Summary
Joe and Brett explore everything someone needs to know about embarking on a personal transformative journey. Joe frames the entire discussion around one central principle: enjoyment isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the most effective orientation for transformation. The question isn’t “how do I do the things I enjoy?” but “how do I enjoy the things I’m doing?”
They break the journey into four parts: conditions for transformation (safety, trust, seeing beyond intellect, vulnerability, full responsibility), approach/principles (loving accountability, embrace intensity, everything is iteration, curiosity, connection), what to expect (pendulation, corkscrew development, unclear-to-clear-to-actionable progression, three brains limiting each other), and impediments (shoulds vs. wants, resisting resistance, unhelpful skepticism, future/past living, the should-do-fail-shame cycle). Joe emphasizes that wanting is the natural engine of transformation while shoulds slow it down, and that resistance to resistance just creates more war with yourself — the only way out is to stop trying.
Key Concepts
- Enjoyment as the orientation for transformation
- Conditions for transformation: safety, trust, vulnerability
- Pendulation is how learning actually works
- Development moves like a corkscrew
- Wants drive transformation, shoulds slow it down
- Resisting resistance just creates more resistance
- Curiosity and fear cannot coexist
- Development moves from unclear to clear to actionable
- The three brains limit each other
- Appreciate the shift, don’t cling to it
Key Quotes
“The question isn’t how do I do the things that I enjoy. The question is how do I enjoy the things that I’m doing.”
“There’s no way of getting it right. There’s no complete. There’s no finish line. There’s no done. There is just what’s the next experiment, what’s the next adventure, what can I learn from what just happened. There’s just play.”
“Fear and curiosity can’t exist at the same time. If you imagine yourself running from a tiger… and now wonder how much does the tiger weigh — all the fear goes away.”
“If you want yourself to change, it slows down the process. If you love your anger and you invite your anger in and you welcome your anger, that is a far quicker process — unless you start doing it to try to make it go away.”
“It’s not a matter of effort. It’s a matter of acceptance. It’s the stopping of the trying. It is the trust.”
“Two people are on a roller coaster… one is releasing carcinogenic chemicals into their body and the other is releasing anti-carcinogenic chemicals. The exact same experience can be used to destroy somebody or to heal somebody.”
Transcript
there’s no way of getting it right there’s no complete there’s no finish line there’s no done there’s no I’m gonna get it there is just what’s the next experiment what’s the next adventure what can I learn from what just happened there’s just play 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 today we’re going to talk about everything you need to know about embarking on a personal transformative Journey conditions for transformation what happens on the journey what we can get excited about and what we’ll get in our way so Joe tell me what does someone need to know about embarking on a transformative Journey there’s kind of a way to look at it that we can dissect it into the all the parts of it and let’s do that but before I even start there the most important thing that someone should know about deciding like hey I want to do something that transforms my life is that it’s a process to be enjoyed like and not only is it a process to be enjoyed because that’s nice but it’s because it’s more effective and the only thing to tweak about that is that enjoying yourself is a little bit different than maybe how you’re thinking of it so most people think or a lot of people think if someone says hey go enjoy yourself they think what am I going to do you know like I I’ll go play golf or I’ll go and have a conversation with a friend or I’ll go get high on heroin whatever their idea of enjoying themselves is that’s not what I’m speaking to what I’m speaking to is how do you allow yourself more enjoyment in everything that you’re doing so that’s what I mean by enjoy yourselves if it means that you’re in a SAT song listening to a guru how do you enjoy yourself in that if it means that you are listening to this digital recording even if you notice that you’re criticizing yourself how do you enjoy criticizing yourself that’s the question the question isn’t how do I do the things that I enjoy the question is how do I enjoy the things that I’m doing that’s like the golden meme of the journey like that’s where you guide your footsteps by and then everything else is kind of a technicality that revolves around that sun it’s a it’s like the gravitation is how do you enjoy yourself um right and as far as like the details I think you can Clump them into like four parts the one part is um what are the conditions that need to be set for transformation there’s a acupuncturist once taught me this this idea of like conditions for healing it’s like what do you need to do just so that somebody can potentially heal um if you’re treating them so there’s that conditions that need to be there for transformation to be possible and then there’s a question of approach like how do you approach it because at the end of the day you’re responsible and your approach is going to make a big difference in the alacrity the enjoyment and the depth of transformation and then I think you can also talk about like what to expect on the journey because when you really gotta get into it there’s certain things that happen over and over again and that it can be full they can kind of fool you and they can also when you see them in a slightly different light they can really Propel you and then I think then you can also talk about like what gets in the way what are the impediments of the journey so that’s how I would break it down so let’s get started then what are what are the conditions that we would set in place for us to enjoy our transformation the first thing is I think the most important thing is you need to feel safe and safe is misused often in today’s world a lot of times people use safety as a way to control like I don’t feel safe it’s not actually a lack of safety it’s a way that they can control their environment but you you have to feel safe you can’t fear reduces your capacity to learn and so here’s something that you’ve never seen before you’ve never seen two people in a yelling match like one person going you son of a papa and you mother Bubba Bubba and the other person say oh yeah you know you’re right you’ve got a point there it doesn’t happen because it’s neurologically impossible so feeling safe is really critical to being able to learn so that’s important and it’s really important also to understand the difference between whether you feel unsafe or whether you feel defensive and there’s a great trick to doing that take a moment you know pause this or whatever but feel in your body what it feels like to feel unsafe when you really felt like you were your life was threatened or that you were threatened and then feel what it’s like when you were really defensive and your body has two different signals for that defensiveness and safety and they they get confused sometimes so to know the difference is really important what are some examples of what that might feel like in the body because I I remember like early on going through your courses a lot of the instruction of like how does that feel in your body a lot of times it would just be dissociation I couldn’t quite feel yeah what do you mean in my body I’m thinking this is a thought um oftentimes safety is felt more electrically in the body it’s usually um it can be felt in the shoulders um and in the belly often but it’s different for everybody and it’s really based on whether you when you feel unsafe if you go to fight flight or or freeze and that’s so your body’s literally going to feel one of those ways defense is usually a hardening it’s usually like a more increased rigidity in some way so tightening yeah but it doesn’t always have to be that so it’s very different for each person but those are some of the signals to look for is like how much electricity is moving through what feels like electricity or energy is moving through your body how rigid your body is what part of your body lights up these are the ways to know the difference for you between safety and resistance and then another thing that’s the condition needs to be said there needs to be trust if you don’t believe that you are going to transform you are at a severe disadvantage trusting a teacher if you choose to have one uh is really important trusting yourself is so critical so trust is a really important thing and the belief that it’s possible to really know that that transformation is is there there’s this thing called the placebo effect and the interesting thing is that that’s always seen like as a glitch of science like you know we can’t really test it because some people just think that they will get better and so they do in this work the placebo effect is is a feature it’s not a it’s not a glitch it’s not a bug it’s really important that you think that it’s possible and I don’t mean to do it in a mamby pamby kind of way I’m talking about like do the research do what you have to do to find out that it’s possible you know talk to people who’ve been in the course or know that that it’s possible and the truth is is like you know we have a great success rate in our courses we’ve had you know great studies done and we have a consistent shift that’s measurable but the main part is the belief that that’s possible and the other thing to see is that some people don’t change occasionally you get someone who goes through who doesn’t change and one of the things that you can always know about that person is they never came in with the confidence that they could change they were resistant right from the start to the whole thing so if you’re that just don’t do it it’s a waste of your time and it’s a and it hurts the other people that you’re on the journey with another really important thing is seeing beyond your intellect and knowing that your thoughts are only part of the way the transformation happens that like do your research if you need to to know that like there are things like mirror neurons and mirror neurons don’t register in the intellect of the brain they’re just some way in which we know that our body has an intelligence that if you move differently your thoughts will be different you know research things like sensory processing disorder where they we know that kids who do not get to inhabit their body in a full way have a different brain function than kids who have inhabited their body in a full way who have an understanding of where they are in space their proprioception issues so we know that the way that we move changes so our body has an intelligence our emotions have an intelligence our intellect happened intelligence and if you are trying to do all of your change through the intellect you’re going to be screwed um it’s going to be slow you’re going to be able to describe everything that’s wrong with you but very little is going to have changed yeah I’ve experienced that myself it took some time to realize that like while I could logically create a framework around everything that I was experiencing I wasn’t able to actually transform until I let the fuzzier logic of emotions and the body uh make movements that I didn’t have to intellectually understand yeah yeah for me the journey was similar it was like a slightly different I just deconstructed I spent like almost 10 years deconstructing all my thoughts so that I could be free enough of them to trust the other ways of knowing and it’s so apparent you know it’s just like ask somebody who’s like a great gymnast how they did it and they’re not going to give you an intellectual explanation there’s knowledge that happens that isn’t that the intellect can’t describe muscle memory is examples like emotional memory endocrine system has its own exact memory hormone systems right exactly nervous system all of that is very hard to describe another really important thing is vulnerability it’s really hard to have a transformational journey if you’re like yeah I got it it’s cool I’m good yeah it’s not that bad I mean yeah there’s some something that could be done there but uh you know it’s not that big of a deal like if you’re coming at it with that approach you are not going to have that much transformation it doesn’t mean that you have to think there’s something wrong with me either right it doesn’t mean that you have to be like I’m broken fix me you know I’m broken I have to fix myself I need to be healed you don’t have to have that I could create that entire model of yourself and stay in that for years too exactly but if you can’t explore the depths of your pain and your constriction and express it to other people then you’re not going to be able to approach it you’re not going to be able to do anything about it you’re not going to be able to understand it better you know it’s like unless your attention can go to the discomfort then your system can’t do anything about the discomfort and so a lot of people have learned how to just not go to the discomfort and obviously it builds up other things happen it’s a painful life but that’s a really important thing and I’d say finally and I think I’ve stated it before which is just if you’re not willing to take full responsibility for your journey if you start blaming a teacher if you start blaming your wife if you start blaming you know your mom and dad you know you have to take full responsibility for the journey and it doesn’t mean that you shame yourself it doesn’t mean that you blame yourself but it just means you don’t shame or blame anybody else you have to just say like I am exactly where I need to be I am responsible for this that is that is incredibly important in the journey because every time you blame somebody else for Where You Are um including blaming yourself so anytime you are blaming anything for where you are you are slowing the process down tremendously yeah it seems like each of these is there’s kind of a catch-22 because they’re both conditions and also the effects like for example with trust many people might approach personal development because starting with a position of that they don’t trust themselves they don’t trust their own goodness or they don’t trust teachers or they don’t trust the process and that’s something that they’re working with so what advice would you have for somebody who wants to embark on a personal Transformations Journey but is worried about being manipulated or controlled by a guru or right ending up in some you know Backwater yeah I would say maybe two or three things that the first thing is like it’s back to the first principle right it’s enjoying yourself so if you are not trusting somebody how do you enjoy that movement of non-trust it’s clear that if you feel safe there’s a deeper level of enjoyment if you feel trust there’s a deeper enjoyment in being vulnerable than there is in being protected you have any tips or exercises for anybody who’s embarking on this and finding that they’re having that difficulty with say trust or vulnerability some way to help them just enjoy feeling what they’re feeling rather than trying to change it yeah let’s say you are in with a teacher and you’re not trusting them or you know that you want to sign up for the course but you know you’re going to have trust issues the best thing you can do is just go to the person and say I don’t trust teachers and I want to and how can we work together so that this isn’t a burden for you and this isn’t a burden for me that would be taking responsibility being vulnerable and trusting um and even in saying that you’re trusting yourself which is the more important thing than trusting the teacher and in saying all this to a teacher you’re giving them trust in that moment and if they react in a way that’s just like well if you don’t trust me then you pretty much know it’s not the right teacher or if they go this is all about just letting go into my words then you know you don’t have a great teacher there and that maybe that you shouldn’t be trusting them yeah it’s a good litmus test the teachers should be able to receive that that mistrust yeah should be able to receive that mistrust especially if you’re taking ownership and if and if you’re not taking ownership and they point to the ownership then also a teacher worth trusting so that’s that’s an easy way to look at it and yes you’re right that to some degree all of these things are they are the things you’re working on as well as the things that you need to be successful at it so then it’s just an order of operations thing it’s like make trust your first thing to work on yeah like don’t make your mommy issues the first thing make trust the first thing and it probably relates to your mom issues or your dad issues but make trust the first thing and really focus there and another feature of this is that it creates a positive feedback loop you know like the safety Trust and vulnerability and seeing beyond the intellect may be the things that are initially holding you back but then as you work on them more and more the speed of your development increases yeah that’s exactly right it becomes more enjoyable which is you know the speed it becomes far less important than the enjoyment like if you enjoy your entire developmental Journey deeply who who cares how fast you’re going and who cares when you’re going to get there you start to get to the point where you feel that restriction like like oh I’m interviewing Joe I’m feeling restriction now and then you’re like oh good this is something to work on yeah no I want to go away yeah that’s a beautiful pointing that’s that’s a great way to think about all of this stuff is like there is a point in that path where everything that’s uncomfortable you trust you like that uncomfortable thing approaches and you’re like oh I can trust this thing because it’s going to teach me something I just have to be vulnerable in it and take full responsibility yeah beautiful so tell me more tell me more about how to approach this how to approach this we’re setting those conditions yeah and and the spiritual path in general yeah approaching the spiritual path what I mean by that is like what’s the best way to be on the path right if those are the conditions that you that are important for you to just make sure I’m met before you even like pack in your bag like that’s the tent and the you know the food stores this is like how do you walk down the path and that’s how when I say the approach to a path that’s what I mean it’s like how do you walk down it and how you walk down the path is you know you know some of this stuff because of our um the 18-month course you did but it’s I have it as the five principles of how to how to be on the path one is loving accountability which basically means that you’re honest with who you are what you’ve done without shame it means that you can apologize to somebody that you can take an honest inventory of yourself without shame that you can look at yourself directly and not feel like you have to be any different that’s loving accountability and it’s approaching life in that same way it’s it’s asking those around you to to meet you in that place so an example of that would be you know to say to the teacher I’m having trust issues and I don’t want to be having trust issues it’s kind of loving accountability to say I have trust issues because that might be making them responsible but that full loving accountability is is that I have trust issues and I don’t want to have them I want to be able to trust life I want to be able to trust people that’s full loving accountability and then Embrace intensity is it’s not creating intensity which I think some people mistake it for often but it’s it’s embracing intensity it’s the you know it’s a business Theory as well it’s like um being a great CEO one of the biggest things about it is just making sure the right amount of attention from the organization is going to the right parts of the organization are we being attentive to our problems are we being attentive to being proactive are we being attentive to our culture are we being attentive to our customer like how how much attention is going where most intensity that’s generally where that attention needs to go correct that’s right like just like in the body if there’s pain it’s that pain is telling you hey this is where you pay attention if you want to take care of yourself pay attention to the pain it’s the same thing it’s it but I call it intensity because it’s not all pain because it can be pleasure often what we avoid more than pain is pleasure and people have a hard time seeing that until they see it and then they’re just like oh I got I always say it’s subtle to you see it and that moment when you actually notice like oh I it’s more intense for me to be in deep pleasure than it is for me to be in pain that’s a that’s a moment so that’s embracing intensity the other principle is everything is in iteration so it just means that there’s no way of getting it adventure how do I learn what can I learn from what just happened there’s no blame there’s no shame there’s just play there’s just like let’s do it this way okay now let’s do it this way and there’s just a trust that you’re gonna keep on entering and it’s gonna keep on getting better and You’re Gonna Learn and there’s no need to think of anything that you’ve done is right or wrong and I can hear the brains out there already like going but if you kill somebody that’s wrong I would agree that killing somebody is uh is not how we want to behave but if there is a person out there who who has killed somebody and they’re not going to be caught that my hope for them would be that their mindset is out of iteration that their mindset is that of like okay well that felt shitty in my body and I feel horrible and I’m still thinking about this thing and my guilt is creeping up on me and like my life has gotten worse and it didn’t make me any happier and it didn’t solve my problems so let’s do a different iteration next time I have a problem with somebody like that that’s what I would hope that they would do that brings up a great point because a lot of what happens in uh soldiers that come back from war with PTSD a lot of the PTSD isn’t around what happened to them personally but it’s perhaps around the fact that they killed somebody and they did it in like anger or rage in the intensity of the moment and that they actually enjoyed it or something about having done it makes them feel like a monster and so they think that that’s just some core part of themselves that’s unchangeable and makes them bad and then holding that core belief just causes so much more suffering and pain in their lives in the lives of those around them that’s exactly it it’s just like we’re never finished we’re never where there’s no moment of perfection and we are reacting to an environment and and we’re iterating that same person never going to Iraq or Iran or wherever people are fighting these days um that same Soldier if they hadn’t hit that environment what like what would they be thinking about their core selves so it’s a very iterative thing and I think it’s really important to have that mindset and that change not only can happen it’s the only thing that you know will happen so that’s it I think being curious is really important as well that’s the other way of approaching the path that’s really important is being curious this is one of the most enjoyable ones you know it’s let’s take that person as an example who like feels like Oh I’m a bad person because I killed people like what if you’re curious about that what are the questions that actually come up instead of being knowing that you’re a bad person what would be the most curious questions about it how was that feeling that led me to take that action yeah what makes me not want to kill everybody right now if that’s who I am what’s making what’s stopping that in me right now if that’s who I am what’s making me keep on beating myself up over it like what’s the part of me that’s beating myself up over it if it’s essentially who I am and if it’s essentially who I am like what makes me not going to the grocery store and kill a whole bunch of people so there’s just curiosity and it frees it up because your fear and curiosity can’t exist at the same time like if you imagine yourself running from a tiger like really close your eyes for a moment you’re running from a tiger this tiger is fast and it is hungry and you are running and feel the fear coursing through your system and you’re moving as quick as you can and it’s catching up on you and you can like hear its breath and it’s like oh you know it’s like it’s gonna get you and you can feel that fear in your system and now wonder how much does the tiger weigh right the all the fear goes away you can’t operate from Fear if you’re curious and it doesn’t just operate like I can be curious if I’m not scared it’s why safety is so important from earlier right because if you you can’t learn but you can also just turn on curiosity and it just reduces fear just like if you turn on fear it reduces curiosity so that’s a cool one and then the last one and I’d say the most important one is connection that it’s really important to stay in connection and connection with each other in connection with yourself and connection with your body it means being in contact with it’s it’s like you were saying earlier that like before when you were thinking about emotions you’re like well I don’t know how to work in my body all I have is disassociation a contact means literally like touching it’s just like to have that point of contact can I just touch into the emotion can I just touch in to the pain can I just touch into you can I just touch into me can I touch into that part of me that I don’t want to see can I touch into that part of me I’m not proud of can I touch into that part of me that is proud it’s connection it’s it is what allows the tree to evolve it’s what allows us to evolve is a connection tell me more about how embracing intensity or being curious about the lion that is about to eat you um how is that enjoying yourself and how does that help you get away from the lion yeah that’s a great question well on the lion part obviously I’m not suggesting that you should wonder how much a lion plays or tiger ways if they’re chasing you um our system isn’t curious when we’re in fear for a reason but if you are in fear over something else like you know what color car you should buy or if you’re going to get fired yeah being curious is far more enjoyable than that and and being curious about being fired is far more enjoyable than worrying about being fired so the curiosity is like you can just feel that in your system like if you just take a moment and you know you can pause here and just feel what it’s like to know to like be like I know I know what you are I know what I am and then to be curious about who you are you can just feel there’s more enjoyment in the body embracing intensity is a little bit more complicated as far as the enjoyment goes it’s the Embrace part of it that makes enjoyable like intensity happens like you can’t stop it you know the Buddhists talk about it they say pain occurs suffering is the choice it’s the embracing of the pain that prevents the suffering and so the enjoyment is is embracing something that you can’t avoid or that if you avoid it’s less enjoyable right like meaning like if you’re a heroin addict you can avoid the detoxes you know you can avoid withdrawals but it’s not going to make an enjoyable life so at that moment you want to embrace the intensity of the withdrawals part of it is the embracing of it when it needs to be done or when it’s unavoidable or when it’s when it’s just better to to face the intensity than not which is almost always you know sometimes we create intensity which is not necessary but if we’re not creating it in a conscious way then embracing it is great in fact embracing intensity is one of the great ways to stop intensity from happening in our lives yeah in a way you let it move through you and change you and then you learn the lesson in the intensity exactly yeah that’s exactly it so tell me more about what happens on this journey what are the what are some of the pitfalls or some of the things that might be surprisingly enjoyable being on the journey the pitfalls are in my mind are slightly different but the the being on the journey is there’s just some things to know about it like so one of the things to know about it is the way human beings learn is a back and forth nature it’s a pendulation is the word I don’t even know if it’s a word but it’s the word it’s the word I made up or amusing depending on whether you can find it in a dictionary but there’s a back and forth nature to it so if you look at a baby and a baby learns to walk they don’t just like crawl then one day stand up and walk and then never crawl again that’s not how we learn right we don’t learn all at once we learned by going back and forth and in fact what they know is that when that back and forth doesn’t happen like particularly in babies crawling that their brain develops differently and it’s not a good thing if you pull a butterfly out of out of the Cocoon it won’t be able to fly like the what we think to be struggle or friction that pendulation of going back and forth is really a necessary part of the learning process and so what you’d normally hear people talking about when they’re on the journey they’re like man it was doing so good and now it’s all gone you know like man it was like I was feeling so blissed out and now all that’s gone how do I get it back the other way to look at it is to say oh cool that’s gone I’m I’m in the learning process this is how learning goes so there’s there’s a way of looking at it that that says oh cool I don’t I it’s gone away which means that I am as much in the learning process as when it’s there and I am getting closer because it’s gone I’m getting closer to a life where that’s fully understood and fully recognized so that’s a really important thing that relates to something else I’ve I’ve seen when like when somebody starts going through this journey and then all of a sudden they start feeling more emotions that they label as negative and they’re like oh no like I had done all this work and now all that work is undone and I’m a total mess yeah yeah right which is not a that’s beautiful it’s not at all the case one of the things that could be happening is they’re just recognizing that they’re having the emotions instead of like just taking them out on people when they didn’t recognize it before that’s common the other thing is that they’re able to handle them now right like one of the things that I’ll talk about often is that like we’ll do a lot of exercises where people really increase their love and you’ll just notice this happen is like when people can love themselves and every part of themselves that was unlovable comes to the surface to be locked or the next the next wave of them so it’s like shining a light in the water at night to attract cuttlefish it’s it’s the more work we do the more um attuned we get like if I make an album which I did you know in my 20s I made a rock and roll album I can’t listen to songs the same way before and after I’m so much more sensitive to it but that allows me to understand and enjoy music in deeper and deeper ways and so that’s the same thing there’s that sensitivity that’s a beautiful Point another thing to understand is that when you have big jumps in development when these big moments happen there’s a kind of a natural step that happens which is things go from unclear to clear to being able to affect the change so easy way to look at this is with kids um you know the first thing infants they don’t even know it’s their hand it’s hitting them it’s scratching them they don’t even know it’s theirs then they recognize it’s theirs but they can’t control it and then they can control their hand Piaget calls this like I think primary secondary and tertiary circular reaction I think is the is a terminology for it but that doesn’t happen just with the use of our hands it happens like when people like fully access for the first time let’s say um their emotional intelligence or their somatic intelligence or their awareness like if they’re finding that moment of seeing that they are their awareness um oftentimes you can’t even talk they’re like what’s going on and they like try to reconstruct their life because they’re like well everything I believe just gone what the hell’s going on and that’s the way it works it’s like they’ve walked into this new world that they can’t control and they can’t even identify the parts of but slowly you just hang out in the world and everything takes care of itself just like it does with an infant you know so if you don’t get scared about it and you’re just like okay yep I don’t know anything and I don’t have to reconstruct anything you know pretty soon you’re talking from that place so that’s another thing to know development moves like a corkscrew I think that’s really important so if you think about a corkscrew or a stock market it’s kind of like you’re moving up into the right in human development just like a stock market you’re moving ahead but there’s like it’s like a corkscrew and every time you’re at the bottom of that Corkscrew it’s like daddy issues and every time you’re at the top it’s mommy issues and and then you can have abandonment issues or whatever but you have these core things going through your lights and your life and you’re refining them and it’s they’re becoming more and more subtle and more and more different as you become more and more sensitive so that you can notice more and more of the pain and agitation that you’re feeling what people often say is like I thought I dealt with all my dad issues and it’s you know before Awakening bad issues after Awakening at that issues like yeah that’s just I was just going to say there’s that one meme where it’s like before Awakening and there’s a child with a boot on his face and then after Awakening it’s a child with a boot on his face but you can see it zoomed out and he’s holding the boot to his face I haven’t seen that that’s great yeah yeah I would say after Awakening he’s loving the fact that he’s putting his own boot on his face and yeah and you know and there’s yeah that’s unclear to clear part I was like oh I’m putting this on boot on my face and the corkscrew is like oh these are all the different ways I put the boot on my face yeah and it’s kind of the same way each time around but I just keep finding more and more subtle ways to heal it yeah that comes back to that pendulation which is like wait I thought I’d dealt with all this before how am I well you know sometimes you’re just record you’re just seeing the new spin the new turn on the corkscrew right a television show isn’t enjoyable if it’s just everybody’s celebrating the whole show if you can enjoy being in the not clear as well as the clear if you can enjoy the corkscrew you know there’s this great um metaphor and truth there’s it’s kind of it’s not a metaphor in in a way they know that if two people are on a roller coaster and they’re going down same exact experience and one of them is like woohoo and one of them is like oh my God I’m so scared and you go into their neurochemistry like what they know is that like one of them is releasing the one that’s scared is releasing carcinogenic chemicals into their body and the other one is releasing anti-carcinogenic chemicals into their body the exact same experience can can be used to destroy somebody or to heal somebody it’s that you’re going to be on the roller coaster ride how do you enjoy it that’s the question how do you allow enjoyment to happen that’s the real question the last thing to think about on this is we have our three brains you know you we can call them the head the heart and the gutter the human the mammalian and the reptilian um or the nervous system and the emotional and the intellectual they limit each other you know even though they’re really all one that if you’re really developed on your intellectual side and you’re not developed on your emotional side um it’s like having three pencils attached by rubber bands and one can get only so high if one is so low and the most bang you’re gonna get for your buck is to move the low one Higher because it gives everything else the most flexibility so it’s just important to know that if if the path that you’re working on has stopped working you know you’re you’re probably neglected one of the sides of yourself one of the parts of yourself so that’s a really important thing to know so tell me about enjoying those things like because this process we’ve just discussed is that there’s going to be pendulation you’re just going to go from like oh I’m Healed so oh I’m still a total wreck and corkscrewing through the same problems over and over in different ways spending a lot of time feeling unclear and then playing whack-a-mole with these three three uh like parts of our nervous system how do we enjoy this process yeah a good story for my life was that you know there was this time when we got kicked out of a house for and at the time it felt like very unjust reasons and in retrospect it was just it wasn’t a match and you know it was a long time ago and and every time I saw the people involved or the house it just like this knot in my stomach just was so there and it would come and go like all emotions do they come in waves and at some point I’m like oh cool there’s something there that I get to learn from and it got to the point where like I would literally drive by the house to hope that that feeling would come back so I could be with it and I could love it and I could spend time with that I could attend to it I learned how to enjoy the thing that I thought was uncomfortable that’s critical and that that’s what it is it is to it is to not buy in I mean even this story is a way to help you enjoy it because if you buy into the pendulation that you’ve lost it then it’s very hard to enjoy if you realize it’s a learning process and it’s very easy to enjoy if you are enjoying it the Learning Happens quicker it’s like a virtuous loop it’s like the more we enjoy it the more we want to approach it and the easier the whole situation gets a feedback loop yeah that feedback there exactly and and and like clear to unclear is another great example of it it’s like it’s really easy to enjoy not knowing it’s really easy to enjoy being taken and be like you know get in a car with somebody and and ask them to drive you somewhere but not to tell you where they’re driving and not to tell you how long and just see like that can be just as enjoyable if not more enjoyable right yeah it’s it’s really how do you let the enjoyment in is the question and all of this stuff that’s really the key to preparing for the spiritual journey that’s great something to be curious about the entire way the entire time yeah yeah now before we run out of time I I would like to get back to touching on these impediments and uh uh pitfalls what kind of things can happen that can block this whole process one of the pitfalls is um thinking that you should do anything finding the wants behind your shirts and letting your wants motivate you instead of your shoulds motivate you in essence the Journey of self-development is is the discovering of the self it is self-realization it is self-awareness and a should in its nature is saying that you need to be controlled that who you are in general needs to be managed controlled modified your wants as there’s a general trust in who you are and and if you think about it in a developmental perspective you know an infant from zero years old till seven like they don’t have any shoulds there is no should in their brain I don’t know for sure but I bet there’s a culture where there might not ever be should ever but in that time period they develop more than any other time period in life they just follow their wants so following your wants is really the most effective way to transform and following your shoulds is the least effective way and and to make it a should is really just a doubt in doubt of trust and of who you are the other crazy thing about wants that I think is really important is you know you take a five-year-old and they want something they’re like no no yes no and they throw a temper tantrum and obviously when we get older we don’t want to throw temper tantrums and so we say we shouldn’t throw a temper tantrum instead of getting in touch with the fact that we don’t want to thread like that isn’t we have iterated we have evolved we now want something different but we turn that into a should we change that natural impetus inside us into something that we should do resisting resistance is another big one you know people don’t embrace the resistance so they don’t Embrace that intensity of a resistance so there’s a great phrase that just says if you can’t love it love the resistance to not loving it and that’s really an important thing is that don’t fight the resistance that’s just more resistance another one how do you not resist that resistance without creating a new resistance around that yeah right exactly yeah in a war with yourself who’s going to lose exactly yeah there’s no way to do it but to drop it you can’t you just have to just stop it’s the only way I think it was the first time it was like 24 years old I went out to the woods to fast and I was looking over this Ridge line and I was noticing that I was fighting myself and then I was noticing that I was fighting myself to stop fighting myself and then I was noticing I was fighting myself to stop fighting myself to stop fighting myself and I was just like yeah this isn’t going to work so I just stopped and that was the first moment that I realized that it’s not a matter of effort it’s a matter of of acceptance and it’s a matter of not efforting it’s it’s the stopping of the trying it is the trust another piece that’s important is um skepticism is a there’s two forms of skepticism one is important one sucks um for the spiritual journey the important one is hey if it’s not true for you you should know it’s not true for you and you shouldn’t think that it’s true for you because some Guru said it or because some Bible said it or you know like if there is a truth then that truth will be apparent in you and it will resonate in you and you will know it that so being skeptical of Truth until you understand it fully feel it is important being skeptical by prevents you from trying preventing you from experimenting from preventing you from being open enough to see a truth that level of skepticism is is you know it’s it’s getting kneecapped it’s like getting your legs cut off in a race and then spreading that to other people is is violent another important one is just notice when your future past living like one of the biggest impediments is somebody who’s like either future living by state seeking you know like oh I want to be in that expansive State again oh I want to be enjoy again oh I want to be awakened oh I want to be future living or or the opposite of that future living which is like this is going to be so hard oh my God I don’t want to have to do this work oh I have to feel my emotions again this sucks uh like that oh boy both of those things it’s like not enjoyable you know it is not even just having having an idea of what you’re going to look like who you’re going to be once you’ve transformed yeah exactly not enjoy projecting your current self onto your future self like oh if only I was perfect and all the like ways that I current think I currently think I should be you know then I’ll be done yeah exactly not enjoyable it is like the moment is far less enjoyable when you’re thinking about how you’re going to end up and then enjoying this moment like if you think about the moments that you’ve like enjoyed yourself most you probably weren’t thinking about like your conclusion you know you’re probably some of the times we enjoy ourselves most is when the the proposed conclusion just happened and so there’s just nothing to strive for in that moment and then you’re like ah and then you create something to strive for and then you don’t enjoy yourself anymore then there’s like the future and past living in the past and that you know comparative mind is like is a is a form of this of who’s better than who’s worse is like that requires future and past living to be able to do that so yeah so anything like that is also these are their big pitfalls their stalls in the journey um and then the last thing about the journey that I think is really important like this this is the one that gets the most is that there’s this natural cycle that happens that people go through and I’m sure you can recognize it is like you think to yourself oh I really want to uh we’ll pick anything I Really Wanna I wanna I really want to stop smoking we’ll pick an easy one I really want to stop smoking and then okay I gotta do that I gotta really do it I got to do why you should do that you should do that you should do that you should are you why aren’t you doing it why aren’t you doing it okay okay I’m good and then you do it and then as soon as you do it you’re like oh okay I hope this lasts I hope this lasts I hope this lasts and then it’s like oh it’s already going away I already noticed that I’m wanting cigarettes again oh oh I had a cigarette oh it fits all over I’m gonna going back into oh quit I said now I’m smoking again I gotta quit smoking I gotta quit smoking like that’s the routine and they all of them rely on each other and you can cut it off at any other point but one of the easiest places to cut it off is when that moment when you actually have quit smoking or you have stopped yelling at your wife or you have stopped being a victim is to appreciate it it’s actually just appreciate that moment and and to keep on appreciating and instead of trying to hold on to it right the idea that it’s gonna go away it is the thing that creates it going away like that the only thing that’s really there to do is just to enjoy this um enjoy that it’s it’s gone and and and the same thing can be said when you’re smoking like if you’re in the middle of smoking a pack a day it’s like how do you enjoy each cigarette like how do you enjoy the hell out of yelling at your wife if you’re gonna do it because nobody really enjoys yelling at their wife so if you can really enjoy loving it yelling at your wife I bet the way you yell at your wife will change if not go away that kind of circles back to a lot of the goal isn’t for things to go away is to just watch how they shift and how they change and like what is the impulse behind the behavior trying to be rather than what we our resistance changes into and so like all of these impediments that you’ve just listed all seem like different forms of resistance and so I just want to ask you how can you enjoy resistance so you just pointed to something which is really great which is if you want yourself to change it slows down the process one is the wrong word if you if you’re getting angry and you are trying to change the fact that you get angry that is a slower process than if you love your anger and you invite your anger in and you welcome your anchor that is a far quicker process unless you wait unless you start doing it to try to make it go away like I’m going to welcome my anger to make it go away then it doesn’t work anymore I’m not saying welcome your anger at people I’m just saying welcome the experience of anger that one feels when they’re angry so I’m not suggesting to go and be angry at people but to welcome your anger to accept it to love it to express it in a way that’s safe it doesn’t create more shame so I just want to point that what you said was brilliant in that and then I think your question was how do you enjoy resistance yeah and that’s that goes back to that that statement of if you can’t love the thing if you can’t love the anger love your resistance to the anger how do you enjoy resistance how do you love your resistance this is the whole question of the spiritual search and the whole way to prepare is how do you enjoy this process 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