#756: Anne Lamott and Josh Waitzkin

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4:27 No 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.

4:49 This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its tenth year anniversary, which is insane to think about. And past one billion downloads. I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favourites. From more than seven hundred episodes over the last decade.

5:07 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

5:23 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.

5:39 And for the bios of all guests. You can find that and more at Tim.blog slash. Combo. And now, without further ado. Please enjoy.

5:49 And thank you. For listening. First up. Anne Lamotte New York Times best selling author of twenty books, including

5:58 Operating instructions An account of her son's first year. Bird by bird. Her classic book on writing. Help, thanks. Wow.

6:08 A celebration of prayer. And her latest Somehow. An exploration of the transformative power of love. You can find Anne on Twitter.

6:18 At Anne Lamotte. I'll tell you a funny story. When Sam's little boy, who's twelve now, was five, I was teaching his kindergarten class. a writing workshop and instead of saying shitty first drafts, I said really poopy first drafts. But after and the kids love me. And after I was done, my little grandchild came up to me. And he leaned in and he sounded like Tony Soprano, he said

6:41 Oh Nana, that was terrible. And I said, What? And he said, You told people you would teach them how to write a book, but you only taught us how to write one page. And that's really what I can help you do is one chapter is on shitty first drafts. I I don't try to teach kids or grown ups how to write really, really well. I just teach them to stop not writing. I teach them to keep their butt in the chair and to write badly. And that all first drafts of any book you've ever read by the authors you esteem most began as unreadable first drafts. And I teach people to take it really small, you know, bird by bird. Is it okay if I tell the story? Please, please. I I I I I would love for you to tell the story just so people know the genesis.

7:24 Well, my older brother, I was like a superstiver in school. My older brother hated school and he was kind of a rebel. And in California in the fifties and early sixties. In fourth grade you wrote two term papers. One was the Sacramento paper. That's our state capital, and the other was on birds. And you had to write it all year, all semester, a paper on birds, and my brother hadn't started. It was due on a Monday and on a Saturday he admitted to my dad that he hadn't started. My brother is a tough guy and he he was in tears.

7:55 And my dad sat down with him and put his arm around him and he said, Just take it bird by bird, buddy. You know, first you read about Check this. And then you write a paragraph in your own words about chickadees. And then you draw a picture.

8:09 And then you take pelicans and you study up on pelicans and then you write a paragraph or a passage on pelicans. I never ever forgot that. And then years later, probably twenty years ago, so In my forties I heard EL Doctoros say That riding was like driving at night with the headlights on. You could only see a little ways in front of you. But you could make the whole journey that way. And I think that is the most

8:34 profound advice I can offer anyone on any topic. that you you you can only see a little ways in front of you and and you can make the whole journey that way. And another th another thing that I think helped people when they read Bird by Bird was The chapter on perfectionism. And how perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, it's the voice of the enemy. And if you listen to it, it keeps you crazy for your entire life because. 'Cause we all fall short, you know, you've written books and you think you're creating this golden and crystal palace that people can walk inside of and see all of truth and beauty and reality. And you kind of end up your books and my books.

9:13 All of'em. Are kind of shanty towns, you know, and like in in PC during the peace marches where people set up tents and thought it made sense to bring their dogs, you know, during the rainstorm. And that's a miracle. And so I think these ideas of not knowing what you're doing.

9:33 And uh letting yourself do it really badly. And to try to help grind down that critical voice. I'll just mention my husband's work here. He he's uh Neil Allen. He wrote Shapes of Truth. And the work he does with people and these shapes of truth is taming the inner critic.

9:50 And what his position is, you're never gonna get rid of it. You know, we don't get over very much here. What he does with people is he has them bring forth the inner critic and actually just put it on the table in front of him. And he he thanks them for keeping them ali him alive. When he was six and seven,'cause it crit kept him small.

10:09 And controllable. So he didn't run out into the street, he didn't swim out past his ability to stay afloat. But that at the age of six year whatever. We probably don't need it anymore, and so He has his clients

10:22 Give the inner critic a great new job, which might be ethical consultant for the project. So that the inner critic can go off to the library where there's an incredibly comfortable chair and a good reading light and two thousand books. And he will sit there and read, which he loves to do. And when we need an ethical consultation, we'll come get him. But we don't need That constant Is it allow okay to say the F word on the

10:48 Oh yes, please. So in Bird by Bird, there's a whole chapter on K fucked radio, KFKD. And without a lot of help and a lot of transformation and healing, Kfucked Radio is on 247. It's telling you how far short you're falling. It's telling you how great you started out and what a disappointment you've turned out to be. It's telling you that what you're in the middle of is beating a dead hor on and on and on. And so the shapes of truth work and the Inner critic work and bird by bird is Ninety percent

11:19 About turning down K fuck radio. Anyway, out of the left hand speaker is all this stuff about that you you can't do it perfectly. And that why bother? And that this has been blah, blah, blah. But out of the right hand speakers the it's like the voice of the people who love you most. The voice of like for me, Sam or my husband or my two best girlfriends, and they're saying, I love your story. So I love how you write.

11:43 I can't wait to read more. So But you can turn down the left hand speaker and it'll always be there to some degree. There are many different directions I could go.

11:54 And thank you for that context. I am going to sit down and reread Bird by bird, in fact. Which I've read at least I would say a dozen times, but I'd always written nonfiction and I'm beginning to experiment with fiction, which is a whole

12:12 Different sport, it would seem. Free in many ways. I can help you. Uh I w if you want someone to help you. I will help you.

12:22 Because it's all the same stuff. You sit down, you keep your butt in the chair, you take one passage. One Memory, one vision, one bit of dialogue, one character describe and you do it badly. No.

12:37 So If we look back to your childhood. My understanding is you had a role model for this. This button chair time.

12:47 Could you s tell us a bit about your childhood? The model was my father who was a writer. Kenneth Lamotte and he had a lot of books published and and a lot of um magazine articles and I heard him down at his desk at that old Olympia at five thirty every morning rain or shine or hangover. He just did it and that was what he taught me was that you don't wait for inspiration.

13:10 It's an illusion. And in fact, I gave a talk once on inspiration and on how I don't believe in it and how what gets me going is debt, mental illness, and the desire for revenge. But my dad just did it. And that's what I learned. And that's what I passed on to my son.

13:29 And my house was very, very tense. My parents didn't love each other. My father drank a lot. My mother was very, very overweight and a black belt codependent from Liverpool. And I was the middle child. I have an older brother and a younger brother. And it was up to me to help. Make sure dad kept coming home because he didn't like mom, but he loved me. I had a rebellious older brother and an infant baby brother, and I needed to.

13:53 Try to help raise the baby brother. I mean my parents really would have been better off raising orchids or teacup poodles or something. And so what I did At the age of five was to try to raise the baby and to try to keep my brother. From imploding.

14:09 And it was exhausting and I got migraines at five years old. And no one What it was fifties, no one quite noticed. The children Had mental health diagnosis and стрес. It was really life or death.

14:21 But I'll tell you. My family worked better when I had a migraine. Because families do well if there's one sick person that's not them. So when I had to be in the total darkness with cold compresses, the family thrived. You know?

14:35 But I learned a couple of rules and I know you've written about stuff like this, but I learned Some survival tools. And one was to think that I was defective and that I was the reason that the family wasn't doing well. Because if I was the problem, that meant I had some measure of control. Right. I could do better. And I couldn't do better. I was an A student. I was a tennis star. But if I I believed I could do better and I could need less.

15:00 And if I did better and needed less, then it seemed to make mom and dad better. And it was completely re-gonomic trickle down, like if dad was okay and we helped dad pump up. Then mom would be able to nurture the three of us. So Born to die people, pleaser. I got all of my self esteem from outside. From good grades, from being the star of the classroom, and from being a great conversationalist that my parents

15:24 like to have around and that my parents' friends like to chat with. And I was not only defective, and this is where it gets dicey, but I was In charge of everybody's happiness. You know, I was in charge of Of helping mom not feel so put down by dad. I was in charge of making dad come home because I was so adorable and I rubbed his feet. I'm a lot older than you, but when I was coming up in the fifties, the They all wore socks with garters, these little sock garters. And I was like a little geisha girl with curly kinky hair.

15:55 And I'd sit and I'd take off his little garter on the couch and I'd take off his sock and I'd rub his feet. And he I thought he would come home for that and he drank a lot. So what I got good at was pleasing people. being a stratospheric achiever, but not quite so

16:12 Right, that it ruined my older brother's life and it made him feel like a loser and I know how to raise babies. And I know how to get by on the leftovers on whatever was left over after I gave everybody the very, very best parts of me. So all of my books, including Bird by Bird and Operating Instructions, everything. Has to do with that. coming into radical self-care.

16:35 And becoming my own priority. This is kinda funny. My mom Who is a black belt, as I told you, codependent always took the broken Friday. My entire life. I can swear.

16:46 On a stack of Bibles my mother never once said, Here's somebody else take the goddamn broken egg yolk. Can you take the it you know? My mother ate the broken egg yolk, and that's what I was raised to believe women did. And I had to have enough therapy. Enough recovery. I've been cleaning it so over thirty five years now.

17:04 And enough in The women's movement. And a lot of outside help so that I could be my own priority. And if there was a broken egg yolk, maybe it wasn't my turn again. Maybe Sam should have the broken egg yolk. Sam loves a perfect fried egg. You know what? Tough shit.

17:21 I know that. Sounds like a loving Christian thing to say, but it had to do with becoming my own priority. So that was the childhood I had. I was very afraid. I had migraines. I was too smart. It's very good at math. Girls weren't supposed to be. I skipped a grade. I made the boys feel bad'cause I was better at math than they were.

17:41 I was small and I looked funny. I had this crazy Pure white. blonde kinky hair and these huge green eyes. I weighed About twenty pounds till eighth grade and you know All I knew to do was to do better.

17:56 And to try to do it perfectly. And that's why I think the chapter in Bird by Bird is something That people so relate to because Yeah, like in my family All of us, in the American way in fact, but in my family The theme was forward thrust.

18:12 that no matter what was going on, you keep going, you keep going forward, you thrust forward and so that the abyss doesn't open up at your feet, you know, and and if the abyss threatens to you, you get to Ikea and you buy a cute throw rug, you know, you trick out the abyss. And they call the abyss the abyss'cause it's pretty abysmal. It's a nightmare. So you try not to land in it. What my family did was drink and overeat and diet. My dad had a million affairs. And It turned out, and you've written about this.

18:42 that the abyss or or in the Christian, you know, theology of Saint John the Divine, it's the dark night of the soul. is where transformation most often happens. And that if you can just bear Being somewhere that you've never been before. where you don't really have any kind of owner's manual or a clue.

19:01 Of how to proceed. Then you're really teachable. You know, and from that place Something magical might just grow. You asked me a question before

19:11 We began recording. You asked me several questions. You asked me how I was doing. You also asked me if I was spiritually fit. or feeling spiritually fit. I don't remember the exact wording, but I'd like to hear to you what that means. And then after that What it means to you current day. After that I'd love For you to tell us the story.

19:30 Or any story of A dark night of the soul experience that you've had. that help to catalyze this radical self care. But let's start In the present tense, spiritually fit. What does that mean to you? Well

19:46 Spiritually fit means I'm in my body. Paradoxically. Doesn't mean I'm in some ether world of, you know, divine enlightenment and it means I heard a Preacher years ago.

19:59 Say the twenty third psalm, which is The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. But she said, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not trip. And I just love that because when I'm spiritually not fit, I'm just Tripping. You know, I'm making up stories.

20:16 I'm in fear. I'm in anxiety. I have a tremendous anxiety disorder for which I'm successfully treated most of the time. But I'm just tripping on something somebody said that it stuck in my craw. On something I'm afraid of, of something

20:32 A lot of fear. In recovery, there's some great acronyms for fear. Because People like my Coke head friends. I mean, I'm my own Cokehead friend, but they would say the the false evidence appearing real, which usually means that you're at the window peering through the drapes, thinking that there's a SWAT team on your lawn at four in the morning, you know, and that the only the best idea you have is another cool refreshing beer. But some of the ones I love is one is the frantic effort to appear recovered.

20:59 That's my main thing is that when I need to look good. When I need to appear to be doing well is when I'm at my most spiritually Lost. And another one I love is future events already ruined. And so I'm just tripping out of it. Like I I was tripping out this morning about

21:16 What if I screwed up with Tim, you know, and and you're so illustrious and you're listenership I think is younger and why would they want this old lady with dreadlocks as Sunday school teacher Word or zen diagrams. me and I was tripping and then I remembered, you know, future events already ruined. That's not truth. That's just K fuck radio.

21:38 And another one I love is fear expressed. Allows Relief. And so I told Neil And he said, You know you

21:46 You are so wonderful at this. Just breathe and go for a walk, first, and do what you do, and you'll be sitting there with Sam and Tim is great. And it you're gonna love it. It's gonna go by so quickly. But so fear expressed allows relief. So Spiritually fit for me is that I'm not tripping. And then I'm breathing. When I was a child, I didn't breathe, you know, I held my breath because of for all the reasons I told you. And I remember I used to pass out on the boardwalk in town. At three years old, and my dad would nudge me and say, Annie, Annie, and I blink awake.

22:20 But if you breathe. You may end up in your body, and it may be that in your body terrible things happen to you. And if you're a girl addict and alcoholic like I am, you know, until Nineteen eighty-six, you let terrible things happen in your body. You encourage terrible things. If you let people do anything at all that they want.

22:41 They seem to like you better, briefly, you know? And so breathing will bring you into your body. So for that reason You may resist it, but for me to do the what I call the sacrament of ploppage and to sit down. And for one minute. To breathe into my heart cave.

23:01 Oh and do the do the sighing. I get my sense of humor back. You know, and laughter Even at my own Quirky, fearful, darling self. Laughter I've written in

23:14 A number of places is carbonated holiness. So if I'm breathing And I've gotten my sense of humor back. I'm in something spiritual. I'm something that has to do with my human spirit.

23:27 And the divine. I mean, I believe and and I've I've heard That we have dual citizenship, you know, we're We're children of the divine or children of sons and daughters of God. And we also have these Kind of screwed up biographical

23:43 Details. We've got genetic details that we would have maybe not preferred. We have predispositions to alcoholism and mental illness or to weight gain in our thighs or whatever, but I have to remember that I can toggle back between Dual citizenship. Between

24:01 Being a child of God or of the Great universal spirit and Annie Lamont, sixty seven. Sunday school teacher and left-wing activist. Mother and grandmother and you know, I got married at sixty

24:15 Five. I got married three days after I got Medicare. And those are all my true biographical details and I also I'm a person Of spirit. So that's what spiritually fit.

24:26 means for me is that I remember That I'm not This terrible pinball machine in my mind cranking out. New ideas about how I can do life more perfectly so that everybody will think more highly of me. Ha.

24:40 Annie, I wanna tell you. I am Enjoying this tremendously. So you are you are exceeding every expectation, so Uh I'm Very, very happy that you're here. And thank you for making the time to be here.

24:54 You mentioned this radical self care and having written a lot about radical self care and what a contrast that is to your early experiences or earlier experiences in life. Was there or is there a particular catalyzing event? Is that brought radical self care into focus as a imperative for you? Well, two things spring to mind. I mean, I could write a whole book.

25:18 On the dark night of the soul and in every book I've written. Yeah. about it to some degree, but it's my favorite topic and I just had a million. Dark nights of the soul.

25:30 while I was drinking and using and usually the solution then was to have Eight or nine social vodkas and maybe a little amyl nitrate just to socialize. But then in nineteen eighty six, the fourth of July weekend I had a three day blackout, which is so unfair. I'm not kidding because

25:50 Usually you have a blackout and you know, it's like a wet chalkboard erasers come by and there's nothing left on the chalkboard of what you did that evening. And it's very scary, but usually they don't happen all that often. I had three in in a row, July fourth, July fifth, and July sixth. And I woke up In terror.

26:12 The morning of July seventh. And I had run out of any more good ideas. All I could think of was how I could Figure out a way. To learn to drink more successfully.

26:24 And I knew that I wasn't going to be able to break that code. And I was already a believer. I mean, I've pretty much been a believer my whole life. I already had a church by then. I um I was just done. I'd reached the end of my rope. That's what the dark night is. You've run out of any more good ideas. And in that space of total emptiness

26:43 And lostness. I was lost. And something found me. And I have to think of it as grace. I understand.

26:53 Grace to be spiritual WD forty. And stretches you. Maybe a really quick spritz or maybe it Maybe you get that The little thin red straw insert it into you and you get a a sustained

27:08 Spritz of it. But It was like water wings. I I suddenly understood that I wasn't gonna sink completely. but that I needed a lot of help. And that was the hugest breakthrough for me.

27:20 Well the help I got first I got A couple of sober women. Who said I have what you have? And I found a way out.

27:30 One day at a time. Not drinking. Just for the day. And if your ass falls off. We can help. Pick it up and

27:38 Carry it to where we are and we'll sit together and we'll share our truth and you won't have to drink for the rest of the day. And we'll help you get through the day just Without a butt. The amazing thing about Grace.

27:50 Is that it meets you exactly where you are. And then it doesn't leave you where it found you. Yeah, it's sort of tricks you into getting into its wheelbarrow. And then it moves you to someplace where maybe there's just a shaft of light.

28:05 Or maybe there's cool water. And the cool water I found was other sober people. But that was the darkest night I can remember. And then here's a here's a recent example. My son and his son live here.

28:19 In a barn on on the property and His son lives with him half time and with the Child's mother half time and I was in major, major people pleasing and I was dance I was just dancing as fast I could to make sure everybody's needs were met. And I was taking the leftovers and the broken egg yolks, and I was exhausted. I was in existential exhaustion. And it had been going on for a while.

28:44 And I finally I know. I shared it with my older brother who'd stopped by, who's a fundamentalist Christian, and he sort of basically done the equivalent of handing me some nice Christian bumper sticker about how God never gives you more than you can handle, which I think is a total crock. And I think what you gotta do with God is try to convince him that you really can't bear all that much. Like when you deal with a trainer at the gym, you don't want them to know how much you can lift. Guess they'll make you lift it and that what you have to do is instead to just pretend you can't pa and hint at liability.

29:15 from another gym you went to where they made you live too much. Yeah. When my brother handed me this stupid Word bumper sticker. I lost it.

29:26 And I said to him. Like one of the cone heads. I said, I have to go right this minute now and go for a ride. I have an errand to do. And my older brother looked at me like, What? And I got in my car and I drove out. to the woods and screaming and shouting And pounding the steering wheel.

29:45 And it saying I hate you, Sam. I hate you. To his mother. I hate you, John, who's my older brother. I hate you, mom and dad. You taught me that I'm a piece of shit. Unless I'm getting A's and unless the entire world and I I hated

30:00 Everybody. And I d it was half hour. I turned around. Half hour. Same record. And then finally I pulled over to Side of the Road and and I I called my my spiritual mentor. Whose name is Horrible Bonnie, and that's what I call her anyway.

30:15 And I said, I hate, I cannot stand it. Oh I do. Is be there for everybody else. And I get nothing. And I went on and on and she listened. Which is the miracle.

30:26 That somebody listens and they don't try to save or rescue or fix you. Or horse you into submission. What they think would be a good path. And she said, Annie. This is what we paid for.

30:39 This is where I hoped you would get some day. And I wasn't in cute adorable crying. I was in red faced swollen nose, Carl, Maldon, snotty crying. I said no, but I don't have any I don't have I've tried everything, blah blah blah blah blah. She let me cry and she said, You are everybody else is your priority, that your son and your grandson and your ma and your f relatives and that your best friends and that your people at church and the blah blah that everybody else is taking care of and you get leftovers. And it was the

31:12 Darkest, snottiest, wettest. Dark night of the soul. And it wasn't like God reached down with his magic or his or her magic wand and tapped me. It really hurt. I was really angry about what I've put up with.

31:26 And I was sad and angry and freaked out. We just stayed on the phone. And then all of a sudden I could breathe again. And I drove back to my house and I became my own priority. And my older brother was there and he goes Hi, you seemed kinda uh I said, Oh no, I didn't you know, oh no, I'm fine. And frantic effort to very

31:44 But from that point on, I can tell you what date that was because Three months later I met the man who became my husband. I did three months Of this radical self love. Of being my own priority, of letting everybody else take the leftovers, of putting myself first, of structuring my days around what would make me happiest. What I needed to do and what I hope to do and what I love to do.

32:09 And then I would find time for everybody else. And three months to the day later. I met Neo For our first copy date.

32:18 And that was five years ago. We haven't been apart. For a day since. So that was the most recent dark night of the soul. My son, who's right here, had a very long stretch of meth and alcohol. Where I thought he would die. That was the most terrifying thing to think I could lose him because

32:36 He's my outside heart. You know, I think children are our outside heart. And I couldn't save'em, I couldn't fix'em, I couldn't rescue him. I couldn't really help him. But the dark night of our soul. was that he had a two year old child, he had a baby nineteen and

32:50 The mom and and my grandchild were living it with me. And Sam was around, but he had a house in the Tenderloin. Uh, he had an apartment and he showed up Wasted. And I had reached my bottom. That's what the dark night is. You've run out of any more good ideas.

33:06 And so what I did was I took a sharpened pencil and I held it to his throat. I mean, this does not jibe with my spiritual books, my my persona and my being a Sunday school teacher. And I said, You're as bad as any junkie I know. And you cannot be back on this property with your baby. If you so much as have a hit of marijuana.

33:28 And we just looked at each other and he looked at me like with such hatred. And for your child to hate you is about as bad as it ever gets. And then I got some sort of holy spirit nudge or Something, you know, the great universal spirit. And I said, Do you want to ride back to the city? And to the tenderloin. I don't know if you know what the tenderloin is, but Oh I do. I lived in San Francisco a long time, but a lot of people don't, so could you describe it, please?

33:55 the crackheads and heroin that it's a really deprived, depleted Addicted Prostitute. Camp Terrible, terrible place. And anyway, so I drove him back to his house and he got out of the

34:09 Car And He hated me. And I walked over to him. And I reached for him.

34:15 I took a chance, you know, they say Courage is fear that has said its prayers. We hadn't said a word in the car. It's an hour drive. And I I just kept praying in silence in the car and it we stood together and I reached for him.

34:28 And he reached for me. And I I said I'll see you and he said I'll see you. And then he called me three weeks later. And he said I've got a week clean and sober.

34:39 And the guys who could actually be there for him, which was not his incredibly crazy mother who had had it. These guys in San Francisco who are clean and sober. had fished him out of the trough, you know? and one day at a time had helped him.

34:54 get clean and so Brittany hasn't a drink or a drug for ten years now. So Those three things that I've described are w are the darkest nights. of the soul that I've been through. But the thing with Sam and with my child in general It said I had thought up till then that I had some really I have a disease of good ideas usually for other people. And I believe that My ideas will really help them have better lives and at least make me less uncomfortable when I'm around them.

35:21 And I learned that. My help was not helpful. to Sam and that help It's the sunny side of control. And I was trying to control him and that was making him worse.

35:34 And I still, you know, I'm sixty seven. He's gonna be thirty two this year. I still he's on his hero's journey. With his podcast, Hello Humans that you've listened to. And he's doing a beautiful job. And I would still Like to get on his hero's journey just maybe ten feet behind him with juice box and sunscreen, maybe, and just be there in case he needs me. But when I do that, it's injuring him.

35:59 It's not helping him. It's certainly not helping me, but what I have to do is is the awareness that I'm doing it again and grip myself gently by the wrist and say, Annie. Stop. Get back onto your own emotional acre. He's doing great. He is a miracle.

36:15 That's what has come from the dark nights are the the greatest truths I know. That my my help is not helpful. Most scared. place on earth if I can not try to do the forward thrust and try to redecorate the abyss.

36:32 That I'm gonna get. Flesh it and light and I'm gonna get fresh air. So and I'm getting you know, my life is if I can tough it out or let somebody into it with me and breathe. And do left foot, right foot. Left foot breathed.

36:48 That my world is gonna become more spacious. I 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 Mementis. Mementus 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 Mementus Mag3on8, Ltonine, and Apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now the Mementus Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. Mementous also partners with some of the best minds in human performance to bring world class products to market.

37:36 including a few you will recognize from this podcast, like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett. Their products contain high quality ingredients that are third party tested, which in this case means informed sport and or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. So check it out. Visit livemomentous.com slash Tim and use code TICKOUT for twenty percent off. That's LivMomentus. L-I-V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash Tim and code Tim for twenty percent off. I And now

38:12 Josh Waitskin. Best selling author of The art of learning An inner journey to optimal performance. A trainer of elite mental performers in business and finance.

38:23 An eight time national chess champion. A two time world champion in Tai Chi Chuan push hands. And the first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt under nine time world champion Marcello Garcia You can learn more about Josh and his projects

38:40 at joshwaitskin.com Joshua. Yes, Tim Boo. Welcome back, buddy. I'm so happy to be here. I'm I'm thrilled you're here, man. Hanging with you. And I thought we could maybe start Just With a complete non sequitur, which is a book you just mentioned to me that I know nothing about, which is Dreaming Yourself Awake.

38:59 Can you talk about this? Ooh, I didn't think we're gonna begin here. It's a book that I explored a couple years ago. Twenty years ago I started studying Tibetan Dream Yoga and Lucid Dreaming. Not deeply, but uh exploring. And this was during the period where I was first getting involved with my study of East Asian philosophy.

39:18 He text me back that name. That

39:28 I didn't intend, but then I picked up and read and it was extraordinary. It's just a phenomenal discussion. Very systematic discussion of the art of lucid dreaming. In this way that fuses. East Asian philosophy with Western science.

39:43 You're In the midst of competition? Two years ago, you mean? Oh this was two years ago. Twenty years ago was when I started studying East Asian Philosophy. I was competing in chess then and then into the martial arts. I need a little more caffeine. Working on it. You've had a rough night. And I wanted to thank you, and just this is like Tim's Stream of Consciousness podcast intro. We're looking at a slack line This is an indoor Gibbon Classic Slack it's about twelve.

40:10 Uh no, not even ten feet long, maybe. We have It's it's surrounded by kettlebells and indo board. And a triceratops which I don't think is yours. Got the bozo ball there. And the bozo ball. And uh

40:24 I want to thank you for actually getting me to bite the bullet and grab a slack line which I set up on Long Island. Yeah, absolutely. I've loved I've had some fun on on your slack line on Long Island too. I love right now I'm I'm in the period you know th I kind of oscillate between these and my son Jack. It was four and a half. We have a great time. I'm on the indoor board rocking he's on the bosom ball. We're having a catch back and forth while on these things. We're always integrating these interesting kinds of physiological Awareness training.

40:50 Speaking of which, I feel like maybe we should Throw a cautionary tail. Into this follow up podcasts. So we obviously trade stories and findings all the time. Would you like to talk about You're

41:05 recent experience with Wim Hoff and Breathing training? Wow. Yeah.

41:10 Well had an extremely scary experience. Some a lifetime meditator and kind of experimental subject like yourself around all these things. You tend to have better self preservation instead of, although I've had a lot of close calls in life. When I heard you speak to Wim, I was extremely intrigued. Actually when I heard someone mention Wim to you on your podcast, and then we spoke about it, then you spoke to Wim, I thought he sounded a fascinating guy. I started digging into his work. So powerful. And I started

41:37 doing he's going through his course, his online course. I loved it. I mean the energetic feeling, the electric surging Through the body. I'm also a lifetime free diver since I was four or five years old I've been free diving. And so breath hold just to put that in perspective, I mean you spend about a month a year. Yeah. In the water.

41:54 Now it's about Yeah, diving usually about a month of the of the year, but I spent a lot of time now, as we know, surfing, Santa Ple surfing. Swimming, diving. I mean the um ocean's a huge part of my life. We gotta talk about our stand up paddle adventure square. Which are pretty hilarious. method and I thought it was incredibly powerful. The intensity

42:15 that you're experiencing internally. It's very similar to training in Tai Chi. Tai Chi Chuan moving meditation for ten, fifteen, twenty years, and then being an hour long into a session. And you have this feeling of energetic flow inside your body. you know, a few rounds of his breath method and you're experiencing these things. And it was incredible. The the gain in strength were mind boggling, the length of the breath holds.

42:35 We're fascinating. But then I made a big technical error. I ignored all the signs. On Wim's site and that you spoke about do not do this in water, which is uh they were all over the place, but I thought You know, free diving's a way of life for me, no problem.

42:49 And the major technical error was not realizing, which is absurd after a lifetime of free diving, that it's carbon dioxide buildup that gives you the urge to breathe and not Mm. Hugely important thing. Please everyone burn that in. It's CO two build up that makes you want to breathe. And so I did the after a long swim at the NYU pool few months ago I started doing my wind breathing and did a series of underwater swim. I did about eight, twenty five

43:13 Meter swims and I think I was on my fourth fifty. Underwater and I this was after a a long workout. And I went from this ecstatic state to unconsciousness. And I was actually on the bottom of the pool after blacking out from shallow water black out for three minutes. Before someone pulled me up.

43:28 And You know, the doctors have told me usually it's forty seconds to a minute to Perhaps. Permanent brain damage, death. I got very lucky. My body saved my life. And they said that if it hadn't been off all the training I've done for so many years, I would have been gone.

43:41 And more specifically, you correct me if I'm wrong, you didn't for and this strikes me as so odd you didn't have the reflexive Inhalation of water. Is that right? Yeah, I didn't take any water into my lungs, which is Hugely

43:56 fortunate because fresh water in the lungs can be terrible. So my lungs had no water in it pretty much. After they pulled me out I was unconscious for twenty five minutes. I was sort of breathing on my own though. When I came to twenty five minutes later, and I was blue everywhere else. My body sent all my all the blood to my brain and my heart. Save my life. And I'm here.

44:12 And it's been it was a life changer. On a lot of levels. You know, the idea of my my four year old boy. Four blocks away, sitting on the rug, waiting for Daddy to come home. And me on you know, unconscious in the bottom of a pool, blue.

44:23 Just That's the kind of experience that um Shattering. How did that change how you think about Training in these types of experiments or

44:33 Life in general, I know it's a very broad question. How does it change your decision making? Well, first of all how it's influenced my life in general. I've I've never lived with such a consistent sense of gratitude Beauty and love.

44:45 In my life. It's just flowing through my body. Presence. to the exquisite little ripples of beauty in everything I do. And a sense of gratitude for the little things.

44:53 It sounds cliche, but it's embodied and I f I really feel it. And in terms of That's a Something I'm Really grateful for. It's exquisite.

45:01 You know, my little boy m my wife is pregnant. Another son coming. In June. And it's made me rethink these questions of risk. But on the other hand, it's been very important not to oversteer. I mean one of the most important learning lessons that I've learned for myself in the training elite mental performers is people oversteer all the time. They overcalibrate.

45:19 And so I've been very careful to sit with this and try to draw the right lessons out of it, not the wrong. And not Too big a lesson. And not too small, lesson. So, for example, this was a huge technical oversight I had. I didn't realize I was taking a big risk here. And there's a lot of big risks that I've taken in life. Some with you. And

45:36 I think I'm actually pretty good at navigating those, but I've been thinking about them quite a bit. But of course it's very important for me to be cognizant in a like in a group risk, as we've discussed, it's important to be present at your own level and the level of everyone else around you. I've been really sitting with this. Since I was a a really young boy, I started playing chess when I was six years old. By the time I was seven I was the top ranked player so I had in the country. So I had all this pressure on me. And a big part of the way that I found

46:04 My therapy was flu. Can you explain that? Yeah. huge pressure, external pressure for his little boy. You know, my style as a chess player was to create chaos. I love the game. I love the battle of chess. Attacking chess. Right. Right. Attacking chess.

46:19 And most players w you know, when they have a lot of pressure on them in the scholastic chess world, for example, and it's true in many fields, they learn how to Memorized their way to victory. Right. They find shortcuts to to getting good fast and controlling the game all the way. They think about rating points, they think about rankings, they think about winning. They have parental pressures, they have You know, school pressures they have Sometimes publicity pressures if they're doing well. So they want to control their way. I had a different approach. I like to mix it up. You know, I grew up playing in Washington Square Park with the hustlers.

46:45 Who taught me to to battle, it fit my personality. And it was you know, a core part of my competitive style to create chaos and find hidden harmonies and find flow and chaos. And as I've reflected on this in recent years, a big part of how I've dealt with stresses.

47:01 has Then to And this is a r an element of risk that I've been I've been thinking about. It's it's it's different when you're twenty and twenty five and thirty years old as a professional competitor or professional fighter.

47:15 And then you know, now I'm thirty nine years old. Dad. Which is the most important thing I've ever done in my life being a father, and I'm so committed to it. So I have to be quite cognizant of the distinction, for example, between

47:28 between risk competitively and risk mortally. When you're playing chess, it feels like life and death. It really does feel like life and death. When you lose a chess game, it feels like you've been shattered on the most fundamental level. And so I was quite comfortable mixing it up profoundly.

47:41 Creating chaos. And I'd be willing to take those risks. But actually it isn't life and death. Right? Then when you're a professional fighter, martial artist You know, you you can break arms and legs in a second if you're if you're not in deep focus, or you can break your neck. But the again

47:55 The stakes are it it's you out there. And then when you're a dad, it's it's a little bit different, right? And like when you're surfing or when you're rock climbing or whatever you're doing, it's in an extreme state. So it's very important for me to be clear. about the distinction between

48:09 What felt like life and death as a chess player and what actually is life and death today. And then there's the state of being Someone who's found Deep flow as the ultimate therapy. There are a number of different questions I want to ask.

48:21 related to everything you just said. The first is how do you initiate or facilitate a flow state? And how would you describe it? Maybe we could Hit that first. Well I've had a lot of different ways of playing this over the years. For me.

48:35 I can describe it in terms of myself and I can then we can go into how For me Love has been a huge part of flow. You know, I I fell in love with chess and I found flow in

48:49 The self expression. Through an art form that I absolutely loved. And I think this is really important with children, to find something that they feel connected to and that they can express themselves through. They can bring out the essence of their being through some art. And then there was tremendous competitive intensity.

49:04 And of course, stretching yourself to your limit is a huge part of it's a very important precondition to flow. And I was always playing as people who were at my level or above. And so I was always stretched. And then I s was integrating in in my teenage years, sort of integrating meditation into my practice, right? So I got very good at increasing my somatic awareness, my physiological introspective sensitivity. I began to feel the subtle ripples of quality in my process. I could feel when I move from a nine or a ten out of ten down to back down to a nine or eight. In the meditation itself. tactily sensitive when doing push hands or some other type of practice. Chess initially. Why is the tactile component?

49:43 Important in chess. I think it's hugely important in mental disciplines. So for example, You know, in chess and today, a lot of what I do today is have this laboratory of training elite mental performers largely in finance investors. And a huge part of the training is in their physiological introspective sensitivity. That's that's the

50:01 Why? Well, first of all We can't just separate our mind and our body. Totally. Right. I mean this is a your w your way of life as well.

50:14 But we we intuitively can feel things way before we are consciously aware of them. Right. The chess player always senses danger. Before he sees it. Just like you know, the hunter will sense the shark or the jaguar before he'll see it. And he'll look for it. So the chess player's process is often to be studying a position to sense opportunity or danger.

50:32 And then to start looking for it. deconstruct what it is and then find what it probably is and then start calculating. Right, but that sense comes before. Or if you're a great decision maker, or if you're an investor, you can sense danger. Right, you can sense opportunity. But you need to have stilled your waters internally to feel the subtle changes inside of you that would be opportunity or the crystallization of complex ideas.

50:54 Or danger. Or the onset of a cognitive bias, for example, which is hugely important as a chess player or as an investor or as anything else. You know, this is one of the areas where we've had this ongoing dialogue and our friendship around what what I call armchair professors, philosophologists. Right. Philosophologists. Yes. So the people this is the philosophologies is the term of um Robert Persick, the author of Zen and the Art Mological Maintenance, is one of my favorite books and and thinkers. He's a friend of mine. You know, the difference between the philosopher and the philosophologist is what Tim's referring to. Or the writer and the literary critic. Or the

51:24 The man in the arena and the I'm sure Professor. Or Remy from Ratatouille and Anton Ego. Okay. Okay. Yeah. There it is. Okay, good. Yes. And so when we think about, for example, cognitive biases, the academics who study cognitive biases who speak about them. And just for people who have no context on cognitive biases, an example like the sunk cost fallacy.

51:47 Right. I've spent this amount, therefore I should put good money after bad because I feel like I've I need to somehow try to salvage this money. That I put into the a given position. Right. I just wanted to give people some examples. Who and who um we've had a number of meals with them There's a gen.

52:04 What was the author's name again, do you recall? Mabusan, I think. For people interested. Sorry to interrupt. And so one of the interesting things about the dialogue the academic dialogue of cognitive biases is that there's the idea that the i the biases have to operate completely separately from the intuitive process. And then we have to go through a checklist of cognitive biases. In my experience, really high level thinkers have integrated cognitive biases or an awareness of cognitive biases into their intuitive process, right? So this is constant process. We've discussed this a couple years ago, actually.

52:36 Where your You're deconstructing technical awareness. Into something that So this process, for example, of of building a pyramid of knowledge, we have a certain technical foundation, we have a high level intuitive leap. We can then deconstruct the intuitive leap into something that we can understand technically and replicate technically. And then we're raising our foundation to have higher and higher level intuitive leaps, right? This is this pyramid of knowledge which in my in my process is built upon by Similarly,

53:02 we can learn how to take technical material and integrate it into our intuitive understanding. But we aren't going to We're gonna intuit the feeling. And it corresponds. The corresponds with a bias being present.

53:16 And so we think with this relative to the language again, Robert Persig, I like the language of dynamic versus static quality. If you think about the timeline, In in a competitive state. For example in a chess game, there's a certain objective truth to a chess position. If you think of that as a timeline which is moving. I think about Persic's term of being at the front of the freight train of reality, right? Freight train is pushing through. Dynamic quality is right at the front of that freight train.

53:37 Think about that as a timeline. And then the other chess player's mind studying the position. When the chess player is present to the position, it's continuing. You're just running parallel to the truth of the position, to the dynamic quality of the position. But if something changes. You make a slight mistake. You move from having a slight advantage to a slight disadvantage. But you're emotionally still connected, attached.

53:56 to having the slight advantage. then what's gonna be happening is that y you're sort of stopping your dynamic quality is becoming static. But the timeline of the chess position is continuing, the game's continuing. But what's gonna happen then is that you're gonna subtly reject positions that you should accept. And you're gonna stretch for positions that you can't for evaluations that you can't really reach.

54:14 And you're going to fall into a downward spiral. That's the onset of a cognitive bias. In that case the cognitive bias would would relate to the emotional clinging to a past evaluation. But if you had the present state awareness which you trained through different tools and approaches that you use with these elite performers, for instance, you would sense the feeling of that cognitive dissonance and not get caught up

54:33 In sort of the slipstream of that dislocation. Exactly. And the way that you would sense that. In this case. is that you would feel the slip away from dynamic quality. And then you would deconstruct that feeling.

54:45 And then you would see what the bias is that setting in. So this is this is really important to say, right? It's not that we're gonna intuitively develop the ability to know exactly what bias might be setting in in the moment. But we're gonna cultivate the ability to have presence, right? I I think about the idea of cultivating quality as a way of life, cultivating presence in a as a way of life. In little moments in small, when we're holding our babies, when we're reading a book, when we're having a conversation with a friend, when we're meditating. How do you help people to identify That feeling to become more sensitized to it.

55:14 Not a counterexample, but an example of Not listening to Intuition or instinct. So we were both in Costa Rica recently doing paddleboarding. Last meal last meal of the trip. We go out to celebrate, we go to this seafood restaurant.

55:30 Food comes out, it's a Sunday. And I leaned over the plate and smelled the food and immediately Knew that It was something I shouldn't eat.

55:39 And despite that, you know, everybody's ordering drinks, everybody's celebrating went into the food and about a third of the way through I stopped and I just pushed the plate away. And then lo and behold, everybody gets severe, severe food poisoning. Except for the two people who I guess we we tried to narrow it down to whether it was the garlic dip or any number of other things. But yeah, we were We were on the toilet each f like every five minutes for for the next twelve hours minimum. And the great part of it is you and I were adjoining bedroom, we were sharing the same toilet. So that was a hell of a night. And we never saw each other. It was amazing, but I heard that flushing happen. Taking turns. That was that was a brutal experience. I remember the look watching you sniffing, you had this like expression of concern come over you at the dinner table. And like I saw that moment. Maybe I wasn't present enough to you and you didn't

56:24 It's a great example of you didn't fully trust your gut. But you were right on it's amazing. Or I felt a sort of social pressure to conform and not rock the boat. So how do you help someone, say, in the world of investing just as an example. Develop

56:41 not only develop the sensitivity to to keep to separate that signal from the noise But also to actually listen to it, right? These are two different points, right? So let's talk about developing it and let's talk about listening to it. 'Cause they're both so so hugely important. And I'd frame them both thematically.

56:58 in different ways. And I'd build training systems around them both that would be quite different. So when we're thinking about cultivating the the awareness I mean I think that a lot of this relates to A return to a more natural state. This isn't so much about learning as unlearning.

57:13 Agreed. Getting out of our own way, releasing obstructions. I think about the training process is the movement toward unobstructed self expression, right? Obstructedness. We have so many habits that are fundamentally blocking us, right, from the phone addictions. People are constantly distracted. People don't have the ability to sit in empty space anymore. People are bombarded by inputs all the time. They're in a constantly reactive state. So w one way that you could frame this out is the stu is cultivating a way of life which is fundamentally proactive.

57:38 in little things and big and you can build day architectures that are fundamentally proactive. But then getting into the the weeds a little bit more, I think it's most foundational to develop a mindfulness practice. to cultivate the ability to sense the most subtle ripples of human experience. Now, I've been trying to onboard people in specifically in the in the finance space, for example, into meditation for a bit over eight years now. Initially I would just try to get but guys to meditate. They'd look at me like I was crazy. Then what I I realized I had this breakthrough which was that if I had them start doing stress and recovery interval training.

58:09 So oscillating heart rate between one seventies and one forties, say So let's say someone does a six or eight or ten minute warm up and then they're on a heart rate interval doing some kind of cardio bike or whatever. moving their heart rate up a number between one seventy and one forties when they become aware. of the quality of their focus.

58:27 um enhancing their ability to lower their heart rate more quickly. And they start to feel their heart rate, listen to it. When that awareness would kick in, I'd start I'd layer in meditation. And the on ramp was just much more successful. And then what I started to refine that with is Is biofeedback. So now what I'll do is I'll have them do the stress and recover interval training, then I'll have them do some form of biofeedback.

58:46 often with, for example, heart rate variability through heart math or working with a specialist. And then when they begin to Have a certain kind of consistency of their ability to To enhance their emotional regulation, to observe these subtle ripples between

59:01 Stress. And coherence. And you can see their biometric data, then you layer in meditation and then the on ramp is even more powerful. And so then they embed layer in a meditation practice. I think headspace is a wonderful tool for layering in a meditation. And I think for a lot of people also starting with headspace. Before bed is another

59:19 kind of gateway drug approach. to then building into or leading into the morning meditation, which a lot of people have trouble with because they wake up, they feel rushed. it's another thing to layer in on top of the brushing of the teeth, the getting the kids ready, et cetera. And so sometimes the evening approach. But I agreed that Headspace is really useful. I think it's really important.

59:38 I think I think you're absolutely right there. And I think it's really important. to have a core meditation practice which is At least in the beginning In the conditions in your life that are most conducive to deep focus and to not being distracted. Later in life we want to be able to tap our meditation under complete

59:56 In chaos. But we want to cultivate it initially in the most peaceful time possible. So if you have kids waking up before the kids Or up or in the evening. Once they're asleep. Or if you don't have kids then life is much simpler. Or during your commute

1:00:09 I've uh found a lot of people who will just like throw on Headspace or some song that they meditate to and they know they have twenty minutes on the subway and it's like all right, that's my twenty minutes. Right. I enjoy meditating on the commute. A lot personally. You've been meditating for a long time. I mean w I'm not sure how you feel about this. I find that if people can have the first two, three months of meditation practice in a quiet room

1:00:29 Then If they start doing it in their commute. They've sort of built the foundation of it in this really quiet space. from what I can tell, it appears to depend a lot on what type of concentrator you are. And what I mean by that is if you look at writers, for instance There's some writers who

1:00:46 want to be in a quiet environment in order to Hear whatever the muse is whispering. And they'll go to a library. They'll go to some place like that. I can't do that. For whatever reason, I thrive in noise environments because if I have the noise I feel like it forces me to focus inward. So for me

1:01:05 studying languages even. In a loud environment. Writing in a loud environment. uh for whatever reason is a forcing function for me. But I can definitely see why for even perhaps a majority of people. It would be

1:01:20 I think it it's partially due to the fact that for instance I'm looking at your wall right now and the fact that that picture is tilted like five degrees to the right is making me Totally bonkers. You think we should fix should we fix it? This is training for me. Look at that. But the the same is true auditorily. So if if I have a controlled noise like music or The chickka chick chick-a chick. I can focus on that repetitive noise, but if I'm sitting in a space that I want to be quiet and I have that controlling aspect of my personality trying to impose itself on something I can't control, and then there's like somebody hitting reverse in a truck and I can hear that outside.

1:02:02 It will drive me nuts. Long of them. Observation to a short comment, but I do think That

1:02:08 If you can drop in In a quiet environment. The point being, as you said, I think to stack the deck in the beginning. Yeah. Like learn how to do this in a Controlled.

1:02:20 unstressful environment and then you can ratchet up over time to when you can use it in the most stressful of environments. Because we don't ultimately want to be meditating in a flower garden. We want to be able to meditate And have a meditative state. Throughout our life. In

1:02:34 Hurricane and a thunderstorm. When sharks are attacking you, any moment. Paddleboarding When you're paddleboarding the last day on a first trip. And Josh is like, You'll be fine. And then three leashes snap and all hell breaks loose. That's a long story. Killer set comes in. So that's just a little context here. Timbo and I have been on this great adventure stand up paddle surfing, taking it on together. And we found this we got a great friend down in in Costa Rica, Eric Antinson, who um Actually as the other podcast other than yours I listen to in life, the Padaluk. Um Eric's awesome. He's a great dude and he runs Blue Zone Sup. He's a brilliant teacher.

1:03:11 really fascinating mind deconstructing stand up paddle surfing on increasingly small boards for us. And we've been going out there and we've had some hilarious close calls. The last trip a couple of weeks ago we almost we almost destroyed each other. Yeah, we had there's a this one like witching hour where the ju the juju is really weird. Almost everybody either got like decapitated Impale. by a board or just head on joust and collision, which is what

1:03:36 But the point that you bring up I think is is right on about meditation. That you know when you're building training programs for elite mental performers, the most important thing is to understand them so deeply and build programs that are unique to their funk, embrace their funk. That's a term my buddy Graham, who's a who's a a dear friend of ours who's comes on our surf adventures with us. Brilliant thought partner. Embrace the funk. Could you explain that? Yeah, we have to embrace our funk. We have to figure out you think about the the the entanglement of genius and madness, right? Or brilliance and eccentricity. understanding that entanglement is always a precursor to working with anybody who's trying to be world class at something.

1:04:11 Because th that entanglement is fundamental to their being. And they have to ultimately embrace their funk, embrace their eccentricity, embrace what makes them Different. And then build on it. Right. And we so we think about self expression. It's not trying to take everyone and put them into the same mold. It's trying to understand someone very deeply and build a training program, a way of life.

1:04:28 That helps them bring out. the essence of their being through their art. Whatever their art is. I mean and that's how I relate to the path to excellence in chess and martial arts. very actively in the investing space, when I work in education with children.

1:04:41 To a nonprofit. It's again the movement. But the problem is the teachers don't listen. They don't know how to listen. Right. They don't know how to sit or parents to sit in empty space and observe the nuance of their child's mind or their students' mind and then build a way of life around that. People are used to teaching the way they learned. think about martial arts instructors. Almost all of them trained us a certain way.

1:05:03 And then teach that way, which alienates sixty five, seventy percent of the students by definition. It's very rare that you have someone who can Take the time. To And it takes a lot of time to know someone deeply enough to build

1:05:14 a training program and a way of life around who they are. I mean for me and what I I only work with With eight teams. I don't take on New client. Very seldom do I take on a new client and I won't work with more than eight people. You also don't do a lot of PR for everybody listening. I always get these emails and texts like hey Could you introduce me to Josh on my show? And I'm like, he's not he's not gonna do it.

1:05:36 Tim, you're the only person once a year or two, uh you're the one guy who brings me out of my Hermetic Cave. I live a bit of a strange life because I'm not on Uh, strange it doesn't feel strange to me. It feels completely natural, but I'm I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of these things. I don't even know the names of most of them. I have an email account though. Um I I cultivate empty space As a way of life for for the creative process. So Timbo, you're the one guy who brings me out of the cave where we have a lot of fun together. So you were talking about these top performers and getting to know them on a very deep

1:06:09 subtle level so that you can help them express the combination of their madness and genius. Or at least embrace it. Among other things, how do you think about Parenting.

1:06:21 Yeah, let's dig into this one. All right. So and then let's remember to loop back after this to finish our this discussion of first of all, you were talking about how to cultivate the somatic awareness. And then how to listen to it. So let's go back to how to train to listen to it. Okay, parenting, Jack. Well Jack's the love of my life. I mean this kid is such an awesome dude and I Parenting has um been the most fantastic learning experience I've ever gone through. So from when he was born,

1:06:46 I tried very hard not to go in with it with a lot of preconceived ideas. And to be attuned to him, to listen to him. From when he was just Days, weeks old, he he was teaching me. Yeah, you talk about

1:07:00 Hyper pull me back. If there was any distraction that's set in, he would pull me back. And he's got a little older, you just take your face and face and pull it back. In the sweetest way. And so the depth of connection.

1:07:11 Being deeply attuned to a young Spirit Yeah. hasn't become blocked. That is in that state of unobstructed self expression.

1:07:20 It is just This unbelievably Game. Learner. unblocked learner. Jack is the game is little

1:07:27 person I've ever known in my life. But but I of course I've been thinking about learning in education for a lot of years. And so I had And so For example,

1:07:37 I think that control is the the need for control is something that inhibits people in life. the need to have external conditions be just so. in order for them to be able to Timbo's pointing at the at my grandmother's paint. That was my grandma's paint, it's a beauty right? Yeah, Stella. Stella Whitskin. Okay, we're gonna leave it messed up. We're working on control. So like from a young age for me, I but when I started playing chess, I would create the chaos on the board like I described, and then I would play in in chess shops with people blowing smoke and playing music, and I'd play chess with like loud guy to monk chants bursting into m in my head from speakers. When I play cards I would never play in general, I'd always keep the melds out of order. Say that again.

1:08:16 When I would play cards. I would like to get cards like a card game. Playing like Jinra Mix. I would never organize my hand. I'd always keep it. Yeah, like if you have like Three sevens. Uh right, or like

1:08:28 All right. Jack Quequin Queen of the U.S. I would keep everything out of order. So I'd have to reorganize it in my mind. Oh you wouldn't gather your I see you wouldn't you wouldn't move your cards around Organized. Right. I was creating chaos everywhere to train at being able to be at peace in chaos and organize

1:08:46 things in that was kind of part of my way of life. And I found it to be a huge advantage that I had competitively. And so one of the biggest mistakes That I observed in the first year of Jack's life. year two of Jack that I've observed with parents is that they do th have this language around weather. Whether being good or bad. When it was raining, they'd be like, it's bad weather. You'd hear you know, moms, babysitters, dads talk about it's bad weather we can't go out. Or it's good weather we can go out. And so that means that somehow we're externally reliant on conditions being perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time. So Jack and I never missed a single storm. Every rainstorm I don't think we've missed

1:09:16 One storm. Other than maybe one when he was sick. I don't think we've missed a single storm, rain or snow. going outside and romping it. And we've developed this language around how beautiful it was. And so when now whenever there's a rainy day, Jack says, Look, that's such a beautiful rainy day and we go out and we play in it. And

1:09:33 You know, I wanted him to have this Internal locus of control. To not be reliant on external conditions being just so. In now he's four, he's getting older, so we've been playing with these things. We began meditating together when he was

1:09:50 In that kind of most pure state, so when he'd be taking a warm bath and he was lying on his back and being completely relaxed, blissed out, we would just naturally breathe together. I wanted the habit to be formed in something that was Initial experience.

1:10:02 To be in conditions that were most conducive to just natural peace. And then We have in recent Months.

1:10:11 been taking it to an interesting funky place. So he would was watch me do the Wim Hof training and I'd be putting my hands in ice buckets and doing this interesting breath work through cold water. And he would initially watch it and come over to stick his finger in, put his hand in. So there's a great moment a couple months ago we were out romping in this huge snowstorm and Jack about ten minutes into it We just gone this long search for the right carrot to put on to make the snowman with. We found the could the nose the nose. We found it. And then Jack got he was in this huge drift and he got his boots just loaded up with snow and he looked at me and he said, Dad, my feet are cold, they're filled my boots are filled with snow, but that's okay, I'll just do the Wim Hof. And make them warm.

1:10:46 And we looked at him and and then he for an hour and a half we played after that feet just covered with snow and he was completely fine. Never mentioned it again. And then he got increasingly interested in in this internal terrain. And we would take hot baths together. We take a bath together every night. And then he would want to turn on the cold shower. and get in it. And he w we'd play what we call the it's so good game. And so we kind of reframe this thing, you know, I I have this you know, people tend to bounce off of discomfort, whether it's mental or physical, and so they run up it whether if they run into internal resistance.

1:11:15 Whether it's a meditation training or someone exposing a weakness, or if they're training in someone might be better than them, whatever whatever it is, they bounce away from things that might expose them. They're repelled from it. Right. But you know the flip side of this is to learn. The way I talk about living on the other side of pain. Pain being like mental or physical.

1:11:32 Discomfort. And mu much of life that's so rich comes from the on the other side of it. The other side of challenge. Internal or external challenge. And with Jack, of course I'm not using that

1:11:42 But it's a little child's embodiment of it. We We started to play with turning on the cold water and he would say, It's so good, Dad Day and we'd kinda be in the hot bath and play in the cold and he would say it's so good. It's so good. And he began to have this gorgeous Yeah. Meditating through it.

1:11:57 And we you know, he would say, I'm meditating through it. It's so good. And we were reframing cold. Cold was is a metaphor. From something that you just you bounce away from to something that you can learn to sit with, to Be neutral in to find pleasure in.

1:12:11 And then we had this experience the other day where he said to me, You know, Dad that will you tickle me slowly. And I always tickl him and he laughs uproariously, but we were lying in bed and I was tickling with him very slowly. And he was he said, I'm gonna do my meditation. He would meditate and then he said to me then the next day he said, Daddy, will you tickle me slowly and I did it, and he said, Can you become a little bit faster? And I didn't suggest this to him, he suggested it to me. And then we play this game where we say one to ten and I would tickle him slowly and he'd start doing his meditation. And we'd move it from

1:12:36 One, two, and we'd go up to he'd like be doing his meditation. And finally I'd be full tilt tickling him. He'd normally be in hysterics and he was just sitting there Meditating. And not laughing. And he found this so interesting. And he's now guiding the process in this in this beautiful way. Now we're turning it to to talking about question just to interject. Did you at any point condition him

1:12:57 To be proactive in that way? Or was it just an organic I think I encourage him to grab the wheel all the time. I mean a huge part of my relationship to parenting, and this is from my mom. And I watched my mom with Jack and I think this is maybe the greatest gift that my mom gave me is having a sense of agency in the world. You know, the idea that Having

1:13:16 A sense that I can impact the world. And that my and that that my compass really matters. Right, so when I grew up I was I wasn't You know, seen but not heard. I was from a when I was five and six years old, they were having adult conversations with friends and our and I was part of it. They wanted to hear my ideas.

1:13:30 And I felt that they mattered. And that's a big part of how I I believe in and my wife and I believe in raising Jack. And so He plays a really active role in everything that we do. And so it was sort of a natural thing. And it was all fun and play. I wasn't pushing any of these things on him at all. This is stuff that he wanted to do. But then he him naturally I've been I've been kinda blown away by how he's been transferring this stuff. over. I mean lateral thinking or thematic thinking, the ability to take a lesson from one thing and transfer it over to another, I think is one of the most important

1:13:57 Disciplines that any of us can cultivate or or ways of being? And it's something that Jack and I have from a a really young age We began to cultivate this from when he was really small around this principle of go around. Initially it was like i the first thing that time it happened is that he was try he was really tiny. He was trying to get in We're in a little cottage.

1:14:15 Tiny little cottage in a big field. And he was trying to get in one door and he couldn't, but he could get in the other door. And I said, Jack, go around. And he looked at me and then he went around. And then go around became a language for us physically. If you can't go one way, you go around or another way. But then it became a language for us in terms of solving puzzles and in terms of any way time you're running with an obstacle, go around.

1:14:36 And then the working with the metaphor of go around opened up this way that we would just have dialogue around Connecting things, right? Taking away of principle from one thing and applying it to something else. And we've had a lot of fun with that. And so it's it's fascinating to see this game little dude if you have this thematic dialogue, principle driven dialogue and we're Cultivating somatic awareness, cultivating the ability to

1:14:57 feel these little ripples inside. I mean Jack's telling me his dreams. in this beautiful way. He tells me how his emotions feel in his body. It's a great journey. I'm learning so much from him. There's a book you've mentioned to me a number of times. Or at the very least a researcher.

1:15:11 And I'm probably gonna Masquer this name as well. Is it Carol Dweck? Getting that right? Mindset. Yeah, Carol Dweck. Mindset, yeah. Yeah, entity theories of intelligence versus incremental or growth mindset. Carol Dweck's one of the most important foundational developmental psychologists, I think, around this distinction of

1:15:28 A fixed perspective Let's frame it like this. Most children unfortunately are educated to believe

1:15:37 That they have a certain ingrained level of ability in things. You are smart, you are dumb, you are F right. And they're told and and the the sad thing is that when they are edu even when they're praised, they're told how smart they are. Or you're you're such a good writer. You're so good at math. And the kids will say, I'm smart at this or I'm dumb at that.

1:15:55 Right. And so but if you're very smart at one thing Then that means that if you fail then you must Be dumb at it. And so it becomes Very static.

1:16:04 And the kids are often quite brittle when they have a fixed mindset, right? Or an entity theory of intelligence. Well, a growth mindset or a mastery oriented mindset is one where we understand that our the path to mastery involves Incremental. Growth We don't have an ingrained level of ability at something. We're going to have successes and failures. We're gonna work at things and it's work, it's practice.

1:16:25 And it's an open mindedness to life experiences that makes us succeed. How would the praise differ? You would pray as a kid for the process versus the outcome. And so you would say I'm so proud of how hard you worked At your math. Not you're so smart at math.

1:16:38 Or if someone if someone has a failure, the other side of it is not to say that don't worry about it, you're just not good at math, you'll do something else. It's to say, Well, how can we practice at this to get better? And so we're focusing on the process and not the outcome. That's like the the fundamental principle. And it's so easy to say it, but it's it's very hard for people to to live it as parents, especially if they don't embody it themselves. What you see often with kids and parents is that The parents

1:17:01 They have an entity theory of intelligence themselves. They're fixed. They're stuck. But they've read the material of Carol Dweck or somebody else. They want to parent their kids around a growth mindset, but the kids See what they embody, not what they say. I mean one of the most important things. I think that we do with my foundation. And I work with schools, with programs around the world, is that we

1:17:20 when we're working with teachers, it's not just this is the material you should teach your students. It's it's working with these core principles and embodying it themselves first. And then Through that embodied intelligence. working with the kids and how they can buy it. You have to walk the talk.

1:17:34 Let's go back to what you said we should go back to at some point, which is Somatic sensitivity. Those sort of dimples of light in the darkness that most people overlook. How do you

1:17:46 Train that. Well thematically the first thing I would say is that is that we need to think about cultivating an internal locus of control, or an internal orientation versus an external one. Right? So as an artist or performer, we have all these external pressures on us. Let's say, for example, again, let's talk about investors again. a one billion dollar investment vehicle.

1:18:06 And they have partners. They have people who invest in that. And they have to write investment letters. They have all the partners say they have thirty or forty or fifty partners who are institutions, maybe endowments, educational endowments, charities, whatever, who have Put their money into this investment vehicle. And Maybe that person has his own money.

1:18:23 as well, or her own money in this investment vehicle. For them to be successful, they have to operate from the inside out. They have to bring out the essence of who they are. as a performer, like we do we're discussing. Um or as a human being. The bring that out through their art.

1:18:37 But if they are constantly feeling pressured By what others expect from them. What others want from them, how they'll be perceived. Or Yeah, how people are looking at

1:18:46 Or how their tweet is being responded to. Right? It's tweet. That's what it is. See? I mean it's so interesting for me like watching people watch their Instagram accounts. I see it with buddies all the time. It's natural. It's it's completely human. But then we're th we're aware of how we're perceived. One of the major reasons that I stay away from these things is'cause I can feel how susceptible I am to this stuff.

1:19:09 Right. You publish a book and it's on Amazon. It it's so hard not to go look at the Amazon numbers. Right. And then the book comes out and you're tracking them, even if you know it's ridiculous and you shouldn't be doing it. Now now someone like you, you're such a world class trained at and cultivated the ability to market these things, this is actually a very important scientific input for you. It's not for most authors. Most authors is an addiction, right? So that's a completely different point, in my opinion.

1:19:33 You're actually gathering data and using it. Most people are just Constantly feeling Tapping the vein. Right, tapping the vein. So with investors this often relates to is PL checking, profit and loss checking. So most investors check PL. hundreds of times a day. In fact it's constantly because it's on their screen all the time. And so having these like little adrenal hits all the time, right? Whether it's dopamine or cortisol, whether they're making money or losing money, they're constantly bouncing off of these things. That's the ultimate external External orientation.

1:20:00 So if you think about it. Internal. Plus proactive versus external Plus reactive. This is how I would tend to frame this out. We want to build a proactive way of life that's

1:20:11 fundamentally move from the inside out. versus a reactive way of life, we're constantly reacting to all these inputs which we may or may not want. And where we're constantly beleaguered by or oppressed by a sense of How we're gonna be perceived. Social pressures.

1:20:24 Right. And so when you're talking about a really high level artist Who might have a really subtle intuition about something. And they should listen to that intuition. Or they should should at least deconstruct that intuition and investigate it. But they're aware that that intuition

1:20:39 might not be perceived as impressive by others. The problem is that the others usually aren't world class artists. They're the armship professors. They're the philosophologists. And so you have The man in the arena.

1:20:52 By a sense of self consciousness. of how the critics are gonna perceive him or her. Which is ridiculous. Because it's like an A player Thinking about the approval of a C player. And that's disastrous. That's external orientation. That's like thinking that we have we're gonna get food poisoning from something, that something's off, and then dismissing it because of

1:21:10 I mean, first of all there's the incredibly subtle sense is how strong the intuition is. No one else at that table there. And we had some pretty high level dudes sitting at that table had that feeling. that we were about to eat something that had food poisoning, right? So it's very subtle. You had a very subtle sense. It wasn't banging you over the head. Right. And then there's the feeling of The social pressures and everything.

1:21:27 It's a very interesting subtle example. Louder in that case than the than like the really subtle intuition that you had. And then there's having the attitude of I don't care about the social pressures. That's really hard.

1:21:40 Which I was able to do a third of the way through, but not before. Right. I think you're actually really in my observation, you're really evolved with this. I mean I mean you have so much External

1:21:51 Pressure. An external awareness on you. I'm consistently find it. Stunning and impressive. how you're able to embrace your funk. How to to live a life that is attuned to your kind of inner

1:22:01 inner ripples. I mean I I think it's actually rather unique. It's I think it's a core strength of yours, in my opinion. Thanks man. I I think that's One element that's been very helpful. in trying to mitigate the risks

1:22:13 And dangers. in the sort of paradox of trying to be Introspective while having a very public facing life is stoicism. And I remember Reading at one point.

1:22:25 I wanna say it was Kato. Who is considered by his contemporaries and his successors in uh stoic thoughtship to be the perfect stoic in a lot of respects. And I'm gonna get the colors wrong here, but he he would deliberately wait. I think it was A blue tunic as opposed to a purple tunic.

1:22:45 to encourage people to ridicule him because he wanted to be embarrassed about only those things worth being embarrassed about. So training himself not to be Overly. sensitized to the critiques of the C players around him. So I constantly I remember for instance this is such a silly example, but I was just in Montana and

1:23:06 I went into the ski shop to get some light gloves just for walking around, not for skiing. And I looked at the whole rack and I was like, Ooh, I like these and they're like the most ridiculous doctor Seuss like striped nonsense gloves you've ever seen. Just like they will not match with anything. Just ludicrous looking. And uh I asked the woman at the front desk, like, what do you think of these? Or should I get a different one? She's like, nah, I think you should get the black ones. And I thought about it. Like I sat there and I thought about it. I was like, Nope, I'm getting the Doctor Seuss clips. And that expresses itself for me in a lot of different places because I will, for instance, do and this is not something I recommend to everybody So caveat empathor, you can't be you know, you're in control of your own li own life. So if you do this you can face some dire consequences. But I'll do

1:23:50 Drunk Q and A's on Facebook. And I'll have a bunch of booze and I'll go on. Something will come out that will embarrass me, but it's not gonna be life destroying. And So it's kind of systematically.

1:24:02 create an environment in which I feel like I don't have a reputation to protect. Which is another reason why I talk about, you know, the psychedelics and I'll talk very openly about you know, monogamy versus non monogamy. And I'll throw these things out there to ensure A that I never become a politician. And B that I don't feel like I have a fixed identity to cling to that I need to protect because I I see

1:24:27 How disastrous that can be. That's really powerful. And the you know, the fire of competition plays that role. As well. I mean you look at people who compete. Let's talk about martial artists. So I own a Brazilian Jiu school with Marcello Garcia. We've discussed Marcello a lot. Definitely. And you just as a side

1:24:41 Mentioned. creating chaos and training yourself to operate optimally. in chaos compared to others. And of course Marcello, who's what, ten time? Nine time? Nine time. World champion.

1:24:53 is the the Master of the Scramble. Yeah, they call him the King of the Scramble. I mean he's the greatest transitional player in the history of sport, maybe. He's incredible. I mean his the essence of his game is to not hold And to again embrace the chaos and get there first. He just has cultivated the transition so systematically that he has ten frames in a transition where somebody else will just be moving from one position to the next. But that transition itself is is something which is like that's his ocean. It's a beautiful thing. But if you look at the school, Marcello runs the school so beautifully, and we've got at this point a lot of world class competitors. A lot of the the school tends to win pretty much all the tournaments. A lot of the guys who you've trained with with the Tim Paris experiment. That was hilarious. Oh my God. That was awesome. We got to Day one. I'm like, Okay, I think I broke my rib. You did great, man. You did great.

1:25:40 Guys, you should check that out. That was pretty the T V show. If you want to see me get my ass handed to me and have a great time training with guys like uh John. Who's an incredible athlete and teacher. Yeah, John is fantastic. That's a TV show worth checking out. Not the Well, if you look at the learning curve of the people in the school, the ones who put themselves on the line as a way of life just learn much faster than the ones who are protecting their egos. Right. Most schools what happens is someone gets good And then they have to win to protect their

1:26:08 status as being very good or dominant. Usually happens with martial arts instructors. Which is that they reach a certain level. They get a little bit older. They get a little fatter.

1:26:18 They have a reputation. So they stop training'cause they don't want to be exposed by the young students who are coming up and they sit in the sideline, but they get their egos get increasingly large. But riddled with insecurity and this brittleness. Tends to then. splay down to the students and the the whole school becomes a joke, right? Versus You know, Marcello the way Marcello runs our school is is so magnificent. Everyone's on the mat training

1:26:38 So hard as a way of life. Everyone's on a world class growth curve. And it's very interesting to observe who the top competitors pick out. when they're five rounds into the sparring sessions and they're completely gased. The ones who are on the steepest growth curve.

1:26:51 Look for the hardest guy there. The one who beat him up. Well who might beat'em up. While others will look for someone who they can take a break on. Right.

1:26:58 And so there's that constant search for exposure. That's kind of a parallel to what you're describing in terms of not having an ego to protect. Or a um You said not having Yeah, reputation to protect. Right. So this is a way as a competitor to constantly put yourself into the fire.

1:27:17 particularly in Jujitsu, I could get better at this. You remember when we did that one day, we had the Gi on and you're like Timbo, your lips are purple. I thought I was gonna die. I thought I was gonna have a heat stroke and have to be carded off. But is it correlation or causation, meaning Are the guys who who on round five pick the hardest guy in the room? Have they already self selected by coming to the school? In a sense or

1:27:43 Did they start off perhaps when they walked in the door the guy who would pick the easiest person in the room at round five And have been Converted into the guy. Who will pick the hardest person? You see both. You see the both.

1:27:57 How do they Cultivate that transition. I think that Marcello is a great role model. I mean this is you need this everywhere. I mean I think that you know we think about this this principle of cultivating quality as a way of life. And you you look at The way Marcello runs that training environment is is

1:28:17 Pretty exceptional. I mean if people don't have a line all the time. His ass is on the line all the time. And he's getting a little bit older. Two kids. And he's a wonderful dad. His life is not just one hundred percent jujutsu anymore.

1:28:30 He has all of these you know, young twenties at this point world class students who wanna go at it hard with him and he goes at it hard with them. He wants to. He doesn't mind getting exposed. He he brings it he's living it. But he's also creating an environment where people are present to quality and little things. If someone is It doesn't have their gion straight. If they tied their belt.

1:28:48 If they're sitting in a way that's sloppy. What happens to C tell them to straighten their gig. I love that. are are doing the warm up. If they're cutting the corner a little bit, he tells them to run the full circle. If people are doing a certain drill in a sloppy way, he refines it. It's the little things, right? And so as you watch Marcello doing the warm up, there's a way that he'll have his hand and just brush against the mat as he re passes it. Like you can feel him engaging his tactile. Feeling for the room.

1:29:13 he's someone who embodies and teaches qualities way of life. So if you're in your fourth or fifth round and you are looking for a way out. You feel that you're fundamentally violating this principle which you've Been Cultivating a tenant of the school. Right.

1:29:27 And you know, this is so important. We think about A core part of how I train people. is around the the interplay of Them or principles and habits. The habits are what we can actually train at. The principle is what we're trying to embody.

1:29:40 And so we'll train it two or three or four or five habits. Which are the embodiment of a core principle. But the idea is to burn the principle into the hundreds of manifestations of that principle become our way of life. And so in this case we're talking about Marcello talking about Or embodying the principle of quality.

1:29:53 in all these little ways. These little ways you could say don't matter, but they add up to matter hugely. Oh I think the little things are the big things. Because they're a f reflection I mean this might sound cliched, but it's like how you do anything is how you do everything. It's such a beautiful and critical principle. And most people think they can wait around for the big moments. To turn it on. But if you don't cultivate turning it on as a way of life in the little moments, there's hundreds of times more little moments than big. And there's no chance.

1:30:19 Yeah that okay, so if People listening don't take anything else from this interview. I think that's so key to who you are. It's so key to why you've been good at what you've been good at. That's it right there.

1:30:32 Here, let me mangle another name since that seems to be one of our themes for the show. This episode is I think it's Archelocus. Archilicus, perhaps. I'm gonna get this wrong, but it was a quote. Gotta be a Roman.

1:30:44 Maybe a Greek, who knows? Who said we do not raise to the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training. Yeah. And You can't just do one.

1:30:53 Every five years waiting for the the big event. You're not gonna have The training necessary. That's a principle that I've been thinking o about a lot around parenting. You see so often people With their second child.

1:31:07 Unfortunately in today's world people are often not present. with their first child either I I was I was taking a walk yesterday With a dear friend of mine. in Central Park and at dusk. We were just talking about other ideas we've been we've been thinking about. And we walked past this woman who was who had three children

1:31:22 In a stroller. And she was on the cell phone having a conversation with a friend. And it wasn't like a quick it was like a long gossipy conversation. And I was just watching this. It was an exquisite external environment. Like the embodiment of distraction.

1:31:38 Three children and a dog. Like the children like looking trying to pull her, but she was just in this other world, right? We think about the distraction of parenting. And then you think about the what often happens with parents with the first child they're completely tapped. Because this is all new, they're present. And the second child they just Well relatively neglect.

1:31:55 We see that all the time. Right. I'm thinking about this a lot'cause we're about to have our second child. And so I'm thinking about like how important it is to not take for granted the things that you've done right. And think they'll just be there.

1:32:07 You're present. And we see this in the martial arts. As someone who trains twice a day, you know, as a way of Life.

1:32:15 For ten years. training until they drop and doing external training as well with strength and conditioning and stretching and everything else. And then They get to a place where they're consistently winning and then they think they can train Seven times a week instead of ten. And it'll be the same.

1:32:29 It's not the same. Like that slip it shows. There's something incredible. about going into competition knowing that there's no way that anyone else trained as hard or as good. As you. As smart.

1:32:40 Right. So we've nothing about training Quantitatively. We're thinking about training qualitatively. Right. The confidence that comes out of knowing in any discipline that you're at, that you gave it your all. Th when I work with someone I say that you know one of my many filters is looking at someone in the eye and saying

1:32:55 That working with me is Living as if you're training qualitatively as if in a world championship training camp. Qualitatively, but I look at them in the eye, and some people you see a fear. You see the fear of exposure. Other people you see a lean in, an eagerness, a gameness, a hunger.

1:33:08 Right. Those are two very, very different paths. Maintaining presence. to that quality even after we've assumed that we've got it nailed, right? You see this with people around presence.

1:33:20 You see, there's so much Bullshit in the meditation world. for example. Because people might have meditated wonderfully for four or five years, or f six years, or eight years, ten years, but then they get ego involved with it. They put together schools and their They're not embodying it anymore.

1:33:35 And then it becomes hollow. They kind of slip from the philosopher to the philosophologist. Without even knowing that it happened. They weren't even present to the question. Firewalking process. Yeah, that's important. What is the firewalking process? This is new to me too. I'm not sure I've heard you discuss this.

1:33:50 Yeah, this is something I've been really For the last year and a half or so developing intensely. I think it's been a core part of my process for a long time, but training people I've been on this really intense learning curve on how to work with people on this. The core to the principle is that people tend To

1:34:07 learn from their own experiences with much more Potentially. Then they learn from other people's experiences. And the firewalking process is is that's what I call That's my term for a gateway to cultivating the ability

1:34:19 to Learn. With the same physiological intensity. from other people's experiences as as we learn from our own. So for example, if you're a jiu jitsu fighter and you Slightly overworked on your arm when you get onboard.

1:34:31 In let's say Mujalos in the world championships, right? Your arm is being separated from your body. You feel like your shoulder is disconnecting, your arm is breaking. If you don't tap, you're gonna break. So you have the combination and often guys will fight it. They won't want to tap. It's the world. So they'll have the combination of huge disappointment. All the Adrenal reactions to being caught and having being wounded. And maybe torn ligaments or tendons, right, depending on how the injury sets in, or maybe a bone.

1:34:56 And they will burn that lesson to themselves and they will not overextend their arm that way again. that's been burned in on an animalistic level. But if they watch somebody fighting and they watch them overextend and get caught in arm bar, that's just like nothing. That's an intellectual knowledge that that has no impact on whether or not they'll overextend. But if we can cultivate the ability to To learn from other people's errors or experiences. With the same intensity as we can learn from our own. It's unbelievable how that can steepen the learning curve. What'd be an example

1:35:21 Of that beyond Jiu Jitsu. Well, for example a really interesting live example that I'm playing with Today. Is that we are working actively with investors.

1:35:30 is that you know we are A brilliant investor recently used the term The Pavlovian impact or the Pavlovian influences of growing up in a bull market. Right. So most investors most relatively young investors grew up in the post two thousand eight world.

1:35:45 So all of their subtle responses have come from growing up in a bull market. So for the most part, they've experienced pleasure when they put the foot in the gas and they've experienced pain when they're taking the foot off the gas. For the most part, it's oversimplified. It's really interesting to sit down and think about

1:36:01 all of the cognitive biases, all of the subtle associations that come with growing up in a bull market. Now traditionally what people will say is you have to live through certain business cycles. You have to the school of hard knocks, right? We have to learn from the pain of the other side. But can you take a highly talented young investor Who has grown up in a bull market. And give them the wisdom. You think about the the journey from preconsciousness to postconsciousness competitor around a certain theme, give them the wisdom of living through many market cycles when they haven't.

1:36:28 Right. So then you can deconstruct systematically. What does a bear market look like? Now I'm not sure w if we're in the beginning of a bear market now, but let's just say that we are maybe in the first or second inning of a bear market now. Maybe we're in the tail, like the eighth or ninth innings of a bull market. Maybe we're in the ninth inning of a bull market and we're gonna see some huge round of intervention and we're gonna go into extra innings of the bull market. Right. No one really knows. Maybe there's some other dynamic at play. Even the great macro economists don't know.

1:36:53 But we they have a sense through this deep study of either macroeconomics or valuation. But we are at one point someday, relatively soon, we'll probably enter a bear market. So it's going to be very important. And so if you haven't lived through one thing you can do is you can deconstruct what a bear market looks like. And you can have them firewalk it. And so what that means is suddenly all of the And a bear market doesn't just mean going down. It actually means the subtle undulation of is often going down for three weeks and then a really steep two week rally and then going down again for three weeks and two week rally. So people often even bare people who who are betting

1:37:26 get really hurt in bear markets, right? Because it's violent. It's it there's a volatility to it. Volatility, yeah. Right. And so the question is how can In this case, an investor who's grown up In a post two thousand eight world. firewalk market cycles so that he can burn that wisdom into himself or herself. And then the question is how do you do this, right? And so there a lot of the things that we discussed

1:37:47 Around physiological Awareness, right? Somatic awareness, cultivating the sensitivity to what's happening inside of us, right? What comes with that is the ability to switch State.

1:37:57 Emotionally, adrenally. And so if we visualize something very painful to us. If we visualize with tremendous potency, we can have a physiological response to that. true even of exercise training. People who say take a ten minute meditation visualization session in lieu of oh there we go. That means we have to go pick Jack from the break and keep it get the benefits of the exercise in large part just from the visualization over ten minutes. But we have to go grab Jack. And well to be continued.

1:38:27 Yeah. Okay, so we're back. We Backlaimed.

1:38:35 The boy from school. Talked about life. And now here we are for the continuation. Firewalking.

1:38:44 Visualization. We're gonna talk about casts. Let's continue with firewalking. Yes. You were just bringing up the physical

1:38:51 dynamics. that are possible with intense visualization. Right. I had this this formative experience I I wrote about years ago where I Broke my

1:39:02 And seven weeks before a national championship when I was training in the Chinese martial arts push ends. And I was in a cast for six weeks. Up until I think Three days before the the Nationals

1:39:14 And the duc said I couldn't compete in everything's beatrophied but I was committed to doing it and it was really interesting'cause I was just doing all of my training one handed and visualizing the weight work That I was doing f on the one side passing over to the other. The weight work. Yeah, I was doing some I was I was doing my martial arts training one handed, which was fascinating on its own to just work on being able to do with one hand what you can do with two. That was tremendous. But I was also

1:39:37 Visualizing the str resistance training I was doing on one side, passing over to the other. But really intense visualization, not just like thinking it but burning it in. The distinction between kind of Think about intellectually. Sort of trying to visualize it.

1:39:53 With every sort of sensory simulation. Yeah, like with your whole Like spirit burning it in deeply. And it was fasting to see when when I took off the cast I had basically not atrophied. And I competed the next Two days later in one. The doctors w I mean they were pretty surprised by it.

1:40:07 I mean they're closed minded about these kinds of things. would you do to translate that to Something. less obviously physical. Like we were talking about training people who've never been through a bear market.

1:40:22 Or the lessons learned of those who have been through. So pragmatically how do you simulate that. Do you have them interview someone who's gone through it and then try to relive those stories? Through visualization or what would the process potentially look like?

1:40:37 is one thing to be able to l to live someone else's experience profoundly. First of all we have to really be clear about the distinction between intellectual and somatic knowledge. When we've

1:40:50 having something burned in. There's an adrenal response, right? So there's a physiology to having an experience very intensely. We have to learn how to create that physiology, right? So how to unjul so we can do biofeedback training. undulating between states of physiological coherence and states of extreme stress.

1:41:06 So that we Build up the ability to kind of move between them at will. And then when we're studying For example, the experience of somebody getting burned extremely Intensely.

1:41:16 Time and again in a bear market. during the volatility, the ups and downs of a bear market, right? You can look at it and it can feel like Just like a chart. Or you can experience the anxiety that comes with it, the pain that comes with it. Like the shattering of your previous conceptual scheme.

1:41:30 You can almost you can almost firewalk the experience of the Pavlovian influence of growing up in a bull market and then having that shattered. You could firewalk that shattering. and then open your mind to the reality of the the broader cyclicality over the long term. And there's a lot of in terms of how you do it the foundation is in a lot of things we've been discussing, right? Intense meditation training. Ways of becoming increasingly attuned to these subtle ripples inside your body, stilling

1:41:54 Being really aware of How we fill space addictively in life. Whenever there's empty space we just fill it as opposed to maintaining the emptiness.

1:42:08 the clarity of mind and the the perception of these little micro ripples inside of us. Cultivating the ability in us and in others. The subtlest undulations of quality. Or of physiology. Maintaining Slack. And trying to build.

1:42:25 Slack into the system. And how important that is. Yeah. I was told by someone I respect a lot recently Find the silence because you have to listen from the silence. And

1:42:38 That might sound very Vague. But I found that if you really meditate on it. I mean it w it can apply to just about anything. I mean, if you really want to separate the signal from the noise, you need

1:42:50 The space to do that. Right. It's such an important principle. You know, this principle of slack is so interesting. I mean for me A lot of it relates to the empty space

1:43:00 For the learning process. And my way of life I mean I've built a life around having empty space for the development of my ideas. For the creative process. And for the cultivation of a physiological state which is receptive enough to tune in very, very deeply. Two. People.

1:43:15 The people who I work with. And so like I can see how I could triple the amount of people that I work with Very easily with the systems that I have. But my growth curve would get much it would change fundamentally. And my internal physiological training.

1:43:29 would take a hit. I wouldn't have enough time for meditation, for reflection afterwards, for developments of the thematic takeaways of every session that I have. In the creative process, it's so easy to drive for efficiency and take for granted. the really subtle internal work that it takes to play on that razor's edge. I think in part it comes back to the limiting of inputs and selective ignorance that you talked about. Right? Because if you triple the number of clients you have in a high tech and high touch business.

1:43:56 You're going to have to juggle. Seventeen chainsaws instead of two chainsaws. Then I'm reacting. I'm not Embodying the core principles that we're working on. But I find really high level training is kind of sort of somatic transmission.

1:44:11 You're embodying a certain state. And then you're Helping someone embody that state. As well. Totally agree. And I think that if you want a good example of that, just as a relatively new dog owner as an adult, you can look at dogs or children.

1:44:24 Unblocked. And that's somatic. Read. Reading ability.

1:44:31 And you can see just as you said, like with as a parent transmits their state of being to their child despite or With the assistance of whatever they might say. Uh similarly if you're interacting Adult to adult.

1:44:46 you need to sort of return to that state to be maximally effective in what you do in particular. And then when talking about sort of dancing on the razor's edge. When you're moving up. The growth curve in a certain discipline. There's a lot of things that you can do to reach the first eightieth or ninetyeth or ninety fifth percentile of something. When you're talking about the last point zero zero one percent.

1:45:06 You're talking about this These arenas where the greatest insight will be right next to the greatest blunder. You have to be w willing to go Just just right on that razor's edge, right?

1:45:16 I was having this Great conversation with the sports psychologist Michael Gervais a couple of weeks ago and he made us this language of thrusting into big waves. Right, the experience he had to go into, like to push himself as a surfer to to thrust into Big waves. I love that expression. But of course if you're thrusting into big waves, then you can easily push yourself into the wave you shouldn't take. Right, so big wave surfers have to be able to to navigate that just the

1:45:37 Most finely tuned. In the moment just intuitive Decision making process. Of whether the moment is just right or whether it's a moment that will kill you. And then if you're working with people as a coach or as a trainer

1:45:49 of people who are navigating the terrain. You have to be in a state Well you can never get that to right. You have to have an embodied state there. And I think that's a mistake that a lot of people make in everything that they do. They just scale.

1:45:59 They scale and quality. And when they you look quality, you lose the ability to successfully navigate the Razor's edge. And then by definition you're probably more destructive than you are helpful. And so when I think about training people who are in that place, it's like ninety nine point nine percent listening. And ideally you can make the most potent suggestions with the lightest touch feasible.

1:46:17 So the Notes. I took some notes beforehand here. Or borrowed some notes beforehand. And one of them touches on the principle of scarcity.

1:46:27 Yeah. A habit creation. be the learning process. See the creative process. Could you just elaborate on the principle of scarcity?

1:46:36 So If we think about the like the idea of subtraction or essentialism. Or scarcity. I mean you you frankly, are as good as it gets, in my opinion.

1:46:44 That harnessing the principle of scarcity. In your learning process Learning how to deconstruct something. Focusing on what's absolutely most essential. And zone in on it. As opposed to just throwing huge amounts of resources at things.

1:46:56 And Just having a like a diluted Quality. Approach. most people when they become successful, they have the opportunity to have more resources and they keep on layering more and more resources on things, and so they're not very potent in how they go about things. If you cut those resources down ninety nine percent

1:47:11 And you find yourself just zoning on what's most essential. And then if you can learn to add resources incrementally. Maintaining that potency. It's incredible what you can do. But it takes a lot of discipline to maintain that principle of scarcity. So in habit creation taking on

1:47:25 The right amount, not too much. Not too little, but not too much. People tend to think about layering on And they get excited when they realize if I go through a diagnostic process with them and we re we realise that there's ten areas they could take on. They wanna take on on all of them at once. Right. You can really take on one or two things at once.

1:47:39 Ideally one theme. And you take on two or three manifestations of that theme to burn that theme on and you keep on layering. In the creative process. I mean you talk about Limiting inputs, right? We've been talking about limiting inputs. Positive constraints. Yeah. Right. Positive constraints. Listen, me speaking about this principle to you, I mean you embody this principle. Profound. What are your thoughts on it?

1:47:55 Well, a few things just to Maybe add Couple of anecdotes to what you just said. The first thing that came to mind was uh quote and I'm gonna butcher this, but it's from uh Jack Maw.

1:48:07 of Alibaba who said, you know, in the beginning we had an advantage. We had no experience, no business plan, and no money. So it forced us to make all of our decisions very carefully. And I do think that people tend to and I'm also borrowing this

1:48:22 overestimate what they can accomplish in a week and underestimate what they can accomplish in a year. Which leads to theoretically appealing decisions like trying to adopt ten new behaviors at once. That are Kind of uh

1:48:35 Hour wise and you're foolish. in the sense that they're doom to fail from the outset. In many respects. And The to your point also about scaling, you know, I have friends who call this the S word because it's romanticized

1:48:50 Confer. worshipped notion in Silicon Valley. Scale, scale, scale. Gotta be bigger. Hire more people. Ship more product. And if you are looking to kind of optimize

1:49:01 your craft, your art, that may or may not be the right path. to doing that. And To my mind, you can look at exemplars or you can look at examples of people who have scaled who are still critics of scaling. In the sense that Bill Gates, I believe, said you know, if you add

1:49:18 people to an inefficient process. It just makes the problem worse. You have to add people to an efficient process. And to that end. Like whether you are Looking to build.

1:49:29 A for instance, lifestyle business, like a healthy cash flow-based business that represents in some way your craft. Let's just say you make This is a real example actually, like twenty customized Rifles a year.

1:49:43 That's all you do. And you sell to the top point zero zero one percent of Markman's uh marksmen in the United States. You never ship more than that. That's the constraint that you apply. Whether you're trying to do that or Build Microsoft. that lesson can apply.

1:50:00 Whether it's adding one person or adding the next thousand people. So for me I think it's very easy to create a false dichotomy in your mind when you look at say A small scale craftsman. who's perhaps like making

1:50:14 Let's just say oil paintings in r rural Alaska. Versus A start up in Silicon Valley with a thousand employees and to think of them is totally different. But in fact if you look at the

1:50:27 top performers in either environment, they'll have a lot in common with each other. And I think one of those commonalities is applying a lot of positive constraints, even when you have an embarrassment of resources available. If we think about this in terms of the creative process One of the most important things to train is the ability to ask the right question. To know where to look. Right. And if you look at people in

1:50:47 in most creative fields who are extremely high level versus incrementally lower fields, it's knowing What the most critical area is. For thinking. Yeah, think about this principle of scarcity. One of the

1:50:59 The ways that I I have myself trained at this in the creative process Or harness the principle of scarcity. Everyone who I work with. Yeah.

1:51:09 It's forcing yourself to end of each day. Think about what the most important question is. And what you're working on. We discussed this last time. It's really interesting'cause you're studying complexity all the time and if you're a really high level thinker, you're slicing through most of it like butter, but then there's usually one or two or three areas of stuckness. And most people I find tend to live in the creative process by kind of surfacing, deciding where they want to go, putting their head down and just grinding their way toward it and then surfacing later on. They don't surface enough.

1:51:34 to reflect on what's the most potent direction to go. You think about like the human versus the computer playing chess. ten years ago. Now the computers are getting really good at knowing where to look. But ten years ago the human knew that one of these two or three directions was the right essential direction, intuitively we sense that, right? And we cultivate the ability to know where to look. The computer had to look at everything. If we're looking at everything, then we're just operating like really, really bad computers. But if we cultivate the ability to ask the most potent question Systematically.

1:52:00 Right, so how do we do this? Well we have a routine where we end each work day thinking what's the most important question. And what I'm doing right now, pose the question to the unconscious and wake up first thing in the morning and brainstorm on it. Do you have them pose it again? No. Actually I think it's pretty important not to do that. 'Cause then we're kind of consciously ruminating on it. I have them hopefully they haven't thought about it for a few hours before they go to bed. This is the one that Hemingway wrote about in his in his writing process really beautifully. Yeah, Hemingway would stop writing mid sentence.

1:52:25 Right. And provide a foothold for Continuing the next day. Right. Which we could also look at from the framing of that internal versus external framing, right? If you're kind of held by a sense of guilt. Whenever you're not working, then you're gonna feel like you have to write everything you have to write.

1:52:40 But if you're nurturing from the inside out your creative process, you're gonna be comfortable stopping with the sense of direction. Even when you're mid sentence or mid paragraph. Right. When I've talked to people who have started journaling successfully for the first time the can most consistent pattern that I see is I write less than I feel I can. Hm. Each day.

1:52:59 They're never pushing to max capacity or feeling like they're pushing the max. They always write less than they feel they should write. Right. That's very interesting.

1:53:10 That's very interesting. And if we think about taking this and then turning it into a systematic training of the ability to be potent in the creative process. If we're working on a given project and reflecting on what's the most important question here. Then we're journaling on it in the brainstorm in the morning. We're doing a lot of things, you know, we're opening the channel systematically between the conscious and the unconscious mind. We're waking up in the morning and beginning our day proactively, all of these things which we discussed in the past. Then if you sit back after say a month and you look back at your say three or four or five journals

1:53:40 brainstorms Q and A's or on a given subject. And you think about Okay, so th in the moment this is what I thought was most potent, but now I realize this in fact would have been most potent. What's the gap? deconstruct the gap between your understanding then, your understanding now, and then design your training process around deconstructing that gap. And training at what that gap revealed.

1:54:01 It's a really powerful way for individuals. that gap. Right. The creation of that gap. Or that blind spot. That misperception about what was most important. Right. Right. And so you're training yourself day in and day out like water, right? to be an increasingly potent and that this is manifesting scarcity and that we are forcing ourselves no matter how many resources we have. to think about what is the most important question.

1:54:25 And what I'm working on. Right now. Do you Journal every day. Yes. When do you journal?

1:54:32 I journal. Well I journal throughout. So I It's like I'll wake up in the morning, meditate, take a Cold then hot cold undulation shower.

1:54:41 And then Meditate. And then I will journal. I've had periods where I've just moved right especially when I was working in Lucid Dream where I'd move straight from sleep into journaling. But that's my rhythm today. And then when I have insights throughout the day, I'll do quick journals about them.

1:54:54 And then after I have sessions with clients, I'll do a journaling session on the most important takeaways. Do you do that in a notebook or do you do it digital? I do it on Evernote and then I tag everything thematically, which is hugely important for me. I have all of my journals and all of the resources you know, that I find valuable tag Thematically. And

1:55:13 through habits in the language of my training process. And so this is incredibly powerful for being able to give people resources for me reviewing the ideas without having recency bias impede how I communicate. Can you say that one more time? So if I have a client who I think has to work on a certain theme and I want to give them resources they can read on it, I can just click on the tag on Evernote and all of the resources, things that I've written and things that I've read. circling that theme or right there. And it's also really powerful because it's really hard to overcome recency. I see without recency bias. Right. Meaning like the primacy and recency effect. So you're recalling what it is you read most recently, not necessarily the best resource. Right. And not necessarily the foundation of my relationship to the theme. Understanding you want to communicate it from the you want to learn from the foundation up. So really powerful. The tagging I mean I find on

1:55:56 I'm sure Evernote isn't the I'm I'm not a big tech wizard as you know, but just just to put this in perspective. So we were looking for well we, I'm using the royal we. Josh was looking for dinosaur train for like ten minutes, and then he's like, You know what? I think I'm gonna search this thing and I was like and you say you're not good at tech. It was a good showing. Oh, I was that was a big discovery. Um And then Jack's like, there's dinosaur tracks. Amazing how this search function works. Should we talk about thematic interconnectedness? Yes. Let's talk about it. I'd love to talk about in the context of education a little bit. This is one of the thematic interconnectedness is one of maybe that's the essence of my relationship to the world.

1:56:38 Or beyond. I think it's I mean you and I have as Sonar eccentric conversations. All over the world on surf wars and wherever else. This has been a big topic for us, right? It's been a huge part of how I've approached learning, you know, from my foundation and looking at the relationships between chess and life, learning about life through chess, then in transferring level over from chess into the martial arts and then

1:57:00 First Chinese martial arts, then into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And then when I work with people It's really how I learn and it's how I found it's really powerful to help people amplify their growth curves to teach them to Be able to learn the many from the few. Or from the one, right?

1:57:15 break down the boundaries between disparate pursuits or disparate parts of life. But between the personal, the professional, the technical and the psychological. And if we have an experience where you know, we're on surfboards and we have some little thematic breakthrough and we can apply it to every other aspect of our life. It's really interesting what can happen because we're pretty well callused over in our areas of strength, but in areas where we're less advanced, we can be more raw and we might be more conducive to breakthrough sometimes. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean you can see things with the beginner's mind.

1:57:42 Because you have no other choice. Right. You don't have to try to simulate beginners mind because you are a beginner. It's like the race to the bottom experience. So for those who are wondering what the hell that means, the race to the bottom is an expression that Eric uses to refer to constantly dropping in board size, often measured in liters for buoyancy purposes. And

1:58:11 Josh and I and everyone who is there really very quickly. Realize that you are to use your expression, kinda dancing the razor's edge and trying to find a balance between the race to the bottom, but also maintaining motivation so you're not just slipping on banana peels for five hours straight. And to what extent do you focus on the board size in the race to the bottom versus which gives you more maneuverability in surfing, versus actually working on, say, the footwork and the other technical aspects of the game on a board that you can manage.

1:58:42 And it's very interesting to think about this theme of the race to the bottom combined with this other wonderful principle that that we were all talking about with Eric. Which is the swapping of boards between so he had these camps where he's I think the eighteen top stand up paddle surfers in the world together with him all riding these ridiculously small boards that are deep underwater when you're standing on them and and I mean it's incredibly hard to balance in these things. So they've internalized this race to the bottom theme so deeply which we are working on. And then they're also they had this experience where they were all together And Initially that was sort of competitive, but then it became much more collaborative and they were just sharing ideas and then they began to swap boards.

1:59:15 and they began to have this interesting experience where You know, every surfboard kinda carves its own lines, right? There's the practitioner who carves his lines, but then there's also the board that has you know a unique rocker will find new lines in the wave. And what these guys would find is that if they swap boards, they could see new lines in the wave. Some guys would would swap boards and try to force the new board to carve their lines. Others would sort of be open. And then they would learn from it.

1:59:40 And then they'd go back to their board and their minds would open up. That's another way of thinking about this idea of the beginner's mind, right? The new board forced them. help them see new lines if they are open minded enough. So anyway, this is an example of thematic interconnectedness, right? So when I came back from that this was our last our previo where we were talking about the swapping boards team and I came back and I was red hot on fire with how to apply this theme in the investment process. with my guys, right? So you have these teams that are so private and that are so magnificent in what they do. But if you could get teams to mix to share ideas with a sense of abundance, like for example, if a world class portfolio manager could swap analysts with another PM for a week or two or three. If they were truly.

2:00:15 Everyone was sharing openly. You'd be doing equivalent swapping boards, seeing new lines, right? It's forcing beginners' mind, but forcing beginners' mind not only with an open-mindedness, but also Tapping somebody who is truly exceptional at a very different style of what you do. So there's an example of just having experience in surfing and applying it to something else. And converting it. Potentially into a simple question, right? Like where can I swap boards? Maybe something that is used for fodder.

2:00:39 for people listening in a journaling exercise. Wake up, have your coffee. Or I was gonna say have your coffee then meditate, probably not the right order. Meditate, have your coffee, sit down, you know. Drop that question at the top and just Organized swap boards. Beautiful. Exactly.

2:00:55 Journaling like brainstorm question to riff on. I love it. So how do you apply that to education? interconnectedness, I don't think that we can do much more Important work with children. Then

2:01:07 Help them. Love learning. Help them learn to bring out the essence of who they are in the learning process. So them to express the core of who they are through learning, which obviously will help them love learning. And then help them discover Thematic interconnectedness, how the world is interconnected.

2:01:21 Yeah. People are are really siloed right now. people think about disciplines in in an increasingly Data driven. Segregated way. A segregated way, in a closed minded way, and it's kind of heartbreaking. And so you know, I have this nonprofit I've been running for a lot of years.

2:01:38 And a huge amount of what we do. So we all of our work is in education. We've got hundreds of programs around the world, mostly in the US but international as well. The art of learning. Project dot org is our website. And The programs that are most exciting to me are the ones where where we we really are systematically working with schools to help children experience thematic interconnectedness. So the way we'll do this, for example, is that we'll be working with five teachers.

2:02:02 In five different subject matters, or four or five, or six, or three, whatever the number is, in the same age group. What are you smiling at, man? Sorry guys. I was just looking at the URLs it's the Art of Learning Project dot org. And I was laughing'cause I remembered when we were filming the T V show and we were walking Up the stairs to the jujitsu to the Marcel Garcia gym. And you kept on saying Towel this, towel that and I thought you were saying towel T O W E L and I'm like What the fuck is howl? And you're like

2:02:33 It's my goddamn book. And you got all upset. I'm like. The art of learning. I'm like, How did you expect me to piece that together? Anyway, that's why I was smirking. Sorry. Now I know the acronym and I won't I won't anger Josh any further. I don't remember that conversation. I'm trying to pick up it was great. Tow, towel, towel for like five flights of stairs. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Anyway, my bad.

2:03:03 So the way that we we do this is that we have For example five Teachers in different subject matters working with My team. To

2:03:12 Weave the same principle of learning. Into For example, math. Social studies

2:03:19 volleyball, soccer at the same time. And so you'll have kids who are studying their subject matter, but they're studying also the way a certain principle of learning or the creative process or performance psychology manifests in each of these disciplines at the same time. And so they're by definition breaking down the walls between these different pursuits. And it's a really interesting systematic way of doing this. So they'll be studying the same principle in math and they move to the next subject and there's They're experiencing it. through another lens and then through another lens, and they're experiencing it in sport. Are these borrowed from The art of learning book in so much as you're talking about smaller and smaller circles, or you're starting you're talking about learning the macro from the micro, et cetera. Yeah, the r the root of these are in core themes of learning creativity and performance psychology that I wrote about in my book and that I've developed since.

2:03:58 Yeah, absolutely. And we've spoken about a lot of them together. And so it's a kind of a combination of individualized self expression. Well, ever a lot of these themes that we've been discussing today and and and last time. And so can people learn more about this at the Art of Learning Project dot org? They can. So everybody please come check out the site. We've got some really wonderful programs around the world and it's it's a good timing for this right now because I'd love it if

2:04:19 Any educators out there. We're we're on the on the verge of launching About ten really high level programs is what we want to launch, all thematically driven. right now and preparing them in the next months. And so Anyone who is in the educational world who'd love to touch base with us about

2:04:34 applying for this kind of program. Katie on my team can be reached at Katie K A T Y At JW Foundation. Dot com JW Found is the name of my nonprofit that houses the Art of Learning project. So Katie at JW Found.com

2:04:50 K D K A T Y at J Ws and Josh Well Whiteskin Foundation dot com. Yes. What type of educators Should Check this out and email her. Teachers, teachers or um people running schools or school systems. Any minimum number of students.

2:05:05 Or any other parameters? Well the essence of these programs would be a school system that's open minded around, for example, h engaging Like I described. Teachers in different disciplines.

2:05:17 working at the same time in a collaborative way. So that the kids can be embodying the same principle in multiple disciplines at the same time. I mean that's the essence of it. So it's a bit of a coordinated program. We've had wonderful success doing this. And it's what really excites me when I think about education, how to build systematic training in creativity through thematic interconnectedness into the way kids learn these days. Because kids get so excited when they can see connections. I mean, this is a big part of what I'm experiencing as a dad with Jack, is how

2:05:43 red hot he gets when he can learn something and then apply it to many other things. This is a core part of of my approach to learning. I think it's been a I mean it's maybe my biggest strength is The ability to Find hidden harmonies between disparate parts of life.

2:05:56 Seemingly desperate. Yeah. Seemingly. Right. Well Josh. This is always so much fun to drag you kicking and screaming out of your cage. You did it. Cage. Or cave. I like cave more. I like cave more. I don't know why I was thinking cage. I guess I guess that's just my inner primate coming out. But the

2:06:17 People have asked me often about education following my TED talk, where at the end I close out talking about tackling different facets of education and I feel like your approach And principle based lens through which you can

2:06:34 not only spot but teach interconnectedness is just so incredibly valuable, like you said. in an educational system where Fields are increasingly siloed. and viewed as separate and you have political turf wars between departments and whatnot, which only exacerbates that problem. And I feel like this is a massively powerful step in the right direction. So number one, thank you for that. And number two, educators

2:06:58 listening to this or if you're just curious to check it out and might be able to help in some way. The Art of Learning Project dot org and then uh if you get a taste of that and it seems compelling and you want to try to apply or jump into the fray, then Kdk Y at JW Foundation.com I'll put this in the show notes for everybody listening. These will be many of the other things we mentioned will be in the show notes at uh fourhour workweek.com forward slash podcast.

2:07:23 But Josh, I would usually ask where can people find you online, but they can't find you. Can't find me So I won't ask that. Is there any people to besides visiting the resources we just mentioned, anything that you'd like people to take away, consider, do, any action Anything that comes to mind you'd like people to

2:07:44 To walk away with. Closing comment or question. That's a big question. Yes, absolutely. It's funny, as I sit with this now, for so many years my primary identity was as a fighter, a competitor. And

2:07:59 I've transitioned in recent years and and I find my primary identity now. is self identity, the way I I've I experience myself. is as a nurturer. Of people. My family

2:08:10 The people I work very closely with And children as I work more broadly in education. And when I think about it through the context of nurturing people and nurturing ourselves. I think that we're living in a world of so much noise.

2:08:23 And so much distraction. and of the space being constantly filled. That it's rather remarkable what can happen. If we Cultivate.

2:08:32 A mindfulness. The stillness of the waters. As a way of life, and we find the beauty in that. There's so much beauty that can come from silence. We can learn so much by feeling the inner ripples of our internal experience. And as parents embodying what we want our children to embody.

2:08:45 Living it. Right. The talk putting away our phones. living a a life of deep presence with our children, with our students, with the people we work with, cultivating empathy, cultivating compassion. It scares the hell out of me.

2:08:56 How powerfully I see the world moving in another direction from this. It's thrilling to me. As long as we we stay in touch with the essential parts of our humanity. And

2:09:11 When I experience What happens working with people with adults or with children. When we're just Completely present. And we cultivate that presence as a way of life. It's incredible what can happen between people.

2:09:24 And when I experience the scars in children that I see everywhere. They come from The anxiety that comes from the lack of attachment, secure attachment. The lack of the attunement of the parent. The lack of the embodiment of the parent or the teacher and these things that are spoken about.

2:09:39 It's heartbreaking. Maybe I'm Really, really old school. But there's something About

2:09:44 The cultivation of Deep presence and qualities a way of life. rings all through me. And honestly the other thing I'll say is that after having the experience I had a few months ago, coming as close as you can come to dying. As you can, basically. I mean First of all, on a tactical level, please

2:09:59 If anyone's experimenting with different forms of breath hold work like the Wim Hoff method, which I think is very interesting and quite powerful, please don't do it in any water, even an inch of water. 'Cause if you go out, you don't want to be in water. I should say if you practice this stuff enough in your type A personality, you are gonna go out. It's not just a high probability, it's almost a certainty. that you're gonna go out and to think otherwise is really courting disaster. So do not do it.

2:10:22 In or near water. Yeah. And when we talk about firewalking about living learning from other people's experiences with the same physiological intensity that you can learn from your own There's something about when you go over that edge, over that cliff

2:10:34 If I could take the experience of love, gratitude, and beauty that I've been living with ever since I had that experience. And I could give it to My brothers and sisters, you know. Holy smokes. I mean what a beautiful.

2:10:49 Live with that deep sense of beauty. It's a rich place. To find the stillness, to cultivate. Not just to find, but create that stillness and practice Like you said, the calming of the waters. I think is

2:11:02 It's underestimated. Because of its Simplicity just as not all things that are simple are easy. Not all things that are simple.

2:11:15 are low in value, right? sometimes what's right in front of you within grasp that is most important to grasp onto and make use of. Yeah. Doesn't have to be. Extremic. And it's so easy to think we've got it nailed, you know, like we can meditate for fifteen years and think we've got presence nailed. And then we stop meditating and then six months pass.

2:11:33 And we're distracted. There's a constant to it. Yeah. And a presence to the sense of the real sense of danger that it can slip. Speaking for me personally, it's also building it in as a habit, just like brushing your teeth. For those people who brush their teeth. In so much as

2:11:48 For me, I know this is true for many of my friends, meditation doesn't really work well as a batched process. In other words, like meditating ten minutes a day. for ten days is much more valuable than meditating once in ten days for a hundred minutes. For most people it'll be less painful too. Once you get into that habit and it becomes a ingrained part of your being in your practice, you will see the value.

2:12:13 Particularly once. you have a critical mass of for me it's typically five to seven days. And then I'm just gonna do it. I cannot believe I wasn't doing this. I can't believe I stopped for four weeks or whatever it is. It's incredibly valuable.

2:12:26 And uh brother Josh. Thanks, brother. This was a blast, man. Thanks, buddy. 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 subscribe 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 kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that 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

2:13:18 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 Shopify, one of my absolute favorite companies, and they make some of my favorite products. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, and I've known the team since 2008 or 2009. But prior to that, I wish I had personally had Shopify in the early 2000s when I was running my own e-commerce business. I tell that story in the four-hour workweek.

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