Summary
In this interview episode of the Art of Accomplishment podcast, Brett Kistler interviews Joe Hudson about his relationship with safety and fear, drawing on Joe’s experiences as a base jumper, paraglider, and CEO. Joe argues that safety is fundamentally an illusion—what we call “safe” is really just feeling comfortable and convinced we can navigate our environment.
Joe describes how he prepared for base jumping by meditating on worst-case outcomes—imagining broken legs, spinal injuries, even death—and discovering he could find meaning in any scenario. This “seeing through” consequences allowed him to jump with genuine presence rather than manufactured comfort. He distinguishes between grounded excitement (embodied readiness with openness to red flags) and ungrounded excitement (enthusiasm covering up unacknowledged anxiety), noting that the same signal applies to business decisions.
The conversation explores how the pursuit of safety can actually disconnect us from reality. Joe shares a wingsuit story where an intrusive thought about his girlfriend receiving a death notification caused him to panic and bail. He draws parallels to boardrooms where unwillingness to feel through consequences leads to comfortable narratives rather than clear seeing. The episode culminates in the slackline metaphor: all the instability on the line comes from the person, not the line itself—and learning to “fall” is what builds genuine internal security.
Key Concepts
- Safety is an illusion—it means feeling comfortable, not being objectively safe
- Grounded excitement signals readiness; ungrounded excitement covers anxiety
- The pursuit of safety can disconnect you from reality
- Internal security comes from learning to fall, not avoiding falls
- Seeing through worst-case consequences creates freedom to act
Key Quotes
“Safety is an illusion. Nothing is safe. We will call something safe if we feel comfortable, if we feel like we can be in flow, if we feel like we are capable of navigating the environment.”
“The other side of the coin of fear is excitement. If I’m feeling a grounded level of excitement and anticipation and I feel like my body is amped in such a way that is metabolically prepared for what I’m about to do and I feel that I’m in flow… and I’m also not just reaching that state because I’m putting on the blinders.”
“Safety can become an idea that we use to stop seeing reality so that we feel comfortable.”
“The line is not insecure at all. The line is just perfectly stable. The only insecurity that’s being brought into the system is what you’re bringing to it.”
“The more internal security you develop… the less you need any specific external conditions to be any certain way and the more you’ll be able to remain in flow through whatever conditions end up occurring.”
“Learning to be secure is learning to fall.”
Transcript
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 hey Brett hey hey hey I want to do something different today I want to ask you questions I want to interview you and the the reason I want to interview you is because you’re just your understanding of safety and fear I think is so unique given both like being a CEO of a company and um and doing Air Sports losing friends um a lot of friends in Air Sports that I wanted to kind of go into your story of how you’ve process safety and fear um and I just think there’s a lot to learn there for everybody and also I think it’d just be nice for everybody to know like a little bit more about you and your story so I was hoping that we could I could just interview you on on safety and fear yeah let’s do it we were just uh we were just recording the second limiting beliefs episode just before this and one of the things that we were talking about was this was this thing around safety where it’s we’re afraid to try on different beliefs or see through our beliefs and explore different ways of being because we haven’t proven that it’s safe and this is something that’s been really really big in my life for a very long time and specifically in the world of base jumping and paragliding and just Air Sports where you know the the attachment to safety really shows up um and yeah so I’d love to get into that a little bit more yeah so I just had a curiosity so what does safety mean to you like what like that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people and I’m wondering what it means to you yeah I mean safety first of all safety is an illusion nothing nothing is safe it’s more of a it’s we will call something safe if we feel comfortable if we feel like we can be in flow if we feel like we are capable of navigating the environment navigating the jump we’re about to do navigating building a company navigating our relationship if we feel like we are going to survive it or the what we care about is going to survive um yeah so well when did you come to that conclusion like how did how did you get there how did you get that’s a pretty sophisticated thought process right which is like safety just means that I’m convinced I’m comfortable right basically and and how did you get there because I’m sure that that wasn’t the way you were born so how did that happen well let’s let’s kind of go back to when when I started base jumping and when I started when I started jumping uh you know reading reading all the limited literature that there was at the time and talking to people they were like okay this is a very dangerous sport there’s nothing you can do to make it safe you can make it less dangerous um but ultimately there’s a very real risk that you’ll die there’s a very real risk that you’ll have in major injuries that you’ll spend years recovering from and maybe never fully and that happens all the time to people and it’s going to happen to some of your friends if you’re in the sport for long enough um and it might be you and you’re the friend that people are talking about and so so kind of getting into that is like okay well I I still feel really drawn into this Sport and so I I spent a lot of time sort of meditating on that and I’d find myself just kind of sitting and imagining what it would be like if I broke my legs and you know injured my spine and kind of did the seeing through seeing through that negative outcome seeing through that consequence and being like well if if that happened what would what would be left would I be would I be somebody who’s in a wheelchair and then dedicating my life to studying neuroscience and solving you know spinal cord injuries or would I be somebody who just gives up and it’s like well I I feel like I’d want to be the person who’d continue doing something continue I feel like I could continue to find meaning sorry go ahead yeah I guess yeah with that without a that was seeing through those things was enough for me to feel safe going into the activity which was to say that I felt comfortable that even if something happened to me uh there would still be like I would be okay with that outcome um because the exploration was worth it did you ever did you ever just think I’m like there’s something wrong like I’m crazy there’s something wrong with me like why would I do something like that did those thoughts ever happen oh yeah all the time yeah yeah yeah and yeah and sometimes I got off on it a little bit you know like oh yeah I’m crazy I’m one of those crazy ones yeah whatever right yeah yeah yeah I can even see the perfect reading you yeah yeah exactly hold my beer yeah and so so that’s interesting so the and so what because what you’re saying is what to some degree what you’re saying here is that like you got comfortable with it and therefore it felt safe but the comfort in it is um is very um it’s on some level it’s very uh individualistic right the the what you could find comfortable when somebody else finds comfortable could be very different things but also Comfort is based to some degree on what’s happened in your past and the way that you gain Comfort here was looking towards your future which is interesting and it does an interesting thing to to note yeah yeah it’s looking at looking at the possible Futures and saying hey is this is this something that I could be comfortable with um and and like we talked about in limiting beliefs it wasn’t so that I would go ahead and get myself injured and be in a wheelchair it was that so I could explore life feeling unconstricted and unconstrained yeah and one thing that I learned about safety is that it can become safety can become an idea that we use to stop seeing reality so that we feel comfortable and that can be helpful for us you know like the first time you’re making a base jump there’s certain things that you need to pay attention to and there’s also certain things that just might be overwhelming if you’re considering them so you focus on the task you focus on the training you focus on what you’re about to do and you try not to think too much about your mother crying when you die because that might just be something that takes you out of the flow I’ve had moments where there was there was there was one jump that I did um in Europe where I jumped my wingsuit and I was flying down a mountain and there was a section where if you were flying at a at a good enough glide ratio you could then fly over another mountain and then have like a whole another several thousand feet of of flight and I found myself like just kind of I was gonna make it I thought I was gonna make it and I was pretty sure I was gonna make it and it’s just like it flashed through my head of this like I I had this imagining of my my girlfriend at the time getting a phone call and I like that all of a sudden took me out of it I was like I’m not gonna make it I like kind of panic pulled my parachute ended up Landing in some uh someone’s backyard somewhere in the middle of France and like I bailed and I survived and I also did not do it very gracefully like right I let I let in information that disregulated me and yeah constriction occurred and then I had to bail um so yeah safety safety like that that kind of just brings it back to this point where like I’ve learned safety is an idea that we use to feel safe but there’s it it can bring us into contact with reality and it can take us out of contact with reality right like if I’m if I’m standing on an exit point and I want to feel safe so that I jump like let’s say that I really want to feel safe and make this jump because I’m with a group of people and I don’t want them to have to climb down this mountain with me that we just climbed up and I don’t want them to have to wait by the car while I climb down so I’m more afraid of disappointing people and not being seen than I am of the jump then I might just dissociate myself from some of the risks of the jump so that I reach this point where I’m like aha okay I’m safe right right yeah so on that for a second what how so I would assume it’s really important when you’re on when you’re on that the base that you’re jumping off of so to speak that you know which one you’re doing like it how do you know when you are using the idea of safety to detach from reality and when do you know when you’re using that sense of safety to be more in contact with your reality because it seems like with base jumping more in contact with reality is good yeah In This Moment is good yeah and that’s how do you how do you distinguish yeah that’s a good question um a lot something that we’ve said a lot in the in the sport and this comes from other places too is that the the other side of the coin of fear is excitement and if I’m if I’m feeling a grounded level of excitement and anticipation and I feel like my body is amped in such a way that is like metabolically prepared for what I’m about to do and I feel that I’m in flow and I feel like flow is accessible to me yeah and I’m also continuing I’m not just reaching that state because I’m closing putting on the blinders I’m reaching that state because I’m welcoming any red flags that there might be and yeah just you’re not to be found Everything feels right so there’s a certain kind of grounded excitement that occurs there it also sounds like if you notice any defensiveness in your system that’s a red flag yeah yeah yeah defensiveness in the system or just what what makes me not want to talk about the wind conditions over that Ridge over there like yes what’s making me focus on like what’s making me focus on that it’s a nice bright sunny day and not on that I’m really tired and we were out late partying last night and I’m you know I’m not really feeling on it right now is it well the amazing thing is is this is such a this is such a metaphor for business right it’s like the things that we don’t talk about which are usually get us in trouble though they’re kind of in the side of our mind like something’s not happening right right there but let’s not pay attention to it yeah yeah you imagine a in a boardroom once everybody just if there’s a if there’s a risk and you’re assessing the risk and nobody in the room is willing to actually feel through the consequence of yeah taking you know taking a wrong action in that risk then you might or or the consequence of like the action you may have to take may be more difficult you may not want to lay people off you may not want to lay off somebody you have a personal attachment or relationship to and since you’re not willing to look at that you’re far more likely to be like oh here’s a story about how it’s safe yeah you know we’re actually going to be fine because XYZ rather than really seeing the the deeper reality yeah um so yeah this is this is a something that just has a it’s been a conversation around the base jumping Community for a long time of people people will start to identify as like Oh I’m a safe jumper that person’s not a safe jumper or this is a safe kind of jump and that’s not a safe kind of Jumper is this jump safe for a beginner jumper like me or like the answer is no to all of those things but but the answer is like well what are the risks and how how do you as an organism interact with your environment given those conditions and do you have the experience does your body have the experience does your body when you’re standing on the edge of this cliff and you’re about to jump does your body have enough history of similar situations that it’s like yeah we got this I know what to do it’s like jumping into a swimming pool yeah and if not so then that shows up in in a somatic experience and you’d ask like what it feels like and it spoke about grounded excitement and another one is ungrounded excitement you know if if you’re really excited but there’s like that excitement is sort of covering up a little bit of anxiety and you’re not letting that anxiety move through and integrate into your excitement then you’re going to find yourself a little bit bouncy yeah um and then there’s another another way that can look is just straight anxiety yeah and by the way that can look is anxiety funneling through to anger you know sometimes people get angry at an exit point if they’re if they’re scared or they’ll they’ll find someone else to be kind of like though like triple gear check someone else and like be super sure that you know the the least experienced jumper on the the load is safe gotcha all right yeah there’s all there’s all kinds of ways that it comes out but if if you’re they’re all a form of not being grounded in yourself and you’re feeling feeling your body and how much is this applied to your business like you’re in a room with your with the people running your business with you how much does that feel like sitting at a entry point how how much are you monitoring your body the same way how much are you yeah interesting interestingly my business is fully remote so sitting in a room is a is an experience that I rarely get with my team yeah um so a lot a lot of my a lot of my time with my business is actually spent sitting with myself and deciding what to do next which might be calling a meeting it might be uh I might be doing some strategy it might be just getting some work done and if I’m with it if I’m with a team and we’re talking um yeah that’s that it’s the same thing um I find that for myself one way that I will leave the present moment leave my Leave myself will be to find something to get excited about like oh yeah the numbers are scary the economy just tanked everything’s a mess and look at all this opportunity out there right and that’s a looking at the opportunity is a wonderful thing to do and clinging to the opportunity grasping for it there’s a there’s a difference there’s a different feeling in that yeah not grounded and not grounded excitement is what yeah it’s here it sounds like yeah yeah yeah and so thank you for the same signal okay that that informs whether I’m gonna jump or not jumper how I’m gonna jump yeah yeah yeah and it really relates back to something that we’ve we’ve talked about before which is it’s it’s about the inner security the more dependent you are on external security then the more internally insecure you’re gonna feel yeah uh for example if it’s you know if it’s if it’s something about external conditions and um let me let me find the real metaphor there yeah so so let’s say I’m let’s say I’m standing on a cliff and I’m about to jump and there’s something you know something that needs to happen performance wise something that I need to execute and I imagine jumping and I’m visualizing this and I might visualize myself throwing the wrong axis of rotation like I might visualize myself failing to get my wingsuit flying I might visualize myself failing to outfly a certain ledge and having like allowing myself to feel those possible outcomes yeah as I’m preparing to do something allowing myself to feel what it would be like to have that occur and recover from it have that occur and not recover from it have that occur and have that last oh moment before impact yeah and just having all of that like all of that possibility moving through my body and integrating is something that allows me to when I actually make the jump if something goes a little bit awry I know like my my body knows what to do an example is walking on a walking on a slack line if you guys if you if anyone listening to this has ever seen people walk a slack line it’s like this uh one inch piece of webbing that can be tied between two trees or it can be you know set up between two Cliffs uh like a thousand feet in the air and one of the things that I love to say about learning to Slackline is that it’s actually the art of learning to fall off when you first stand on the thing you feel so insecure your your legs just wiggle and shudder and you fall right off and you’re like how am I ever going to be able to walk this thing and then I I like to tell people like you the line is not insecure at all the line is just perfectly stable the only insecurity that’s being brought into the system is what you’re bringing to it it’s your muscles over correcting it’s your top down trying to think your way through it and initially yeah you’re gonna fall but the more the more you do it the more internal stability you develop and then the less over correcting your legs need to do and then you find that the balance is just a natural there’s just a natural point of balance on the line the line wants to balance your body wants to balance and it will just do it and that’s when you start getting to the point where you can walk across you know a mile long lines I haven’t done that as several of my friends have and people just seeing they’re like this is amazing how do you do it and it’s like that’s a really good metaphor for the internal security that yeah it’s interesting yeah go ahead go ahead no the more yeah just the more the more internal security you develop and this can occur in physical reality could occur in your social reality or business the more secure in yourself you are the less you need any any specific external conditions to be any certain way and the more you’ll be able to remain in flow through whatever conditions end up occurring yeah so what’s interesting to me is that somebody listening to this can be like okay I have to learn to be balanced so that I can be secure which is in itself and over correction and a lack of security and and they might have missed the point of what you’re saying here which is learning learning to be secure is learning to fall and yeah what is like a real story in Slackline obviously you’ve Fallen a million times but what’s a real story of it like in business or in relationships or in um even in in base jumping where a fall has really taught you how to be secure yeah let me think about that one for a moment um yeah okay um yeah in 2009 I was in South Africa and I had this was sort of a long journey I had broken my arms skiing in Utah and then continued to go on an Africa trip anyway even though I had a broken arm I was in Zambia with a friend um and then I re-broke the arm doing some like Refugee smuggling on motorcycles and having a crash and then I got the news that my dad had lost his job and he lost his health insurance and I had like a couple hundred bucks and I was doing some freelance work online web work that wasn’t particularly consistent um and so I had like a couple hundred bucks and a broken arm and no health insurance and uh I was like okay what am I gonna do so I went to South Africa um took a took a bus down to Cape Town they’ve got good medical care there and I was like I’m just going to figure things out from South Africa and get some get some Medical Care and so I did that for a while and um I I kind of sank into the city I really loved it I was there for about a month or so and then I went to go check my bank account uh pull out some money from the ATM and it was empty I was like what and I I looked and the exchange rate had actually halved almost in like the month or two that I had been there and I hadn’t checked it and so I was suddenly out of money and I didn’t know where my next money was coming from and I was in this foreign country and luckily I’d already paid my rent for like for that week so I had a place to stay and I was just like okay well I’ve got like nothing I have nobody no idea what I’m gonna do so I just started walking around to different like bars and businesses on uh it was called Long Street which is uh the main kind of thoroughfare in Cape Town and I just started writing down my name and phone number on napkins and I walked into businesses and I was like hey I’m a web developer I mean like y’all’s websites look like they could use a little bit of work I’d love to you know help you out and um I ended up getting one phone call from that and it didn’t turn out to be the best client but they’re just like that was a process where I was like I was out of money out of everything and and I still refer to that moment now where like you know what if I actually lost fully everything it would it would suck I there’s a lot there’s a lot that I love and that I’m attached to about like material possessions and you know access to financial resources that I’ve had in my life and I also know that I can go back and just write down my name on name and phone number on napkins and do do something from absolute scratch in a brand new place in a brand new environment all over again yeah and yeah that’s where I say like walking the slack line you end up learning some internal stability that like you you build this experience over the course of your life yeah and like it’s true that like a a newborn baby doesn’t have like their their body has a biological stability it has instincts and it’s also not going to successfully take care of itself and then over time we do we do get our feet under us and this is one of the things where the the process of letting go of limiting beliefs our identity lags behind our actual growth and the more the more that we see that the more that we see that there actually has always been an internal security and an internal stability and that’s the kind of internal stability that might make us be like hey let me try something new like walking a slackliner starting a business and often often something happens that that we forget that we have that innate innate security and stability that we have the capacity to assess reality wherever we’re at and take steps awesome well thanks for sharing a bit of your life with us I really appreciate it and I love your perspective on safety is really wonderful thanks for sharing everything yeah thank you thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you 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