Summary
Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler explore the radical idea that managing life — trying to control specific outcomes through effort and tension — actually produces a life that requires constant management, not happiness. Joe shares his personal journey from international stock lending to pursuing a creative career, only to discover that both environments had the same dysfunction. The turning point came when he decided to simply say yes to what showed up, keep saying yes if he enjoyed it, and say no if he didn’t. Everything took off.
The conversation unpacks what management actually means: intellectually trying to assure specific outcomes rather than holding general intentions and following impulse. Joe uses examples from film directing, sales teams, business investing, and parenting to show how micromanagement produces worse results across every domain. He describes the alternative as listening to the river rather than fighting it — maintaining determination and boundaries while releasing the need to control every detail. The key insight is that every point of management reveals an inefficiency that can be solved through better systems or deeper enjoyment.
Joe extends this to internal life: managing emotions through suppression and self-criticism is equally ineffective. The resistance to emotions is what makes them painful, not the emotions themselves. He shares his experiment of doing nothing he didn’t enjoy for a month and discovering that true enjoyment means learning to enjoy whatever you’re doing — including taking out the trash — not just doing things you already enjoy. He and his wife raised their daughters without punishment, trusting their inherent goodness, and the results surprised everyone who visited their home.
Key Concepts
- Management communicates distrust
- Enjoyment as the only metric
- Enjoyment is more efficient than pushing through
- Enjoyment is available now, not later
- Inherent goodness eliminates internal friction
- Boundaries are the deepest non-management
- Managing emotions prolongs suffering
- Pleasure capacity is trainable
Key Quotes
“If you learn to manage your life, you end up with a life that you need to manage. And that is not happiness.”
“I said, what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna say yes to whatever shows up. And if I enjoy it I’ll keep on saying yes, and if I don’t enjoy it I’ll say no.”
“The amount of management that it took to make a deal happen was the same amount of management that I would have to consistently provide to make the deal work.”
“Enjoyment doesn’t cost anything. Enjoyment is just a perspective, it’s just an allowing, it’s a receiving. It requires us to be a little more present.”
“The reason you think you have to manage yourself is because you don’t see that you’re inherently good. You believe that you’re some lazy, gluttonous creature that needs to be whipped into shape.”
“Having a boundary is basically the deepest act of non-management. You’re saying here’s what I’m going to do, and then you allow the other person to do what they are going to do.”
Transcript
That you’re on a boat and you are going down a river management is when you’re fighting against the Ripper but when you’re in that effortless flow of the river there’s an enjoyment to it what you have to do is you have to be listening to that River deeply you have to be listening to that impulse 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 we’re told all of our lives that if we want results we have to manage ourselves and the world around us in order to get what we want but what if that isn’t true what if intention and determination are critical of managing life gets in the way what if the way to get the life we want is to focus on enjoying our life not only by doing what we enjoy but also by learning to enjoy whatever is happening this is what Joe and I will be getting into today so Joe what makes this an important topic for you there’s a personal story behind it you know when I was um really young in my career I did International stock lending for a while and I was you know still sorting through so much of my personal issues at the time and um I I decided in my head what I really wanted was to have a creative career that and that was something that I decided also was like far out there that I had to like attain instead of realizing that it was really available if I had the right perspective and so I um quit this great job as far as money goes and as far as career path goes and I went for seven years trying to have a creative career and there was this place where I was um where I had basically reached it and I was working on this TV show and I had written something and I was being um brought in to train to direct the show and and I did this two-week stint on the show and I realized it was this the same thing that International stock lending was meaning that everything that I had run away from in international stock lending I was running two in this creative career one person had all the power everybody was working long hard hours they were unhappy um I remember the actor of the TV show saying to me you know every time I come into work it’s like having a piece of my soul ripped out um everybody wanted to be doing something else and not the thing that they were doing they had some dream of the next level of their career and most people weren’t leaving because of the money and I said well that’s exactly the thing I was running away from and running to and I had spent all these years of my life trying to manage this outcome and I had finally achieved it but I didn’t have any idea that it wasn’t the thing that I wanted and at that moment the Revelation came on me and I said wow you know what I’m going to do instead what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna say yes to whatever shows up and if I enjoy it I’ll keep on saying yes and if I don’t enjoy it I’ll say no and then all of a sudden there’s more and more stuff to say yes to and so I got to just keep on picking the things that were more enjoyable and as that happened everything took off my money my happiness my career everything in ways that I couldn’t even have expected it was like I I had surrendered and I allowed that surrender into my own enjoyment to lead my life and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a life that I enjoyed I neither enjoyed stock lending nor did I enjoy trying to become an artist nor did I enjoy being the artist but I ended up enjoying my life not by managing it by focusing on the enjoyment so that’s that’s why it’s important to me I think why it’s important to talk about in general is because it’s the biggest misconception that a lot of people have is they think that if they’re going to manage their life they’re going to end up with a life that makes them happy but in actuality if you learn to manage your life you end up with a life that you need to manage and that is not happiness hmm so what does it mean to manage your life in the way that you’re describing one way to think about it is intellectually you’re trying to assure an outcome so when I was directing films one of the things that I really realized in that process was that if I had a very specific outcome in mind of how the actors were going to do their thing it was horrible the result was horrible everything was horrible the process was horrible If instead I gave the actors Direction and then I just waited until it felt right and I just allowed that impulse to carry us and go oh that’s it that’s what that’s going to work without the idea specifically of how it was going to be the results were far better and that’s one way to think about the difference between management and non-management is that you’re not holding really specific future outcomes you’re holding the intention of the scene is going to be great and it’s going to be emotional and you’re holding the intention the actors are holding the intention of whatever it is for them getting the person to say they love them and getting out of the room whatever their intentions are everybody’s holding their intentions but the outcome is something that you are recognizing when it’s right it’s not something that you’re being specific and controlling about so there’s this implicit feeling of trying that happens when you are doing management and trying is very different than doing doing is just the action it’s like in mental waves you think about doing as Alpha there’s like this Flow State that happens and it’s just everything’s happening and there’s not like a lot of tension in it managing life is when you feel like you have to bring tension into the process to get it your way another great example of this I think that’s really really palpable is I see this with clients all the time is they’re thinking about a big conversation they have to have maybe it’s with their husband maybe it’s with their boss maybe it’s with a good friend and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to say it in such a way that they’re going to get the outcome that they want instead of thinking about what’s the authentic way for them to say it what’s their deepest truth that they’re trying to share and let the chips fall where they may if they’re in the first then they’re in management and if they’re in the second then they are not in management yeah I think the that film example is actually a great one because in filmmaking in production you’ll often have like an art Department that’s trying to make exactly the igloo that’s in the treatment you know for the director when you know maybe they could make any number of igloos that fit the theme and that would work great in the scene and many other parts of the scene are likely to drift through the course of production from the treatment and there are ways to flow with that and there are ways to try to manage every single detail um which you just end up having the entire crew of fighting reality for a while yeah so it’s something that I’ve realized like when I’m running businesses and I want something a specific way that’s where it’s creative or someone’s doing something creative and like copy editing or some sort of visual aspect or building slides I’ve realized that if I just give them three adjectives just I wanted to be reliable grounded and empowering then the results are far better than if I start thinking I know how to design something and I’m like well it should be a little more blue and turn this a little way is like that kind of broad stroke thing and people we know that people in general and management of people that people respond a lot better are a lot more motivated if they feel like they have autonomy and that doesn’t mean that they don’t want Direction it means they don’t want Management in in the way that I’m talking about management right you see that a lot of design as well micromanagement to design is a great way to get terrible work from a good artist exactly and and that’s everything is and there’s a way of looking at every person’s role as an artistry and you’re going to get bad work out of everybody’s hardest Artistry and that I think the other the other way to look at it is imagine that you’re on a boat and you are going down a river management is when you’re fighting against the Ripper and when you are in the flow of the river even if your paddles in the water every once in a while and you’re doing that stuff but when you’re in that effortless flow of the river there’s an enjoyment to it and there’s a non-management but when you’re fighting against the river then you’re in the management and for that to happen you have to to not be managing a river which obviously never really works what you have to do is you have to be listening to that River deeply you have to be listening to that impulse so then when people are in management mode they usually are not listening to their internal impulse or the impulse of the people around them so it sounds like the the distinction to be made here is like management is to try to fight reality to conform to your results and enjoyment in this concept is uh more combining your intention with the randomness of reality and seeing what happens yeah that’s right it’s also so I work with a lot of Executives and this is one of the hardest things for the executives to really catch on to because they have all made a living in being able to have this determination and drive to get the results and many of them have used management to get there that determination and drive that utter unacceptance of a result that’s different than the one that you want is really critical but you need to be very general about the result that you want like it can be General like I want a company that’s super successful I want a product that sells better than all the competition that’s great but when you start managing that process and want it to be this specific way you want it to have this kind of sales technique you wanted to have blah blah blah blah blah then that’s when it goes south so you have to keep all that determination you have to keep all that fortitude you have to keep all that utter unacceptance of a reality that that you don’t Envision and there is also a reading the river and letting the river flow and paying attention to that River and following it to get there a lot of this seems to happen by buying into in the moment like oh no this has to happen because if this doesn’t happen this particular way then you know the entire plan is is ruined so like how do you know like without this 30 30 000 foot view that we’re discussing right now how would you know in the moment if you are managing rather than following your attention what are some ways to to mindfully recognize this in in the process so one of the things that I see managers do since we’re on management specifically one of the things that I see managers do is they don’t ask this question they don’t say what speaks against that let’s say I come into a room and I say I want I want to sell in question based selling and I’m we’re talking to the sales team I’m like let’s do question based selling and then I might try to convince everybody and push everybody into it and motivate everybody give a good speech and everybody’s like yeah let’s do a question based selling what is usually far more effective and that tells you that you’re not in the management of that experience is to say Let me give a good case for question based selling here it is now tell me what speaks against it and people will tell you here are the things that we don’t think will work about it that tells you the things that you have to address and then you address them and then you’re in the flow of the situation then you’re like okay and then most likely you’re going to get a much better solution because the things that they want you to address are important to address and if you can’t address them then they you don’t have real buy-in and without real buy-in they’re not going to do as good of work but without real buy-in it probably means that there’s a better solution out there so that’s one of the ways to know is if you’re trying to push people into a result instead of being eager to find out what um speaks against it when you know when you when you’re listening to what speaks against it your results are going to be far better so that’s one one way to know it there’s a delicious irony there the idea of trying to sell a sales team on a sales process about question based selling without asking any questions I hadn’t I hadn’t thought of that in my example yes exactly that would be incredibly ironic yeah exactly and it’s why question based selling works is because you’re not managing the customer you’re actually empathizing with following the customer you’re following the river instead of trying to manage the river um so that’s one way to know it yeah other ways are you’re more listening to the outcome than you are the impulse right so like right now if you listen for the impulse as to what to say next that’s a very particular somatic experience and you can still have determination in this experience right you can still be feeling like oh we’re going to get to resolution and I can be listening and waiting for the impulse to speak like that’s all a very possible situation but when I want your next sentence to be something or I want my sentence to do something to you to get to a particular place then I’m in management and that kind of that adds another step in the like another filter in the process of what you’re going to say when you have to think about how you think it’s going to be received exactly which then builds in all of your projections into the conversation it also builds a tremendous amount of inefficiency when you’re managing stuff what you are always doing is not looking at the root cause right so as an example let’s take which is a more enjoyable car an mg to own is it an mg or is it a Lexus most most people who don’t like fixing cars would say Alexis is a far more enjoyable car to own than an mg because you know with an mg every 500 miles you have the thing up on blocks and you have to do and so when you are in management you’re just constantly trying to figure out how to fix the mg with the least amount of money in as quickly as possible but when you’re in enjoyment you’re looking at the core issue right and so if you are looking at the core issue everything becomes far more efficient because you’re not trying to you know patch the boat as it’s as it’s sinking instead you’re thinking what’s the right boat to build right yeah getting out of context to the better bigger question exactly so we have learned to manage things for a reason many would propose so like don’t you have to manage some level of things for anything to get done and if if so what is where is that line it’s not where you think it is that’s for sure what I mean to say is if you ask the people at Hyatt hey man do you have to manage your properties they’d say absolutely if you ask the people at Airbnb do you have to manage your properties they’d say no if you ask you know SK Telecom and all those telecom companies that tried apps before Apple did do you have to manage your apps at the building of the apps they’d say yes absolutely we need to manage it but Apple said no we don’t we just as long as they hit a minimum requirement they can be on the App Store right and if you think about all your great employees like how much management do they actually require it’s the people that you’re managing that are not usually your great employees so and maybe because you’re managing them so hard indeed right so do you have to manage and what’s the boundary the answer is is that the the better your system is in place the better you have the mechanism working the less management is necessary so every place that you are managing is basically a way to look at an inefficiency that you have if you build a really good machine say like an iPhone you don’t have to manage the iPhone you you and I have never said the word wow I really had to manage my iPhone yesterday it’s because it works we might have to manage our iPhone use and that arises from inefficiencies in our attention exactly that’s right and even that so that’s that’s the self-management part right which is you can say oh I need to manage myself my cell phone use or you can turn off all your notifications and you can turn your phone into black and white and don’t allow for color usage on your phone or you can um you know put on the sleep mode there’s all sorts of things that you can do so that you don’t actually even have to manage your your cell phone usage that it’s all done so I can find out what it is in my emotions that makes me want to go to Instagram and start scrolling yes exactly exactly yeah all different levels of it so even managing your own state is is ineffective and in fact that’s the thing about meditation generally is that most people call sitting still and trying to manage your State of Mind meditation it’s not meditation it’s torture and enjoyment of sitting there is meditation yes management is going to happen this isn’t something that you get upset about is it something you’re going to never have to do in your whole life no but every time you’re managing something you can absolutely see it as a chance to become more efficient and the way that you find that efficiency is through enjoyment that’s great the other thing that happens here oftentimes when people are talking about they’re like yeah but I gotta manage my company I gotta like I gotta like tell people what to do and then you look at other companies there’s this company called valve there’s this valve handbook which is just amazing and the way they manage what they do is they figured out how to choose really good people they have a whole thing about that and then they when you get to valve you have a a desk that’s on Wheels and where you push your desk is what projects they do so there’s not even somebody saying okay these are the projects we’re going to do here’s our big initiatives they literally just have people roll their desks to what they want to do and those are the initiatives that get done in the company if you look at our entire economy like we have like four tools to manage our economy and we don’t do it very well right there’s just like interest rates and you know how constraining the laws are for businesses Etc and our whole economy doesn’t have a manager and yet we’re the biggest economy in the world and we’re and so far we have been the most um the most resilient economy in the world so is there really a need for management is there really a need for that level of centralization and there may be in certain circumstances but guaranteed there is a more efficient system out there and when somebody finds it they will be the winner of that business and their life will be more enjoyable it sounds like there if somebody wants to start experimenting with loosening management and finding more enjoyment there there seems to be a requirement for a certain amount of slack in the system like if you if you’re running a company that’s just barely making payroll month after month after month and you imagine that if you just stop managing people and the way that you’re currently managing them and you even have one or two hiccups then that then everything is all over or imagine in a personal in a life where somebody’s like well you know I’m working you know three jobs right now to make ends meet and if I just started focusing on enjoyments then you know if I if I left one of those jobs well then I’m not going to feed my family how would you respond to to that or how does that like how would you respond to there being a a feeling for a need for a slack or people’s fear that they don’t have enough slack to try and experiment in this way I would say that they’re looking at enjoyment in a backwards way it meaning there’s one way to look at enjoyment which is here are the things in my head says that I will enjoy when I do it like me having a but your head doesn’t really know what you’re going to enjoy so you can try to organize a life where everything you do is enjoyable meaning that you’ve chosen things to do that you enjoy that you think you enjoy or you can learn to enjoy the things that you’re doing so I’ll give you an example of this this is um when I was I don’t know 27 years old or something like that I did this experiment where I said I’m not going to do anything I don’t enjoy for a month and see how that goes and for the first three or four days it was everything that I enjoyed I took a nap when I wanted to take a nap I you know did everything but then like the trash started smelling and I was like well I’m not enjoying living with no trash and I don’t enjoy taking out the trash what the hell am I gonna do and I learned oh wow there how do I take out the trash and enjoy myself how do I write emails and enjoy myself how do I pay bills and enjoy myself because I don’t enjoy not being having bills I’m paid or having a bad credit rating that’s not enjoyable for me so the only way to really get to a life that you enjoy is to is to not avoid the intensity it’s not to run away from difficult things it’s finding the pleasure in whatever you’re doing is it has to be a major part of the equation so if you have three jobs and you need the three jobs to get by then learn to enjoy the jobs that you have learn how to do them with more enjoyment and watch when you do your job with more enjoyment your job changes pretty darn quick people want to be around people who are enjoying themselves people want to work with people who are enjoying themselves and people will be attracted to you people will give you more opportunities it’s the same thing in your business if it’s like maybe you don’t have the ability to do a re-embetting organizations where the management is so low that people are deciding their own uh payroll and people are deciding you know people on the bottom line of a company like the manufacturing line of a company are deciding what three million dollar pieces of equipment to buy those are companies that are run like that maybe you can’t get there tomorrow maybe it’s not even smart for your company to get there but the question that you can always ask is what’s making this so unenjoyable and how do I enjoy this process and and that is going to build efficiency in your company the thing is that there’s somebody’s mind right now when they’re listening to me and they’re saying this isn’t necessary I can be successful without enjoying myself and that is so true you can be successful financially you can accumulate a lot of power you can have a good looking mate on your side you can um have all the toys that you want and not enjoy yourself that’s absolutely 100 the case um they’re not actually even correlated that kind of success and enjoyment there’s a lot of people that successful who don’t enjoy themselves and there’s a lot of people that successful who do enjoy themselves but what I am saying is that you can have both and if you are having both you are finding efficiencies yeah so let’s let’s define enjoyment then a lot of people think of enjoyment as like there is sort of a sense of control people have the freedom to do what they want to do but a lot of what it seems like you’re describing with enjoyment is that it doesn’t really require freedom for example you could be working three jobs and be micromanaged and potentially find enjoyment in what you’re doing so can you talk a little bit more about that yeah absolutely I can so there are people in jail right now enjoying themselves there are people on this earth right now who are sitting in three by three cells who haven’t lied down in two years two months and a day who are doing it to learn how to enjoy themselves that’s that’s part of the Llama tradition right the the enjoyment is available to you right now like right now I can say to everybody who’s listening to this hey enjoy yourself just a little bit more right now just a little just allow a little more enjoyment in at this moment my entire body just relaxed a little bit right exactly like what did that take what had to be your condition did not change at all like you know you’re in the same space you have the same bank account you have the same girlfriend you every nothing’s changed and you just enjoyed yourself a little bit more enjoyment doesn’t cost anything enjoyment is just a a perspective it’s just an allowing it’s it’s just a receiving it’s a it’s a visceral it requires us to be a little more present that’s it it requires us maybe to be a little bit more in our body it’s not something that is ever inaccessible to us I mean this this is definitely an internal thing as well we’ve been talking a lot about enjoyment in in our environment in our circumstances in our businesses in our organizations how does how does this management and enjoyment Dynamic work internally in the way that we just experienced yeah it’s a bit of a mystery exactly how it works um what I what I’ve seen is that internally there’s a a capacity to feel pleasure that is like a muscle almost it’s a nerve it’s a nervous system thing but it feels like it’s a muscle in the fact that you can build it you can build the capacity for this feeling of enjoyment in your life and this feeling of pleasure and that there’s a certain amount of overwhelm that happens when you feel too much of it and your level of too much is going to be different than my level of too much which is going to be different than the person C’s level of too much what makes it be too much I’ll tell you what it I think it is is if you if you put your hands together and like put your hands like your thumb and your fingers all together and then intertwine your fingers and now intertwine your fingers in the opposite way so that your hand looks the same but your pinkies have switched positions and you’ll notice that one of those ways is comfortable the first way is comfortable the second way is uncomfortable yeah interesting pleasure being too much is very much like that it’s just what you’re used to it’s very much a level of comfort based on what you’re used to and based on what your nervous system feels safe handling if your certain nervous system had to be on high alert to feel safe as a child there’s a low level of pleasure that you are going to allow yourself and enjoyment that you’re going to allow yourself because you’re going to feel unsafe and if you were deeply nurtured as a child then that level of pleasure and enjoyment is going to be much higher and we can train our nervous systems to start accepting higher and higher levels of pleasure it seems like there’s an inverse relationship between enjoyment and like letting our guard down so the more enjoyment we’re experiencing the more down our guard must be and there’s some baseline level of guard that we must viscerally believe is required to be safe does that make sense that’s right that’s exactly right what you’re basically saying there is that you have to believe that a certain level of defense is necessary to be able to protect yourself which also means that you don’t believe that you can respond in the moment that you have to be prepared and that is one of the main things that that creates us not listening to our impulse not watching the river is that idea that we have to be prepared so we’re not in the moment in the present moment handling the thing that’s in front of us or that we’re in the future in a way that’s very hard right we’re not in the future in a soft way you can be in the future and be like Oh and dream in the future and have intentions in the future but most of the time when we’re in the future we’re trying to control the future and and that’s like the perfect example of management like that’s the most and we do this internally all the time is that we’re literally having conversations in our head to control the future have you noticed that the conversations that you’ve had about how you want the future to go they have never worked out specifically as you planned you think about how you’re going to have the conversation 10 different ways and it never happens that way it always happens differently so we’re thinking about our thoughts we’re trying to manage our future it never works out and it’s definitely not enjoyable where that’s called spin we’re just spinning right and now imagine that you’re in that conversation with that person and you’re just like listening to the impulse and focused on enjoying the conversation which results in a lot more listening to what they’re saying as well exactly and it helps them feel connected with you and you feel more heard they feel more heard the conversation goes better so it’s the same thing internally internally we’re trying to manage ourselves all the time hey lose weight hey get more in shape hey you should listen more hey you should stop managing hey whatever it is that your brain is constantly telling yourself you should manage and it doesn’t work very well it’s not the most efficient way by any stretch and we do this in meditation and we do this in yoga and we do this in now what is it like to to meditate and focus on enjoyment not just doing something that you enjoy but also enjoying what you’re doing or what is it like to do yoga and focus on or CrossFit for that matter exactly so what’s the internal what’s the internal thing that you do and when you’re managing and how effective is it compared to enjoyment and the amazing thing is I could say to somebody hey look whatever internal exercise you do just focus on enjoyment just enjoy that exercise that’s your number one thing to do and if they do it most people won’t because they’re like uh enjoyment scary subconsciously but if they do it what they notice is that they do it a lot more because it’s more enjoyable if meditation isn’t enjoyable you don’t keep on meditating if working out isn’t enjoyable you don’t keep on working out so the enjoyment like propels the the practice and telling yourself you should do it and you really have to do it you have to do better and stronger and it’s not very enjoyable and so you stop doing it right the the other thing that’s important here to say is that the reason you think you have to manage yourself is because you don’t see that you’re inherently good you don’t believe in your inherent goodness you believe that you’re like some lazy gluttonous if you were left your own devices and that you need to be whipped into shape and if you believe that about yourself then that’s who you’re going to end up being and if you believe that you are inherently good that you want what’s best for you and the people around you and that you want to have an active enjoyable fulfilling life then what on Earth would need would you need to be managed for if you want that stuff what would make it that you wouldn’t just naturally do it it seems that that would also show up in the way that you manage or treat your employees or expect to be managed or treated by a boss yes any Moss that you’ve ever had who is a micromanager I guarantee you they micromanage themselves horribly and and if they’re not depressed now they will be and if they don’t have major anger issues they will have any boss that you have that’s that is constantly in fear for how you are behaving is in constantly in fearing how they’re behaving it’s just the nature of it it’s why the self-development work works so well in companies is because you are projecting your internal relationship externally so yeah let’s let’s dig into more about how this uh this management enjoyment Dynamic shows up in relationships yeah here’s a story that I think freaks everybody out and it’s a good it’s very apropos I have two girls I don’t think there’s any time I punish them and I don’t think my wife ever punished them we we got angry from time to time that absolutely happened I’m sure they felt ashamed from time to time though we did our very best not to ever shame them the thought process then is that what your kids must be spoiled and that your kids must not do what they’re told and your kids must not behave well and if you get into my home what you find out is that my kids are amazing kids and it’s like so palpable that when people come they’re like oh wow like you have amazing children how did you raise them like that question gets asked all the time and even after they see our kids they’re just most people are dumbfounded that’s how we did it it’s what we trusted and that they wanted to be connected with us we trusted that they wanted to be connected with themselves and when they were connected with themselves they um would show up thoughtfully and lovingly and with care and that’s what they did that’s how it worked out and we never said to them hey you’re a bad person hey you you’re naughty and we need to control that naughtiness like that never happened so they never believed that they were naughty they just saw that we saw them as good and they ended up as good so obviously some adults that would take years and years and years of treating them that way for them to act that way so I’m not suggesting that you go around and like go into a Maximum Security Prison and treat all of them like they’re amazing people who are inherently good because unless they believe that there’s going to be friction to get to that point but in general that’s the way that you walk around in relationship the way you walk around is that you find out what’s motivating them find out what’s moving them find out what they want to do and follow that flow instead of saying this is what I want you to do and do that like you see this happen all the time of one person convinces another person to join a project if I’m hiring somebody for a project I basically say what’s your dream job and if they’re not really close to the job that I have in mind it’s not a good fit I’d rather have somebody whose dream job it is to do the job that I have in mind than to convince someone to do something because eventually I’m going to have to manage them it says something that I learned in making Investments and what I realized was that the amount of management that it took to make a deal happen was the same amount of management that I would have to consistently provide to make the deal work then that’s really if inefficient at investing so if I have to if I I learned that if I had to manage to get a deal done I just would not do the deal because it was the deals that happened with a certain amount of flow and ease that then continued with that same amount of flonies obviously there’s ups and downs with everything but generally that Flonase was far more likely there’s also that like disempowering factor of managing like if you if you invest in if you invest in somebody’s and then you manage them you’re really saying that you don’t trust their idea unless it’s done the way you think it should be done yes that’s right that brings you back to that prison example as well because like you know you could go into Maximum Security Prison it’s like yes on one hand you can’t just relax all the restrictions and behave as though everybody knows their inherent goodness but we could actually stop doing a lot of the things that we do that reinforce those I am bad belief like there’s a lot of yes you know talk about how the system reinforces itself absolutely you can go in and treat every single person in a Maximum Security Prison like they are good people and that absolutely will help them there’s a a great video um a documentary called being human and there’s a if you look it up online Leonard being human you will see an example of somebody who was killed a a woman and her child and the grandmother of that woman and the child showed him a certain amount of love that changed his life and you can see it it’s it’s absolutely doable and that’s how it works in relationships when the other thing is like when you’re trying to be managed in a relationship you don’t want to be in the damn relationship that’s just there’s some part of you whether it is you are getting sold a car and the person’s trying to manage you into buying the car you don’t want to be in the relationship and that sales person isn’t as successful they know that the best car salesmen are the ones who focus on having a good relationship that don’t try to sell the car and they outperform the ones trying to sell the car like usually four or five to one but it’s the same thing we see it in our love life our husbands our wives our girlfriends boyfriends that when we are trying to manage the other person’s mood there is less love when we are trying to manage the other person’s reaction there is less love there’s less enjoyment in the relationship right if you are enjoying the person there’s a lot less management if you’re enjoying the moment you know there’s a lot less management but as in the prison example you can have boundaries yeah you can have boundaries without having to manage anything a boundary is following an Impulse that’s a great great point having a boundary is basically the deepest Act of non-management on some level and the reason it is is because what you’re saying is here’s what I’m going to do and then you allow the other person to do what they are going to do right which is like hey what I know is that interacting in this kind of a relationship isn’t working for me so if I’m going to continue to act in this relationship what I want is it to not have a lot of yelling and I want it to be respectful and kind now that person can leave and they might they might leave you so it’s really a non-management it’s just saying this is what I’m game for this is what I’m willing to do in this world and that’s what non-management is to a large degree that’s what creates an enjoyable life even if it’s scary to get there it sounds like what you’re what you’ve been saying would be also if if the partner is going to leave you and then you’re going to have a lot of uncomfortable feelings because of that and sadness then that is also something to be enjoyed absolutely or we’re going to be trapped by it right that’s enough fear of it yeah that’s another way people most of what we are trying to manage in our life is an emotional reality we’re trying to manage emotions trying to not feel heartbreak when our lover leaves us trying to not feel like a failure if our boss gets angry at us and the non-management of those emotional states and when I say non-management I don’t mean that now you’re like a puddle on the floor throwing temper tantrums and throwing and throwing tennis rackets around your house I’m not saying non-management in that way I’m saying like allowing yourself to feel the emotions fully not act out on them but allowing the non-management of emotions so that you can actually feel them fully and you’re not trying to push them down and repress them and hold your muscles to not feel them or judge other people not to feel them then that is a far more productive way of changing patterns in your life than all the management of telling yourself you should do this or do that and you you even mentioned it at the beginning of the podcast you talked about or I could just look at emotionally what’s happening when I scroll on Instagram and what I’m trying to avoid so how can we cultivate the enjoyment of those those feelings that we are trying to avoid by managing well stop resisting them that’s half of the lack of enjoyment is the management itself stop trying to manage them and they all of a sudden become a lot more enjoyable stop resisting them a lot of the things about emotional states that we find out is that it is the resistance to them that’s painful not the actual emotion itself it’s the fear of them that’s painful not the actual emotional itself all of it is a physical sensation in your body it has different intensities but once it’s unresisted they change rapidly the the sensation of them changes rapidly no one’s ever really been killed by an emotion or maimed by an emotion internally maybe an angry person named somebody else but if you internally are feeling your emotions you’re not going to be wounded but we can slowly through the process of managing and suppressing our emotions we can slowly kill ourselves with stress that’s true and depression yeah yeah exactly generally that’s the thing about management is we think we need it and what it actually is is just this a constant signal that we can find a more efficient way in a more enjoyable way and just dropping the management itself can be enjoyment and and it’s just about just to say it’s just about like taking your hand of control away from it slowly you know some people after listening to this is like okay I’m just not going to manage any of my employees ever again and then everything goes to and then they’ll be like yes that’s right I needed to manage it and I’ve proven that I do need to manage it what I’m saying is just like see see what the next level of enjoyment is see what the next level because you have to find the new ways of being without management and an example of this I think that’s really critical is like you you’re sitting with a bunch of employees and or people that you work with and you need a job done let’s say you need the the car cleaned right and the least amount of management is to see if anybody cleans the car which may happen if they have the right to find roles and everything like that Reinventing organization style somebody might just come and clean the car because they see it needs to get done and then there’s like hey I need the car cleaned and then there’s like I need to get the car cleaned and this way this way this way and then make sure you detail this and do this and then there’s car cleanse just like hey I need the car cleaned and I need it to look like it looks when you get off of a new car lot and I need it to be done for less than 150 dollars and I need you to enjoy yourself doing it huh where you give people the parameters of what a good job is but you don’t tell them how to do it you just tell them how to win right and you don’t see a lot of people doing it that way you don’t see that that interim step the interim step of letting people discover how to do it in a way that meets that allows let them to win because most people want to know how to win if you keep determination and you keep intention and you keep boundaries and you keep maintaining and and mandating the the results that you want then how how necessary is management the management is just the fear that you’re not going to get there people are going to hurt you that people aren’t going to show up well you’ve been saying that in this entire episode is that in order to stop managing we need to be willing to feel and enjoy feeling these emotions that we’re trying to avoid like fear and that sounds like a really interesting topic to get into on on another episode indeed yes indeed yeah there’s a great way to think about that which is we often try to figure stuff out before we actually allow the feeling of stuff and if we really let that feeling happen and learn how to enjoy that feeling then most of what we’re trying to figure out doesn’t need to be figured out anymore 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