Summary
Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler explore the concept of connection as the foundational principle underlying all of Joe’s work. Joe describes connection not as a particular emotional state but as a “meta state” — a state beyond states — that can coexist with sadness, anger, joy, or any other emotion. Connection is defined as being in touch with what is in the present moment, leading to expansion, more energy, and a sense of something bigger than yourself.
Joe shares three formative experiences that led him to prioritize connection as his life’s “bottom line”: observing a joyful, connected business leader named Case who was more effective precisely because of his relational approach; learning about the Harvard longitudinal study showing quality relationships as the number one predictor of health and happiness; and watching a CEO turn around a healthcare company by focusing maniacally on employee and customer connection rather than traditional restructuring.
The conversation explores how connection is always available and doesn’t depend on anyone else — you can maintain your sense of connection even when others try to break it. They discuss how chasing future happiness sacrifices present connection, how tension is essential to connection (like music needs tension), and how the practice of connection involves both doing (vulnerability, empathy, wonder, impartiality) and simply noticing what’s already there. Joe emphasizes that returning to connection after losing it is less about effort and more about recognizing it was never gone — like dropping a hot frying pan rather than strategizing how to put it down.
Key Concepts
- Connection is a meta state that can coexist with any emotion
- Connection as life’s most effective operating principle
- No one can break your connection without your agreement
- Making connection conditional on the future makes it impossible
- Tension is essential to connection, not opposed to it
- Returning to connection is noticing, not effort
Key Quotes
“You being in connection with yourself and others is not dependent on anybody else because being in connection with what is doesn’t require anybody else.”
“How much would I sell my ability to connect for? How much would you want to get paid for that?”
“I can be in connection when I’m sad, I can be in connection when I’m crying, I can be in connection when I’m angry… and I can be out of connection when I’m doing all those things.”
“If you start trying to get connected, if you’re trying to get to expanse, if you’re trying to get to movement, then you’re out of connection because you’re not being with what is.”
“I don’t want to listen to a symphony with no tension. I don’t want to watch a television show without tension… As soon as you feel tension, any of us feels tension, we want it to go away.”
“Once you’re back in it, once you recognize that it is something that is there all the time, then what do you do? The best thing is gratitude.”
Transcript
and the truth is that you being in connection with yourself and others is not dependent on anybody else because being in connection with what is doesn’t require anybody else 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 good afternoon hey Brett nice to see you again did we just we just got to hang out now we get to hang out again for this yeah we just did a three-hour coaching group call and it was really good yeah but a group what a group yeah super fun started out with an exploration on tension we walked through some sort of a process of connection and a lot of discussion around it and it seems like connection is really alive for our for our conversation right now and you’ve been wanting to do a podcast on connection for a couple weeks yeah so this seems like a perfect way to lead right into that you know it dawned on me I some time ago like two three weeks ago I’m like we have something called the connection course and we’ve never done a podcast on connection that can’t stand we got to do something about that so yeah there’s a moment in the call today where somebody had kind of a tension between like being in the curriculum or being in connection and the question that came up in my mind was well what is the difference between this curriculum and connection if at all it really seems to me that whatever it is that we’ve ever done in any of your courses has been aimed towards connection uh even identifying those ways that we think we’re in connection but is actually pulling us out of connection like caretaking for example and yeah and power versus empowerment all the all these different kind of things that get in the way of us in our life tend to also be all of them seem to point back to actually being in connection yeah I haven’t thought about it that way and it’s it feels very right to me yeah I mean I think the thing about connection is the question that comes to mind is what is it what is connection and because it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people and I think that it’s it’s one of those things that’s like a meta state or a like a a state that can Encompass all states um what I mean to say is that I can be in connection when I’m sad I can be in connection when I’m crying I can be in connection when I’m angry I can be in connection when I am uh having sex and I can be out of connection when I’m doing all those things and so though it’s a felt sense in the body it at the same time is not it’s not like a particular state and you can be connected with somebody when they are angry and when they are sad and there’s somebody out there I know is like what you can be connected with people when they’re angry yes you can I promise and so there’s just there’s a way of the way I think about connection is that it you’re being in touch with what is in the present this is what is I am in touch with that and that leads to an expansion um more energy and it puts you in touch with something bigger it’s it’s it’s literally seen Beyond feeling Beyond yourself so that you’re you’re in touch with something bigger and I think one of the things that people get confused about a lot and I hear this in the language it’s like oh I’m out of connection with this person because they blah blah blah and the truth is that you’re being in connection with yourself and others is not dependent on anybody else because being in connection with what is to be in contact with what is doesn’t require anybody else yeah an interesting Nuance there is that you can even be in connection with a sense of disconnection yes with that so I’ve seen this happen in groups often where everybody’s slowly kind of pretending to be in connection because they want to be in Connection in the group or in their team or in the family in their relationship and then the moment somebody says you know I feel out of connection right now all of a sudden a bunch of relief happens and then it’s actually like connection somebody had to recognize and then honor the fact that they are feeling out of connection and being in connection with that sense of disconnection Begins the you know the process of coming back into connection yeah we saw that this morning in our call and we saw that exact same thing happen yeah exactly you can even be in connection with the state of being out of connection which is you’re right mind bending right so so given that all of this work comes back down to on its root level connection what makes that so important to you what makes connection the thing that you I don’t know I could say specialize in in a sense what is what does it makes like Joe Hudson work yeah that makes it all focused on connection and not like you know there’s self-love in it there’s self trust there’s all these different pieces but just something about like connection seems to be your personal Focus yeah that’s a great question yeah even like when we do long courses the first principle is connection connection the name of the course is the connection course so it it makes sense that it’s that like that would become part of what I’m known for uh but what the way it happened is that I I very much like living my life principally I like saying Okay so instead of saying how do I make a particular situation that I’m in workout and strategize over it I say these are the principles I live by and if I live by them no matter what the situation is that that’s going to create the best outcome for me and so connection is the most effective principle that I have found it is the it is the principle that if that’s my bottom line if I’m a business and my bottom line is connection my life is the best life that I’ve experienced in all the experiments of having different bottom lines and so there’s I’d say three stories that I could tell about this that describe how I came to that or what made what made me see that so clearly the first one was K so I know you’ve heard me talk about in case I met him in a business context and I was in Venture Capital at the time and I was so serious I was like every I was trying to make everything work and I was so serious about everything and here comes case who constantly is laughing he’s doing this he’s not investing but his job is to fix companies and he’s doing the same serious work but he was doing it with like so much love and he was creating deep relationships everywhere he went he would go into farming communities where he was like stuck out like a sore thumb and and he’d be making friends with like conservative Farmers he’d be making friends with people in the city and some people didn’t like him no doubt but he was just constantly creating this connection around him and it was incredibly effective at his work and I just noticed that you can do the same work and you can be happy in it and you can feel uh capable in it and so I started saying oh well I want some of that happiness so I started working on my own sense of connection and connection with others and as that happened I became more effective I I was all of a sudden people were more there was less management it was more collaboration there was more trust there was more um understanding of one another I understood customers better I understood funders better I had better relationships with all of them I would you know all of it everything became easier as I started focusing on on connection and so that was the first big hit that got me yeah I’m I’m curious to go into and this might be a rabbit hole right now but what were the things that you had been focusing on and what was your attachment to those things that made it that you had to see all this evidence for Connection in order to follow it yeah that’s a oh that’s like that’s that’s a question um I was interested in results I was interested in improving my value I was interested in um showing people that I was worthy I think it and and making sure that I was there was also a huge amount of responsibility I felt very responsible for the money that I was that I was caretaking and that’s where my head was I wasn’t I wasn’t thinking that it was possible to enjoy myself and then that would make me more effective it just wasn’t it was just a limiting thought that I had had and it was until I could see an example of some there’s very few examples of somebody living in really deep Connection in the business world and then when you see it you’re like oh crap I can do that and so that was that was it okay so so you’ve got this example with case a person that you that you met and you got to see live out a life that was focused on connection and also be successful in business and it not just be some separate thing and then what else how else did you come to this yeah then I ran into a study um there’s a Harvard study that uh is the longest lasting study in the states I thought it was in the world but it’s not apparently there’s one in England that’s longer lasting but they’ve been studying uh it started off as a group of young men and they studied them through their lifetime and they just got all sorts of data and now they’re studying their offsprings and wives and stuff apparently and but they’re they’re studying that every all the facets of Life Health and every year they come in and do questions etc etc and what they discovered through this is that a happy successful life is one that’s in connection generally um it’s and so they’re measuring it as external connection they’re measuring it as uh social connection as quality of relationships are you in relationships that you that you uh care about that are that are invigorating which I think is a result of connection I don’t think you can be in those relationships if you’re not in connection with yourself people aren’t in inspiring loving supportive relationships if they’re if they don’t have a certain amount of self-connection as well and so this reduces you know heart disease it’s like makes you live longer this makes you happier this it doesn’t particularly say that you’re going to be wildly financially successful but it also says that you have a successful life um in whatever terms you want that success to look like and so it’s the number one indicator of like a long life and happiness is this these qualities of relationship this these high quality relationships yes it reminds me of some other uh some other studies that went into you know populations in certain parts of Italy in certain parts of some parts of the U.S and they compared a whole bunch of variables including diet exercise health and they found places in you know like France and Italy where they were eating poorly by certain standards I mean you could say that standards are different for different people but the factor that they found that was most important was that these were communities that were living in multi-generational households and having a lot of family around them and Community around them and that that was what they gleaned as the most important factor was the connection to a social fabric I’ve read the same stuff and what what I remember some of the studies showing that it wasn’t just because there’s multi-generational houses where they don’t live long right it’s the one where there’s these healthy relationships where people feel like a sense of belonging to the community and they a sense of connection again see it’s it’s not I’m just with the community it’s I feel in connection with the community yeah and there was even one in the United States I think it was like Pennsylvania they’re like why is everybody living so long here and they that’s the other thing that they found um yeah so so that was another one I was like okay so now I have some evidence and there’s a whole bunch of psychological evidence once you start looking for it like Aces and all sorts of things that point to this aces are adverse childhood effects and then experiences experiences thank you got me and then the final story was there’s a we had this Healthcare company that we were invested in and there was a woman who was a CEO and she was an excellent leader and she was brought into you know grow this company but it was really a turnaround she hadn’t particularly done a turnaround before and usually if you’re working with somebody who’s doing a turnaround and they’re successful at it one of the things they do is they just fire half or all the people and you know within the first six months and kind of reestablish the business and and she didn’t do that what she did was establish connection it was you know she had like surveys that went out weekly to people she was constantly like connecting with the customers connecting with the employees making sure that people are happy and you know I’d heard about that in things like Southwest Airlines where they back in the day they would talk about you know employees first customer second shareholders third if your employees feel that sense of connection with the company then the customers will be happy if the customers are happy then the shareholders will be happy and it’s how they you know formed in that business and but to see it at work and to see the turnaround that happened and the inspiration that the people had and how much everybody liked working everybody liked working with her and and she did she successfully like in two years brought the com you know 5x the company or something like that it was just a tremendous thing to watch her and it was her number she was more prioritized on that you know as a CEO what you notice is you have to focus on like two or three things and your the the thought process is I focus on these two or three things everything else will work around it and she was just maniacal on that sense of connection and feeling connected and being connected herself and it was just it was amazing to watch that turn around so those were the three things where I just was like oh okay so this this is a tool that works and it doesn’t just work as far as Effectiveness it works because it also creates happiness it creates Joy it creates a long life yeah and then there’s this realization happened which is like well how much would I sell my connection for like how much would I sell my ability to connect for like if you think about that question it’s ridiculously it’s like it first of all brends bends the brain a bit but like how much would you sell your ability to connect with people for or let’s say sell half of it so it’s not like you’d be zero but you just you could tell half of it how much would you pay how much would you want to get paid for that you mean to to give up it to to give up that that ability to connect to have somebody else walk away with it as a superpower and yes yeah exactly I want half of your ability to connect it’s gonna it’s gonna add on top of my capacity connect how much is that worth to you how much are you gonna charge me that is a mind-bending question because I mean I mean maybe assuming that I know that I could rebuild my sense of connection my ability to connect now then can’t no no no then hell no like no amount of money because with half the ability to connect and infinite money my life is still going to be half or some you know logarithm weird curve more out of connection than it doesn’t matter how much money I have and you could even replace that with other variables too like give you the hottest wife or something or the you know the the most power yes like well if I’m out of connection and I have a lot of power then that’s not good for anybody and definitely not for myself because the dictator is just as trapped yeah that’s right that’s everybody else yeah so that’s exactly and when I when I saw that I was like oh wow like this is this is the most priceless thing and what’s interesting to me is I will often ask people that I’m coaching long term like what’s the bottom line of your life what’s the bottom line what’s the thing that if you have that and it’s amazing how many people come to some version of connection if you really think about like okay how do I know at the end of my life I feel like you know if I have a lot of something at the end of my life what’s that something and and so we all know it inherently we all know it inherently or you just imagine the idea of you know heaven or like a lot of the way a lot of religions imagine heaven or just people would imagine well what would it what would you like if I got everything that I ever wanted and you know to be like maybe some golden streets and stuff but it’d basically just be my family and friends surrounding me and being in Harmony and peace and in connection and so this really points to what you were just saying with a lot of the people that you’ve that you’ve asked this question of that they sent the responses tend to be some intermediate need or want that underlies all underlying all of it is connection that’s right yeah they’ll they it takes them a while to follow the train to the station but eventually yeah they’re like oh yeah it’s some version of connection I wonder if that’d be true for all social mammals I wonder well yeah all social mammals yeah yeah I wonder social being the key yeah the key word right yeah and it’s also like if you want to work in a team it’s the number one thing as well right so it’s like a team that doesn’t feel connected to one another doesn’t have that sense of connection is not going to perform as well they’re going to have trust issues right you have to have the trust for the connection people who feel deeply connected have the trust and it’s it they’re going to be most effective so all of it all of it it just it all seemed to come down to that and it’s this thing that you can feel anytime anywhere it’s really just a noticing a choice that you’re making yeah so if if all this boils down to connection uh and not even just your work but the way that we’re talking about you know the core human need that makes it for a really simple Principle as you mentioned being the first principle connection it’s simple enough you might as well repeat it three times and say connection connection I I actually repeat it three times because you start with connection you stay focused on connection you end in connection so it’s a principle means that for me it means you have to like can I act on it and so it’s like oh things aren’t going well I focus on connection if things aren’t going well with my with my customers I focus on connection if things aren’t going well with my marriage I focus on connection I start my interaction with connection I I end my interactions with connection so that’s why I have it as three times which makes for a really good heuristic too because in any moment you can be like am I optimizing for being right or am I optimizing for connection am I trying to convince somebody or am I trying to connect with them am I trying to change myself or am I trying to be in connection with myself yes yeah that’s it okay so let’s assume our audience is somewhat sold and they’re like okay okay connection connection whatever I I say to our I say to our audience don’t be sold do not be sold test it test it go live your life and every time you have a choice it’s hard choose connection and see what the hell happens don’t don’t trust me do it okay great how do I do that how do we how do we get into connection what is what does that look like walking around don’t ask me hard questions okay go ahead sorry so how do you do that uh so that’s the weirdest thing is connection is almost the opposite of doing right it is it’s more of a sense of being I think there’s lots of ways to be in Connection in the course and the connection course we talk about View and those are hacks like if I’m vulnerable it puts me into a deeper sense of connection if I’m impartial if I can be with what is that gives me a deeper sense connection if I can be with you in empathy it gives me a deeper sense of connection or myself and empathy Wonder oh those things all help us get into connection um so there’s those kinds of hacks that you can use and there’s also just in noticing that you’re always connected there’s never been a moment in your life where you’re not connected right like you depend on so much to survive you every thought that you’ve had is connected to some other part of the world influencing you um from the amount of Omega-3 so to just there’s also just a noticing that can happen and and that’s how it works in my system it’s just there’s a choice in that moment oh and then interact and so that’s my internal state of connection my external state of connection view works really well that vulnerability and partiality empathy and wonder and also it’s there’s often a question of what is it that I if I was in that shoe that person’s shoes how is it that I would want to be interacted with and and the question is how do I actually most deeply want to interact with that person and usually if you mind those two um Wells they become the same well you’ll start to see that the thing that I that I how I want to be how I would want to be treated and what is my truth they they if you get down far enough it’ll you’ll you’ll get to the same thing meaning specifically like I want the person to stop being an and and they want and and if I were them I would want me to just walk away eventually I’m gonna get down to oh I’m gonna say I’m hurt and I’m gonna be vulnerable and they want to actually see that I care about them enough to be able to do that so eventually you get down there yeah which is that’s an interesting point here because often we we project that someone else if we were in their shoes and we imagine what they would want if we were them or what we’d want if we were them we’ll project what we would actually want which might actually be some form of disempowerment or caretaking or something that we we’ve conflated with connection or conflated with love and so what you’re speaking to is getting asymptotically closer and closer and closer to the Core of what the actual connection is which might not be stopping being an it might be owning I would love that person to own their truth with me or I would if I was this person I would want to hear what I have to what I have to say but in a way that is in connection and loving and owning my own yeah that’s right yeah there’s a triangulation piece there which is not in the bad sense not in the psychological triangulation um sense of the word but the there’s a triangulation piece that is the sufis had this great thing about the Golden Rule and they would say um do unto others as you would have them do unto you I hope that person’s not suicidal because if they’re suicidal then they’re going to kill everybody that’s the thought process and so there’s a triangulation between do unto others and as you would like others to do unto you and um what is my deepest truth what is what is the thing that I feel most most deeply in my own want or my own truth so how do you know if you’re in connection with this truth yeah so there is a visceral feeling that tells you when you have a sense of connection right there’s um and this is the weird part is that it’s like I said a state that is beyond States if I if you close your eyes right now and you feel a moment that you are sad and disconnected and sad and connected you can feel a moment when you were working doing working at your computer and you felt connected and working at your computer and felt disconnected that’s how you know this reminds me of the way that you talk about meditation where you can be meditating and enjoy it and being in connection with yourself or you can do meditating and torturing yourself and there’s a there’s a difference if you if you sit down to meditate there’s a way that it can be discomfort discomfort can arise because there’s just discomfort in your system and now you’re connecting to it and you’re allowing it to be felt and it moves and that’s how you tell I guess if its connection is that it moves without you having to move it yeah yeah it moves and and there’s a feeling of expanse and there’s a feeling of like Beyond yourself that comes along with it and then if you try to get there if you’re trying to get connected if you’re trying to get to expanse if you’re trying to get to movement then you’re out of connection because you’re not being with what is you’re trying to get it there and this is part of like that practice of connection there’s a practice to it and there’s also a so on one level connection is always there and there’s no practice required on another level there is this practice to it yeah I think this this ties in a lot to the work that we do with the voice in the head and the internal conflict of when there’s a part of us that we feel in conflict with getting into connection with it is actually in some sense tracing that part’s connection back to our self like oh the part of me that’s a perfectionist and judging me how is it actually trying to take care of me and love me and getting into connection with that part and seeing them connecting back to the same Source right so if I’m thinking about it in a group context like we we have a group of people in this coaching thing that we’re doing and and to me how deep real connection is built and constantly goes deeper and deeper and deeper is the following we have some sort of tension we allow that attention that tension to be there we embrace the difficulty in that we work through it we get back to love we get back to a sense of safety love and then repeat and so the more that you go through adversity together and get back to some way of feeling connected and loving and supportive of one another again the more that connection happens in a group and you can see this in soldiers who have been through really really tough things and have trusted each other deeply you can see that sense of connection build and it’ll stay for a lifetime similarly with teams and where they’ve gone through really tough stuff and they’ve made it through they feel like this deep sense of connection it’s no different internally internally if I I have the different parts of myself if I embrace them if I embrace the the friction between that from my fear the part of myself that’s scared or the part of myself that’s angry or the part of myself that’s greedy if I can be in that tension Embrace that intensity and get back to connection get back to love get back to supporting the different parts of myself supporting I become just a more connected being over time yeah it seems very importantly related to the the podcast that we did on embracing intensity you know rather than creating intensity because I think it could be possible to interpret what you’re saying as oh yeah you know what my team and I need right now is to go through something really hard together so you know like let’s go through like green hell like the military does and you know that does create really cohesive teams and also you know like I had in my childhood a lot of times where like I was taught to build character and then I carried from that a habit of putting myself through to build character right when in reality when one I think one of the nuances in the the call that we had this morning was that the tension will arise the tension will already be there and what I notice you doing in this work is just allowing the tension to be there you’re not trying to drag it up you’re not poking to bring it up unless it’s unless it’s like right there at the surface already and I will say that being able to be in the tension without wanting it to go away so it’s just like we were saying on the call this morning there’s um it’s like if you were to listen a symphony with no connection it I mean sorry with no tension you’d be like I don’t want to listen listen I don’t want to watch a television show without tension I don’t want to have a course where there’s no tension it just takes all the life out of it and as soon as you feel tension any of us feels tension we want it to go away so it’s this really interesting phenomenon that we wanted on the long run but we don’t want it on the short term and so one of the Great Tricks of connection is to be able to be with tension in a connected way how do I how do I have that tension and still feel deeply connected with myself yeah so what makes it that we don’t focus on connection as if it’s this effective and it’s this baked into our mammalian nervous system what makes it that we lose the plot so frequently and end up going in some direction orthogonal to connection we get the idea that our happiness is in the future I think mostly based out of fear or our demises in the future but we get focused on the future potentially the past um but mostly I think it’s the future we’re out there thinking okay I can get happiness if I do X Y and Z or I can get connected if I do X Y and Z if I’m famous then everybody will love me if I have money then I will feel safe um and so we’re constantly sacrificing the connection of the moment for the idea that we’re going to have something in the future rather than thinking oh if I’m connected in the present people are going to want to be around me want to support me and everything I’m going to want to achieve is going to happen easier my accomplishments are going to happen easier because I have a community of support and so we’re constantly giving up out of fear sometimes and you can be connected with your fear which changes the way fear is but it through that kind of disconnected fear through that o in the future then we lose track of connection it’s it can’t be that simple yeah that’s interesting so something that I pulled from that is like if you if you’re holding your connection with yourself hostage or making it conditional over something happening in the future then you can never actually have it that’s right yeah carrot on a stick you can’t be connected with yourself if it’s dependent on something that is not actually present with you right now already Yes uh interesting right and and you see people do this all the time I’ll I can I’ll be there when I quit smoking I’ll be there when I have the money I’ll be there when so and so loves me I’ll be there when yeah you’re there right now yeah even if it means being there with the fear of your future happening or not happening or yes you’re past following you or all the all the things yeah you see it all the time like especially in my line of work there’s you know people get everything that they wanted and they’re still miserable you see it all the time they had this idea of what was going to get them the thing they did 20 years of schooling and then another 20 years of of career to have everything the checklist the the husband the money the power the notoriety the everything in there like miserable yeah ironically I’ve I’ve found myself sometimes to be more miserable the more of what I think I want that I have and then less miserable more engaged and more connected when I have less of what I want and I’m just living moment to moment because that’s all that’s available to me you know like the times that I was like traveling through Africa and like no money and didn’t know where my next you know whatever was going to come from were actually some of the like golden moments of my life yes that’s right yeah there was a great billboard in La that spoke to this at some point they they were basically saying why is it that our best memories are when we’re when we’re young and without money it was a bank it was a bank one and and speaking to that same thing it’s like there’s a there’s a way in which when we start one of the ways to get out of out of connection like if you think about this time of year 20 there’s a steep sense of connection with with life with oh my gosh like food and the people around you and and then if you’re in some sort of thing where you’re constantly looking at the future it’s very hard to feel that sense of connection you can do it you can look in the future and feel that sense of connection but it takes some doing yeah so another another thing that’s interesting here is that the way that we’ve been talking about connection is that it’s all internal it’s something that is within your own agency your own internal locus of control and I think that a lot of times when people think about connection that’s sort of a two-way street takes two to tango and some might imagine that if someone wants to break connection with you you can’t stop that and then the connection is lost and then that impacts you and you’re like no I lost this connection so I can’t be as happy unless in the future I get it back and then the conditional thing begins again yes okay there’s two parts to that the first one is that there’s the locus of control being yourself that’s true to a point and then very not true to a point and the that not true to the point is where it’s not where it’s dependent on somebody else but you can see that it’s a gift like there’s a deeper level of connection that occurs when their surrender in you and so to think that you’re in the the locus of control often uh makes it so that so that you forget that you’re here by the grace of God is a way to say it but that that you’re here by the grace of the laws of physics and the universe and nature and existence yeah and that can even separate you from your reality backhand as well that’s true and putting yourself in the center of control can separate you from your reality as well so what’s interesting is all and almost anything those thoughts and almost anything can both put you out of connection and put you into connection depending on how you approach it and the thing that you’re saying is that that’s also very true is that you can’t break connection with me I have to agree to it I have to agree to it you can say it just happened to me recently um had somebody who I had been client who just did something that hurt and and and we found out intentionally you know when we talked about it you know she did it to hurt me because whatever the love was scary the thing that was happening was scary for her and the like it reminded her too much of like love that she felt where she got abused and so it was like she was having this trauma response and so she did this thing and I was like I know you know that you’re hurting me I know you’re I know you know that and I’m just here to tell you at some point I express a Manger I expressed sadness I express chart and at some point I said I’m not going to let you stop me from feeling connected and love for you I’m not going to do that because that hurts me so you can you’re doing all this stuff that’s fine and I’m not gonna I’m not gonna stop loving you I’m gonna stop doing business with you because that I’m not I’m not gonna get hurt I’m not going to allow that damage to be done again but I’m not going to stop loving you and you know that was a huge event for her now sometimes people are gone by the time you can’t you can’t say that to them they’ve just decided we’re out of here yeah I could imagine even in like romantic context that that might even sound a little stalkery like okay yeah you can leave me but you can’t stop me from loving you I’ll be loving you from over here just you know every time you think about me you remember that I’m over here loving you if you say it like that if you say it like that that is kind of creepy yeah but I mean that’s that’s also the way some people might take this you know if that if that’s the energy that’s true yeah and yes they might they’re gonna take your your connection in lots of different ways there’s going to be lots of projection onto it some some people will think it’s needy I’m sure and some people will think it’s um stalkery or whatever but the but that’s their reaction to to being you know their own presence and their own love it’s their own sense of connection because what you’ll notice is that any person has kind of the capacity to get to a certain level of connection and then that’s kind of there okay now it’s getting more intense now I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna lift up I’m gonna go get into the phone I’m gonna go watch television I’m gonna go do heroin whatever it is there’s some kind of some level of it that is within their normal range and then they’re going to react to it um and that’s why it can’t depend on anybody else it’s really about and it can be all very silent for this particular case it was really important for me to say it because of the relationship that we had but there’s other cases I’m in a grocery store I see somebody I feel like a deep sense of connection I don’t have to say anything about it you know I often walk around the world feeling like a tremendous amount of love for people I don’t know and I’m not like walking around going I love you I love you I love you it’s not happening yeah it’s like meta meditation nobody nobody in the world Kim Jong-un can’t stop you from doing a meta meditation in which you are sending love to all beings and that’s your own internal experience and that is beneficial for you and has an impact on all those that you have contact with in some sense due to the impact on your Consciousness and nobody can stop you from doing it and you’re not crossing any boundaries right I mean it’s a it’s kind of that’s a part of all religion I mean that’s a very Christian ideal too right it’s like loving Love Thy Neighbor there is a freedom to it like we somehow think that freedom comes from uh having a set of ideas that were right that that are right and that that we have that we never have to leave and what I’ve noticed is the truth to Freedom is far more about being able to feel and love everything feel and be connected to everything which would include falling out of connection in the most ungraceful ways so yes let’s say let’s say somebody leaves me I drop out of connection with them I leave in a rage I go do the heroine I get a bunch of self-criticism and yes the spiral how do you I mean how do you get back into connection from there and I know I’m walking into a trap with that question with you yeah I don’t so this is kind of where Grace and surrender come into play meaning that um on some level it’s not until you think about that I want to be back in connection not until connection presents itself that you remember that you’re even able to so if you’re completely non-present there’s no way but as soon as you think oh I could be present again then presence has already occurred then then connection has already occurred as soon as you think oh I want to be in connection so there’s a way in which connection is always there and it’s always available and If you start trying to get it you push it away and and so that question I always answer it with the how do you drop a hot frying pan version some version of how do you drop a hot frying pan it’s it’s there are things that you can do you can meditate you can get in your body you can exercise you can eat healthy foods you can’t and those all will help you know they’ll all point to it for you you can do meta meditation you can pray you can do community acts of service there are a thousand things you can do and on some level you also need to see that it’s always there and always available because the effort takes you away from it so then once you’re once you’re back in it once you recognize that it is something that is there all the time then what do you do then the best thing is gratitude is just to be thankful for it that’s the easiest thing is to be even right now if you feel into this moment you can feel your connection it’s always there and you can be grateful for it easy peasy lemon squeezy yeah that was my as a kindergarten teacher for my daughters used to always say easy peasy lemon squeezy this kind of reminds me of a question that I’ve heard posed that it was like a scientist some University students to just throughout the day ask themselves am I conscious and then they did some studies on them after they had that practice it was just like asking asking yourself a question increased the sense of feeling conscious in the moment or being aware and less on autopilot and it sounds very similar here where it’s just oh am I noticing that connection is a thing and when you once you’ve noticed it rather than trying to judge it and try to figure out how you can improve it or what’s wrong with it or what’s missing just noticing oh there’s my desire for connection and then feel gratitude for it and let that deepen it and then see what happens from there yeah even the desire for connection is a form of connection beautifully said yeah beautiful awesome Brett what what a pleasure what a pleasure again for both both of our times together today yeah I love this one yeah me too all right all right talk to you soon see ya 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