Summary
In this coaching session, Brett shares his pattern of diving deeply into rabbit holes — crypto, air sports, relationships — to the exclusion of other commitments, then experiencing painful crashes when the neglected areas of life catch up. Joe helps him trace this pattern back to his childhood experience of diverging from his family’s religious beliefs and the shame and heartbreak of feeling he was causing his mother pain.
Through the session, they discover that Brett is “engineering heartbreak to avoid heartbreak” — recreating the conditions for deep shame and heartbreak that were never fully felt as a child. The pattern of hyper-focus becomes a way to avoid the underlying shame, which itself covers unfelt heartbreak. Joe guides Brett to feel the shame directly, treating it with loving attention like a child hiding under a couch.
The session culminates in Brett recognizing that his lifelong search for a “finish line” — inherited from his religious upbringing’s concept of heaven — keeps him from experiencing the serenity already present. When he drops the idea that there’s something to resolve or complete, he finds deep relaxation. Joe points out that the serenity comes from undoing, not doing, and that the impulse to “keep it” or “get things done” are just habitual ways of covering up what’s already there.
Key Concepts
- Engineering heartbreak to avoid the heartbreak you haven’t felt
- Passion turns to obligation through unresolved shame
- The finish line illusion keeps you from present serenity
- Serenity comes through undoing, not doing
- Shame hides from loving attention like a child under the couch
Key Quotes
“It moves from passion to stress, it moves from passion to obligation, and then in that you start becoming so single-minded that you forget to live a life that’s enjoyable.”
“We are creating the thing by the way in which we’re avoiding it. It is the way in which we are avoiding the emotional experience that we’re recreating in our life.”
“What if there is no complete, no done, no heaven?”
“There’s not a doing, there’s an undoing. It’s like ‘I did something and I need to keep it’ — it’s very different than ‘I undid something and saw the truth.‘”
“Think about mice or rats or beavers or dogs — they never have to tell themselves or be worried about getting shit done. But they’re always doing shit.”
Transcript
my mind is flitting around in a million directions going down rabbit holes and my body is like hey we have something important to do yeah that’s beautiful that’s always the way it works right the relationship with the self is reflected in the relationship with the people around us welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson foreign okay so this is going to be a really interesting episode we started the call intending to dive into an episode on attentional black holes or perhaps on engineering our own heartbreak but I’ve been having a rough week and we ended up diving into what turned out to be a session with Joe coaching me so here it is Ron unfiltered and I hope you like it so throughout my life I have this pattern of diving into something really really deeply and Hyper focusing on it and then it starts to become a hyper Focus to the exclusion of other things and then ultimately to the avoidance of other things and then I build competence in the thing that I’m getting hyper focused in until I start to get a little bit complacent and then that thing ends up crashing and then I’m like left seeing the consequences of all the avoidance in the rest of my life and somehow this is usually ended up happening in such a way that has left me better off than I started over time but it really just feels like extremely wild swings Big Ups big Downs can you give me an example from like two years ago yeah an example from a couple years ago was you know like in 2017 I started getting had been interested in but started seeing a lot of people get interested in crypto but cryptocurrencies and investing so yes I started to see all kinds of opportunity and I just became very deeply interested in it and that seems like a good thing being interested in something that’s new and exciting and potentially you know world changing even if it’s such early stages that it might not be world changing for years but I like many other people got really focused on you know this this possible future and kind of hanging my hopes on the financial gain that I was imagining that I was seeing in my like the numbers in my financial accounts and also at the same time starting to feel like they were more important they became higher priority to me than what was going on in my life you know the the numbers in the financial game became much bigger than the numbers in my My Business Financial game and also the excitement of it became much bigger than my excitement elsewhere and this has also occurred in other areas like with with base jumping just really getting into something that’s super deeply exciting and enlivening for me or in a relationship just getting fully swept up in it and you know disappearing attentionally from other areas of my life what makes you say it disappearing intentionally no not intentionally intentionally like my my attention draws away from places that it used to be right what would what would make you just not say I was disappearing into it what makes you give the caveat of attentionally yeah I think I have a little bit of a self-judgment around my attention throughout this process there’s a part of me that’s that’s like no don’t don’t fully go here there’s other things you care about and then there’s a sort of a negative feeling associated with not paying attention to the things that I care about huh or finding that they care that I care less than I did a moment ago about them how does that tie into say commitment like what’s your experience of my experience of commitment has over the course of my life been something that starts with generally starts in the same way as I just described with a lot of fire and a lot of excitement and then you know I’m I’m a very flowy person like I kind of go from one thing to another thing and I’m following some thread that just cuts across all these different areas of life and so very commonly for me the thing that I’m following shifts or changes shape and that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in the thing that I was interested in before but I start to feel like obligated not to change like put myself into an obligation not to change in order to keep the commitment I see so what’s the difference between what you’re describing as far as going down an attentional rabbit hole and being committed to something well I mean going down the intentional rabbit hole is being committed to the exploration of that rabbit hole yeah and it also feels like a disowning of other commitments and there’s shame in that if you we were to ask let’s say any woman in your life um over the last 20 years what would they say your relationship to Commitment was that’s a really good question you’d have to ask some of them um if you had to guess maybe they even said something to you at some point yeah I mean they say they say various things I would say that they say that I am a deeply committed partner and also that I change yeah and some something that they’ve said is that like when when they’re with me you know they feel the commitment really strongly and then when when I’m not with them then they feel the lack of it right so this is the thing you’re pointing to it’s like you get into something you’re fully in it that’s all you’re focused on it’s it’s like a strong sense of an immediate commitment uh but then the things that you’ve already started to some degree Fall by the wayside and they don’t you don’t feel the commitment towards them in the same visceral way and they don’t feel the commitment from you during those times of going deeply down the attentional rabbit hole yeah which then creates shame around that rabbit hole itself okay so if you take the shame out of it what’s the problem with all this I guess the the problem is that it just feels unstable and that also looking back through my life the consequences of it have been just these Wild oscillations which is something that I actually really enjoy I do really enjoy having a life that just varies wildly from thing to thing and I just go super deep into a direction that and go go farther than most people might go in that direction to separate for me the difference between uh what you like about having a highly varied and I’ll call it intense life and what you don’t like about having a highly varied and intense life yeah what I like about it is that I learn a lot and I collect a wealth of different experiences and I grow and what I don’t like about it is there’s these periodic like tectonic shifts that I experience as painful where there’s just a lot of resistance and I go into a period of perhaps months of feeling disconnected but not noticing how disconnected I’m feeling until all of a sudden it just shows up and I recognize how disconnected I’ve been from from things that I actually do love and how much I’ve actually narrowed into a stressful relationship with a thing that I’m focused on okay so the thing is what I what I’m hearing you say is that you love going down these rabbit holes and the fact that you learn and you grow but somewhere down the rabbit hole it moves from Passion to stress it moves from Passion to obligation and then in that you start becoming so single-minded that you forget to live a life that’s enjoyable through balance or through some of your other commitments is that what you’re saying yeah absolutely and I find myself unaware of you know basic logistical things that are important for kind of keeping my life together right and I’m just curious what if nobody ever gave you shit about that what if like you did this and everybody was like oh that’s cool that’s Brett being artistic or that’s Brett doing his thing that’s providing for the family whatever everybody whenever you did all that nobody guilted you or shamed you or said you weren’t there for me how would your relationship with this cycle change yeah interesting it’s hard to even imagine separating those things because I believe that by doing things this way leaves people kind of left in the dark like there’s there’s a way that I’m taking responsibility for other people depending on me and then me going off in a New Direction so whether whether or not they even shame me about it or even show hurt at me there’s a way that I just project it or there’s a way that I just take responsibility that that their experience of disappointment or abandonment so I know your childhood enough to be able to point to something so I’m going to point directly which is maybe I don’t know well enough let’s see if I remember correctly how similar this is you going down a different Rabbit Hole than your family did on a religious basis yeah well I had not thought of it that way but it does feel very much like that yeah so stop talking about it for a second just feel that feel that place that you felt when you diverted from the rabbit hole that your family was in and stayed in around religion and you went looking somewhere else yeah I felt very much like I was letting my mom down yeah and the pain that she would feel about my afterlife was my fault yeah and I resisted that feeling but also still bought into it there’s also even like other layers like throughout throughout my religious upbringing there was times that we changed churches and reasons that might happen was because we or my mom or I or like however it was would diverge from the prevailing opinion in you know the church or the group that we were in and that led to a lot of disconnection from friends and people that were really important to me I’m seeing now ways that I’ve recreated that my whole life too as well as the obsession yeah right like I would assume that at some point you were obsessed with the religion or God or whatever that relationship was as a kid yeah I went deep and I was you know the basis to my youth group band right went on revivals yeah so here this is repeating and if you if you feel that feeling in your body of that moment of recognition that you were causing your mom pain or at least that’s the way it was told to you that you were causing your mom pain for not believing in this and that whole feeling like where in your body does that sit there’s a there’s just a like anxious tension in my chest and in my arms yeah and how similar is that feeling to the feeling of feeling like you have to do the thing that you’re in the rabbit hole with you have to focus on cryptocurrency over your relationships you have to focus on Air Sports over like how similar are those two physical feelings yeah it’s the it’s the same physical feeling and it’s it feels like the thing that blocks me you know sitting down and doing my taxes or registering a car or things that are very mundane like I don’t feel my body doesn’t feel in a mundane state to be doing them it feels like I have to get up and go jump off a cliff right right right so in a weird way what happens is this natural passion shows up and then as you start to relive the trauma maybe it’s happening maybe it’s not of disappointing people around you that creates an anxiety in you that then gets transferred probably both to them which makes you want to not be around them and to your work which makes you get more hyper focused and and stressed is that what what we’re concluding what am I missing there if anything yeah that sounds very right okay one way that I’ve continued to recreate that is by finding communities and going deep with those communities as I travel the world or whatever sort of becoming a part of the community but then also being like well you know I’m kind of not going to be there I’m only sort of partially in this community but I’ve got all these other communities or they’ve got this other thing that I’m doing or I might just get up and go to the Arctic for a month and I won’t be around so don’t depend on me too much right okay so how much of of that commitment or lack thereof is based on the fact that you also learned as a young kid that you can’t trust community and so to some degree there’s a way of saying no we can’t trust you because you left the church but the other way of thinking about as a kid is though Community is stagnant and so it can’t meet me as I grow into my truth right or that Community is like there’s another kind of mirror to that where I see communities as tending towards homogeneous group think and then I want to get away from that or at least keep distance from it right that relates to something else that’s a pattern for me is that I really love to be a contrarian and feel very right when I think everyone else is wrong about right all of this early childhood patterning yeah yeah as if there’s a right and a wrong yeah yeah right so today how does this whole thing cause you pain from this perspective from seeing it this way how does it all cause your pain one way it causes pain is that this this anxious feeling in my body is I guess avoiding that has made it difficult for me to sit down and do basic things what’s the anxiety avoiding if you couldn’t feel anxiety and you couldn’t stay busy what would you be left to feel over this situation where you’re changing and the loved ones around you aren’t meeting you I’d have to feel you know the Heartbreak of that I change and that I’m not stable I might be a different person tomorrow than I am today and other people might be different people they are tomorrow that I might feel abandonment or that they might feel abandonment yeah and I don’t remember if we recorded the very very beginning of this when we said hey let’s press record but you said engineered heartbreak yeah so what would be making you engineer heartbreak to avoid heartbreak I think there’s a way that this might be related to something that I do or I put myself through difficult things to prove that I can handle it it almost seems like there’s something subconscious in me that does that with this engineering of heartbreak right so I know in other podcasts so this is the coolest thing it’s like we’ve spoken about the thing that I’m about to speak about like I think at least three or four times in the podcast alone and countless others but when we’re in it when we’re in when we’re reliving that trauma it’s so hard to see it but that whole idea of we are creating the thing by the way in which which we’re avoiding it it is the way in which we are avoiding the emotional experience that we’re recreating in our life it’s the same thing that we’ve talked about of the cell wants to get to homeostasis it’s like the body continues to produce these Early Childhood patterns until we can finally feel the thing that we couldn’t feel as a kid yeah and a layer on that is that one of the things that I feel is shame around not feeling the thing especially now that I intellectually know all of this so well yeah my body just feels not fully up to date on this so you’re you’re engineering heartbreak that you then avoid yeah is this is what you’re saying yeah right and then you get to feel heartbreak slash shame for avoiding the thing that you created to feel that you’re not using to feel it’s almost like it’s the shame that I’m recreating yeah it’s almost like I’ve learned to be actually very okay with heartbreak itself but I’m not okay with shame yeah it’s beautiful so what’s wrong with shame hmm I literally had a shame feeling your system what what is the discomfort of shame in your system physically it feels like resisted fear which feels like cowardice and that’s something that I’ve judged myself for my whole life all that was in your head in your body when you feel shame what’s uncomfortable there’s a numbing numb is comfortable they even wrote a song about it Comfortably Numb I want to get under that numbing and see what what I’m actually numbing out yeah there’s a feeling of like curling up in a ball slight sickness to my stomach yeah a tightness in my chest sort of an anticipation of rejection or pain and a hopelessness yeah so just feel all that for a second like allow all of that to be felt just as it is don’t you don’t have to manufacture anything you don’t have to try just as it is feel it how did you know that I started manufacturing it I refuse to answer your intellectual questions right now yeah so notice what’s happening notice what’s happening to the discomfort of Shame slight shaking in my stomach and like midsection wait how much more comfortable or uncomfortable is it becoming if you stay with the shame it’s becoming a little bit more comfortable but then like my intellect comes in at me is like and it’s just like oh it’s just because you’re about you’re not feeling it enough anymore you’re avoiding it right what happens if feeling it is all that’s required what if it’s just it’s just like your little kid that felt shame like when your mom told you you were responsible for her emotions and that her punishment for you going to hell was somehow your responsibility like what did that kid just need at that point I don’t even know that it’s fair to say that she told me that I’m just a kid assuming it I mean she was worried for your soul yeah that was happening yeah which is love okay exactly but the point is what did you need then What Would Have Made It different for you better for you in that moment man I don’t know like it’s hard to say that what I needed was for my mom too happily accept that she believed I was going to hell right how about just loving attention how would that have been as a kid yeah my my diverging beliefs being given loving attention yeah or being given loving attention in my in my beliefs so what makes you think that giving loving attention to your shame right now is somehow not enough but it would have been enough as a kid I mean it feels this is interesting it feels like when I try to give my shame loving attention it somehow misses like the attention misses the shame in some way the shame manages to wiggle out from under the attention Chase it around the room I know that sounds weird but Chase it around the room trying to give it love like I’m gonna love you you can’t get away from me I’m gonna love you I can feel it there subtly it’s what kids do by the way totally what kids do if kids feel shame and you go to give them love they just hate it no no no like little ones they’ll fight your tooth and nail over it yeah it’s like hiding under the couch and peeking out through the skirt yes that’s right that’s right exactly yeah when I when I try to do this on my own I immediately think I’m just not doing it good enough or I’m not finding it or that I must not be you know finding the root of whatever my feeling is that’s the pattern that’s not the truth of it that’s the pattern like literally like were you finding God did you get to the root of it did you feel like there wasn’t like you weren’t quite getting the whole thing like that’s the relationship that you were taught to truth to love to to feeling life yeah you weren’t quite getting it yeah yeah that’s what I feel with everything yeah I was just not quite getting it right you’re also not quite getting it as compared to other people I mean I think there’s probably some some reality to all of us not quite getting it right because it’d be impossible right but you’re in your mind I’ve noticed that it’s it’s you know it’s it’s not like you’re not quite getting it like everybody’s not quite getting it it’s like no you’re you’re special and you’re not quite getting it you know what I’m saying yeah this feeling that I’m special and I’m not quite getting it right I’m special in my not getting it especially in my not getting it but there’s also you know I was in you know gifted classes in school but also I just didn’t do the homework just somehow managed to barely be scraping by in those classes and everybody else you know even people who seemingly didn’t get the material as much as I felt I got the material had their shit together in a way that just had them be doing the thing doing the school not getting talked to about being behind right you’re like recreating this being not quite fitting into the social fabric yeah now you’re in a social fabric full of a whole bunch of people who are really smart and not motivated to follow all the rules and have done a whole bunch of creative things in our living and you still feel like you’re not a part but probably all of them do as well so you’re not alone even in that yeah all right like a question that just routinely comes up for me is how does how does anybody like continue to put themselves in a position of working with or relying on me right that’s the pattern there’s no truth to that however you’ve done it you’ve shown up in your business you’ve shown up here you’ve shown up in your relationships many of them for years and years you can say that but like the paper you know the data is different than what your what your voice is telling you right now yeah and that brings me back to the piece where I can intellectually know a thing intellectually know what I even on some level want and my body doesn’t line up with it and there’s a feeling of Despair in that yeah so prove your body’s not lining up that’s the story prove it your body’s stressed when you’re ignoring your knowing knowing the commitments that feed you that nourish you your body is aware of the shame that’s happening you’re like what how is your body not participating fully here so there’s there’s a way that I feel that being true and the more the more I get off track the more avoidant I am of the things that I care about the more stressed I feel so there’s a way that my body is guiding me back towards my truth in that way yeah and yet there’s something in my body that’s like if that’s not happening there must be some opposing Force and what is that and how is that my body being in alignment if there’s an opposing Force pulling me away from what the rest of my system seems to think is alignment I think I’m a bit confused in the fact that like it is opposing forces that keep everything in Balance so what what am I missing maybe there’s one of the opposing forces that’s just getting too much weight in the decision prove it so there’s this idea that you’re stuck on maybe it’s your mind that’s the opposing force that thinks that it like yeah like that somehow or another that your body isn’t with you yeah maybe it is the inverse maybe it’s my mind that’s not with me in the moment of freeze what’s offline your body or your mind huh it’s hard to say which but it does seem like it’s true that one of them was offline it feels like my like my mind is doing the thing that I describe myself doing to others to my body like my mind is flitting around in a million directions going down rabbit holes and my body’s like hey we have something so right now it’s like you it like I can sense like a desire for resolution yeah yeah there’s a strong desire for resolution which I’m recognizing is wanting myself to change hmm and what’s the resolution going to get you alignment Joy accomplishment connection and how is that not here um stories in my head prevent me from seeing it I feel connected to you I mean I feel I’m enjoying the conversation you know I feel like we should to do a podcast and then we just like dove into a session that’s what happened because I don’t have my shit together enough to do the podcast but there’s a tremendous amount of connection and joy and Alignment in it so what so what what’s the problem because my head said there’s a thing I was supposed to do you know would it have been better than this I don’t know we could have had a really vague podcast discussion that I felt like disconnected from and judge myself for not being vulnerable in they could have done that right exactly so since the resolution isn’t going to give you anything that you already have what what is it that you want the resolution for to feel like it’s done like a complete like I did it I got there it’s all better now What If That Never Comes what if there is no complete no done no Heaven I mean it would be boring if everything was done I mean it even back in the day right like the thing that you dismissed is that there was a Finish Line when you dismissed the religion and there was also a way that in the religion I was really hanging like holding on to this idea of a Finish Line yeah that’s right like I actually when I was a kid my logical brain was like well I’m a Christian ideally I could just kill myself right now and go straight to heaven why not do that what if this is just the rest of the letting go of the story like the Finish Line part of the story is now gone yeah the Finish Line part of the story has continued to be there all along yeah like at any moment I’ll arrive what happens to your sense of self if you deeply accept that there is no Finish Line there is no you’re never done I just feel a lot more relaxed in my body now there’s a way that doing work and taking on challenges doesn’t feel like the last final Sprint before the Finish so I feel less pressure and so what’s what’s left to do about this perceived of abandoning your mom through cryptocurrency and Air Sports and since you’re never going to completely resolve it it’s never going to be completely done what’s left to do I mean it feels okay to follow rabbit holes now I feel less shame around rabbit holding yeah I don’t know any human who doesn’t rabbit hole sometimes it’s the post office for 33 years and I don’t know any human who doesn’t do it we are creatures of habit yeah and that’s an interesting one I consider myself there’s a way that I shame myself for not being a creature of habit and I see people having structured habits in their lives that supports them and creates consistency and I see myself as not having that but you despite us having regular you know podcast recordings um even outside of that you regularly go down rabbit holes you regularly get stressed out it regularly serves you by getting you money and and knowledge and wisdom and I regularly recreate heartbreak but crashing and burning in ways that somehow I survive right exactly regularly recreating the circumstances for you to allow a deep heartbreak and shame that’s never been allowed before I feel clear I’m not having like squirmy shame feelings popping up in my body and I’m not not having running thoughts about this and there’s a way that that feels disorientingly Serene yeah that makes sense like there’s nothing to do but that’s in contrast to the previous story of there’s always a million things I’m not doing right right where it gets even weirder is that nothing to do so much stuff and there’s there’s a way right now where like I I have your voice in my head from another time of you know being afraid something will go away is the first way to make it go away so I’m like don’t be afraid this will go away that is being afraid that it would go away yeah see I’m getting it wrong all wrong me too laughs right yeah it’s the fear that the serenity could go away like that’s a possibility like all we did was see what was we didn’t we didn’t do anything like you didn’t become a different person all you had to do was just see what was actually happening and the serenity came in well isn’t that in some way the state that I was experiencing before going away yeah the difference is that there’s not a doing there’s an undoing yeah right so it’s like I did something and I need to keep it it’s very different than I and I undid something and saw the truth oh I see then what do you have to do to keep it yeah there’s a way that my my way of trying to self-explore this previously was like a stack of doing things on top of doing things to get myself to feel whatever it was that was unfelt yeah and that was just a stack of layers pushing back and forth on each other yeah they were all just in the way of the truth of what you are and I don’t have to do that right thanks exactly exactly so I mean what’s going to happen next am I going to do my shit taxes or what if no I have no idea I don’t know it’s good I don’t know what I’m gonna do next either so it works out just fine so just notice that all the movement so as you like feel the serenity as you feel like oh this is just myself uncovered rather than something that I’ve created that I need to keep notice how much stuff is it’s just kind of automatic ways in which we cover ourselves and they’re just showing up and that’s the really cool part about this process is that you can just start to see in in especially in these moments of clarity you can start to see all the ways that you want to cover yourself up so you just found one of them how do I keep it that’s one of the ways that you try to cover yourself up and then you just found the second one which is like will I be able to get shit done I have to get shit done yeah think about mice or rats or beavers or dogs it’s like they never have to tell themselves or be worried about getting shit done but they’re always doing shit all you know if they’re if they’re not sleeping they’re doing something yeah but none of them are building companies promoting podcasts yeah well you’re not licking your balls so and dogs are you know we’re not on video yes they’re not doing as complicated things they’re not capable yet we we think we would stop doing the things that are interesting to us it’s like it’s silly yeah I guess the most complicated things I’ve done have been things that have just sort of Fallen together as I’ve been doing whatever yeah they exactly even in the planning that brings me to places that I couldn’t just wander to just noticed every one of these things and they’ll come with a little visceral sensation with them is this Sensei I’m making the noise of the sensation right it’s like they’ll come they’ll each come with that and that’s kind of the habitual way to cover ourselves up yeah there’s like a tensioning that comes with it yeah so which is awesome they’re going to come and then you get to see them and and and see through them and that’s the what have you just sat for the next three weeks because I know you create a life where you can do this like for the next three weeks just watch them come and see through them oh but Joe I create a life where technically I could do this but what I’ve actually been doing is thinking about all the things I’m not doing ah yeah just to say one other piece to it which I think is important is there is a nervous system piece to this which is if you’re operating under stress for an extended period of time your body will go into a physical depression and not be motivated so like that is that’s natural right like if a deer has gets chased by a tiger for 20 days straight it’s gonna definitely need to like sit down and do nothing for a bit hmm you know there is a physical component to it yeah it’s interesting there’s this like sitting down and doing nothing but being stressed about it oh gosh requires that release and then the depression is like see I’m doing nothing that’s why I’m depressed I gotta do something and then it Loops back on itself that’s exactly how it works yeah you see this with like big time CEOs and when they sell their company it’s like bathrobe for two years see it all the time and then it’s like yeah it’d be a bathroom for three to six months if they weren’t telling themselves they should be up and doing something all the time but because they tell themselves they have to be up and doing something all the time it takes you know three times as long to recover four times as long to recover hmm okay well enjoy the serenity yeah yeah I’m just gonna take today to do that yeah what a total pleasure yeah thank you Joe thanks for a great time thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate us on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so 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