stream thing Yeah, we'll come back to the crow something on my shoulder saying it you might need this person You might eat this person in reference to any Given email that might come in and so for what I find in my life is that the vast majority of stuff is clearly noise

And I can ignore there are categories of activities. I'm not particularly good at moderation whether that's with chips or chocolates or speaking engagements or film the bike there's certain things where I need to either Be considering each item that presents itself or not consider them at all as a category So I've decided certain things just from a binary perspective like speaking I will not do any of unless they happen to be a 10-minute drive from my house and fit 20 other parameters

Otherwise, it's an automatic no and I don't even see it where I think I find more difficulty is where there are people who have been Very helpful in the past who perhaps were very supportive in their early days Who now have lots of favors to ask but if I'm listening to my body It's absolutely not a full body. Yes. There's a large part of me that knows I do not want to act

We as I do not want to agree. I do not want to accept. I do not want to do whatever it is. They're asking me to do because It doesn't feel right And or it's unreasonable nonetheless those are the types of emails that tend to pile up and those are the types of emails Also that even if I have someone like an assistant or multiple assistance filtering The names are probably noticeable enough or old enough that they'll get brought to my attention. So

Let's see here. Is it familiar? Yes, it's familiar. How does it serve me? This I have more trouble with so maybe you could walk me through I would imagine many people I'm not going to say it doesn't serve me because I'm willing to at least as a thought exercise to accept that If it didn't serve me out of already found some clean solution or I wouldn't have any emotional difficulty fixing it

How would you walk me through figuring out how it serves me? Well, I want to reflect back a couple of things that I'm hearing so that we can just sort of establish it The first thing I would say is I really admire all the filtering that you've put into your life And the structures that you've put into your life to create boundaries and saying no And I think that the rules as you define them and they might be rules for like hey every morning

I'm going to do x and every afternoon. I'm going to do y or I'm only going to work from ours those are all important

But ultimately insufficient for complete relief from some of these feelings. They're really really helpful They've reduced your anxiety from oval whelming to small But 620,000 emails Right, and so I want to bring your attention to two other feelings one was you said something about Missing something that might be important to you Seeing someone that that has been helpful to you in the past or something that's important to you that you might miss something

So that's one fear is that right? I would say so. I think the greater fear is that People who would at least believe that they have supported me without asking for a quick pro-crow in the past Would get upset and this does happen it has happened where people take things very personally and

I recognize I can't take responsibility for everyone else's feelings and responses to things I do think that's a fear more than missing an opportunity because I'm not concerned about missing financial opportunities Not anymore not not anymore. I once was but I also you know, I stopped Start up investing completely In 2015 because the noise Simply wasn't worth it the cortisol fueled unnecessary Hurrying associated with that culture was Causing more harm than good so I stopped in 2015

So I missed a pretty pretty decent bull run which I'm okay with so it's not a financial concern so much as Social cost and fallout if that makes sense Yeah, yeah, what I'm hearing is a fear of disappointing someone who matters to you Yeah, yeah, that would be a piece of it. That would be a piece of it and this is helpful to me to talk through because

It's not just disappointment in some cases. I can't I actually really dislike interacting with some of these more recent acquaintances but For whatever reason they view their position is very entitled in so much as they expect a fast and very compliant response for me on many things And they know a lot of people in the same circles And so that causes concern so there's an implicit

Internal existential threat. I think that's fair. I think that's fair to say yeah if I could say one more thing Yeah, yeah, yeah, just just so I don't sound totally ah like I'm living in a land of make believe I have run into many many instances This is you know more than a dozen at least where say someone will send me an email

They want a blurb for new book. They want this this this this this this and by the way it's coming on in four weeks or whatever it is there's some set of Request slash demands I don't reply this has happened with journalists as well where for whatever reason I won't help them and then a hit piece comes out or then there's some type of blowback slash vengeful behavior whether that's shit talking me on stage or whatever might be so there's evidence to support the fear

But here I am I've survived. I'm fine That is also true. So I just wanted to add that color right and so I want to reflect back to you empathetically and rashly You're not nuts At least threats are real at least not at least not in that department. That's right. That's right So what I often say is that there are three basic risks that we're all trying to manage all the time

Love safety and belonging. We want to love and be loved We want to feel safe physically emotionally spiritually And we want to feel that we belong and what I'm hearing So if you resonate with those at all

the existential threat and I want to bring your attention to existential because I think that the threat is to the essence of who you are Or at least the perceived threat and when someone trash talks you on stage whether to trash talking is you The you not the meatbag, but the essence of you and so

I think that the fear I know for myself that the fear of disappointing others is a threat to my belonging I'm not going to be in my family anymore My children won't love me My partners won't love me and so therefore I will be unsafe I will be bereft I'll be by myself I'll be alone in the woods Fending for myself And there are few things that threaten me more than the threat to belonging I don't know does that resonate with you?

It does resonate I think that a lot of what I've done and been able to do has been dependent on maintaining very long-term Relationships with people who I enjoy being friends with who happen to also be very very good at what they do whatever that is And so I think there's a bit of you know what got you here won't get you where you want to go or won't get you there and That does resonate and we don't have to jump to this but what I'd love to talk about or listen to you

Describe because I think a lot of people would benefit from it is when you run into someone who like me is Fielding a lot of inbound and it could be from one person But they for whatever reason are having difficulty saying no or establishing boundaries. What are tools or books or approaches that you've found helpful for people In that position whether it's non-violent communication or fill in the blank anything at all or questions Anything at all. How do you begin to Advise someone like that?

Well, there's a couple of things come to mind and I'm gonna reference two friends of our Seth Godin and Sharon Salzburg the first thing was when I was really struggling with this Early on in my career my adult career Seth Godin gave me some wonderful advice which boiled down to this phrase I wish I could but I can't and that became a kind of interesting little fence around my life a boundary Marker and so the idea was that you would be able to say to someone someone who reaches out

Can you do this favor for me this thing for me and you get to say I wish I could but I can't so you just pause around that Problem is of course There's an inauthenticity that can set in which is I actually don't wish I And I can but I can't but I really don't know that yeah, that's a whole no that's like and but I won't and so then it becomes a little bit of like Listen, I'm trying to take my own advice to heart and the advice I give clients

Is to take care of themselves first and so that becomes a kind of useful tool But then you reference something before about not being responsible for someone else's feelings And that brought to mind a teaching that Sharon Salzburg gave me which goes like this all beings own their own karma They're happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions not my wishes for them

Say that one more time please. Yeah, so all beings Own their own karma Karma being the cause and effect their consequences of their actions Their happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions Not my wishes for them or the corollary to that is not the actions that I take or don't take Now they may say to you when they're reaching out to you Tim Tim If you don't do this thing that I'm asking you to do then I will be unhappy and if I'm unhappy

I will be mean to you. I mean that's essentially the existential threat. I wish they would actually just send that email Because then I would say gotcha bitch. I have a blog shouldn't have sent that email Which is actually happened with writers from the New York Times believe it or not Which is

They're threat. Oh, yeah, yeah, and then as soon as they realize what they've done They're like ah shit and then they cool the jets, but yeah, so here's a little tool that I have come up With that helps me is I often think of creating these little fences

And I often visualize a chain link fence so that I can see through it and it has a gate in it And the gate only opens one way inward and I get to control whether or not the gate opens And so then I can see someone on the other side and then the phrase that comes up is love them from afar Be kind to them in my heart

Set clear boundaries. I have as your friend as your guide as somebody Hopefully is standing shoulder to shoulder with you is sort of in this crazy journey I really feel for all the people who have reached out to you 620,000 times in your inbox and all of that stuff and I feel for you

And I would advise you to delete every one of those things Yeah, and to basically love all of those people who are gonna get unanswered from afar And be kind to them in your heart and recognize that on the whole you're doing the best that you can

Because you are I wish I could give you like here's the tool you know like NBC nonviolent communication says some brilliant tools or here's the book that magically unlocks that To me the challenge isn't not having the tool the challenge is in the meaning that we put into the situation

That is the hardest thing to come over and to recognize that you're okay Even if you're not necessarily being yet you're kind distorette your best Because like you like everybody else like me we all get resources that are thin at times my god And so you know if you've not answered a text message from me Tim or if you've not answered an email from me I am never ever ever gonna think ill of you. Well, I appreciate that wish I could transmit that Composure to all of my

620,000 senders. Let me ask you a A situational question and this is true in my life and I'm sure it's true for many people listening that I have a handful of people who are Kind of close to me very much in the same circles playing at a high level who tend to

Reach out to me only when there is an ask of some type and there tends to be some great degree of discomfort associated with the ask Inso much as perhaps they have two or three people who are close friends of mine attending an event of theirs or Investing in blobby blah whatever might be So that it is there's a great degree of discomfort that I feel

In ignoring the email. Maybe I actually get texted by one friend and then the email from this person There are a few people who are Repeat characters kind of like Newman and Seinfeld and Seinfeld and shakes his fist Newman, yeah, so I have I have at least a half a dozen newmins who are pretty tough to get rid of and they're not very good at reading Hints or they deliberately ignore hints that I don't want to do things that I don't want to respond

Have you coached people through breaking up with friends or having Direct conversations with their own newmins and then maybe the newman is a co-founder maybe the newman is a someone on the board of directors Maybe fill in the blank for having a really direct Conversation about this type of dynamic Sure can we put aside just for a moment co-founder and and board member because they are totally there are power dynamics there that are different than the newmins that you've been talking about

Yeah, let's leave out co-founder and board member. I agree that add to the complexity or we can circle back to it separately But here's the thing if we start with a basic basic basic basic premise it goes like this Am I a good person? Am I doing the best that I can and if I can answer that question relatively straightforwardly and honestly Then I don't have to feel guilty Because that's what we're talking about right that's the emotion that gets manipulated

I don't have to feel guilty saying to somebody. I don't have the space To do the thing that you would like me to do which might include maintaining this contact and There's an image that I often use whether it's with a client or with my own self and it's come to me as I've

gotten older and I'm obsessed right now with myself being old and The images of a bone-side tree which over its lifetime, you know, you can see this One foot tall bone-side tree and it could be anywhere from 10 years old to 300 years old you have really no idea and What I see is

Something that has been carefully pruned into a thing of beauty and I think that that's our opportunity in life Now if we start with the supposition that we are never enough that we are not good enough and that we therefore not only You said before become addicted to busyness in order to make ourselves Not feel the things that we don't want to feel remember that Well, one of the things that we do is we maintain unhealthy relationships in order to not feel the things that we don't want to feel

Even when those unhealthy relationships make us feel other things we don't want to feel Whereas if we start with the basic premise that we are enough just as we are and that there is no great loss To you him if Over time you lose some connection and you use this term several times to some high-powered person

Oh my goodness. This high achieving person this high performer person There's no real great loss Like think of the people that you have interviewed over the years The people that may be began in some powerful position and that have gone on to some powerful position

Oh my god if I lose that connection that I once had to them then somehow I'm at a loss Whoo take a breath we breathe into that the Buddha taught us one thing You are basically good just as you are Not because of the connections that you have maintained And those people who love you and care about you and understand the essence are going to be fine Even if you say Hey, I'm sorry. I actually can't maintain this connection. May I ask you a question?

Sure. All right, so I agree with everything you just said and What I'd love to hear you elaborate on is any practices or tools that you use or recommend people use to get from intellectually agreeing with what you just said To embodying that in some way that translates to different behavior Does that make sense because I mean one of my favorite quotes is I guess it's Ted Geysel But Dr. Seuss which is the people who matter don't mind and the people who mine don't matter

I mean I love that quote. I rely myself of it all the time nonetheless I do have this guilt that crops up on occasion that I recognize his counterproductive nonetheless it crops up and causes me to behave in ways that I know are not necessary nor productive and I'm wondering How you help people to make that leap from kind of the

intellectual uh-huh. Yep. I get it to The other lily pad of behavioral change Well, the first thing I would say is that the practice that you just described embodying the Ted Geysel Dr. Seuss quote that is a practice And the first thing to do is to remember that the thing about the word practice is that we actually never achieve We're always moving towards We're always going there but oftentimes

achieving it permanently sustain persistently. Yeah, that's a tough one so In those moments when we fail to understand and remember that those of us who those who love us won't mind When we fail to remember that It can be helpful to remember what I was saying before about I am enough And I'm doing the best that I can or as Dr. Seuss once taught me Not bad considering

Not bad considering how rough you may have had it. Not bad considering how hard your life is right now You're okay You're okay And if I can say that to myself every day in one form or another Bringing a kind of mindful attention to the points when I fail

With a kind of forgiveness to myself. Well then wow. Okay. That can be helpful Do you Use Journaling for this I know journaling is very important to you and I want to discuss that as a topic and there are a million in one of ways to Journal so like to learn more about how you use journaling but is is journaling One of the ways that you remind yourselves of these things. Yeah Yeah, and if so what does it look like down to the mundane details?

Do you write down I am enough as a prompt and then write for two paragraphs on why that is the case or How does one implement this so just to for context? I have been journaling consistently. So there's about 13 years old daily and I'm 55 so a hell of a lot of journals and And again to be consistent and I think you do the same thing I handwrite I do you know and

What may be unusual as I never go back and reread Because it's not about figuring shit out It's about the experience and so my general prompt the thing I almost always start with is Right now I'm feeling and I simply bring my intention to it

And so I might be feeling to talk about this very specific situation guilt So for example and I'll use this sort of mindful attention if I were to journal about our conversation one of the things I might journal Is about the guilt that I have felt over the years as to whether or not I was

Reaching out to you when you might be in trouble or if I was one of those folks who Put you in an uncomfortable situation and I bring that up not to a list of response from you But as an example of an exploration of the guilty feelings that I might have Where are they coming from what are they doing was I kind that sort of thing? And then I blow a kiss to myself

Easy there buddy boy easy. This is all a journaling exercise I'm just talking it out and I remember something that's really important About that word guilt guilt is self-focused Remorse is about the other Remorse is oh I hurt someone's feelings and I would like to not be hurtful

So I'm going to try not to be hurtful guilt is oh my god I can't believe this I'm ruminating ruminating ruminating ruminating I find myself journaling in a ruminating kind of way I try to bring attention to that and that's the moment where I say easy boy Easy you're a good man who sometimes

Fails to live up to your aspirations That's it that simple I also promised I would return to the crow this might be a good Pro place Yeah, now I'm gonna get the pronunciation wrong Mary Help me with the last name P.O. and Ponset Puppet Yeah, and it's Marie Marie Marie

Always it's always a tricky one. All right, so Marie Ponset Ponset And she's still with us thank god and the crow what does she Describe in terms of the crow this that might fit might not but I want to make sure I fulfill my promise to oh I think it does fit. I think it does fit. So Marie was

One of my professors in college. She taught poetry But I also took a particular track in teaching writing And so she was also my mentor and she used to talk all the time about the crow who sits on your shoulder telling you what a piece of shit you are ah

That's a piece of shit. I can't believe you wrote that you know, it's like I hear that voice And it sits on your shoulder and it tells you all the things that you have done wrong and all the things that it happening And oftentimes in my journal Sometimes I'll take a second hand so that there are two different colors I will allow the crow to speak

This is really important. This isn't a jujitsu move Because the mistake I think a lot of people make is they try this for rocks at the crow and Shut the crow up and that crow is a really interesting voice That crow tells us all the things that we are doing wrong And the ways in which we are not enough and that's the linkage back to what we were just talking about This notion that we are not enough just by ourselves

That's the fuel by which the crow is there now. This is the move to make The crow's mission is to preserve your ability to be loved To feel safe and that you belong What it makes you feel like shit though. Yes, it makes you feel like shit But its motivation is for you not to feel ashamed and so the crow is doing you a favor

The crow is trying to keep you safe. The problem is the crow is so attentive and so vigilant That it's a little too active And so what we want to say at that moment is thanks a lot buddy I really appreciate it But all those people who might be angry with me Because I didn't respond to them or do the thing they wanted me to do They actually don't really see me and if they don't see me They don't know that I'm doing the best that I can

So I'll blow my kiss. I'll put them on the other side of that chain-link fence And I'll love them from afar This is really important and by this I mean everything that we've been talking about pretty much since the get go but especially I'm referring to the journaling and creating an outlet for

The crow or the monkey mind or What Tim urban of wait, but why would call the mammoth and I highly recommend that everybody check out an article He wrote called taming the mammoth which is on this subject that if you hate that part of yourself and Try to contain it at least in my experience that does nothing but Exacerbate does nothing but worsen The problem but along the lines of say morning pages, you know, Julia Cameron and so on writing freehand in the morning and providing that

Monkey mind an opportunity to fix itself on paper at least for me gives me tremendous amount of Increased levity during the day. It removes a huge burden Do you tend to journal first thing upon waking up? Could you walk us through when you're at your best? When do you wake up? What is your first kind of 60 to 90 minutes look like over two hours? Whatever you choose

It's two hours and when I'm at my best. I wake I clean up so our shower and stuff like that and I have caffeine because you do not want to be around me without caffeine What time do you wake up generally between five and six? Almost without fail usually without an alarm clock So I'm really awful around nine o'clock at night. I'm a very boring person. I do not look at my phone

Let me say that again. I do not look at my phone. I do not look at my phone Because it's just too painful and with a cup of coffee coffee not coffee as I say from Brooklyn and Then I journal usually for an hour and then I sit in meditation usually for an hour half hour Sometimes 45 minutes. It sort of depends on how the day is going And what's going on? But the entire period feels like one quiet meditative period So that's me at my best

The journaling for an hour. I want to dig into that a bit because I think it's such a powerful tool and

I'd like to hear more about how that hour is spent. So I'm looking at a page in the new book appropriately named reboot and you have in this book different journaling invitations So you might have let's give a few examples in what ways do I deplete myself and run myself into the ground Where am I running from and where to why I by allowed myself to be so exhausted you mentioned earlier that you

Often start the journaling with right now. I'm feeling dot dot dot Are there other prompts that you personally tend to use more than others? Well, I would never say that I would use the prompts like

I'm going to use the same prompt every time the one thing that I do consistently is right now. I'm feeling And then generally speaking I might review the path 24 hours almost in a diary kind of fashion, you know So yesterday I woke up and then I also don't worry about explaining people so I might say and then I met with Mary Jane And I don't have to explain who Mary Jane is because who cares?

I'm never going to read it again and nobody is ever going to read it I get rid of all that monkey mind bullshit chatter Right, and I just go right into it and I presume that the journal knows all sees all has been there with me all along That's an important point Secondarily, I will ask myself many questions like how long have I felt this way Which will then bring me back to some early memories And I will start to be able to elucidate the patterns of my life

And that's really important because it's the patterns that actually point out where we have some struggles Can I circle back to a point that you were making before about accepting the totality of what's going on because the journaling can help me in that Yes, you know wanting that

So I mentioned before about maybe utilizing different pens to speak for the different parts of ourselves Before I even go further, let me make this observation I think it's super helpful for you Tim To speak openly about the ways in which there are different parts of you

You know for those of us who are mildly curious about this space that's an obvious fact But there's still very much a point of view in the world That there's just one mind that there's just one point of view and all those other voices

We pretend aren't there. They're not part of ourselves And you were absolutely right when those voices are not given Airtime they get really pissed off Really really angry and the energy that they hold is really important And so if we go back to journaling for a moment by giving voice to those other voices By giving airtime to those other voices We get to lay out in fact all the conflicts that exist within us In Buddhism, there were taught that there are seven layers of consciousness

Seven is an observer observing observing observing observing they're all these layers of what's going on right And by taking the time in a good journaling session you can allow you don't even have to swap all these pens You can allow dialogue You can allow conflict you can allow argument And it's in that expression That's a manifestation of that full acceptance that you were talking about before oh wait I can contain multitudes isn't that what Whitman said

Do I contradict myself? I do I am large I contain multitudes Amen With the we are aware of it or not we all do a book that helped me a lot with this And I found so much value in the first Unless I 50 to 100 pages that I wanted to get to work Immediately

I was like okay, that's plenty of grist for the mill. Let me get started was radical acceptance by Tara Brock Oh god what a great book Yeah, and I think the title is fairly sterile or Milk toast, but the book is so good and in my particular case my

Default emotional home in a way was anger and the way I dealt with that was by fighting anger That makes sense yeah trying to cage and contain it and radical acceptance offered me an entirely different way of relating to that Which I found extremely valuable are there any other

Tools, meditations, books anything at all that might be helpful in assisting people to accept or reconcile with different parts of Themselves or at the very least recognize different you know how before you were saying like you you know You're taking a breath because she wanted to jump in I'm having all those same feelings Yeah, so much here first of all shout out to Tara Brock for radical acceptance

What a what a brilliant book and what a gift she is as a teacher. Yes. Yes. Yes on the acceptance You know you talked about anger being your default mechanism For me growing up with the violence that I experienced as a kid rage Was a major part of my childhood

But the challenge that I experienced was that anger rage was so dangerous that I actually turned it into anxiety All the time and so actually you can't see it because the video is off But on my desk or two little action figures one is Hulk and the other's Thor And one part of me that I learned to accept Was the Hulk Because the Hulk when I was a kid I remember this one time I have a younger brother named John

And in my mind's eye he's still 10 years old even though he's in his 50s. So hey John Anyway, when I was a kid we lived in a part of Brooklyn where called Bensoners and I We lived in the second floor of a two-family house And I remember looking out the window and one day this kid was throwing rocks over the fence at my brother John And I went ballistic and I ran downstairs and I grabbed this kid and I pulled him over the fence And I threw him on the floor and I pounded the crap out of his face

Because here's the thing you do not fuck with my people You do not fuck with Hulk's people The problem was that Hulk was often dangerous and would often lead to something negative happening to me So I would shut him up and I pretend that he's not there And he would show up in all sorts of ways like really cleverly dissecting somebody's argument and Being really wordy and verbose and shutting people down and all these awful behaviors And what I had to do was radically accept

That that guy that big green guy exists in me for one reason only to keep myself and those who love me safe And by the loving Hulk I transformed him into Thor Who's just as strong just as powerful Well, less likely to be out of control and motivated by justice better hair too and much better hair much better skin So that radical acceptance that accepting the fullness of of ourselves

Oh my god, it's so liberating, isn't it? It is and what's liberating also is simply the realization that you can in some fashion reconcile these different parts of you and that they serve a purpose not only do they serve a purpose but that they were

Probably in some way fundamental to your survival whether that's physical emotional or otherwise and that they were Incredibly incredibly important and may still be very important for certain things certain situations That's right and you know that recalls Carl Jung's notion of the shadow

Which is the place he describes is the place we put the dismembered parts of ourselves And this is really important not only do we put the parts of ourselves that society may say are obviously not good Let's say a rage like anger But also the parts are ourselves That are actually quite powerful quite positive and quite Lovely But because they threaten say are belonging

They have to actually be put in the shadow as well. Well, they too get really pissed off Right and they too cause trouble And so you might put into the shadow your intellect or your capabilities or your ability to write a book and you might sit for two or three decades Knowing that you want to write a book and not doing it

Because it might threaten you in some way or another. This is a good segue for Difficult decisions and by difficult I mean emotionally difficult And so the for instance sitting on the Desire to write a book for 10 20 years and then finally taking whatever the steps are the first steps To finally write that book potentially maybe that's leaving a job Maybe that's starting a job could be any number of things Could you speak to you can choose which of these questions you would like to answer

When did you say no to something that was at the time very difficult to say no to which in retrospect was very important To your life And then the other is when was a time when you decided to kind of block out all the noise block out everything else and focus on something very narrowly And that ended up being extremely important in retrospect What occurs to me is that the answer to both questions is the same meaning probably the most consequential career choice that I made the

consequential saying no that I every day was to walk away from the venture business and to stop being a professional investor and

The rest of my life unfolded and I'm sitting here talking to you today. I mean we might have been friends to him Had I taken that path who knows But I'm sitting here talking to you about something that feels like the most profound fruition of who I am my vocation my bollissisms all of this because I said no To the thing that I was actually really successful at um, which is a Mindfuck if you think about it because because like if I was failing as an investor you could sort of say

Well, of course it walked he walked away. Ha ha he failed, but I actually walked away when I was successful

Because it was too painful. Can you walk us through how that happened because you had to have this feeling for I would imagine more than 20 minutes Maybe it was days maybe it was weeks maybe it was months What was the kind of 24 hour period the dinner the conversation the 48 hours whatever it might have been when you're like enough is enough I'm actually sending the email having the conversation and walking There's actually years in the making I would have to go back to 99 2000

Right around that time period where if you recall the market crashed the Nasdaq crashed I forget the absolute numbers because they would be miniscule compared to the numbers we're dealing with now But the market crashed around March 1999 and I remember it because I was on a Family holiday to

Washington DC when Fred I think texted me Said did you see the Nasdaq you know, it's like oh my god, you know And I think it had dropped like 700 points or something which at the time was like a phenomenal number Anyway right around that time

I started having this I just couldn't sleep. I was just not happy I was 37 38 years old so in hindsight it was clearly entering midlife And like the systems were collapsing all around me And then I thought I couldn't go out and fundraise with Fred and raise a new venture capital fund for a flat-art

And so I decided to leave the fund But I decided to leave the fund and go to jp morgan because I thought that the problem was It's changing the externalities and so then I Took a position starting January 1st 2002 and as we were talking about before by February It was just not working and I remember going in to see my boss at the time a guy named Jeff Walker

Who's vice chairman of the bank? He's still very very close friend and I remember saying I can't do it I just can't do it and I think it was probably a few months after the canyon ranch visit And I said I'm not going to renew my contract At the end of this year

And he said well, what are you going to do? And I said I don't know but for the first time in my life I'm going to be without a job since first time since I was about 13 And I'm going to be liberated from this definition from room I would you know this notion of like wearing somebody else's suit of clothes It was incredibly scary It was incredibly hard was the trigger I hate to interrupt it was the trigger that you had a preset

Scheduled meeting for the renewal of the contract. It was kind of like shit or get off the pot in the sense. No So you said dinner it was a dinner, okay It was the dinner. It's like Jeff. I need to have a dinner. I need to talk about this What because the presumption everybody renewed their contract did something prompt was there like a particular day or moment Prompted you asking him out to dinner, you know, so I went down to to canyon ranch and I read these books

Let your life speak a holy shit. I've actually not been listening to my life And I started to spend the next few months that was the beginning of my meditation practice I first meditated a canyon ranch And I would argue I first began listening to my life to my heart And over the next few months up until November that year

I think we had dinner right around November 2nd or so. There's that number two again I never noticed that pattern before We had dinner and I said to him, you know, it was like one of those moments Do I say to the beginning of the dinner? Do I say to the you know? Because like I just won last small But the way I'm not gonna be a partner anymore and I said it at the beginning and I knew in my heart that he would still be my friend In fact, we remain super close

But the fear was like what was it gonna do? And I didn't know And no idea Thank you for bringing me back to that time because It's important for me to remember that. I'm feeling that right now What was the day after you walked like do you remember what that what you did on the first one or two days after you walked out? I remember starting to tell people I told the woman who was my assistant at the time She remains a very close friend. See there's a pattern carry raclin

And I said, you know, carry I'm not gonna do it. I don't remember all of the details It was so long ago. This is you know 17 years ago now But I remember the feeling and the feeling was a combination of utter relief and absolute terror Both feelings simultaneously What's your advice to someone who's in that position and I could phrase it as What advice would you have given yourself when feeling those two things at that point in time?

Which you can answer or since you have experience with so many executives founders and so on When people are experiencing this sense of relief combined with Object terror of facing the unknown What's your advice? The first thing I would say and I would have said to myself is that welcome to midlife For sure And I say this often now because I often can see the connection to where I was talking to the CEO Of a very successful company

Who was just talking to him this morning 39 years old and it's like everything's working. Why do I feel Groundless is like well, let's talk about that So what I often say is remember you're not alone and the second is That there are adults men and women Who are on the other side of that golf and we're fine and you'll be fine and Would they have trod the path before you? And you're gonna be okay. How many references to books have you made temp?

And those were all written by people you know terror's book was written just as much for herself as it was written for anyone else You know and the all of those people They're there they're like ancestors guiding us through that period And saying come on over the water's fine. You're gonna be okay Don't be so scared What is helped most with or what?

But Helped most if it's past tense with your anxiety with your worrying when you transmuted Rage into anxiety or if anxiety bubbled up is from other sources What are some of the things that have helped you most with that?

I'll speak about the rage for a moment the rage and then turned into anxiety It would often turn into anxiety, but it would equally as often turn into migraines And that's when doctors say his first taught me the first of those three questions, which is what am I not saying that needs to be said?

And by linking speaking To the rage And to the migraines and to the anxiety I gave voice to the feelings and that Didn't magically make them go away, but it lessened the power of that anxiety less than the power of all of those feelings So learning to speak whether it's in my journal

Or actually learning to speak like an adult with another human being hey that hurt me or hey I'm scared that thing that you said last night scared me and as a result I want to do the thing that I would normally do which is withdraw and cut off connection to you

But I'm gonna stay here and be an adult and engage with you That move It doesn't make the anxiety go away, but it puts me back in control puts the Adult me back in control the other thing that I do is I start to ask the anxiety questions like you really want to work with what's going on in that A megdala which is where that source of anxiety tends to be right the megdala

Ask it questions. What's the threat? What am I afraid of have I heard this before those questions fire off the prefrontal cortex Which can relieve the anxiety do you personally tend to ask this questions before meditation In journaling what form does the asking take?

Yeah, I do well remember I journal before I meditate so a lot of times I will be sitting down at the cushion Going oh this is what I'm working with And you know, I'll tell you what happened this morning in my meditation session I was working with some really difficult feelings that came up over the weekend And I was sitting in meditation. I had had a conversation with Sharon's Hall for a guest today And it was really helpful and all of a sudden she came back in just as I sat down

I'm a very ritualized meditator, right? So I have candles. I have incense You know, I'm a form of catholic so I like all that ritual stuff You know if somebody could ring a bell it makes me happy right? So I'm doing all that stuff. I'm sitting on the cushion and all that's emerging And all the sudden I started visualizing the area of my chest where my heart is And the object of my meditation this morning was open your heart open your heart your heart's closing Stay open stay open

And in that moment I realized that what I was continuing to work with was the impulse to close down this weekend That I was feeling in response to the fears And so the naturally arising thought that came from that session in that moment was Oh Open

Open which very very quickly turned it to loving kindness meditation for myself For people who don't know correct me if I'm wrong here, but loving kindness meditation If you want to learn more about it, but highly Recommend diving into that also known as meta me TTA meditation to

Folks worth checking out jack cornfield who's been on this podcast before specifically speaking about meta and loving kindness Sharon's also spoken about it on the podcast And those are good those are great places to start very very effective short

At least can be short meditation that really punches above its weight class in a sense And I think in part for me I'm really glad we're talking about this because it's a type of meditation that I haven't used in a while and I really should Is at least for me it's a vacation From Obsessing on myself

If it is directed at other people now as was pointed out to me during my first ever extended meditation retreat I was talking about loving kindness and how much I enjoyed it and they asked on the way out Just a quick suggestion Have you applied this to yourself at all and it was so Non-sensical to me It's like it didn't it like they might have been speaking to me and clinging on I was like loving kindness to myself what like that doesn't make any sense

And lo and behold I did find it very valuable. I really enjoyed combining that with also loving kindness meditation for other people And if you're just kind of rolling your eyes at The sort of a new age hippie sounding wording of loving kindness

Then we could switch to a different language and look up meta META meditation Same same but different Jared let me ask you just a couple more questions We could go for many many hours More and we certainly have spoken for many hours before but for the purposes of right now

I think we're getting close to a really good getting reacquainted chat and Round one of the podcast I'll ask you just a few more questions one is what is the New behavior in the last handful of years it could be Anytime really or belief that is most

Or should say greatly improved your life quality of your life new behavior or belief in the last Film the blank number of years that has significantly Improve the quality of your life the mean one that comes to mind is that I am a good man the belief That's a belief I believe that I am a

Fundamentally good person And that I accept the fact that I often fail to act in accordance with that but that feels to this guilt-ridden anxious-ridden angry child from Brooklyn way back when that feels radically transformative What I'm good just as I am No Yeah, I'm good That's huge Hard to imagine something bigger By the way, I have to practice it every day, but you know, I'm a good enough partner I'm a good enough business person. I'm a good enough coach

I'm good enough parent. That's the hardest one for me Have I wounded my children? Yes Does that undermine whether or not I'm a good man and a good father? No

And that allowance has done something really magical. It's allowed them to accept themselves So yeah, it's a big move that is a big move the next question might segue might be completely different But if you could put a message on a billboard metaphorically speaking to get a quote a word a question anything non-commercial out to billions of people what might you put on such a billboard? I'm gonna add two sentences

It's a big billboard. So there's plenty of big boboard. So it doesn't say in peach Trump just kidding It says you're not alone and just because you feel like shit doesn't mean you are shit The you are not alone is really really important Because we feel so broken because we question our worthiness all the time We exacerbate the feelings of I must be the only one who's going through this and this is crazy because despite all the evidence

Whether it's myths whether it's stories whether it's religions whether it's philosophical traditions Everybody's saying the same thing you're fundamentally good Yeah, there are things you can do to improve your life, but you're fundamentally good Relax, it's okay

That's that equanimity that I often talk about like Okay, so I guess you're not alone and just because you feel like shit doesn't mean you are shit And if I'm not shit then this feeling of it being crappy right now well, this will pass So let's add another one this two shall pass

Can I add onto that chicken ad you can keep adding Tim think of the times in which you have struggled You've been very open about your struggles and by the way, thank you for doing that because you model something that's really important Think about when you've been at your worst and how alone it feels and how it becomes this self-reinforcing negative view that you must be crap Because you feel like crap

It's like no stop you must be human because you feel struggle and there are billions of humans and have been billions and there will be billions more And struggle is universal It is part of the amusement ride That's right Yeah, and you bought a ticket and might as well go for a ride

It can't be on magic castle indefinitely you're going to go through the haunted house occasionally Jerry Thank you so much for Taking the time today to share and to catch up and to teach I always enjoy our conversations so Point number one. Thank you very much Well, thank you and thank you for giving me the opportunity and thank you for asking gorgeous questions that really help me think and feel and Thank you for doing what you do every day. It really means a lot to the world

My pleasure. I really appreciate you saying that and it helps me as much as I hope it helps other people And there's that weird crazy esoteric thing that all those people high achieving people say oh there He goes oh helping me helps other people helping other people up to me. Yeah, right. Tim's living proof of that so there

It's true. It's true. I mean, I think that I've been very fortunate to somehow Stumble my way like a drunken the dark into a career that involves having conversations like this So thank you lady fortune for that and it's also just a tremendous opportunity to Explore some of these things that perhaps aren't Explored as often as they should be and you are great

Companding on the path with that. So thank you again and Where are the best places to Say hello to you on line or to learn about what you're up to of course the book reboot subtitle leadership and the art of growing up

is available and certainly something I would recommend people check out has the many of the prompts and more that we've talked about A lot of case studies the personal history and a distillation of a lot of what you've learned working with hundreds thousands of clients at this point yeah and And what else should people know anything else yeah, I mean probably the best way to sort of follow what's going on is reboot.io slash book

But also if you just go to the reboot.io website. We've got A bunch of resources podcasts self-guided courses journaling exercises all sorts of things designed to help folks all for free Because you know, hey, what the heck you know, let's help each other out and that's probably the best way

You can also follow me on Twitter at Jerry Kallone you mentioned that earlier, but pick up the book Pretty proud of it and I hope it makes a difference makes a dent in the world That's the best that we can hope for And for people listening, I'll link to everything that we've discussed the website book website twitter and Everything else that came up in this conversation in the show notes as always at Tim.blog forward slash

Podcasts you can just search Jerry JER or RY or Kallone if you want to take the black diamond root instead of using the easy option and You'll be able to find it very very quickly Jerry any other comments requests Anything at all that you'd like to say before we wrap up

No, it just said it was a real heartfelt pleasure. It was really a blast likewise. Thanks so much Jerry and Everyone out there Thank you so much for listening and until next time Pick up a damn journal Amen, that's right and real pens real pens Give it a shot. It's amazing what you can discover when you take what you think or clear thoughts and put them on paper

and that's it for now. So until next time. Thanks again for listening Hey guys, this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend

Between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday Easy to sign up easy to cancel It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week

It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles and reading book some reading albums perhaps gadgets gizmos all sorts of tech tricks and so on they get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast

guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you So if that sounds fun again, it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend Something to think about if you'd like to try it out Just go to tim.blog slash friday type that into your browser tim.blog slash friday drop in your email and you'll get the very next one Thanks for listening

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