Summary
Joe opens with a guarantee: if you leave your house today, you will disappoint someone, get judged, and get criticized. So much of life is designed to avoid these things, and it never works — chasing other people’s approval only separates you from yourself. The real question is not how to avoid judgment but what you need, right now, in this moment, to be at peace with yourself. He walks the viewer through that question directly, pointing out that the good feeling we chase from others’ approval is actually this self-possession, which is always available now and never arrives reliably from outside.
Joe then explains why self-possession works in the world. From college bars to business meetings to families, the self-possessed person — the one who feels good simply being with themselves — is the one people are drawn to, while the needy, chasing person rarely gets the deeper thing they want. In most dynamics there’s one person chasing and one running; rarely two people standing upright. When you stand upright in yourself, you attract others who are upright too.
Finally, he shows that being in yourself lets you actually see other people, which is what dissolves their judgment and criticism. When someone is upset, they feel unseen; if you stop and genuinely ask what they mean and what you’re missing, they calm down and feel heard — not because they need you to agree, but because they need to feel connected. This is the foundation of the connection course, which always starts with the relationship to yourself.
Key Concepts
- Self-possession is what people are actually attracted to
- Peace with yourself is only available right now
- Seeing others dissolves their judgment and criticism
- Chasing approval separates you from yourself
Key Quotes
“If you leave your house today, you are definitely going to disappoint somebody… All the negative things that we spend so much of our time trying to avoid is going to happen today. I guarantee it.”
“If I’m constantly trying to make sure that you’re happy with me, then I’m not putting any attention to what makes me happy with me.”
“What do you need right now to be good with yourself in this moment?”
“You’ll often see that there’s one person who’s chasing and one person who’s running. There’s not two people standing upright.”
“Yeah, people are going to judge me and I still have me. Yeah, people are going to like me and I still have me. Yeah, I’m going to mess up and I still have me. I’m right here. I’m available right now.”
“They don’t need you to be smart. They just need you to feel heard.”
Transcript
If you leave your house today, you are definitely going to disappoint somebody. You are going to have somebody’s judgment. You’re going to get somebody’s criticism. All the negative things that we spend so much of our time trying to avoid is going to happen today. I guarantee it. So much of our lives is designed to avoid these things and it doesn’t work. So, this video is all about really understanding the pattern so that you no longer have it affect you negatively. Most of the time, the people who are constantly chasing other people’s approval or trying to avoid their their judgment or their criticism are people who were taught their entire life that that’s what they’re supposed to do. Trying to make it so that other people are constantly happy with you will just drive you insane. But most importantly, what it’s going to do is it’s going to separate you from yourself. If I’m constantly trying to make sure that you’re happy with me, then I’m not putting any attention to what makes me happy with me. And so here’s the question for you is like, what do you need to do to have peace inside? And immediately what your mind is going to do is it’s going to say have to do this. It’s all going to go into the future or the past. But I’m I’m talking about right now at this moment. Right now, what do you need to do? Who do you need to be to have peace with yourself right now? And then again, right now, what’s required? So, let’s slow it down even more. Just take a deep breath for a second and ask yourself this simple question. What’s required in this moment to just be good with myself? And if you’re not good with yourself right now, that means your brain has already gone into the future or into the past. So, I’m just asking you right now, what do you need to do to be good with yourself? And this feeling that you’re starting to gather now, this feeling of like, oh, right now I can be good with myself. How much of what you’re looking for from others is this? How much of what you’re looking for by not getting the judgment, by not getting the criticism, is actually you’re just looking for this feeling, right? And notice that it never comes. Somebody doesn’t judge you, but then they’re going to judge you the next moment. Or somebody doesn’t criticize you today, but they criticize you tomorrow. But this thing, it’s always available to you. And check it out. See if it’s available right now. What do you need right now to be good with yourself in this moment? And what your mind goes, yeah, but I have to go act, Joe. I have to go and go to a meeting. I have to go make money. I have to go be a husband. I have to go be a wife. Well, what if you did all that from this space, right? Instead of doing it from the space of, oh, I have to get everybody’s love and approval, what if you do it from this place of, oh, what what do I need to do to be good with myself right now? What are you chasing? if you have that, what do you need to chase if you have that? So the question is like why does that work? Why does it work both in that immediate feeling that you’re having in this moment, but also what makes that work in the world? So when I was in college, there’s this lesson that I learned the hard way, which is if you went to the bar to hit on women, what you noticed was the guy who was self-possessed was the one that women wanted generally. And the women that were self-possessed were the ones that guys wanted generally. The ones who actually felt that goodness with being with themselves just by being with themselves. That’s what people are attracted to. And so all the really needy ones, all the really chasy ones, they might have gotten something, a relationship shortterm or something for the night, but they weren’t actually getting the thing that they wanted that was underneath it all. And so it’s the same thing. You see it in business. You see it in families. You’ll often see that there’s one person who’s chasing and one person who’s running. There’s not two people standing upright. And when you stand upright in yourself, when you realize like, oh, everything I need to be good with myself is available right now. It’s not available in the future. It’s not available in the past. Then all of a sudden, you can attract other people who are upright in themselves. And that’s what makes life really, really satisfying. And that’s why it works. It’s an amazing thing to just watch a business meeting and you see one person chasing approval. One person’s scared of that disappointment, scared of that judgment, and the other person’s like, “Yeah, people are going to judge me and I still have me. Yeah, people are going to like me and I still have me. Yeah, I’m going to mess up and I still have me. I’m right here. I’m available right now. I have me and you can just see their life trajectories change dramatically. But the other thing that happens is when you are in yourself like that, you can see other people which is what really cures that judgment and criticism and disappointment. So what do I mean by that? If somebody’s upset, which means they’re disappointed or criticizing you or judging you, it means that they feel unseen in themselves or they feel unseen in others. Like most fighting that we see happen d if you’re just stop and you say hey what what do you mean by that? What’s going on? What am I missing? You’ll notice that they’ll get calmer. They’ll start talking. They’ll feel heard. And it’s not like they need you to agree. They don’t need you to be smart. They just need you to feel they just need to feel heard. If you think about any fight that you’ve gotten into, anybody who’s criticized you, if you’re like, “Oh, tell me like what’s your criticism? What am I missing? What would you have me do? What happens to that criticism? All of a sudden, they’re engaged in you. They’re in wonder with you. They’re in relationship with you. You can’t do this if you’re not in yourself. But if you’re in yourself, it’s really easy to do. You just allow that person to feel seen. And all of a sudden, that disappointment, that judgment, that criticism most of the time is going to just go away. Not all the time, but most of the time it’s just going to go away. And so when we’re trying to be perfect for somebody, when we’re trying to not make a mistake, it never works. We’re chasing the dragon. It’s like there’s just no way to make that work. But if we’re in ourselves, what we have an opportunity to do is when somebody judges us, if we choose to, we can say, “Oh, what is it about you that’s not being seen?” And this is something that we see dozens of times, like a week in the connection course. You’ll see family members do the connection course or you’ll see business partners do the connection course. And if they actually just sit and see each other, problems that have been brewing for years, judgments, disappointments, guilt trips that have been years and years in the making just fall away as soon as they get that connection. As soon as they feel seen because it’s what we actually want, right? Do I want to be right or do I want to feel connected and intimate and seen by you? what like what’s the true want there? Do I want to be judging you or do I want to feel like, oh, we have a relationship that’s important? And as soon as you get that, all that other stuff just drops away. But the first thing that’s required and the first thing that we go into in the connection course is the relationship with yourself. It’s like, oh, right. Am I going to be vulnerable with myself? Am I going to be in empathy with myself? Am I going to be in wonder with myself? Am I going to be impartial with myself? And all of that happens right here in this moment. It happens when you realize the thing that you’re chasing, you can only find right now here. Because this presence that you just got to feel and that you get to feel right now is what creates the connection. And the connection is the the antidote to all the judgment and all the all the disappointment and all the criticism because we as humans when we feel connected, we don’t need to do all that stuff. We can actually just move forward and learn and grow together, which is what we really want.