Summary
In this foundational conversation with Brett Kistler, Joe lays out the philosophy behind “The Art of Accomplishment” — the idea that personal development and productivity are not at odds but deeply intertwined. The “art” means three things: doing things with ease (measured by enjoyment, not speed), deepening self-awareness through your work, and recognizing that your consciousness is the product you deliver to the world.
Joe dismantles the false dichotomy between accomplishment and well-being. He argues that efficiency is best measured by enjoyment — when you’re fighting yourself, you’re wasting fuel. The friction in our work life comes primarily from lack of self-awareness. He uses examples from tennis (focus through the goal, not on it), butchery (finding the space between meat and bone), and martial arts (relaxed until the moment of impact) to illustrate that mastery is about minimum friction, not maximum effort.
The conversation identifies core limiting beliefs that block artful accomplishment: perfectionism over connection, improvement over authenticity, shoulds over wants, and defense over love. All rest on one foundational misconception: that you are not inherently good. Joe describes the path forward as three steps — holding intention without attachment, treating everything as iteration (no failure, no success, just learning), and recognizing it’s an undoing rather than a doing.
Key Concepts
- Enjoyment is the true measure of efficiency
- Your consciousness is the product you deliver
- Connection over perfection
- Inherent goodness eliminates internal friction
- Accomplishment is undoing, not doing
- Intention without attachment is most effective
- Discovery, not improvement
- Iterative mindset prevents failure
Key Quotes
“Accomplishing stuff is more about the how than it is about the what you get done.”
“Efficiency isn’t measured by speed — it’s measured in the human condition by enjoyment.”
“In a war with yourself, you’re always going to lose.”
“A baby doesn’t think that they’re bad because they’re crawling. They’re gonna walk. They don’t need to think that they’re bad because they’re crawling.”
“At the peak of a poet’s career he is a businessman and the peak of a businessman’s career he is a poet.”
“The real gift that we’re giving to the world isn’t the product that’s tangible — it’s the product of our consciousness.”
Transcript
foreign of you happening it’s why the great artists you see their full expression and they can only get to that self-expression they can only get to that level of ease by having more and more self-awareness 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 a lot of people have a sense that self-development and accomplishment are mutually exclusive that in order to be maximally productive it’s necessary to sacrifice parts of who we are or to back burner our own personal Evolution we focus on creating systems for setting and achieving goals we Imagine That by doing this will somehow arrive at our fully developed self without examining where these goals came from in the first place and so a question I often hear asked is how will self-inquiry help me be productive and lead to more accomplishment it’s an amazing thing about the human brain is what we really like to create false distinctions it’s something that we do I think it’s because the brain in general its job is to create distinction it likes to create false distinction you know it’s very much to me like the way it was in 1970s when you could either be a businessman or you could be an environmentalist but you couldn’t be both that they were at odds and then somewhere in the 90s they figured out nope you can do both that’s possible it’s the same thing with this and in fact they really Drive each other that the personal development Focus that that course if you will gets tested in business and gets tested in projects gets tested and getting things done and you get to learn a lot from where the rubber meets the road and vice versa that as you learn how to understand yourself better and other people better which is the whole point of personal development then all of a sudden you get better Tools in business and you do better at getting things done it’s why I always use the phrase art of accomplishment it’s speaking about the fact that accomplishing stuff is more about the how than it is about the what you get done so you can accomplish something and your focus could be like my job is to earn a million dollars but in actuality you’re going to be less likely to earn that million dollars if you’re not focused on the how you’re going about it I’ll give you an example of this my girlfriend in college her name was Kate and she would sir she was a really good tennis player and she would with her coach she would serve and try to hit like a basket one of those baskets that you pick up the balls with and she would hit it like she was good so she did two or three out of five times and then one day the coach took the basket off the ground and put a quarter right in the middle of where that basket was sitting and said sir and hit the quarter she didn’t hit the quarter once but she would have hit the basket every single time if it was still sitting on top of that quarter the thing that we see in business all the time which is focusing through the goal is one of the ways to make sure you accomplish your goals so whether it be being the best company in the world or whether means beating the competition or whether it means trying to change the world for the better through Environmental Solutions or whether it means great customer service whatever it is having a goal that’s beyond the goal that you have makes the goal it makes the goal more likely to be gotten tell me what makes this an art think about it like this there’s accomplishment and accomplishment basically means that you’ve achieved something successfully successful is the first question that you have to ask what does successful mean successfully means to me it means that the task is done holistically right so is it accomplishment to make ten dollars if that’s my goal if I also like sacrificed everything I love for that ten dollars that doesn’t make any sense at all that doesn’t feel like accomplishment so it’s a holistic success it means that you’re you’re firing on all cylinders that you’re getting the whole thing done it’s think about it like a building success isn’t just getting the building erected it’s a quality building it’s a beautiful building it’s a useful building that’s what makes success so you’re looking for the holistic thing and then if you’re thinking about it as far as an art form then you have to move out of the tyranny of a checklist right which is like I’ve written something down now I have to do it or I’m going to beat myself up because I haven’t done it and it’s going to move into how you do it how is it that I’m going about doing it and that’s what makes it an art form and there’s very specific things there’s if you think about art in general what art does is it the art of artistry of something it means that you have more ease in doing it it’s a path of self-awareness and you recognize that your Consciousness is the product let’s get into those further uh tell me more about the ease because there’s a lot of things that we want to do that are accomplishment that just simply are not going to ever be easy or so we think yeah so we think yeah there’s a couple ways to go at the ease part of it one way to go at these part of it is to think about like there’s an old story about a prince coming to a butcher and he says to the butcher how often do you sharpen your knives and butcher says I never sharpen my knives and the prince goes that’s impossible the best butchers in the world have to sharpen their knives at least once a month and the butcher says no no my my blade finds the space between the meat and the bone and it’s basically saying how you get things done is with the minimal amount of friction that the master of a craft is doing it with the least moves it’s not about winning or losing anymore they’re far beyond the winning and losing of something it’s just how do I do it with the least amount of effort and what’s amazing in our society is that we think about Effectiveness or efficiency in speed as humans not as cars right cars is really obvious the fastest car doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient car but we think that if we’ve gotten done something quickly then we’re very efficient but efficiency isn’t measured by speed it’s measured in in The Human Condition it’s measured by enjoyment that we are efficient when we are enjoying ourselves it means the least amount of effort is necessary the least amount of fuel is necessary to make something happen so if you’re accomplishing something with that kind of ease when you’re accomplishing something with enjoyment which is how we measure that ease then you’re in the Artistry of it that’s what I mean by ease yeah that makes a lot of sense because I mean the opposite of ease is uh that you are actually fighting yourself in some way right there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to do the thing another party that does want to do the thing and so there’s there’s dissonance there and a loss of efficiency so it’s interesting to think of efficiency as ease or measured by ease yeah exactly which is beautifully put because what you’re saying there is the friction is mostly caused by the lack of self-awareness when you understand what you are when you are aware of how you work there’s a lot less friction and that’s why the second part is so important the Artistry brings you closer to yourself if you’ve ever met a great Artisan there’s a way when you at least when they’re working at the very least when they’re working you see this kind of self-awareness this presence that occurs that self-awareness it brings you closer to yourself it calls you into something deeper it has to be a full expression of you when you’re self-aware it means that there’s a full expression of you happening it’s why the great artists you see their full expression it’s they don’t feel muted or stilted that level of ease by having more and more self-awareness and the self-awareness of how they work that sounds similar to what might happen if somebody’s you know looking at a to-do list of things they want to get done and I think efficiency is efficiently knocking out all the boxes but what might be actually more efficient is asking themselves why they want to get that list done in the first place and maybe if there’s you know one question they could ask themselves that removes half of that list that is actually an increase in efficiency it sounds like this is the like the personal version of doing that like why is it that I want to be getting these things done why is it that I want to be successful what does success actually bring to me yeah that’s a beautiful Point that’s exactly right that when I look at my list every morning I always think about what can I do that’ll make this whole list irrelevant or easier and it’s the same thing with the meta list in life like there’s a beautiful technique that you can use which is okay if I get that done then am I happy then and then your mind will usually go no I’ll need this and say okay well then if I get that done you know will I be happy then and it can just go on and on yeah it’s like asking the one the making the one decision that can eliminate 100 other decisions it’s finding perhaps in many of these cases the one need within us that resolves a hundred other secondary needs that we thought we needed to fill that’s exactly it and that’s what self-awareness does just by its nature so you mentioned that your Consciousness is the product that you’re working on in that case so let’s dig into that a little bit more yeah that’s the last part of what makes it an art form is that you know if you’re looking at a piece of art there’s a way in which you can feel like a painting you can feel how the artist was when they were painting and when the artist acknowledges that then what the artist can do is is really understand that their Consciousness is what is being consumed and it doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook or Ford or Van Gogh we’re feeling the consciousness of those people who made it we’re feeling that experience and if they were anxious and nervous then were perpetuating anxiousness and nervousness if they were worried about not having enough they’re going to make sure that we are worried about not having enough when we use that product when we consume their Consciousness and so it seems even more true these days as like a lot of a lot more consumers are thinking about products that they feel much more personally aligned with rather than just like oh look it’s a jug of milk it’s like no no because this is a jug of milk that treats cows in a way that is you know more agreeable to me or this is the company that is working on making more fuel efficient or electric cars and that’s something that really speaks to me so what you’re saying is that even even a company even a product is a piece of art and that the consciousness of its creators should come through in that it does you just can’t help it there’s a great quote that my friend Steve used to say to me he said at the peak of a poet’s career he is a businessman and the peak of a businessman’s career he is a poet or she is a poet or she is a businessman it is an absolute truth that how we get something done affects what it is the end product of our doing and it’s as simple as if we rush to sweep the porch or if we enjoy sweeping the porch we’re going to get two different jobs done and and it’s going to look different at the end of it and so our Consciousness affects it and it’s the acknowledgment that that’s the case that the real thing that we’re the real gift that we’re giving to the world isn’t the product that’s tangible it’s the product of our Consciousness that we’re delivering and acknowledging that the Consciousness is part of the equation of the product that it is in part the product that we are producing and that other people are consuming is what makes it an art form not just a doing yeah I think another great example of that would be in software development any software that’s developed by a team that’s frenetically running around trying to finish completing their backlog uh and the product and Engineering aren’t communicating with each other very well that product is going to end up having you know having that Consciousness writ large in its implementation in bugs and you know missed like features that don’t make sense Etc exactly so let’s talk a little bit more about how our Consciousness as the product of this work a lot of people would see that as odds with business because the focus is moving away from from perhaps the business itself towards yourself what would you say to them again it’s a lot like the 70s with the environmentalism you can make money cutting down trees you can make money planting trees you can make money making all of your product artistic you can make money making all of your product as cheap as possible so there’s a thousand ways to make money like just walk down the street of any City and you will everything you look at has got seven or eight or ten people making money behind it there’s infinite ways of making money and the idea that how we are when we make the money isn’t part of that equation is just silliness it’s something that happens when people don’t want to feel their whole experience and they make the excuse that oh it’s just business or they make the excuse that you know I had to do this because it’s business and and the craziest thing is is you look at incredibly successful businessmen who are just merciless in their uh desire for winning competition or for quality or for customer service and they will never allow a team to not deliver or or allow a team to sacrifice the important things and yet as soon as the idea is like oh we can all be growing as humans or that we can all be having full expression here comes up there like no can’t do that we can out-compete we can build a billion dollar company we can out-compete over-resourced competition but we can’t also do it in such a way that we really enjoy ourselves it’s it’s a ridiculous notion and it comes from an inner thought that they have that they can’t beat them for their full selves and be successful that they had to cut off a part of themselves to be successful and that normally just comes from the fact that they had to cut out a part of themselves to make Mom and Dad happy and that’s where it’s really coming from it’s just it’s just very limited thinking or a belief that productivity and achievement require sacrifice yeah and so if you’re feeling sacrificed that might mean you’re on the right track to achievement right let’s take a look at that one for a second who sacrificed more the guy who created men who created Google or the men who created benetti tires who worked harder who put their family at bigger risk it’s just nonsensical to think who worked harder it’s nonsensical to think that that there is that that level of sacrifice needed there’s people who make millions of dollars without it millions of dollars with it it’s what do you enjoy it’s what do you love if you love working 80 hours a week and you love that kind of productivity don’t tell everybody it’s necessary just say it’s what you did and you loved it I I listened to Elon Musk talk about this first thing he just talked about you have to work all the time and I thought to myself you had to work all the time when you had one company now you have three companies or four companies or five companies and you’re still working all the time which really means that you only had to work 25 of the time to do the company that you originally did yeah you didn’t have to work all the time and you’re proving it yeah that’s a really good point so a lot of people say that they you know they have to get a paycheck and so this all this art sounds great but you know they’re they’re not in that position or maybe they’re not running their own company maybe they’re in in some kind of hierarchy and they’re some organization or even if they do have their own company they just well you know I have to make money like I have to make money now uh or you know on this with this particular Runway so I just don’t have time to make this an art I lived in Los Angeles for a while I lived next to this um first generation from Central America family just sweethearts and the sun when he decided it was time to go out to work he was like 18 years old and he worked at a subway and when he was working at the subway he just did it with Pizzazz he did it with friendliness he did it with a joy he did it with a bit of a like a singing like he was just like he was just one of those characters that you you’ve had the experience you’ve gone into some place and there’s somebody on the other side of the counter who’s enjoying themselves in their maybe singing or they got a little Pizzazz one that he was one of those people and he worked there I think for three weeks until somebody walked in and was like hey I have a restaurant and I need someone and then within another six months he was the sous chef and then you know it just like he just kept on going I don’t know where he is now but that was the example to me that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing if you do it with Artistry you’re creating the world that you want and the idea that you can’t do that in any situation I mean Mandela did it in a prison how he wanted to be the Artistry that he was delivering to humanity was there when he was in a prison so to think that you can’t do it because you’re in a bureaucracy is again it’s just as limited of the thinking as a businessman saying we can’t be whole humans and do business it’s just and the crazy thing about that that I think people don’t recognize is if you think you can’t do it because of your situation then you’re owning the position of a victim it’s like somebody whose life is oppressing them and if you have that position there’s only two people who really want to spend time with you other victims and people who abuse you because that’s the only people who you have that value for right victims other victims will be like great yes we’re oppressed let’s all talk about how oppressed we are and the abusers are like cool you you feel like you’re oppressed great I will oppress you that that’s exactly what I need to get my world cranking and so the the mentality of that invites it just like all of our mentalities invite the world that we see to become real right yeah that could be an entire episode of its own and I’m sure it will be yeah so how does how does a person get to this place then yeah so there’s three bits on how a person gets to seeing all of their accomplishments as art to seeing that there’s an art of accomplishment and the first is an intention I don’t call it a goal I don’t call it a mandate it’s just holding it in your Consciousness that this is where I want to be it’s like looking at a map and saying Los Angeles is where I want to be or San Francisco is where I want to be it doesn’t require any more weight than that it’s like an implementation agnostic goal yes exactly yeah that’s right and so like if you dig into that a little bit there’s this um story about an admiral I can’t remember his name who was taken in the POW camps in Vietnam and he was asked who got out of the camps he said that’s easy it was the people who knew they would get out then the interviewer asked who didn’t get out of the camps he said that’s easy it’s the optimists and the interviewer was confused and said Optimist what do you mean how is that different than your first answer he said the optimists were the ones who thought the get out by Christmas or by Easter or by the rainy season they were the ones that didn’t make it so the intention is just holding that intention out there knowing that you’re going to arrive there so that’s the first bit the second bit is take it all as an iteration there’s no failure there’s no success there’s just I am learning by iterating and experimenting iterating and experimenting iterating and experimenting I don’t have to be hard on myself to learn lessons I don’t have to be hard on myself because I had a certain time frame it’s just a very gentle iteration iteration iteration just the way you would think an artist would do after a 20-year career so they kept on playing kept on trying and new and crazier things came out and then the last part is to know that it’s not really a doing it’s you asked how does a person get there but it’s it’s not a doing it’s an undoing we’re just basically learning to undo a whole bunch of training and be in a natural state and I’ll give you a great example of it so if you put your two hands together and put it like let’s say that the palms of your hands in front of your face and try as hard as you can to pull your hands apart and if your hands are apart right now you’re not trying you’re doing so forget the doing and just go to the drawing and try as hard as you can to pull your hands apart and now without thinking about it feel the exact opposite thing that you feel when you’re trying that’s what it means to undo you’re you’re undoing and so that’s that’s what you do if to make all of your accomplishment Artistry to make life the art of accomplishment then you’re undoing yeah it’s interesting as I did that there’s a doing the try there’s like a sense of planning going on throughout my entire system like imagining which muscles I would move and how to to move my hands apart and I can do all of that without actually moving at all and it feels like a good metaphor for you know beating myself up over a to-do list that’s exactly it so then what are we undoing exactly and what does that help us accomplish or how does that help us to accomplish things the main thing that you’re undoing is this misconception that you aren’t inherently good like we have basically what we’re undoing is a whole bunch of limiting beliefs there’s probably about seven main limiting beliefs but there’s they’re all resting on one limiting belief and the one limiting belief is that you’re not inherently good that you have to put effort to make yourself good enough of value better that it’s not your natural place that you’re not there yet so if you think about an oak tree when is an oak tree good enough is the oak tree good enough when it’s an acorn or when it’s too years old or when it’s 150 years old or when it’s collapsing when it’s becoming dirt when is it good enough when is it not inherently good and that’s the thing that we think about ourselves is that we have some place to be to get inherently good and or some way of being and what’s actually preventing us from acting in an inherently good way is is only the idea that we’re not it’s only the idea that we’ve done something wrong right I think that’s a really good point because there’s a really big Pitfall that I’ve experienced in personal development or you know trying to become more productive or work on my systems of of accomplishments where we start to see how everybody else is doing things and we’re like oh man like I’m just I need to get from where I am to where they are by somehow making myself better because I’m not good enough and if only I had this person’s system or you know that person’s motivation and drive or that person’s Clarity if I could get there then I would be able to get get things done which just really does reinforce that oh I’m just not there yet I just don’t have it in me right yeah silently yeah exactly which just slows down the whole system that like a baby doesn’t think that they’re bad because they’re crawling they’re gonna walk they don’t need to think that they’re bad because they’re crawling it’s just a natural part of the developmental cycle and there’s that form of goodness and there’s also the other form of goodness which is every time you defend something in yourself there’s some way that you’re believing that you’re not inherently good that you have to defend something about yourself I don’t mean defense like someone tries to throw a punch you block it I mean defense like someone accuses you of being bad and you think you have to justify something what would make you need to justify something if somebody came to view and said the sky is purple at noon the sky is purple would you really need to defend the fact that the sky was blue right so there’s some inherent belief system that there’s there’s something that there’s a shame that there’s something wrong with us and that’s part of the inherent goodness that once you understand that that is your natural state there’s so much less to be doing so much less so I’ll give you an example for a second about how it works it’s let’s say one of the limiting beliefs that I see people do all the time is that Perfection is more important than connection right and so they think that they need to be perfect because they think that they’re not good enough or their thing needs to be perfect or their presentation needs to be perfect or their product needs to be perfect or the date needs to go perfect or whatever it is and they focus on that trying to make it perfect instead of how do I connect so they they choose Perfection over connection and if they choose connection they’re far more successful and they will choose it naturally if they don’t think that they have to be perfect to be good enough or to be good specifically how this works you can try to create the perfect product or you can try to create a product that’s in connection with your customer and to stay in connection with your customer and the second is going to do much better than the perfect product if you have a first date and you’re trying to be perfect that’s not going to go so well even if they happen to have a second date for you you’ve been trying to be perfect so they’re not dating you they’re dating some idealized version of yourself and eventually that shit’s gonna go sideways whereas if you just go for the connection if you say oh how do I connect with this person and let’s see if it’s a match then it’s a far more productive stance and the place where it’s like most articulated is in meditation where people try to have the perfect experience of meditating instead of being in connection with themselves and it’s the difference between torture and meditation meditation is connection managing yourself is torture yeah yeah I spent a long time in meditation you know doing maybe an hour of practice every day just because I was really stressed out about work and you know beating myself up over to-do list you know the usual and so I would meditate more and more and find that it would call my mind but my my goal in meditation was to calm my mind not to feel what I needed to feel right and uh that really just kind of pulled me away from from the emotions that we’re trying to help me update to my situation yeah I find that if you’re trying to manage your experience it’s pulling you away from yourself instead of being with what you are and enjoying it so tell me some more of those limiting beliefs there’s a couple others that I can think about um there is Improvement instead of being authentic right so that’s the one that you mentioned earlier in the podcast where you were talking about wanting to be better at this or better than that instead of wanting to know what you actually are right so I I want to be enlightened instead of wanting to know what I am the wanting to be enlightened path is a far slower path right than wanting to know what I am I want to work successfully 60 hours a week is far less effective than understanding what your natural rhythm is and what your natural way of being most most productive is so it’s it’s that constant question of like trying to improve yourself instead of find out what your authenticity is or I want 100 million users versus I want this to improve people’s lives right if it’s authentic that you want 100 million users if that’s really the thing that’s going to charge you then that might be your authenticity but then the question is what do you have to do that is authentic to you to get them instead of how do I make my podcast so great that they get them that I get the users what are some others other ones is uh shoulds before wants I find people always are trying to motivate themselves with their shoulds instead of with their wants and wants are far more motivating and far more effective at getting us places if you think about the first seven years of your life you couldn’t even have shoulds and then all of a sudden should show up in every all your development slows down you get more development in the first seven years of your life than you do pretty much at any other time of your life and it’s when you stop following your wants and you start following your shoulds that everything gets slowed down and again like with both of these it’s whether the only way you would think oh I need to improve instead of I need to be authentic is if you think that you’re not inherently good and the only way you would think I should do that instead of I want to do that is because you think that you aren’t inherently good I think there’s seven of them but the other one that’s just coming to mind right now is the one we spoke about defense versus love that most of us immediately move to defend ourselves rather than love the person so you the quintessential example of this is the boss you know it tells you what you need to do to improve and most people get defensive instead of saying to themselves oh my goodness my boss just took a social risk on me potentially you know risked our relationship because he cared or she cared enough to help me be successful we don’t think oh wow thanks thanks for taking the risk of telling me that yeah it’s quite a flip on the usual script right because we moved from defense instead of love so these are all the ways and we only have to do that if we think we’re not inherently good yeah so how does seeing your inherent goodness tie into the art part of this art of accomplishment if you see that you’re inherently good then obviously Things become more enjoyable and more easy because there’s less fight that you have with yourself so that’s just simple it’s and the the more that you focus on your enjoyment the more you stop having the fight with yourself you know there’s this quote though in a war with yourself you’re always going to lose and so that enjoyment comes to a large degree because you’re you’re fighting with yourself as ceased or slowed down and that happens when you see your inherent goodness so that’s part of how that works and then when you fully realize that your Consciousness is what is coming through whatever product you’re creating then the question is what’s the Consciousness that you want to give to other folks if you’re coming from a place of understanding your inherent goodness then that’s the product that you’re going to be creating is one that ties people into their inherent goodness and it doesn’t it’s not so limiting as one might think meaning take a look at like some of the great artists of our day I’ll use a comedian because yeah I’ll give you an example because it’s some people might not even call them an artist but Jim Carrey he is if you listen to his story and this is so much the case it’s like they were going about their career it wasn’t going so well and then all of a sudden they just were like I am going all the way I am not going to hold back I’m gonna take the big risk of my full expression I’m going to basically trust that if I just go all the way with myself things are going to work out then I’m going to trust that goodness and then all of a sudden Boulder and Bolder things come out of the artist Jim Carrey is the example of this and when we watch it maybe we think it’s confidence we’re like oh my God that guy could do all that crazy stuff how confident must they be but it’s really a confidence in something that’s beyond them it’s a confidence in their inherent goodness and so when you see that in people like we just naturally want to follow it we just naturally want to be a part of that it’s why we see so much of that in some of the greatest movers and shakers of our time people who have accomplished just amazing things in their lives is that full Trust I guess one of the ways to look at it is to see it as it’s like channeling you can only Channel if you trust what’s coming through you and that channeling is what it starts to feel like when you are deeply when you’re deeply in the art of accomplishment but way to look at the art of accomplishment is like in some traditions they would call channeling they would call it cleaning out your tube so that you could have greater access to the thing that’s moving through all of us the animator of all life neurology would call it alpha waves but it’s that flow state and being in that flow state can only come when you can rely on your inherent goodness if you’re judging yourself and you’re questioning yourself and you’re in a fight with yourself you can’t be an alpha you can’t be in Flow State yeah another good way to describe that I think is just something this idea of channeling is acting from something that’s not that’s coming from outside of your identity of yourself a lot of a lot of artists were talking about Artistry here a lot of musicians have talked about how when they were in the flow and they were writing some of their their biggest hits they felt like it wasn’t them doing the writing it was just the words were coming through them yeah we’ve all had this experience we’ve all had the experience of playing music without having to think about it or just channeling the emails and you know just knowing exactly what to write and we’ve all had the experience of being in that flow State and that only comes when we can trust our inherent goodness I think that’s that’s the feeling people are trying to get at when they’re knocking out a to-do list finding themselves in that flow right I think a lot of this is just it’s not about the to-do list it’s about what it is that you actually want to be doing yes and it’s about allowing the lack of fight to be in your system right our system by Nature doesn’t want to fight with itself and so to allow that to happen really allows the flow state to occur and then the final bit is as I think you already kind of mentioned it it’s the self-awareness which is the only way that we’re ever going to see that we’re inherently good is for us to see what we inherently are and it requires us to drop the stories of ourselves and the ideas of ourselves and it requires us to love the ego like right into Oblivion that self-awareness is what allows us to see that we’re not just channeling it we are it that what we thought we were small but what we really are is part of everything and when we see ourselves as everything when our identity switches from the little me to the whole then the inherent goodness is it’s all everything is in that inherent goodness and there’s just a piece that comes with it and that’s why when you see those artists who have you know 50 years at the carving table and you see that just this piece in them the piece of artistry of a deep Artistry that’s where it comes from as we start to view accomplishment more as an art what is going to change about the way that we do things and how do we address that fear that might exist that getting into this personal development stuff is going to make us even for a period of time less productive if we are if we have a 18-hour workday right now and that’s the thing that we’re doing and it just feels like the whole house of cards is going to collapse if we just take one day off from that what’s the step forward they did this great study in the US Army and the study was that they took a test two tests that were the same test but different you know reliable and whatnot and they took a group of uh soldiers in boot camp and they just worked them to death and had them sleep deprived and then they put them in front of the test and they did the test and then they let them rest for a couple days r r and then they came back they weren’t sleep deprived and they did the test and then they asked the soldiers of these two tests which one did you think you scored better at and which one do you think you did quicker and 80 of the people thought that they had done quicker work and more accurate work on the first test when they were sleep deprived and in actuality a hundred percent of them did better when they had rest and they were not being rushed through the whole situation so it tells us that we have a mental illusion that happens like an optical illusion and we think that when we’re when we’re busy and we were sleep deprived and we’re running around checking off boxes we think we’re more efficient when in actuality we’re not that’s not the multitasking uh studies as well where they proved that people really do not multitask they just think they multitask that they’re actually their performance actually degrades yeah exactly it’s exactly the same principle so the first thing is to acknowledge that situation and then to to start to disassociate the idea of ease with productivity I mean some people just because they’re only productive when they’re in friction they think that productivity is friction and to see to really find real ways of measuring are you getting the stuff done and not working as hard or enjoying yourself more to really find that out you know and it’s interesting it’s this culture it’s you didn’t work 60 hours why are you lazy and in other cultures that I’ve been doing particularly some in Europe they’re like you had to work 60 hours to get your job done why are you so incompetent it’s just a completely different way to take a look at it so that’s the first kind of thing to know and then the second part of your question is like how do things change well you get bigger things done you get things that are more aligned in your system done you don’t sacrifice your well-being from the accomplishment of your career your money but you don’t sacrifice your career and your money so that you can have better well-being the dichotomy starts to go away and you see that your work is a means to an end of your well-being and that the well-being is a means and an end to your work that they become the same thing they they stop being coming separate in your system and their the nervous system starts to relax you start doing things like oh I can move this lever here and I just have to wait for a couple months and everything will fall into place or I could put two weeks in and I will have it done in one month instead of two like you start to see these little leverage points you see that the world is more as a system it’s the way the artists talk about it is like carving artists they’ll talk about they see the work in the wood before they even get started it’s not about I have an idea of what I want it to look like and I’m going to carve it into the wood it’s like the wood is telling me what it wants to be carved into but it wants to be made into and that’s the experience of life in general is that you’re following it’s like the taoists talk about it as the way of water that it all water doesn’t require any effort to get to the ocean it just follows it just goes to the lowest point it is effortless in its way and it is more powerful than any sword try to fight water with the sword and you’ll know that’s the way that it starts to feel that life starts to feel so what you’re saying earlier is that a lot of this work is actually an undoing an undoing of the the limiting misconceptions of self so if you look at the martial arts they really subscribe a lot of the same Theory to what that what I’m talking about and it’s one of the ways is that you your whole body is relaxed until the moment of impact so if I was going to tense the whole time and hit you my punch is a lot less powerful than if I’m relaxed the whole time and then tense right before I hit you and it’s conserving your energy and making you stronger at the same time and making your movement have more and we somehow think walking around tents all the time is going to make us more effective and it just it’s like it’s just kind of ridiculous right and also keep us narrowed and focused too because when we’re if we’re walking around tents about all the things that we’re thinking about getting done we’re not asking the bigger questions that really help us find you know that one decision that can eliminate 100 decisions and so a lot of what you’re talking about this idea of breaking down these misconceptions of the self and trusting and leaning back into our inherent goodness letting go of the trying and just being in the doing a lot of that allows us our entire nervous system and our minds to relax and see outside of the boxes of any any of the shorter term tasks are thinking that we’re doing which really helps us to to really guide our lives on a grander scale and drive our businesses because we could spend several months working on go go go getting one particular project done pushing one feature that part way through the process we could have easily if we had a big enough view determined that the landscape had changed and that this is becoming a waste of effort yes it happens on fractal levels it happens on wow I’ve just spent 20 years creating a life that I don’t want and it happens on I just spent two months doing a project that my boss really didn’t give a if I did and I just spent the last two minutes worrying about something that I could have spent creating something right I think that’s one of the things that makes this so counter-intuitive is that it’s often it’s just much easier to think oh I’m almost there I just need to do this that and the other thing that are in line with my past 20 years of plan and that’ll get me there which is a much easier thing to experience for many than the recognition that maybe 20 years of my life has been spent further and further away from my authenticity right and getting me there is the Crux that’s the bit is that the idea that where you are right now isn’t good enough and you see this all the time in business where you see somebody who’s been successful talking to somebody who’s trying to be successful and the person who’s trying to be successful is like well you’re able to be so confident so being able to say yes or no to things so nonchalant about opportunities because you already have success and there’s some truth to that there’s no doubt about it but what I’ve seen is that the people who hold that position invite the success more than the people then they get it and what I notice in my business is that the more that I became picky the more that I decided it just wasn’t worth it if I didn’t do the thing that I wanted to do and I started rejecting clients or I started rejecting Investments or I started rejecting really good deals then all of a sudden more and more good deals more and more good clients started showing up and that comes when you aren’t in that place of fear that you need to prove something to be good enough to be loved it comes when you can trust your inherent goodness yeah I think that speaks a lot to this reciprocal nature of uh accomplishment versus personal development it seems that many of us think that accomplishment is going to give us the confidence and so if we just go for accomplishment first then we’ll have the confidence and what you’re saying is that we can build the confidence we can build you know not just a false sense of confidence but if we are confident in who we actually are then that will lead to the accomplishment which then can feedback because there is a little bit of feedback loop like you said once you’ve been successful doing something it definitely helps you yeah feel that way but we can actually work on that personal side directly and everything else is Downstream of there yeah I would I wouldn’t even call it confidence it’s like the closest word that our society knows to put on it because confidence kind of feels like or at least the way it’s interpreted is I’m good enough for it’s not really I’m good enough it’s just I know what I am I just know what I am I know what I like I know what I want and I am committed to being a full expression of that that’s the key thing and that knowing who you are and really finding out that’s what the like the real cool part about the whole journey is right because to do that you have to see that you’re inherently good and then to do that you have to see that you would hit what you inherently are and then that requires us to drop these stories and our ideas of ourselves and it requires us to just allow the ego to be loved into Oblivion and that’s and that transforms us into an artist yeah and the artist transforms us into that to see ourselves as everything allows us to have that energy when we move in the world instead of to see ourselves as this limited thing well thanks again for your time thank you a pleasure 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 feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com