#767: Tim and Uncle Jerry Tackle Life, Big Questions, Business, Parenting, and Disco Duck

Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to interview them, and tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. Sometimes I get not just a two-for-one, but a hundred-for-one when I interview someone who also helps world-class performers, in addition to being such themselves, to get past sticking points, to redefine themselves, to reinvent themselves, to chart new paths forward.

And my guest today, Jerry Colona, is such a person. He is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm, dedicated to the notion that better humans make better leaders. But prior to that, he was an operator in many different ways. Prior to being a coach, he was a partner with JPMorgan Partners, the private equity arm of JPMorgan Chase. He also led New York City-based Flat Iron Partners, which he founded in 1996, with partner Fred Wilson, Flat Iron, went on to become one of the most famous artists in the world.

He was a nation's most successful early-stage investment programs. At age 25, he was editor-in-chief of Information Week Magazine. He's written a bunch of books. We'll mention them at the end of the conversation, but one is Reboot. The other is Reunion, both highly recommended. You can find his company, Reboot.io, and Jerry on Twitter and Instagram at JerryColonis.io.io and NA. And he has been on the podcast twice before. He is a fan favorite. People always take a ton away from our conversations.

And I recap some of my favorite aspects of those in this episode. And we cover a lot of ground. There are a lot of stories I've never heard. We have a lot of laughs. Almost a few cries on my side. We dig into his toolkit. The questions that he uses with himself and with clients that I have adopted as some of my favorites. There is a lot to learn. And it was a hell of an enjoyable conversation. It was a walk-in talk. And I have done this before.

I am out in nature today. It is a beautiful, bluebird sky day in the mountains and to sit in a dark room. Staring at a screen seemed like an insult to nature, complete travesty, totally unnecessary. So I have high fidelity recording equipment. That is what I'm using right now. It is a headset. I am sitting 10 feet from a beautiful river where I'm watching the eddies swirl around rocks. So why not? Get out and move.

If you can listen to this while you're moving, I encourage you to do so. Audio is a secondary activity. So if you can walk in talk or walk in listen while I'm walking and talking, all the better for you, me, everybody involved. So hopefully that all makes sense. But without further ado, please enjoy a wide ranging conversation, a very tactical, practical and also funny conversation with Jerry Colonna.

First, a few quick words from the fine sponsors who make this show possible. I use all of their products. So this is not me just shilling. I've tried it all. I've vetted it all. And there they are. Okay, this is going to be part confessional. As some of you know, I am recently single and navigating the world of modern dating. What a joy that is. Sometimes it's fun, but it's mostly a goddamn mess. As many of you probably know.

I've tried all the dating apps. And while there are some slick options out there, the most functional that I have found is the league. Why did I end up using the league? First, most dating apps give you almost no information. It's a huge time suck on the league. You're starting with a baseline of smart people.

And you can then easily find the ones you're attracted to. It's much easier. It's like going to a conference where everyone is smart and then just looking for the people you think are cute to go up and speak with. So more than half of the league users want to top 40 colleges and you can make your filters really selective. So if that's important to you, then go for it. It does work. And that is one of the reasons that I use it.

Second, people verify using LinkedIn. So you can make sure they have a job and don't bounce around every six months. It's a simple proxy for finding people who have their shit together. It's infinitely easier than trying to figure things out on Instagram or whatever.

Third, you can search by interest and in multiple locations. I haven't found any other dating app that allows you to do this. For instance, I usually search for women who love skiing or snowboarding have those as interests. As I like to spend say two to three months of the year in the mountains.

I'm a river and mountain sky. The U.I. is a little clunky. I'll warn you, but it's incredibly helpful for finding good matches and not just pretty faces. So you can search by interest and specify multiple cities. So to summarize a few things that I think make it stand out features available on the league include multi city dating, LinkedIn verified profiles ability to block your profile from co workers bosses family, etc.

You can search by interest. You can get profile stats and there is a personal concierge in the absolute. There's someone you can text with within the app as a personal concierge to get help. So what am I looking for? I am looking for a woman who is well educated and who loves skiing or snowboarding or both. These are, and I've used this word already, proxies for like 20 other things that are important.

So just I'll leave it for now. Someone who's default upbeat likes to smile, smiles often, glass half full type of person who would ideally like to have kids in the next few years. Her friends would describe her as feminine and playful and she would love polarity in a relationship. She's athletic and has some muscle. I like strong women. Not necessarily bodybuilders, but you get the idea. It could be a rock climber dancer, whatever, but has some muscle loves to read and loves learning.

If this sounds like you send hashtag date Tim. So hashtag date Tim in a message to your concierge in the app to get us paired up. So these are all reasons why I was excited when the league reached out to sponsor the podcast. They even have daily speed dating where you can go on three three minute dates with people who match your preferences all from the comfort of your couch.

So check it out. Download the league today on iOS or Android and find people who challenge you to swing for the fences and who are in it to win it. I found it to be super fascinating. You can really get good matches instead of just looking at pretty faces and kind of rolling the dice over and over again. Much better. So download the league today on iOS or Android and check it out.

Message hashtag Tim to your in app concierge to jump to the front of the waitlist and have your profile reviewed first. Check it out the league on iOS or Android. This episode is brought to you by eight sleep. I have been using eight sleep pod cover for years now. Why? Well, by simply adding it to your existing mattress on top like a fitted sheet.

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They currently ship to the United States of Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. I was so pleased with how much from our prior experience. I just wanted to tell you that and also to ask you is there anything that you have repeated or shared that to you is the equivalent of four hour work week in terms of being the blessing and the curse that you just can't seem to shake for better for worse.

I know we're going to talk about legacy, but specifically I'm wondering is there a point when you get tired of hearing some of your own profound questions echoed back to you specifically. Can you guess which one I'd be complicit yes, yes, I don't get so tired of it. I will tell you that I get tired of the misinterpretation that goes on with that.

Would you mind laying out the context of this question, what is the question and then would love to hear you expand on misinterpretations of the question. So what is the question or what was the conditions that caused me to ask that question initially of myself. Let's do the question because we covered actually you know what? Let's rewind the clock all the way. Let's do both.

And for people who are like what the hell are they going on about this is a question that I revisit a lot maybe I'm revisiting it the wrong way. So we will find out shortly, but yes, if you could just explain the Genesis story, then the formation of the question and then how people misinterpret it. Is that order makes sense to you that would be sure I think a great place to start.

And the Genesis story, the origin story isn't that complicated. You know, if we go back in time to my mid 30s when I was a Prince of New York and a former VC and totally fucked up as an individual, I was needy in the first decade.

I'm now my fourth decade of psychoanalysis and I had a very tough as nails nice Jewish lady psychoanalyst named Dr. Sayers and what she taught me repeatedly endlessly boxing my ears when she'd say this is how have you been complicit in creating these conditions you complained so much about. And you have to picture it right I'm lying on the couch there's this you know old Jewish lady whose 30 years older than me who's just basically had it with me complaining.

And so the roots of the question are really a kind of an exasperation not just from my analyst to me, but eventually with me about me. And it was really only by taking that question how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want that there was a massive unlock for me. Now you asked about the misinterpretation the first level of misinterpretation that people go through is that they assume I'm saying how have I been responsible.

And I am very, very particular I get very, very angry when people misinterpret the word complicit for responsible. And it's not because I want to let people off the hook, but quite the opposite I want people to understand that they've been in a complex. Here's the thing Tim when we get into our mindset that says I am responsible for all the shit in my life were actually walking away from doing the hard work. Could you expand on that? Yeah sure because guilt is a defense mechanism.

Right because some people might say well that's extreme ownership as I say I'm responsible for all the shit. Exactly that's the beginning of the solution, but where do they take a wrong turn. So I like the kind of ownership I like the word ownership I don't like the word responsibility.

And the reason for that is because and the reason I think it can be a defense mechanism is because it can be an old structure. So many people that I encounter myself included, spend our childhood pendulating between grandiosity and a sense of worthlessness. I'm either shit or I am the best. You got rid of that childhood. Well, I got rid of it in my adulthood. This is the point it I got rid of it by actually asking the right questions of myself.

If the word complicit is replaced with the words even extreme ownership, the danger is that I tip over into misunderstanding what actually has been going on. And I end up in the zone of being responsible for everything. And the truth is it's much more complex than that. I was just thinking that you're referring to a pendulum and that not taking any responsibility for anything is one example sort of absolving yourself from the hard work.

But I never thought of the opposite if you're accepting that anything and everything bad that happens is your responsibility slash fault. It puts you in a similar position. It seems exactly the position of puts you in is unable to actually with discernment diagnose what's really going on. And you know what you don't get to transform stuff if you don't really know what's going on. And so to understand what's really happening for you, you have to understand what your role is and what it isn't.

So how do you walk say a client through answering that question well? How are you complicit in creating the conditions that you say you don't want or the conditions of your lives in your lives that you say you don't want? How do you walk them through their rough draft of trying to answer that? Okay, so the unlock on the question is the second half of the question which people skip. You say you don't want. So give me an example from your own life, Tim. What do you say you don't want?

Oh man, how much time do we have? I have become better at this. So I'm not dodging the question, but I would say probably some form of busyness. Right. I've got this and I'm over-scheduled and I've got this and that and the other thing that is imposing on what maybe I say I want which is more blocked out. Space for writing or making. Right. So you say Mr. 4 hour work week. I don't want to work more than 4 hours a week. Nice turn. Nice turn. Yeah, I mean it. Yeah, you're right. Right.

So you say you want to be so efficient and so productive that you get everything done that you want to get done so that you have time to play. Take care of yourself where breathe right strips as you talk to you. Right. Okay. Just a quick sidebar. Breathe right. This one's on me. Next time you got a sponsor of the podcast. I could recognize them because I'm a breathe right user. I used them to sleep at night. Oh my god. And we were both like a lifetime supply so feel free.

Okay. So you say you don't want to be so busy. Right. And you were asking how do I walk a client through to understand the role of complicity. Right. In this regard. So how does it feel when you're not busy? I would say. And I don't want to steal your thunder here. But since I'm cheating with a cheat sheet, right. It's your show. So it's your thunder. And so segue to a compliment or maybe a necessary component of the first question.

How are you complicit in creating visions so you don't want, which is in what ways does that complicity serve you? Okay. So to answer your question and that at the same time, I would say probably, and this is almost a certainty looking back at some of the scariest depressive episodes in my life. It's when I had a lot of empty space. And there is an underlying fear. Even though I haven't experienced anything close to that magnitude of desperation and darkness in a very long time.

There is a fear that if I create a void, that is the voice that is the narrative that is going to come to dominate my thoughts. I would say that therefore my complicity serves me by avoiding that. Right. And so if you really want to transform, when will you be comfortable with the void? That's a good question. And in my defense, your honor, I will say that I'm about to go off the grid for a week starting this Friday.

So in a few days, I'll be going completely off the grid. No, no, nothing for a period of time. So I haven't injected these periods. But let's get into the messy stuff for a second since life is rarely as much of a randomized control trials. I've had an ongoing number of chats with friends and what's up in different messaging platforms. And it's been around taking breaks, creating space, chilling out. So a lot of these friends of mine have passed every hurdle an objective they could have had.

And like goal posts keep moving. They want to make a million and then I was 10 and then I was 20 and then once that gets into defense. And then it's trillion once it gets indefensible, then it's like, what's your annual compounded growth rate and this that turns into percentages because they can't even with a straight face defend the rest of it. But what they claim to want and what they believe I need is to chill out take a break, create all this space.

My experience is as social animals or at least as a person who benefits from social interaction, I do best around other people. I just do. And there are, it's not 100%, but it's not 0%. There's a risk that I do return to some of those dark places of dark narratives. It's not zero. So I struggle to answer the question of like when can I allow space because I do it in small doses, sometimes larger doses, it took almost all of October last year off the grid.

So perhaps you can help me to find my way to answer the question you posted. You know, look Tim, I feel like Uncle Jerry and that we speak every few years and every few years, my how you've grown. I know you don't feel that way because you're in your body. But when we first started talking, which was years and years ago, this was a big struggle for you.

This was a tremendous struggle and there was a sense that you might miss out. There was a sense of like you being falling behind in some sort of weird little race, a race to the top. And I think the speed with which you're able to go right to the fear of the void, what Blaze Pascal identified when he said that all of man's problems stand from their inability to sit alone in a room.

You know, I think you've got like a lot of us, you've got a component of that. And I also want to say I'm watching you letting go of the need to turn that void time into productivity time. Right. When I first started promoting the notion of sabbatical, which we've talked about in the past, I remember dealing with a client who would say, well, I'm going to learn Portuguese. It's like, no, you're not going to learn Portuguese in four weeks.

You know, you're going to learn to breathe without breathe right strips. You're going to, you know, you're just going to learn to enjoy yourself. Now, what I hear you doing is learning to enjoy yourself, which is a really powerful skill.

Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be a lifelong project, which is okay. A lot of things are lifelong projects. That's right. We got here because you were asking about that process. And this is the process. Right. This is the process. So for you, when you're off the grid, starting Friday, you know, what will that experience be like for you?

At what point might you be anxious and at what point might you start to relax? Because are you going to be with friends this trip to this particular example may not fit the exercise.

But what I've done for the last handful of years is every year, I do a past year review, rather than setting, let's just say blind semi uninformed, overly optimistic, near as resolutions. I look back at the past year and figure out what the highs and lows looked like if I were to do kind of an 80 20 analysis places, people activities.

The most life giving and the most life draining and then I schedule time as soon as possible. In blocks of one week, two weeks, depending on availability to spend time with energy and people doing energy and things. Right. And this particular week off the grid is going to be a Alpine, Alcant, which I do once every two years or so with bow.

At probably between 10 and 12,000 feet for most of it, it's going to get cold. We're going to be eating a lot of shitty, free-tried fruit, hopefully a bunch of trout on route to finding Alc.

And I have just found that particular experience and the time dilation that it allows to feel like a month off or two months off, it is just so regenerative for me that it's become a core piece of my annual planning, not necessarily a hunt, but that type of shared experience with a small, very small group of people.

So that's what that will look like. And I, in a sense, I don't want to say I'm disallowing myself from feeling discomfort because there's going to be incredible discomfort physically sleep is probably not going to be fantastic. And we will be very, very, very active, but it's not the same as doing a silent retreat and sitting there watching your monkey brain. Right. Yes. Contoured itself for 16 hours a day.

It's the kind of retreat where like layers of your skin are stripped away because you're so raw and rugged out in the world. And that's just going to drop you into your body and drop you more and more into the land. And that's a place of nourishment for you for sure.

Yeah, let me ask you if I could how often do you find with your clients or your team find with their clients that the fixes in the body or in something physical versus in the mind, even though the symptoms permeate both because the Cartesian separation of mind and body is ridiculous. It's not the same. And the reason I ask is that for me, let's just say taking a trip like this, it is such a restorative reminder of how what I want a need is simple and right in front of me.

But that comes through for me at least often, not always, but physical movement, sometimes physical hardship where as they say dog trading a tired dog is a happy dog. I think humans are pretty similar. Well, we're both mammals, right? Yeah, you asked how often I would say 95% of the time. Wow, I would say you're finding your way. I'm older than you Tim. So I get to be the wise one.

But you're finding your way to that really inherent wisdom and my take on the Cartesian day cart notion is instead of it being I think therefore I am I am therefore I think. And that's where all the problems begin. You know what you're really talking about is getting into the essence of your existence. The only cautionary note that I would sound is when we start to invade the productive thinking into that tired dog.

Effort meaning I'm going to do this so that I mean the worst cases I'm going to do this so that I lose weight or I'm going to do this so that I can look better or I'm going to do this so that I can I don't know quiet some negative self thought. And I think you're beyond that. But I would say to those listening what I have found is when I can let go of even up those things and just get dog tired. Then I'm happiest for sure.

It was definitely possible to sort of run towards things run away from things and I think with athletics movement it's not necessarily condemnation to be wanting to quiet something because you may just have too much inherent physical energy and it has nowhere to has no vehicle through which to dissipate so it just creates the

kind of devil on your shoulder creating all these fairy tales to drive you insane. And I do think that quieting that by dissipating the energy through exercise makes a whole lot of sense. But if there's a persistent problem that you're trying to avoid that requires attention then it's a different matter altogether.

Let's just agree that bypassing is not a good strategy. I mean it is important to take a vacation and that wise old analyst Dr. Sayers used to say to me all the time enough Jerry you figured it out now go take a break. But he's in sight what was going on in that session room but it's really important that we let go of those things that are driving us and that's not bypassing when you go on this elk hunt.

Maybe you're avoiding the conversation that you're supposed to be having you know to use one of my other questions maybe you're not saying the thing that you need to say. But I suspect at this point what it's doing is it's giving you the ability to come back to the stuff that you've had to confront but it's giving you some ground to stand on so that you can confront the things that you need to confront.

No I feel and it's also planned so far in advance at this point that it's not a reactive it's proactively basically injecting turbo boosters on my physical mental well being so that I can bring that back to everything else.

And you mentioned a few things just a moment ago that I just want to reiterate for folks and this I believe maybe the same therapist could be a different one taught you these questions ask when an existential pain what am I not saying that needs to be said what am I saying that's not being heard what's being said that I'm not hearing my getting that right.

Well she taught me the first question and it was again in a moment of exasperation when I had been hospitalized with a really terrible migraine and spent a week going through neurological tests only to find out that there was nothing physiologically wrong with me. And in the first session back she looked at me and she said what are you not saying that you need to say you need to talk more.

When you see those questions please hear that voice i'll add by the way that those questions have sort of bounded around the internet the way a lot of my questions do and.

One woman wrote back and said here's another one what are you hearing that's actually not being said it's that's a good one really good one that's a mirror that's right you know you hearing that's not good that's really good because boy oh boy do we tell ourselves stories a what we're getting at in all four of the questions and really much of this conversation is the answer.

The important is the importance of not both shedding yourself the importance of not bypassing what's really going on for you and I have found in my 61 years now that that is also a lifelong practice that my capacity to both ship myself continues unabated and no matter how progress is I think I am involved I think I am my ability to.

Be diluted by my own mind knows no end so I have come to see that as just a part of the human condition maybe when I'm as old as my friend Parker Palmer who's 86 i'll have the wisdom of not being able to bullshit myself. Parker Palmer also the author of one of your favorite books I believe let your life speak i'm getting that right.

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 momentous momentous offers high quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories including sports performance sleep cognitive health hormone support and more I've been testing the products for months now and I have a few that I use constantly personally I've been using momentous mag 3 and 8 L. theanine and apegianin.

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I want to overlay a few more questions that can be used that I took note of when I was reviewing our past conversations that I really like I don't yet have kids so one of them won't totally apply me although could apply I guess be hypothetical but ways of edging into what's actually going on. It's circumventing that bullshitting that we're all incredibly good at doing and it may not be.

I guess it often isn't conscious bullshitting right where we know we're lying to ourselves makes me have really compelling narrative that isn't true right we're hearing something isn't being said so one is no really how are you doing not just how are you doing but like no really how are you doing.

And then the little trick of asking people if they want their kids to feel the same thing that they're feeling when they get to be the same age and if they don't it props up to start realizing their lives and so on start with the whip next to a river such things happen right and there are more of course but what I was curious to ask you is all segway into this by way of an anecdote there's amazing fascinating. Sage man name Bill Richards and Bill Richards wrote a book called Sacred Knowledge.

He is a religious man and also I think he may be an ordained minister something along those lines. He also has the distinction of having administered hundreds and hundreds of psychedelic assisted therapy sessions both before and after provision and last time I spent time with him he kind of looked like Santa Claus. Amazing big white beard kind of jolly old elf type of feeling always smiling with a little twinkling as I and I spent some time with him probably.

Eight years ago something like that near john Hopkins where he's done a lot of work and I was asking him some question about doing the work right this is a phrase that comes up a lot in personal development circles dealing with your shadow self and X Y and Z it can take a million different forms doing the work and he said something to me that is stuck ever since and it was along the lines of well.

The tricky part about doing the work and I was like I don't what's the tricky part is like there's a very thin line between doing the work and just picking on yourself. And I was like and he said a few things to me that day where afterwards I was like fuck I just thought it was funny but there's actually a lot to unpack there and how do you help.

Clients or how do you think about helping people to distinguish between the two right because there can be a degree of like trauma fetishizing and cast fetishizing where people are doing everything and anything to just revisit every mishap of childhood every mistake their parents made.

And the dose makes the poison right it seems like pericels is said so long ago not an English obviously and how do you think about navigating that I think it's a brilliant question and I think it's something I probably as I slip slide it my way into elderhood.

And I think that I have begun to finally let go of in my own life and so when I think about supporting other people what comes to mind is really I mean think about the way Bill responded to you think about the way Dr. Sayers would respond to me think about you know I think about the conversations I have with my elder friend.

Parker it's always laced with humor and it's the humor that cuts through it humor forgiveness and not in this kind of I don't know self development book bullshit self forgiveness thing that's out there but genuine care and concern. I mean I'll give you an example I wrote a book that came out last year called reunion and hard of that journey was really reuniting.

To use language from the book with the parts of myself that I had to zone but more importantly my ancestors and in this case I went into a relationship with my father now my father died thirty two years ago and in unpacking his story what I came to. Have a new relationship with was his own depression his own alcoholism and I unpack you know to spoil the plot my dad was on his wedding day his mother was so angry at him for marrying my mother that she screamed from the back of the church.

Putana putana putana or or or or because my mother was praying wow the time and then she screamed out you're not my son you were adopted. Jesus and that's how my father yeah that's how my father found out he was adopted and I grew up as we've discussed before my mother was mentally ill my father's depression and alcoholism really marked my childhood.

And I would say that I spent most of my life being angry with him and this is to the point of the forgiveness and I think that what happened was in writing this book I started to really step into his body what would it be like to be eighteen months old because it turned out that he was given up for adoption at eighteen months old

and he was given up and raised by the only parents he knew in Italian American couple and the reality is his biological mother was an Irish immigrant to New York who gave birth to him when he she was twenty and I ended up in Ireland at her gravesite not only forgiving my father but forgiving her. And I did that I tell that story in this book but more important to your point I think that that laughter came about. From forgiveness.

Where now I actually can feel myself going he wasn't so bad he did the best he could and he got a raw deal and you're some of the things he did sucked but not bad. Was that incremental a hundred different realizations adding up over time or were there any flash points where there were particular experiences or insights that covered the bulk of the traverse from anger to forgive us or acceptance in the way that you described it.

It's interesting because we were talking before about a the physical being the somatocized being and you know there was a moment but it wasn't an insight meaning it wasn't a thought. And you know I talk about this as well my youngest son is named Michael and he was a junior in college.

And he did a semester abroad in Dublin and one week for my birthday I went to Dublin to visit with him and we went to visit his girlfriend was there as well she was also taking semester abroad and we went to visit the printing museum in Dublin printing printing.

And we're walking through the museum because we're freaking nerds looking at old print presses right and I'm explaining to him how the machine works and you know he's looking at me like a yeah you're both shitting me dad and it's like no no no my father worked in a print shop.

I remember walking through the print shop and seeing molten lead flowing as they would refired lead type and that the sparks would fly as they were doing this I remember all of this from when I was a kid and I was explaining all of this and I look up and they have this replica copy of the equivalent of the Irish Republican declaration of independence.

And it was actually at that moment that I had this profound visceral experience of my father which was not an insight right it was first of all my father would have loved walking through the museum with his son and grandson and all the son I realized that the folks who had put up that poster originally and declared their independence.

Were the kin folk of my father which was a very different and powerful word for me and you know later about a year later when I was in the church chart and in the gravesite and visiting my grandmothers grave it's still weird to say this because I never knew her and I was walking through this tiny little graveyard.

I realized that I was surrounded by the bones of my kin folk and Tim that was not an intellectual experience that was not an insight that was a viscerally felt experience I look up and I see the lights landing through the trees and I swear to God I felt like I could hear my grandmother at four years old running down the lane you know what a story.

You know to bring it all back I feel like because of that experience I closed a wound that was transgenerational trans personal and intergenerational this probably to one ask a few different questions and I'll first say that personally I found tremendous value in. Metabolizing number of things from the past I've had some horrible things that happened to me as a small child so seemed important for me to at one point contend with that or triage it process it in some way now if I were to take.

Not necessarily devil's advocate position but look at for instance many people I've interviewed on this podcast there are some and I'm probably missquoting but it's not going to be too far off I remember chatting with Mark injuries and one of the most storied famous and successful venture capitalist or age also an incredible technologist in zone right and.

Code or slash product developer mosaic being among his achievements he answered it may have been I think his billboard was raised prices billboard that's not it but there was some type of perhaps the question was related to if you had to live your life with one mantra what would it be it was some version of forever forward he told the story of. A character in a detective novel who has arrows tattooed on his shoulder pointing forward to remind him always forward and.

Many of the most effective people I don't know if they're the most content people I don't have that window into them have philosophy along these lines right you can't change the past you can change the future pay attention to your thoughts behaviors habits those all form your destiny moving forward right there's a very forward focus to view and it works for a lot of things then let's just say on the opposite end of the spectrum i'm sure there are very very successful people who also

spent a lot of time metabolizing the past I know quite a number of them but they're also folks who get so focused on the past there are a lot of them in the past in Texas where I live that they don't really seem to be grappling with the present or the future particularly well and they feel like their past is this

unalterable basically shaping of a sculpture they cannot undo on some level where they can't seem to escape the vortex the gravitational pull of the narratives they have about their past to help someone find the right blend of past focus versus present or future focus I know that's very very long lead up to the question but it's something I do think about a lot

of the things that you are identifying a real challenge in the human existence and I'll reframe it just slightly and take us back to the notion of bypassing I can argue that those who are only forward looking with no awareness of the past maybe bypassing as you know from your own experience ignored trauma can stay in the body can affect us forever but the fear that many people have and one of the reasons why we struggled to sit alone in a room is that we're afraid of our

thoughts and the thoughts are either about the future or the past that we're afraid of many people fear being trapped in the past. So your question is how do you balance those two which is a great framing of it and I often think of the Carl Jung quote which is I am not what has happened to me I am what I choose to become and I think that no one would ever accuse Carl Jung of ignoring the past but seeing it as if you will the source material of what the future is the reason we open the

closet that is really fucking messy is so that we can straighten it up and close the closet door and move on because the stuff in the closet that's ignored and messy has a way of busting through the door and messing up our lives.

So I think part of your question too is how do we get somebody who is stuck in the past to move forward is that a fair statement. Yes, yes I think that the trend seems to at least in certain places to have one pretty extremely from the sort of Gordon get go let's just say pure machine with just enough reflection on the past to take advantage of new opportunities but not much more. All the way back to sometimes what I would say very self indulgent past reflection and over sharing and.

Yes, like OK you wrote the script you're on your 247th re right maybe it's time to stop. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to parse things a little bit please I don't feel comfortable criticizing someone for being quote for over sharing having grown up with the consequences of far too much silence and secret keeping I know the detrimental effects of that.

What I really liked though is your word over working and I keep thinking of like dough bread dough and bread dough is over was actually thinking of clay and play it up yeah I used the writing because I know it better. Yeah, there is that tendency to overwork it what I have found to be helpful is a Buddhist aphorism which I've used often which is this being so so what.

And what's powerful about that it's not so what who cares it's so what are you going to do about it which is that forward momentum whether it's mere wounds which we all have or trauma which many of us have. Retraumatizing ourselves by replaying and reworking it over working it doesn't release us but acknowledging what has happened.

And then really empowering yourself to say and what will you do about it is I think that's the unlock I think that's the balance point that you're looking for and I'd love to. Actually say something related to your pushback which I think is valuable and valid in the sense that you mentioned being on one end of the spectrum right if you come from a family and a place of withholding in silence and stiff upper lip not communicating feelings experience etc or worst secrets or worst secrets right.

And then it can be very therapeutic and very healthy to push yourself towards the other end of the spectrum recognizing you're probably not going to end up. At the furthest diametrically posed point which is something I do think is unhealthy which is performative trauma right literally I have been at cocktail parties in Austin where I meet somebody and this is prior to my divulging my own abuse when I was a kid.

Literally the fourth sense out of their mouth is something about extremely graphic trauma and I'm like what are we doing here exactly I don't think this is for your healing benefit and it becomes performative in a sense I suppose I just feel like that is unhealthy also not just to yourself but to others in a way it I think can diminish how severely some of these things impact other people.

Just because a person happens to have gone to the point where they can casually drop graphic abuse into conversation does not mean that someone else is comfortable hearing or saying the same happy to sit on the latest topics for a second but I'm very curious at reboot or reboot.

I have a lot of clients right in the capacity of executive coaching leadership development etc when did the boots start when was it founded July 2014 roughly so 2014 perfect so it's almost a decade ago I'm just over just over a decade you're right just over a decade ago

have you seen any changes in the types of challenges people are continuing with or they mostly the same just wondering as technologies changed as social dynamics have changed as the world has accelerated have you seen any problems crop up more and more or less and less or is it kind of the same old stuff that we've been talking about for thousands of years.

It's about both I would say I think that there are unique expressions that have emerged I think that there is a kind of global tension that exists in the world right now that sure there have been call it left right tensions call it whatever language you want to use those tensions have existed but it feels heightened right now and you couple that I think and this I think is really.

I think is relatively new the after effects of the pandemic and you have this really complex mix I think for example of the complexity I know one company for example in November December after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th

and that I'm having a shutdown slack for two weeks because there was no discussion it was all argument and quite honestly a lot of the argument from all sides felt performative to use a word you were just using and not necessarily designed to really move the conversation forward

and somewhere another this being said human nature is human nature it's why coaching is actually a good business model much of what happens continues to happen you know I mean I can't name the company but I'm at a new client I rarely take on new clients but I kind of fell in love with this kid when I first met him very very hot young company

not quite the clusterfuck it was six months ago but pretty close and you know as I'm sketching out on a driveway sport everything that has happened and will happen everybody is like well how do you know I said because I've seen this in time this is what we do this is called dysfunctional startup and here's the path then it's going to be fine it's going to take a year and a half to two years you know I hope that I addressed your question I don't know I may have gone off on my own tangent

well let me let me hone in on one particular concept that I love for you to expand upon or just riff on and I may have it transcribed noted down in front of me in correctly so you can fact check me as well but it's around the discussion of guilt and partly I think guilt can be super powerful driver

negative driver in a lot of cases I think guilt and prestige often terrible motivators to quote Maria reference Maria popova but the guilt I think also seems to be having quite a moment because when you are water boarded with disaster and crisis globally 24 7 it's hard not to feel like you are not doing enough but this is what I've written done guilt is self focused whereas remorse is about the other person so if you find yourself

reminiding in guilt over something that's when you bring attention to that and say easy boy easy or good man who sometimes fails to live up to your aspirations the first part is when I want to ask you about you say more about guilt being self focused versus remorse I just wanted to make sure I understood this clearly

I often think of my but his teacher Sharon Salisberg whose line about that is that guilt is self-lass her rating which I find really a compelling image and what it does is it kind of keeps us here's an old reference you may get it because you may have had record players where the needle stuck in the groove

and you just like again and again and you're ruminating and you're spinning and you're like oh shit you know what did I do that I don't have whereas there's no opportunity for growth there's no opportunity for learning Daniel Pink just wrote last year I think it came out the power of regret and as so much of what Daniel does it's kind of a social science take on this question I prefer the word remorse to the word regret but I think for this instance you can substitute them

and there's something very very powerful that's embedded in that is the learning and I think that that's what you're reaching for here is when we allow ourselves to internalize remorse or regret we're opening ourselves up to other people to knowledge to growth ultimately how do you do that without slipping into guilt well so if you're talking to somebody and they're like fuck it you know done that God is a battling terrible done it and I always do this

that's an exaggerated version right but if they're in a loop of self-lass rating guilt how do you move them towards one of these close cousins that is perhaps more healthy exactly how do you do that if you think about the setup the setup more often than not if if I am often plagued by negative self talk I am going to be more subject to that ruminating guilt because I tend to see the thing about which I feel guilty as evidence of my shittiness as a person

and if that's true then the movement is towards decoupling my sense of worthiness as a person from the action so good people do bad things all the time good people who do bad things who don't learn are less evolved less mature than good people who do bad things who then learn through regret and remorse but they remain good people does that distinction help it does are there any problems or exercises that you would potentially assign could be something else

to a client who has developed the habit of negative narratives around self worth because they did a bnc right that's just a reflexive habit that they have is there any way that you suggest they reframe things are start training their mind to go in a different direction I mean I hate to sound like a broken record again but how does it serve you to think ill of yourself any patterns and responses are there any patterns that any common threads that you hear in research

and some family of origin structures for example the way I can know that I belong to my family is by turning to negative self talk just like the way I can know that I belong to a family is by seeing myself as a victim right if I grow up with parents to see themselves as victims that might be the way in which I interpret the world

and so by starting to unpack that and really taking a look at the way to use my phrasing it serves you to think ill of yourself begins to raise the consciousness that releases you from having to repeat the pattern so let's hop to a topic that you mentioned as we were brainstorming various directions to go in this conversation and I have none of the fleshed out contacts which is perfect

because it's kind of boring for me to know exactly what's coming me to legacy legacy seems to be something that you're thinking about and I suspect we could have a all needy conversation about this so I'll let you kick it off in whatever way you think makes sense well you know I was joking before I talked about feeling like I'm slip sliding into my elderhood you know and title of your next book that's right that's right that easy life lessons from Uncle Jerry

well with that you know that's kind of where I feel like I'm entering this period you know Tim you know it's like I've done two books now I'm starting to think about what do I want to do what is next and I've been thinking about these themes of redemption I've been thinking about themes about legacy and what does it mean to look at and in some ways very similar to the conversation we've been having

to look back on the past in order to move forward in the future and I think that you know someone asked me last week what am I thinking about in terms of that legacy and I don't really think about it in terms of say what do I want to leave behind which I don't know maybe that is the definition of legacy but I think about it really more in the terms in terms of three different circles of impact and influence that I have the first circle being myself and my proud of the man I've become

the second is my children in descendants how do I want them to look back on me I mean I fucked up royally and yet for some unknowable reason my 27 year old wanted to spend five days camping with me this summer can you believe that because I would never have wanted to spend five days trapped in a sprinter band with my father and then the last circle is what how have I left the world I hope for example all of the work that I have done made an impact on you Tim

we know we never always notes in front of the case you know when we were celebrating your 10th anniversary I sent a note I sent a video and I was telling you like I'm proud of what impact you've had and people yeah really appreciate the video thank you you know I don't know this to be true but the story tell myself is you didn't start this podcast

to have an impact on some random 22 year old kid who's a little lost as I experienced it you started this podcast answer questions that you had about your own life that's right but in doing so you impacted a lot of people and I think you should be proud of that well sir yeah it's uh continues to this day I think when I'm doing it right for me to be conversations trying to answer your questions I have myself

isn't that interesting I want to highlight that isn't it interesting that when you lean into the questions that you need answered in your own life you end up positively impacting other people yeah the personal being the best universal right yeah says so what if that's the definition of legacy meaning being so real and so honest as to make yourself a palette if you will

or a canvas where people can work their stories out that's pretty cool yeah I like that definition or that placeholder for legacy because when I've thought about leaving things behind and know a lot of fancy

muckety mucks often very good people soulful people who somehow get fixated on legacy maybe because they just they've overshot mezzles higher give needs maybe accepting taking out maybe self actualization and transcendence but everything else certainly they've overshot by such an absurd margin

that they start thinking about legacy and I always think to myself I'm like Alexander the great horses last name again nobody knows and we are somehow going to stand the test of time like the head of the sphinx poking out of the sands and the desert come on like it's just it seems ridiculous right but maybe who knows right what I said about borrowing from Bill Richards like Bill Richards told me this thing yes or you tell me a question yes I pass that on yes somebody else passes it on

and like even though the attribution probably gets long lost along the way that is some form of legacy right yes continues yes a thousand times yes listen I know legacy as a word can sound grandiose and and I love your self deprecating humor don't use it though to deny the thing that is true

yeah okay and because that's another form of that self delusion and bypassing the fact of the matter is you have made a positive impact on the world it may be fleeting it may disappear who knows listen I tell you the story about five or six months after my first book came out I received a ton of fan mail on the book I still get mail from people saying you know this book really impact my life

but I'll never forget this one day in one day I got two messages one from the CEO of a fortune 100 company and one from a man on death row and they both wrote about the book and said in one form or another your story is my story I will go to my grave proud of that fact that's amazing also to have it happen on the same day

on the same day and the lesson Tim in that is there's really no difference between those two men and that's what's really powerful can you say a little bit more about that because the face of value of course you look at their CVs very different but I know you mean something different could you say a bit more about that I do I do and in December of 2019

well first in September of 2019 my first book came out in June in September 2019 I'm doing a book talk you remember when we used to do things like that and pre pandemic we were listening to many altes on the record player that's right that's right and I'm I'm walk into this venue in Denver and there's this woman who's like clearly in her 80s

who comes up to me and she says you look like our speaker and I said well that's because I am your speaker and she laughed and she stuck out her hand and she said to me my name is Margaret and I grew up in the dust ball and I read your book and your story is my story and Tim I did not grow up in the dust ball during the depression I grew up in Brooklyn

like what the fuck right and a few months later that was the best follow-up to I grew up in Brooklyn but what the fuck I'm sorry I didn't want to do it better fuck is a part of our dialect I'm sorry no I have to just just a brief aside I'm not going to mention it by name but everybody listens to this podcast with no my friend of mine who grew up in New York City a lot of like Brooklyn influence and his greeting to me is you fucking fuck

I'm fucking you so it's like one of the most sophisticated brilliant thinkers of our time but that's how he greets me I don't understand you have a fucking problem with that yeah exactly yeah exactly alright Margaret alright so a few months later I'm in Dublin and I'm doing a book reading and the audience is filled with not surprisingly white people

but there's this one black woman who's sitting in the very front row and at the end of the talk and just in some ways you know you've experienced something similar at the end of the talk she comes up to me and she says I was really moved by what you were saying especially the part I had been talking about how when we lose a parent at an early age it forces us into early

parenthood and importantly that that can often be a signifier of leadership she says that thing you're talking about what that happened to me my father died when I was 13 and you know I'm kind of dopey and exhausted and I kind of nod my way in response and then she says on Robin Island and I look at her and I say what and she's yeah he was

Robin Island is where Nelson Mandela was held and she says yeah he was a freedom fighter based in Zimbabwe and he was caught on the border of South Africa and beaten to death in the prison and then she says to me your story is my story and the thing about that and her name by the way is Joy Tanday Kengari she is going to be graduating I think for the PhD in law

in October she's one of the first black women in the city of Dublin to be a barrister the thing about that experiences to your point our lives couldn't be more different but there's something very very powerful about this notion that your story is my story

yeah you feel like a few layers were all people everywhere in all times stealing the same things if you go deep enough if you go deep enough and if you're willing to be honest I mean so you know when people come up to you and want to share their trauma yeah there's a performative element to it but maybe two they're seeing their story in your story Tim 100% just for clarity sake if people do it after I share it publicly what happened to me it's very different from the examples that proceed that

where with no context it's clear that they are showcasing their trauma within the first few minutes to anyone who will listen which I think can get into Danish territory but I agree with you 100% and I do I'd say probably in response to that episode more than any other

but certainly there are few where I discuss personal challenges with depression and so on which thankfully are fewer and fewer and shorter and shorter in duration but you never know and I agree with you 100% may ask you a completely unrelated question because it's stuck in my mind and I need to scratch the edge your son and the sprinter band five days you you mentioned fucking up a bunch of stuff like all parents do hey even no one guy great guy I will mention a by name but he said

it's like oh yeah I'm going to send all my kids to the Hoffman process he's like I don't fucking them up I'm just not sure how anyway so you made mistakes like every parent does but what did you get right why do you think if you had to try to explain it

and I know it's not a laboratory so nothing is easy to isolate here but what do you think you did right or what worked maybe it's your son out of the box who knows maybe just very forgiving guy but why did he end up wanting to spend those five days with the sprinter band versus your experience with say your dad the power of that question is twofold one is I think it's a really really important question and the second is you're touching upon one of my most deep and profound fears

which is that I would have fucked it up as a parent and so I want to be clear I still have the capacity to fuck it up I think the answer to your question goes back to something Dr. Sayers used to say to me when I would lie in the couch and be a moan that I was a terrible parent and I would be racked by guilt because of this stupid reaction that I had or this stupid thing that I said or that kind of thing and she used to say to me all the time two things

one you cannot spoil children with love you can spoil them with things but you cannot spoil them with love so love them and the second thing was she said give them words give them words and I think I have three children Sam is 34 Emma is 32 and Michael is 27 and Michael is the one that went camping with me but Emma and her soon to be husband really enjoy the camping band as well and the truth is I have great relationships with each of them

because they're great people what is give them words mean yeah give them the ability to talk about what's actually going on inside of them and listen I mean I think that as parents we can become so afraid of fucking it up and hurting them that we get wrapped around our own anxiety our own narcissism and then we lose the connection which is the thing that our children want more than anything else did you give your kids words of so how did you do that two things I do think I gave my kids words

I think I also raise the bar on what they expect from other people they expect words from other people which you know has a mixed blessing right because not everybody is trained to actually talk about what's going on not everybody knows how to answer the question how are you I think I gave them the way I did it was I modeled first and foremost and the second and I think I'm good at this I listened now I also want to give a shout out to their mom

because this was not a one and done I did it myself by any stretch of the imagination they had two spectacular parents who each endeavored to do right by their children in different ways and different styles for sure given your experience you have good relationships with your kids if you had to add a third or forcing to your therapist's rules let's just say you can't spoil the kid with too much love number two give them words what might number three and or I guess

wouldn't be or number three if you want to add a fourth and go for it what might you add to that I think that if I could go back in time and give myself advice the way she might have given it to me because she tried to make me feel this I spent far too much time feeling guilty

and far too much time worried about whether or not I was being a good parent I mean this is another thing that she used to be is aspirated with me about it's like all right Jerry there going to be fine but the truth is you know and I'll give myself a little bit of a break I didn't have the context I didn't have God rest my parents souls and coming to understand that they tried I did not have role models for good parenting and so I had to piece it together from people like Parker or my therapist

or other mentors and elders in my life as I watched how they were doing it how were they being the elder in their life and learn to forgive myself for the mistakes so that with regret and remorse I can pick myself up and try again

can you apologize to your children oh my god what a powerful tool that is yeah better start apologizing in advance you don't have kids build the muscle don't try to win the world series is your first baseball game exactly exactly why are you thinking about kids so much these days

oh man I'm so I'm so bored of this business sage on stage stuff it's just like I'm boring myself so much I'm excited I mean like I'm being a little seizures here but beyond a certain base level of needs we're all playing games right so the trick is knowing what games you're playing and then be very hopefully conscious of the games you opt into what are the rules what's winning what's losing what's the ranking what's quitting time what are the stakes etc and I feel like family kids

is the next big chapter the next big adventure I don't overly romanticize it I have almost all my friends have kids I know it can be an enormous enormous pan in the ass it can involve a lot of sadness and anxiety and you name it but then enjoy enjoy of course then there's a laughter and a sense of completion I mean let's shout out I mean the best of all the accomplishments I've ever done the best has been becoming the father that I needed as a child without a doubt yeah it's a big one

a couple years ago before I went to Ireland I was in Wales I don't know if you know the due lectures so I think it's gonna ask me if I knew what I think I've heard of it but you you you've been to the due lectures you spoke to do I think the first or seconds due lectures like 2009 it was amazing I really enjoyed it did fabulous and for those who don't know you should check it out it's kind of like Ted without all the

performance shit and with much more confusing street signs I remember drive drive around Wales this is no Google maps that's I'm doing that international data and they're like sure just turn left it would you walk a walk on I get to the sign and I'm like that's 24 continents how do you read this what yes it's 24 continents in a row without single vowel I'm just like wow okay anyway so I was at the the due lectures and I was doing a reading from reunion the new book and I was maybe the first

three or four pages it was just the opening chapters but it provoked such a powerful response from the group and as you remember it's like you're in this like old hay barn cow barn the cow shed I think they call it and my oldest son Sam had come with me and at the very end of the talk

people were sort of you know milling about and you know oh my god you know and tell me what I done wrong and tell me what I done right and all that stuff you know what they do right oh it's very good except it's like okay the next time you write a book you can talk okay anyway I look

up and Sam who's you know six one big guy he's a moitai fighter and trainer he looks up and he just mouths the words I am so proud of you dad that's amazing what a moment that's the moment that's what you want you know that's what you live for that's what parenting is yeah I feel like

I need to make up for last time I've been wondering if I need to go like raise the red lantern style I have no idea maybe just have impassion a survival of fittest and pregnant like 40 women and see how we do I I am I don't want to say desperate but I'm just like well I'm a little surprised you're

talking about this because are you gonna now be inundated and then you're gonna call me up and say Jerry what do I do and I'll say how have you been complicating creating these conditions you say you know you mean publishing this to millions of people yes nephew Timmy I mean putting it on the

podcast well I had this either I'll share this this I haven't really said to anybody but I I was I was spending time with the number of my really close friends we do this reunion once a year and the most of them have kids not all of them most of my kids and one was echoing this lesson or

conversation he had with someone far older than he a grandfather and he kept saying you know there's nothing more precious than hugging your grandkids and I started running the math and I was like I'm 47 I don't know if that's gonna be a thing I don't know if that's mathematically even remotely

reasonable for me to entertain and that fucked me up I got to be honest not because I've really thought about grandkids much but when he put it that way and it happened to coincide with my birthday which was sort of the cause for the reunion and I was just like wait a second here I'm

no mathematician but fuck me that was that was the tough told the swallow I'm not gonna lie I was like oh yeah that may not be a thing well not for publication on this so I'll do it over email but we have a mutual friend who is in exactly the same place you guys should hang out you know

for sure just drink some whiskey and cry ourselves to sleep or put the red lantern out and say I'm ready oh god not ready to switch teams yet that's tight you know never's never's never's never five listen what are you willing to do for your kids it's like I'm no biologist but yes exactly

well before we move off that topic let me give you a poem you're ready this is by Philip Larkin yes it's called this be the verse mm-hmm they fuck you up your mom and dad they may not mean to but they do they fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you

but they were fucked up in their turn by fools and old style hats and coats who half the time were soppy stern and half at one another throat man hands on misery to man it deepens like a coastal shelf get out as early as you can and don't have any kids yourself wow so should I

Sylvia plath myself today or tomorrow Jesus Jerry well he's not British he's British Lord I know I'm sorry for reading poems but usually they make people cry this one because like this is like doctor suits meets a star is born good lord what amazing all right

let me try to write the ship here so three books I alluded to these I'm curious you've mentioned a few books in our conversations before certainly around which I recommend everybody also when things fall apart by Pemetro Dren faith by Sharon Salzburg let your life speak by

Parker Palmer I'm wondering if any of your kids have been impacted by any of these books or if there are other books you've recommended to your kids whether or not they're out there of them oh yeah Sam I am particular loved the wisdom of insecurity which is a really really

powerful book Michael is probably the one who follows most of my book recommendations and and we go back and forth from novels to nonfiction we swap books back and forth the novel that Michael loved the most was also really powerful in my life it's a call it sleep by Henry

Cross sleep call it sleep everything I heard of it so Henry Roth wrote call it sleep in the 1930s and it tells the story of a young boy I think he's like seven or eight years old growing up in the upper east east Harlem when it was a Jewish neighborhood and their Jewish immigrants it was

well received and then lost in time and it was I think it was because then the famous book critic who discovered a used copy in the strand in Manhattan and then devoured the book in the 1950s and published the first review for a paperback book in the New York review of books and so the

book was a discovery level and anyway I'm going off Henry Roth as a novelist was one of the most influential novelists in my life it's a book that I remember when Michael finished it he sent me the same passage that I had first read when I was about 17 or 18 years old and was blown away by

it's like yeah that's the passage and for those who know the book it's the passage where David is touching a trolley cars third rail with a soup ladle and a milk ladle it's really a powerful passage anyway you didn't ask about novels well I it's funny that you brought up a novel

maybe I accepted you because I was going to ask you actually if there are any novels you recommend where find contain and convey a lot of truths that stick out to mind it doesn't have to be the best but for instance Zorba the Greek I think is a standout for me you remember that good

job yes so Zorba the Greek huge standout I've been meaning to read it again and some more of the same authors work do any others stand out to you because I've really found fiction which is very closely related to humor right let's just say Bill Richards or your therapist parable these are

all very closely interrelated it's funny that you say this because I just completed volume one of a five volume series do you know the library of America series I have either heard of it come across it it does ring a bell okay so library of America is a nonprofit foundation that seeks to

preserve the writings of amazing American writers and I think there are over 350 volumes that they have done writers like James Baldwin anyway I just finished volume one of Wendell Berry and the thing that comes to mind and I said this to Michael in a text message I think this is the first

set of novels and short stories I've read that have changed my thinking about writing in a profound way and what Berry did and volume one is the material from everything takes place in the fictitious town of Port William Kentucky he of course is from Kentucky still lives there and these

tell a series of stories short stories and novellas and novels all taking place from the end of the Civil War in this case through World War Two and it all involves the same characters or the same extended characters but many times the incidents that he writes about are written about from different

characters points of view and it's still working on me I've been reading it I finished it a few weeks ago and I've been reading it for about three months because it's close to a thousand pages deeply deeply moving I'll check it out I have more homework assignments which of course I love I do

love my homework what is the basic thesis of the wisdom of insecurity I know this book title and I've come across it multiple times and I've never read it it's Alan watched exploring what is that anxiety about what is insecurity about what is it that we are working with it's a way of

coming to understand the I guess you know if you want to link it back to what we're talking about earlier it how has it been useful for us rather than something that we need to push away got it how has it been useful not in a condemning way that's right how are you complicit way but how

has it actually been that's right along the lines of the gift of fear by Gavin DeVecca right that's right that's right not something to swathe with not always something to swathe away how is it gift right it's a simple to understand you know we're often told that the way through insecurity

or anxiety is to somehow embrace what's happening in the moment but this actually walks us through it tells us how to do that and of course Alan Watts is an incredibly important and teacher in this end Buddhist tradition yeah he's a he's a one of a kind that one and amazing narration

as well the people who want to take it in audio format and some spectacular speeches presentations Jerry we've covered a lot of ground here is there anything else you would like to mention before we begin to land the plane is there anything else you'd like to say ask of my audience point people

to anything at all you know I think I've really appreciated our conversation especially the amount of laughter and you actually help remind me of the importance of that and so let me double down on that because you know it's kind of a fucked up world we're in right now you know as I've been

saying recently it's the kind of world where babies get murdered for ideology and that's a kind of fucked up place and not that that's material to laugh about but to understand that there's a human connection that can be had gotten even in the midst of all this I think is incredibly important

right now so as Dr. Sayers would say to me you've done enough work go and off the grid go take your time go have fun and laugh your ass off good advice good advice I'm gonna work on that tonight you know something I've started doing and this is related it's a bit of a hard segue but

games just table top games no phones yes yeah rewind the clock these things have been with us a long time yeah amen you know what can I mention another thing they got stuck in my mind well so just funny because it was your mention of a stock record when you're asking about records

and if I remembered records the one thing that popped to my mind that I has been on repeat which of course is sort of self-referential even of itself when I was a kid I had this little mini tiny mini L. P. O's the size of tiny pancake was really small and it was a song that I played a million times

and drove my parents insane but they made the mistake of giving it to me and it's disco disco duck you want to remember the song who wants to be a disco duck and it's Donald Duck singing the song over and over and over and over again holy shit what a wonderful song oh and I actually had

some speaking engagement like I can't remember year ago two years ago I don't do too many of them and they asked me what I wanted my entrance music to be I tasked them with trying to find disco disco duck they were not successful but boy can dream boy dream and then what's frightening is I

I will not but I can sing that song everyone yeah this is my my homework assignment to everyone listening go find disco disco duck that's right I'm sure it's on YouTube it's a treasure Jerry where would you like people to find

you you're you're at your clona on twitter will link to everything in the show notes they can find a reboot at at reboot hq on twitter reboot dot ios the website you're the author of reboot leadership in the art of growing up and also reunion exactly leadership and the longing to

belong you got it I think tracking me down there on Instagram I'm at Jerry Colona all sounds great to me so I appreciate that absolutely and to everybody listening we will link to everything in the show notes including probably some version of disco disco duck at the so park and prone that's

right and the Philip Larkin poem if you're if you're too happy and just need a moment of sadness Tim dot blog slash podcast and until next time as always be just a little bit kinder than is necessary not only to other people but also to yourself and thanks 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

I'm reading books I'm 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 this episode is brought to you by eight sleep I have been using eight sleep pod cover for years now

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Europe and Australia okay this is going to be part confessional as some of you know I am recently single in navigating the world of modern dating what a joy that is sometimes it's fun but it's mostly a goddamn mess as many of you probably know I've tried all the dating apps and

while there's some slick options out there the most functional that I have found is the league why did I end up using the league first most dating apps give you almost no information it's a huge time suck on the league you're starting with a baseline of smart people and you can then easily

find the ones you're attracted to it's much easier it's like going to a conference where everyone is smart and then just looking for the people you think are cute to go up and speak with so more than half of the league users want to top four new colleges and you can make your filters really

selected so if that's important to you then go for it it does work and that is one of the reasons that I use it second people verify using LinkedIn so you can make sure they have a job and don't bounce around every six months it's a simple proxy for finding people who have their shit together

it's infinitely easier than trying to figure things out on Instagram or whatever third you can search by interest and in multiple locations I haven't found any other dating app that allows you to do this for instance I usually search for women who love skiing or snowboarding have those

as interests as I like to spend say two to three months of the year in the mountains I'm a rivers and mountains guy the UIs a little clunky I'll warn you but it's incredibly helpful for finding good matches and not just pretty faces so you can search by interest and specify multiple cities

so to summarize a few things that I think make it stand out features available in the league include multi-city dating linked in verified profiles ability to block your profile from co-workers bosses family etc that's very easy to do you can search by interest you can get profile stats and there is

a personal concierge in the absolute there's someone you can text with within the app as a personal concierge to get help so what am I looking for I am looking for a woman who is well educated who loves skiing or snowboarding or both these are and I've used this word already proxies for like

20 other things that are important so just I'll leave it to that for now someone who's default upbeat likes to smile smiles often glass half full type person who would ideally like to have kids in the next few years her friends with described her as feminine and playful and she would love

polarity in a relationship she's athletic and has some muscle I like strong women not necessarily bodybuilders but you get the idea it could be a rock climber dancer whatever that has some muscle loves to read and loves learning if this sounds like you send hashtag date temp so hashtag date temp

in a message to your concierge in the app to get us paired up so these are all reasons why I was excited when the league reached out to sponsor the podcast they even have daily speed dating where you can go on three three minute dates with people who match your preferences all from the comfort

of your couch so check it out download the leak today on iOS or Android and find people who challenge you to swing for the fences and who are in it to win it I found it to be super fascinating you can really get good matches instead of just looking at pretty faces and kind of rolling the dice over

and over again much better so download the leak today on iOS or Android and check it out message hashtag tim to your in-app concierge to jump to the front of the wait list and have your profile reviewed first check it out the leak on iOS or Android