 So I remember after that thinking okay I should interview Leo and I should connect with Leo and then just kick the can down the road Super long time, and I don't even know why it came back up. I think somebody finally said yeah One of your one of your fans. Yeah, I guess the mutual fan right yeah What are you gonna finally gonna do that thing with Leo? And I thought yeah, it's about that time, you know Yeah I'm glad we connected. Yeah likewise. You've done a lot of Kind of crazy stuff actually and crazy. I mean this is a busy 30 years if that's what you did in 30 years, but this looks like it's a busy six or seven years Yeah, well, I don't know which list you're looking at. I'm looking at this All that was a regular guy within a couple years actually. Yeah, I mean to give people kind of a preview of what we're talking about here since December 2005 and then this this ends I think in 2013 or something like that this list you quit smoking you became a runner You ran several marathons. You began getting up early. You got organized for in your house and in your life You began eating healthy then vegetarian now vegan. You tripled your income. You wrote a novel You saved a bunch of money. You got rid of all your debt. You simplified a lot of your life You clever cleared out your inbox in your desk. That's a whole show probably You lost 65 pounds you trained and competed in a couple of short triathlons You started a blog made it a top blog according to Time magazine Wrote a couple of other books did a bunch of physical challenges and then ran a 50 mile ultra marathon If you go back to the first thing it's quit smoking and then the last thing on this list alone, which is Five years, you know is you ran a 50 mile ultra marathon. So that is a there's just got to be so many changes in between Smoking and running an ultra marathon. Were you like a hardcore smoker? Or was it like oh, I smoke sometimes or were you like no, it was definitely more than a pack a day Wow more than a pack a day. Yeah, I mean I hadn't been smoking since like middle school or anything It wasn't something really long, but it was definitely intense. Yeah, I mean it says that you're from Guam I know you're from Guam and I know that North the only reason most people know where that is is because North Korea says We're gonna wipe it off the map or something like that. What made us famous. Yeah Yeah, unfortunately and what you're famous for is being threatened with news But I think a lot of folks don't really Realize is tell us about growing up in a place like that. Was that a place where you thought I'm gonna do all these big things with My life or was it just kind of a small town feel? Yeah, it's definitely a small town feel It's kind of like a smaller version of Hawaii. So it's yeah, you know us territory You know Western stuff in the Pacific But everyone knows each other. No, I mean not every one, but you know a lot of people there You everyone's in each other's business. Yeah, you don't really dream big at all like I was a writer for the the local newspaper there, but I Never thought I could make it outside of Guam I always had like these thoughts like maybe I should go to New York and become a writer and It was just like that was that's too big And so I always just thought like be a big fish in a small pond kind of thing I can imagine that I picture Guam is even further away version of Hawaii That's even smaller Hawaii and when you go to Hawaii and you don't just stay at the fancy hotel You see a lot of things where you think oh, wow This is a family that's probably lived in the same plot of land for a long time And they're all kind of doing their thing and you read a lot about Hawaiian culture in the small-town problem Sure kind of that happened there So if that's similar to Guam or if Guam has more of that then I can imagine growing up in a place like that You think of going to a place like New York to become a writer and it's kind of like You just grow out of that just as little girls realize you can't be a princess or a unicorn writing princess Yeah, like Guys think oh, maybe I'm not gonna join the NBA when I because I'm only five foot four I mean, it's possible, but it's probably not gonna happen. I'm in seventh grade now time to get real So if you grew up in a place where you weren't necessarily thinking big How did that process start with you, you know, because like I would imagine smoking is one of those habits You just find yourself with after a while Yeah, but quitting smoking is kind of a big deal and certainly writing books and creating Zen habits the blog is It's about thinking big at some level. Sure. Well, I mean, it's a great question for me It was it was a process of building trust in myself I really had no trust that I could do anything on a grand scale So I had to do it on a small scale. So quitting smoking actually was a pretty big thing for me Yeah and so I had to like take even that into tiny tiny steps and one step at a time after years and years of failing myself and feeling so much doubt about myself and Having no confidence in myself one step at a time I started to build trust in myself and you can see this list Starting from the quitting smoking it was a whole process of building that trust and Eventually I had enough trust where I can like take a deep dive into the unknown But it didn't happen overnight. Did you think that quitting smoking was gonna be I put this in air quotes. I suppose it's impossible before you started I mean, it seems like you wouldn't try to do anything without thinking I can do this Yeah, so did you always have kind of a can-do attitude or were you not really did you also develop that somehow? I was hoping it would be possible and hoping that yeah It was actually gonna lead to a chain of events of changing my life Yeah, I had a whole bunch of things I wanted to do. I wanted to lose weight and exercise eat healthier Like get out of debt all these really You know common things But I kept trying and failing at it and I just kept like beating myself down After failing and so I said well this doesn't make any sense. Why can't I do this? And so I poured myself into the research and figure like if I could just do this one thing Maybe I can make these other things happen. And so yeah I definitely thought it was possible. I didn't know how I could do it I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself and So I thought if I can it's almost like saving my life by doing this one thing I if I could just pour myself into this I'd save my life and really how it felt to me because this this seems almost even more intimidating to think Okay, I'm gonna quit smoking and then it's gonna turn into all these other Impossible dominoes being knocked over you almost added more pressure to the process of putting smoking, right? Like first I got to quit smoking then I'm gonna get an exercise and lose weight and then Well, I mean compared to what it was before it was like I want to do these 20 things all at once Right like I want to change my whole life in January, right? Yeah So like I'm gonna just take all these projects on and I kept failing and failing and failing and I'm like well This is not working. So I got to try something else. So I said let me just pick one and it turned out I picked one of the harder ones. Yeah, maybe the hardest one on the list But I'm like I'm just gonna pick one and just do everything I can to make that happen and then I'll worry about the rest later And that was actually a really hard thing is to let go of all the doing all those other things All right now because they all seemed really urgent and really important Yeah, like quit smoking and payback debt because I'm not spending money on cigarettes Yeah, it's all pay the debt back and then it all helps and I'll start running because I'm not smoking anymore So then I'll start the exercise It seems like it would be really easy to dive into too many things at once and then get discouraged So did you do habit research and realize okay one goal at a time is the way to do this? Or did you just kind of guess your way to success on this one? Yeah, that was a guess that was like well This is not working right? So I got to try something different. It was just like it like almost like pulling my hair out Which is well, I don't have any mission account It worked but I was definitely pulling my hair out and I'm like I got to do something like it was desperation And so that act of letting everything else like just pushing it back and saying I'm gonna give myself complete focus That was an act of desperation I was like I had to make something work and so I tried everything with that one thing I tried everything I like promised my wife and my daughter that this was gonna happen My wife was a smoker too, but she was pregnant. So she wasn't smoking right But if I didn't quit she was gonna start smoking so it was about something bigger than me So I tried doing that I went on an online forum and and promised all the people on there that I wouldn't you know smoke without Posting on the forum first I did a whole bunch of research into quitting smoking and changing habits and mindfulness That's actually when I started meditating was to like Replace the trigger, you know when I when I got stressed out I would smoke and so now I had to do something else So I learned about habits through quitting smoking. I didn't actually know much about habits at the time But I I learned and some of it actually worked and I'm like, okay This stuff worked Maybe I can try it for something else and so I started running and I couldn't even run for ten minutes I was sure out of shape. It's some smoker for sure But then also I just hadn't been exercising for like a decade so I Started putting the same ideas into work for one habit after the other and after a year That's when I started Zen habits was I had run my first marathon and I changed all of these things But the same ideas were working over and over and over and so I'm like I got to share this with people and so I started Zen habits and started sharing what worked. Yeah It's it seems like you've done so many things right after being not necessarily a self-described Well, if you're smoking you're overweight you haven't worked out in a decade There's other stuff. That's not going right in the in the life generally speaking There's all kinds of things that are a result of that or that you do that because there were symptoms other stresses, right? Yeah, so let me ask you this I suppose. This is kind of a weird hypothetical, but if you could Take back all of the smoking that you ever did, but you wouldn't know anything about habits as a result because you didn't have to quit Yeah, I wouldn't take it back at all because what you know about habits has changed your life so much that yeah You asked me this in 2005 I would have said yeah, definitely right get rid of all the problems all at once, but asking me now Yeah, I definitely look back and I'm like this journey was really important to me. It was life changing I've now helped other people change their lives thousands of people and so If I hadn't done all in a messed up so many ways Yeah I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now and know what I know now a lot of people say that well You know everything all the difficulty I've been through in my life has left led up to this particular turning point But when you hear that sometimes you're like well, of course you have to say that otherwise all this suffering you went through You know it was just suffering to justify it. Yeah, you got to rationalize it somehow So I always like to find a time when somebody has actually turned a skill they built as a result of Some sort of event or or process and see if that has worked I was speaking with a guy named Isaac Lidsky. He went blind as an adult and Now he understands people and motivations and he hears things and he's got this whole different world of experience and I asked him if he would give up That that whole experience for having his sight back and he was like not even close no way and that's surprising right because yeah Okay, smoking the damage may be if any hopefully there's none, you know, you've recovered But it's probably won't show up for decades and decades, but if you go blind I mean that's that's your new life starting from that moment onward is without sight So that it's it's always so interesting to me to find what skills people would trade Some other L some other irreplaceable element of health for example, right of physical health. I do think that Your reply makes complete sense because your business is around habits your books are around habits and at some level Being able to spread this wider than yourself is you can't quit smoking for other people I mean, I guess you could for your wife and kids, but the reach of that effect sort of ends there Sure However writing a blog that helps people get out of debt save money become mindful ditch stress build healthy habits You've got a snowball Effect happening. Yeah Yeah, you know, and it's it's interesting because I I started changing You know my life and then I started sharing it and people started changing their lives And I was like like my whole life has changed because they're doing the work So I started a whole program where I'm helping people change their habits And so I started working with them and it what What it really did was teach me about Layers of habits because you know the external one is like I'm smoking and you know spending too much I'm you know not exercising and so I'm like, okay Well, I just need to do these external steps, right and my life has changed and everything is great But what I realized is actually underneath that there's all kinds of underlying like Neurosis, you know, like why am I not sticking to these habits? And so as I started to do this, I talked about the the trust that I was building in myself Yeah, I realized I had like absolutely no trust in myself But there was also this habit of like criticizing myself and not being compassionate with myself There was this idea that I had to comfort myself with food with spending with all of these other things TV and Distractions because I was hurt or I was stressed and so I had to comfort myself and so I have all of these habitual things like mental reactions to things that I started to to learn about as I started to unpeel the layers and I at first, you know when I started the blog for the first few years It I thought it was all just that external steps and so I would tell people like looking go outside and get son Yeah, I would give them like a list of like 10 things to do like go do these things and people would be like, okay Great, and they some of them would actually do it but but like a big percentage of them would go through the 10 steps and be like You know, I can I can't do it and they like step 5. They just stopped. Oh, wow And I'm like, well, why not I told you all the steps to do I did those steps and it worked And so it puzzled me for actually a few years where people were Going through these steps that I was giving them and they were just self sabotage, right? I'm like, what the hell is going on here? So I would I started diving into like, you know What why didn't you do it here? You're diving into other people's problems. Yeah, and my own I still have my own problems. Well, of course I just I just think that for me especially a lot of the issues I've found in myself and in my past I've only found but somebody emails me and I'm like, that sounds so familiar You realize it's a problem and I just went well, I'm fine. Yeah, you know Yeah, you just kind of ignore it and like just look the other way, right? Yeah I'm like, well, I just ignore that problem in my life You mean that's been causing you difficulty at your marriage or something. Yeah weird. Well, these people were we're actually ignoring it They didn't realize there was a problem They would justify why I didn't do it and they give me all these excuses and I'm like That's not the reason and I had to kind of dig into it and it took me a while To learn that you know part of it was that beating yourself up kind of thing People just had this real negative self-image about themselves and every time they failed it was confirmation of how awful they were and They would just that it would just trigger this whole story in their heads Again something that we like we don't see this going on so we we ignore it But it's just a story that's spinning around in our heads About how we messed up again, and I don't know why what's wrong with me right all this stuff And this is going on pretty much all the time for a lot of people Everybody that we're we're saying things about ourselves some people are like I'm awesome like you know cheering themselves on but I'd say that's a smaller Percentage most people are looking for reasons For confirmation that you know why they don't trust themselves Why do you think that is? I think You know, it's that's a good question. Yeah, I think part of it is is just Conditioning so we have habitual responses to things and so when we mess up We might start to hear this voice in our heads that might turn out to be like our mother's voice or our father's voice or Teachers or a sibling that would just start beating you up When you're younger like criticizing you and the weird thing is if you look at like a four-year-old I don't know if you have kids yet. I don't yet Okay, well when you if you ever decide to you know if you have this kid They're running around at four five six years old thinking. I'm freaking awesome You know like everything is great. I'm nothing's wrong with me. You know, I messed something up So what like it's perfect. I'm perfect, right? And so they're completely whole and like they think they're amazing Yeah, and then sometime between that and like 18 like by the time they're 18 They're like something's wrong with me. Yeah, like what happened between six and 18? Puberty first of all puberty yeah school social status Your parents your teachers like always telling you there's something wrong with what you're doing Yeah, and they're doing it for good reasons like they really want you to succeed in life So they're they're trying to do their best, but right at some point There's this message that there's something wrong with me and you know like I need to make myself better Which is why the whole self-improvement thing exists, which you know you and I are both a part of right Yeah, we profit from that, but the truth is we are There's something wrong with you. Don't you forget it. Yeah, tune in next week where we figure out what that might be so we we've had this voice drilled into us from when we were like six years old and That's a really hard thing to to start to change. I think so and I think most of us as adults many of us as adults We find ways to sort of fake our way around that or to There's kind of that layer where you don't realize it then you finally think oh my gosh There's all these problems imposter syndrome creeps in where you think other people are gonna see yeah These things that are wrong with me now, too and then you figure out either how to break through that imposter syndrome by developing self-trust like you mentioned or We'd have that fake cheerleader face that we put on where we're like all right. I'm just glad I got through the day It's been so great I have nothing to complain about and then you just think to yourself or I think to myself when I see people like That often like oh my gosh I don't want to see you cry yourself to sleep You know in the or in the shower or something like that because I just imagine that person with the fake happiness It's just sort of decided well I don't know how to fix any of these problems So we're just gonna get a curtain and just pull it right over that wall with the giant hole in it Yeah, we definitely develop a lot of these mechanisms of like not looking at things not being honest with ourselves Right, that's I mean it's really hard because actually if you start to be honest with yourself It starts to feel pretty crappy and that's like yeah really bad user design like you don't want to feel So you're like, okay, don't look at that. Don't look behind the curtain Yeah Yeah, there's definitely a graph of like the benefits and the feeling that you get from being honest with yourself And it starts with a pretty sharp drop down Right like that's not something you want to do You're gonna be so happy once you've been honest with yourself for a year and a half or like in your case with the Whole look I'm gonna die young if I don't lose weight and quit smoking Uncomfortable feeling sure long term you're at the top right of that graph But in the beginning you have to just jump off the fifth floor window Essentially of this graph, which is why most people actually yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt now Which is why most people don't actually do it sure and tell they hit like some really painful part of their life You know losing a friend losing a father You know, you know hitting rock bottom with alcoholism or drugs or something like that When you hit that painful place You're actually really motivated to like be completely honest with yourself and to start to make some changes But when you're like in a relative comfort zone, I mean, there's still stress and some discomfort there But you you can pretend and just not look because you're not motivated to jump off of the fifth floor Yeah No, that's that's that's for sure because you think well if I can just sort of fake my way through it in another way I'll get past this without having to do the dive Yeah, and doing that deep dive off that graph or into that graph is is It's not something easy to ask of yourself and there's no real foolproof plan You can have all the support around you in the world But you're at the end of the day are kind of alone at the bottom of that well for a while Because even when you're and I noticed this it just myself going through tough times When you hit a hard time in your life or Especially if it's self-imposed first of all Yeah, but if you hit a hard time in your life, especially if it's because you're quitting smoking where most people can't identify with that It's not a death in the family. It's not a weird issue that you had with your family member your kid or Financials this is like you deciding to do it most people are happy for you So they think oh cool good, you know The only person who understands maybe what you're going through is your your wife and even then That you're we're up before I am tossing and turning and you look over and she's sound asleep, right? So you're still kind of doing it on your own and I think for a lot of people that's Terrifying yeah, because it's kind of like being alone with the voice in your head and Nobody else is there to talk your way through it because you're you've decided to turn that voice off that rationalization voice Yeah, and it's it can be really scary Especially how old were you when you decided to quit smoking and get on like 30 early 30s. Okay, so That you're young you're young adult at that point. Yeah, you know The younger you do it. I think the more unlikely it is first of all But also it's a little easier because your life is constantly changing but by early 30 If you're anything like me you kind of had an idea. I mean you were already married and had a kid, right? Actually, we're on our way to the sixth kid. Well, holy cow. How many kids do you have we have six? What's a mixed Brady Bunch family? Yeah, just to we had two each separately Okay from different partners, and then we came together and had two more. Okay, it was kind of a yeah, Brady Bunch Yeah, that is kind of you must have a lot of legos on the floor. Yeah, well, they're mostly adults now They're four adults and two in the teenage area. Yeah, okay. Okay, gotcha So you even when you started this process you were fairly settled as an adult. Well, well I'm not saying you were mature or anything. I'm saying you had a lot of life packed in that house. Sure But how do you break through that rationalization because that's one of the most convincing I found is Look, I can't do this. I have a wife. I have kids. I can't mess with my routine. I've got to keep going to work and performing I'm not gonna sit here and try to run a marathon. Yeah, what's wrong with you? That's something you do in your 20s Sure, you know, how did you break through that? Well part of it was actually, you know, all this beating up of myself I felt so horrible about myself and I also felt like a really bad father Not only was I in debt and not providing for them the way that I should but I felt I felt like I was setting a really bad example If I didn't quit smoking my kids were probably gonna smoke. That's a stat that that's shown to be true If I didn't exercise and eat healthy, my kids probably were gonna do the same And so I was actually leading them down a path as their father and leader was like I'm not I'm not setting a good example for them And so I really felt I was failing them and that was just of course more reason to beat myself But at some point I had to just say, you know what you have to you're you're running From all of this stuff because you're afraid you're you don't like the discomfort of pushing into it like quitting smoking You know, you're afraid of failing at all at being a writer and doing all these other things and so that's such a Self-centered Selfish thing to do is to like just run from your own fears and avoid the pain because you don't like to feel pain And so I felt like I had to do something for something bigger than myself Which is why I promised my wife and my eldest daughter that I was gonna quit. It's like this was not just for me This was actually a step that I had to take for them. Same thing work for getting out of debt and all the other things I Was doing it for something bigger than myself Even if it was just, you know for seven other people then myself, but that was That was big enough for me to actually push into the discomfort of it And that's really what a lot of this is it's just saying hey I don't want to face the discomfort of look being honest with myself of You know the physical discomfort of any of this stuff And so I'm gonna just keep avoiding and avoiding and avoiding procrastinating and you know at work and all that other stuff And so I had to just say you know what I had to start to become a grown-up Yeah, like face face the discomfort face the truth and start to do the the hard work and Because it wasn't just myself anymore like you said I was a young Not super young adult, but yeah all my young adulthood I had just been avoiding all of the hard stuff sure and that led to you know I was like, oh, I'll push that down the road kick the can down the road I'll worry about retirement when I'm 60. Yeah, good plan. Yeah So I just we all do that when we're in our 20s are a lot of us do is just keep pushing back the problems and pushing it back But until eventually it builds up into such a big problem that you can't ignore it anymore And that's what happened with me was some of these problems became so big that I couldn't I couldn't fake it anymore I couldn't like ignore them and so I had to face up to that truth and I had to say well You know what this running away stuff and this being a little boy of just like not want to do any of the hard stuff This this is stupid like I just need to grow up Yeah, and I had to do it for them and so with my love for them in my heart. I had to You know like take on this discomfort Yeah, and that training of having love in your heart and pushing into that discomfort and the uncertainty of Who you you know you thought you were but you're not really The uncertainty of it all That's something that I'm still practicing today. It's just really been life-changing for me and I'm Now my life's work actually is to push into that discomfort with that love and devotion easier said than done Of course because yeah, you still feel fear. I assume. Yeah, but here's the thing is I as I'm sure it's the same with you But for me the fear has now become a signpost that I'm actually doing something right sure used to be a signpost like Turn the other way go back to those in the couch Yeah, or beat yourself up because because of this fear, but what I've learned is actually you know This fear is some area of uncertainty. It's like, you know, like Luke You know the Skywalker going into the unknown like he he went into this area outside of his farm You know like yeah, it was really scary for him And yet it was for something bigger and it was important and he had to go into the unknown And that's kind of like what we are when we push into the unknown is we're exploring some unknown territory We're learning we're growing we're Creating and we're doing something for something bigger than ourselves. And so when I see the fear that means something's right I'm like shaking. I'm like, okay. I'm doing something right. Yeah, that little adrenaline burst I just had a guy on the show recently named Akshay Nanavati wrote a book called fear Vana All right, and it was similar in that he looks at things that he's afraid of and leans into it now He's got a little bit of an extra kick on the end of that. He's like, oh Cliff diving I'm gonna go do that now and I'm like, I can make a list of things I'm afraid of because they're actually not lethal Go ahead. Do you think but I I understand why that can be really inspiring? Personally and builds a lot of trust personally just going into things that you're afraid of Do you think that you can overdo it with that kind of thing? I mean is it possible? Absolutely? I think what it is is Finding a practice zone so it could just be like sitting in meditation and that could be uncomfortable for you And or it could be running an ultramarathon or a marathon and saying this is uncomfortable It's not like necessarily life threatening although But like you're you're doing something within Reason and you're like saying this is my practice zone right now for some people it's sitting and writing or doing a podcast like this Some kind of creation or starting a new business and so that's like within reason But it's it makes you shake and for me that that's a great place It's just fine even just a small time each day You don't have to do it all day long Finding some small time each day where you're saying this is my practice zone and what you do is you create a ritual around it with a Container a ritual has a beginning and an end so you know that it's limited It's something that you practice every day so that it's continued practice and you get better and better at it And you have a space that you can do it and you consider it sacred And so like whether you believe in God or you know some kind of mysticism or not or you're just a rationalist Sacred is just elevating the mundane and the everyday into something that's special right and so if I said this Podcast space is sacred to me it elevates just an everyday conversation with some recording To something where we are practicing something at the sacred folding table. Yeah practicing our connection here And some of our skills and that to me is worth practicing and worth Elevating into a new level. Can you give us an example of what that might look like because I think for a lot of people They're thinking well, you know, I go for walks every morning. That's kind of the same thing But it's not really it might be but it's missing some of the elements of ritual that you mentioned I think this is important Because it's really easy to say well, I did practice today because I went outside and I made a bunch of phone calls And then I burned 600 calories. So that was my that was my exercise or that was my ritual, but it's not quite It's not quite what you're saying. Yeah Well again and the the purpose of this is really to practice with that uncertainty in the fear and the doubt and the Discomfort right like all that stuff is hard stuff and it's stuff that we would normally avoid and so by creating this space You're saying I really care about this. This is something again that's for bigger than myself and so by creating the space you're saying I'm going to practice in this space and It's limited time limited, right? the other element of that is That you create Some kind of daily Ritual where it's going to be at the same time in the same space at least normally you might be traveling So you might create a new ritual But let's say you wanted to write and that scares the shit out of you, right? So you want to write and you're like, okay, all right And but I'll check my email first and then I'll go do these things first and so you still want to write but you just keep pushing it back and back and back and If you wanted to create a writing ritual where you actually practice with the discomfort of that you say I'm gonna write right after Doing a few yoga poses in the morning as soon as I wake up I'm gonna have a glass of water do a few yoga poses to energize myself and then sit in the same space and write Every single day for 20 minutes, right? And so you need something to signal the start of that ritual So I did my yoga poses. I have the the sacred space and I might play some music I might light some candles if I want to so you can do something to like create a mood or yeah Make it fun. Whatever you want to do But you have to start That that ritual and you might say Okay, I'm starting the ritual right now, right? And you might actually set an intention at the beginning of the ritual I find that to be really useful is like I'm not setting a goal for the outcome But I'm actually saying an intention for how I'm gonna show up in this space and so my intention might just be like I'm gonna sit here with my discomfort of writing and Do nothing but write or sit here and do nothing, right? and so like I'm I like feeling the discomfort of writing and Now I want to run and I want to go check my email But instead I'm just gonna sit here and just feel That and one of the things about this ritual is actually I'm allowing myself to feel the discomfort instead of Not trying to try not to think about it trying to avoid it, right? So by allowing myself to fully feel it. I'm saying well This is something that's part of my experience and I'm not rejecting it I'm actually allowing it in welcoming it and maybe even finding some gratitude for it because it's actually something amazing Does that help get rid of those feelings? I know that's not because I'm like I don't want uncomfortable feelings Exactly, you know these sound terrible. There's a reason I get up and go make tea instead of calling the bank Yeah, I don't want to deal with this so I want to avoid it So that's that's actually the problem is that no one wants to feel any of this stuff discomfort stress Fear like my body and brain has become so good at like figuring out some other thing to do Yeah with that and so what I've been finding as I practice with this is actually the answer is to feel it to fully feel it and fully Experience it and what happens if you practice this is actually a meditation where you can sit there Like I don't want to write right now because I'm so afraid of what people are gonna think about my writing And then I'm gonna be stupid and I can't do this and all this other stuff going on in my head I just sit here and don't write and I sit here and Just allow these feelings to come up and I don't even have to verbalize the feelings I might like respond and say well, I'm gonna fail fail and and things are gonna be Horrible for me in my life is gonna be a failure. I could do that or I could just feel what it feels like to be scared and shaky I see so you have that self-doubt so you sort of take the costume off the feeling right so you can Take the uniform off. I guess you're feeling something and you think oh, no, I'm so nervous What if this happens? Well, if that happens, I'll have to borrow money from my parents Oh, they're gonna think I'm such a loser an adult borrowing money from his parents Well, you know, then they're gonna they're not gonna want to do this and then my wife's parents are probably gonna think that Oh, this is gonna be so embarrassing. I'm gonna look like this. I'm gonna feel like this And this is what's gonna happen in my life instead of just saying Feeling really nervous have anxiety my heart's racing actually even deeper than that So what you first described was a whole narrative. Yeah, I call it a story So you're telling yourself a story the story is actually causing some kind of physical feeling in you, right? Yeah, I'm making it worse doing that. I'm fully aware I know that I do that and make it worse than yeah But I mean the fear is caused by this story like oh things are gonna go horribly wrong, right? And now you're feeling something in your body and so The second thing you described was description of the feeling, right? I'm feeling fear. I'm feeling uncertainty. I'm feeling all these different things That's right. That's where I get off the meditation train. I guess. Yeah, these self-awareness train Yeah, no, that's that's a great thing is just to identify you're actually feeling something So you recognize you're feeling something But the deeper part of it is actually this is the meditation part is to just drop your attention Straight into the physical aspect of your body like where is it is this feeling actually located and for me it's often Yeah, it's right. Yeah, it's right here. Yeah, some people Some people it's actually in their shoulders and neck So the feeling could be in different places But for us for a lot of us it's in the same spot most of the time So for me like right here in the chest and I might actually then Turn with curiosity to this physical feeling and so now I'm looking and like what does it feel like? Well, I might start to describe it. I'm like, oh, I feel like running away I feel like like now drop that and actually go to the physical feeling. Well, it feels like a tightness in my chest This is a physical description of the feeling So I'm actually being curious and investigating this this actual physical feeling One of the interesting things about this is first of all, you've interrupted your pattern So our pattern of this is a habitual pattern that we have of spinning the story around or the narrative Yeah, the story takes a left or a right depending on how crappy How much crappier I've been able to make myself feel through the story So if I go straight ahead, I'm like, oh, I feel pretty bad now Then I make a right and I'm like, oh, that's even worse Then I make a left from there and I'm like, oh, that's my whole days running now I got to go take a nap And I will keep doing that We have so these are habitual ways of reacting to the the actual physical feeling Which then causes more physical feeling, but it's habitual. We've had it since six years old basically, so it's habitual and What we can do is interrupt that because if we don't interrupt it We'll just like you said stay in it for a long time. We can stay in it for hours. Yeah all day long actually So we can interrupt that by dropping our attention from this story to the physical Body that we have, right? So that's the first thing that it does and the second thing we actually realize is if you actually Investigate this with curiosity You'll actually find that's not that bad It's just like a little bit of tightness in our body and we overreact with the story. It's like, oh my god There's like this horrible thing happening. No, it's just like a little tightness in your your chest Like sometimes it's pretty tight, but it's nothing horrible like your chest feels a little constricted. Oh my god. It's panic time Yeah, panic attack heart attack. I must be having a stroke So if you can learn to stay with that for a little while and that's actually a hard thing to do But if you can learn to stay with it You actually realize it's not that horrible and we've been running for nothing And we've been blowing it up for nothing and you actually learn some trust that actually you can handle this feeling After a while, you're like, oh, okay. I know this feeling and I'm I'm actually friends with it And again, I've I've mentioned this before but you can actually welcome this feeling into you Which is completely a 180 from what most of us do which is I want to get I want this feeling to stop I want to get away from it But instead you're like I'm actually going to invite it in like a good friend into your house Um, and that transforms the feeling to like something that you don't want to something that you're like saying let's Let's have tea together or at least you've accepted it, right? It's you're not just resisting it the whole time Yeah, or or avoiding it like I've been wanting to think about it. Right. Yeah I hate those cliches from self-help like what we resist persists I mean, those are never universally true. They just sound good But in this case, I think there's there's some treat well Yeah, because if you're trying to run from something you build up that mystique around That crappy feeling or that narrative and it's it it ends up haunting you quite literally We get so trapped in those and what happens it also affects our external actions So I have all these feelings. I procrastinate with the writing But if I'm also feeling like anxiety or frustration, I might lash out at my wife or my kids or people I work with So that's obviously I'm that's not it's undesirable, right? Right. It's not helpful So I'm lashing out or like I'm I'm feeling road rage or something like that because of these stories that I have Like something about this other person has caused me to like go into this road rage kind of story And that actually has external things like I might dry fast and tense and honk my horn and do all these things Like pull out my gun On California But I might like there there's external things that that happen and they can actually have like bad consequences Were you do you used to have be a road rage type of person? It's hard to imagine. I I've yelled I've never pulled out a gun But I've like rolled my window down like flipped people off and like yelled pretty loudly. So not on your list of zen habits Not my proudest moments to be honest. Yeah, I'm not sure what the story was there, but it wasn't good Yeah, yeah, probably a mix of other things going on in your life at that point. I would imagine. Yeah, yeah uh One article that I saw that I really thought was Interesting that it's a habit so many of us have the destructive habit of evaluating everything that we do I'd love to talk about this because okay when I as soon as I read this I thought Oh, yeah, that's that's me 100% Did a workout great didn't do a workout. Well, maybe did I walk? Did I do this other thing? Well, yeah, okay, kind of I'd give myself a pass But I I know really that I'm giving myself a pass so I feel bad there Should I eat this? No, but I'm really hungry and I want it then you eat it. Damn it. You know, you could have resisted that You need to remember next time. How shitty you feel And it's just one thing after another. There's almost no time where I feel like I'm not doing that I'm sure those times exist I was probably one of them But even after this I'll go, oh, you know, I should have done that and I should have paid more attention to this Bouncing around in this chair and you can hear it. Damn it. You know, yeah that will happen And this is not a good habit and it had never occurred to me that there was another choice I thought everyone does this and that's just the way it is Yeah, actually everyone does do it and I don't think you can actually necessarily stop it from happening It's just like a natural thing. It's like this is good. This is bad This is good. This is bad and we do it not only with our own actions But as we go around, you know the world in our office in our home I'm like, I don't like the way that she's acting right now Oh, I like the way she's doing that. I like it when she does that. Oh, I don't like that. I do like that And so I'm constantly just like judging the world, you know, right and myself constantly And you know, there's there's some ways where you can be like, well, I like this and so I want to be Encourage more of that, right? But what that leads to is actually More like it's in in Buddhism. It's called greed. So it's like constantly wanting all the things that we like, right? Like and that can lead that's actually what led to me smoking too much and it led to me Eating too much. It led to my debt. It led. I mean it leads to like numerous problems, right? And and then and that's also why we go to distraction social media and all these are is great things Wonderful things, but we just constantly we like looking at these pictures. I mean, we literally like them But we we're like judging them like, oh, I like this and I want more of this And that feels better than doing the hard work that we've been running from And that's the thing that we evaluate that we don't like So like I don't want to feel the uncertainty and discomfort of writing or Or doing some other kind of creation and so I'm Avoiding that because I've judged that as bad and I'm going towards the thing that I really want and I'm judging that as good And so it's just this constant like going towards the things we want Running from the things we don't want and again I actually think I look think of this as my like little boy self. It's like all I want is a candy Yeah, I want the marshmallows and like I don't want any of the pain and difficulty and I remember as like a a little When I was in school, right? I would Um constantly push off the homework like I can do that later. I can do that later and that's when my procrastination Yeah, I haven't started. That'll do it. Yeah. It's like, I don't I don't want to do that now I don't want to do that now I'll do it later when when the time comes And then I would actually like stress out, but I never learned my lesson So I was like avoiding the things I didn't like that was too hard And going towards the things the video games and all the other fun things that I really wanted to do And you can see that this actually has horrible consequences Like in our habits, but it also has bad consequences in our relationships and as we think about ourselves So it seems quite human then to constantly evaluate ourselves and others It seems quite natural and people want to be worthy of praise We want to make sure that we're doing things that elevate us. We're constant Well, if you're anything like me, you're also doing this Comparing your habits with other people sometimes or comparing yourself with other people. I'm pretty sure that's as universal absolutely and The problem is we compare our blooper reel to other people's highlight reel So we look at all of our mistakes and we look at what they've crafted for us on instagram And it's an unfair fight, but how do we Start to get out of this because compare comparing yourselves to others is tough That's going to be something that's going to be a constant life struggle But how do we stop even that first little step of evaluating each of our little actions because it happens so often and so fast It's not just a it's almost not just a habit. It's almost like a reflex Yeah, no, absolutely. It's absolutely a reflex. It's at that kind of reflex level And so you can't always I don't think you can stop it most of the time What you can do is say Oh, I'm doing it again And it's like if you've been like, you know hitting yourself or like scratching an itch Okay, so you're scratching an itch and it starts to bleed like that's not good Right, that's no longer an itch. I gotta stop scratching these itches because It's you know, obviously causing me problems And so sometimes when you have an itch, you can just habitually start scratching it You can recognize that you're scratching and you recognize this is going to lead to bleeding Right, that's this is what what's happening is just like, oh, I'm scratching again And so you can do different things to like stop yourself from scratching But I think the the main point of it is actually just staying with the itch So um and just recognizing that the itch is not that bad and that's the discomfort And uncertainty that I was talking about you can actually just stay with the feeling And not necessarily say I need to get away from this. I think this is bad Right, so that's feeling that's inside me. It's just a it's just a sensation It's just a tightness in my chest. And so if I can just stay with that It's not good or bad. It's just an experience And a lot of times you can you could actually reframe it if you want and say like The sensation means that I'm learning that I'm growing that like I'm you know, something is great And there's nothing wrong with reframing things, but what you can do is actually just learn to stay With whatever that itch is whatever that that feeling is and not need to like say this is good or this is bad This is just my experience right now as I sit here with you I can be like, well, you know, I'm screwing up this interview I'm I'm kick. I'm kicking butt here. Come on leo. Yeah together I can do that or I can just have the experience of being here face to face with you which Can be a beautiful thing But it's just an experience and in fact what we can learn to do is actually love All of these experiences and find the beauty in every single moment Whether it's like the thing that we normally would judge is bad or not It seems Like a such a nice idea to just love every feeling that you get or give every feeling that you get some kind of love I imagine That trying to do that Trying to feel that way or trying to let feelings happen that way I guess you would say in a in that sort of meditation practice Is kind of the equivalent of When you're on like an airplane and you get an itch in your back and you just you can't reach it You realize there's no way you're gonna get that itch or you're in a snow suit, right where I grew up Probably don't have those in guam But imagine you're all bundled up and this is a very michigan thing you're walking outside and you go Crap my lower back itches a lot. Oh, you're not getting in there You're not gonna scratch that itch. You can lean up against a mailbox, you know, but it's not gonna happen until you get home You get a walk home. Yeah, take all that crap off and then you can get that itch So you get almost philosophical about it where you're like I'm gonna focus on the itch and then maybe it'll go away and then sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't Or you just keep walking and you go Eventually this it I'm gonna wait out this it will give up before looks more stubborn than the Yeah, you're more stubborn than the itch and it seems like it just gets harder and harder and harder And then of course you get home by the time you get all the stuff off You've pretty much forgotten about the itch and of course if you're like me you're like I'm gonna scratch it anyway Just in case it's still there. I just didn't know and then of course you have phantom itch Yeah, or you find a freaking huge spider in there. Yeah, man. I knew I should have gotten this thing off Because it's been in the basement or your garage for four months or eight months before the the next snow But these these types of feeling itches these uncomfortable These uncomfortable sensations We don't have the choice to scratch them most of the time unless that scratch is actually distraction I guess distraction We scratch our itches all the time And sometimes it's just us spinning around a story in our heads. Sure. Okay, that makes sense Like I didn't like I didn't like something that you did maybe and so now I'm just gonna like maybe I'm not gonna lash out at you I'm gonna bite my tongue. Mm-hmm But I'm gonna stew inside inside and just like constantly spin around a story about how Horrible Jordan is and what an inconsiderate jerky is, you know, just like constantly do that and that's scratching the itch That's scratching itch. Okay. Yeah, gotcha. And actually So here's the thing is you you won't always scratch yourself Stopped from scratching the itch like you might sit in meditation and you're like, okay, I can't I got the snow suit on right I can't scratch But actually you can in meditation You're just sitting there and you can like spin around stories in meditation the whole time And like never have like paid attention to your breath at all, right? Sure. I feel like that's how I used to do it I was like this this is hard man. How do people sit here and beat themselves up for 45 minutes Yeah, and then you start spinning our story around about how stupid this meditation is and like this is useless I don't know why I'm doing this and I should be like doing my work And all these other things and like I just want to get up right now And I don't know why I'm putting myself through this so we can have habitual stories about that as well Which is scratching the itch? And so here's the thing is you can't actually stop yourself from doing that all the time You're not always going to stop the scratching And so what you have to do is when you notice yourself Spinning the story around about meditation or about the other person or about yourself Is just like smile at it because there is like this this You know, I there is a recognition that this is just a human thing that we do It's not necessarily a bad thing where we need to slap ourselves for Scratching the itch. It's more like oh there I go again. Like that's just A tendency that I have and that's you can be friendly towards your own failings And I think that's actually one of the most important habits that we can develop is Learning to be friendly when we mess up and when we scratch the itch Because beating ourselves up Even though it feels like it's worked for us in the past Maybe isn't the best course of action to continue forward Being ourselves up is actually more scratching the itch. It's like oh, I've been scratching the itch. Damn it. You're so stupid Stop scratching the itch You're actually scratching the itch then is like judging yourself as really bad and then starting to like just constantly rail on yourself Yikes. Yeah, it can be Really tough to not get lost in those spirals with meditation that it is very hard Mindfulness in general meditation aside just mindfulness in general The chief problem that I seem to have with it on any given day is as soon as I sit down. I'm like, okay I just remembered something and I need to write it down right now And that happens so often right and I used to give into that because I thought well, okay Well, I'm not scratching a itch. I just but I do need to write this down The problem is you could do that for 40 minutes straight. I never meditate There's a lot of stuff going on there's a lot of things you just need to do just for a minute Right And so that's actually a really good learning That's one of the things I love about meditation is as you start to like Try and get away from the meditation In different ways. You're actually seeing your habitual patterns in action. It becomes very clear Like oh, I need to like go do this one thing real quick It's a it's a rationalization that you have and actually most of us have Is like, oh if I just do this one thing real quick It won't it'll be okay because this is important, right? And I can put this thing off this thing that's uncomfortable and go and do this thing that will just take a second Right, right. And so you're actually well, we are all actually doing that all day long It's like I'll I'll do this but in a second because I have to do this real quick Yeah, and it's a justification that we have in a habitual way of escaping And so in meditation if you're if you're doing You know a good job of setting that ritual in that container Is like you're saying I'm not actually gonna allow myself to escape And then you'll see some even more deeper Habitual reactions come up of what happens when you don't allow yourself to escape It's really like some dark stuff sometimes. I'm sure that it is whenever friends of mine are like Oh, I'm doing a three-day meditation retreat. I just think oh my god. That sounds terrible And when they do it for 10 days or something. I'm just I would die. Yeah, I would you're evaluating it though Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm just thinking even about sitting on the floor for more than 10 minutes would hurt so much. I'd want to die So here's one interesting thing is this is your ego Like saying like asserting itself and saying no, I'm I'm not putting myself through that Like I'm I'm more important than that. And so it's it's like saying It's defending itself basically and what happens when you pour yourself into a ritual like the three-day or one-day meditation Uh retreat is you're saying I'm just gonna let go of my ego right now and just fully melt into this practice And that's a hard thing to do yikes. Yeah, I mean I'm already my ego is already rejecting the idea You come up with reasons why why you shouldn't do it. Maybe I'll do it this summer after I settle a few things You know, maybe I'll do it later So in that case what happens you need what you need to do is like treat the ego as like this little child That needs to be let alone and you're not you're not gonna just like throw the child off the cliff diving cliff, right? No, probably not have fun terrible parenting No, like they'll never want to cliff dive again, right? So you take treat the ego the same way it's like, okay, let's just try a little bit, right? And so you that's how I did it with with all of my habits. It's like, okay You know, it's really hard to do this but let's just try five minutes of meditation or two minutes of meditation So you just kind of like lead it in Little and you and it's like exposure therapy for for people who have fears Is like you give yourself just a little bit of that little dose of that that fear And you can deal with and you're like, oh, okay, that wasn't so bad And if you just keep giving yourself those doses actually you can increase the dosage over time And eventually like the fear is gone. So this is, you know exposure therapy and you can do the same thing for your ego exposure therapy for the ego is like just allow it to You know pour yourself into something just for a few minutes and just Completely just let go with that and not need to like justify and get out of it I think a lot of people who work on this When I meditated all through high school because I was so stressed out And then in college, I kind of thought I don't really need to do this anymore because college to be honest was not that hard Right, I've worked a lot, but it wasn't it wasn't that stressful except for around exams And so you kind of think you can get rid of this But what I've noticed getting back into it a little bit at least as an adult is just it's an onion with a million layers Yeah, and you keep every time you think oh, you know, oh, I'm getting through this This stuff that I just mentioned with having to write things down. Oh, this is so great now I can finally Get rid of that and I won't have to worry about that anymore And there's just one thing after another and I'm wondering are those habits all there Already or is our mind actually coming up with new ways to just reject this practice of sitting down All right, they're there all the time You know, I mean different triggers that will bring it up But they're there all the time and they're just like I said our habitual reactions This are our minds like defensive Mechanisms and we developed them when we were young as a way to deal with discomfort and stress So like, you know, someone criticized us Or they told us we had to like go and you know sit in a classroom all day long Right like we had to do something that we didn't like and so we developed These like mental patterns to defend ourselves And it's like if you're a little kid and you're getting beaten down by your parent, right Like there's nothing you can do you physically can't beat that parent up or defend yourself So you have to do you have to do something Habitually to stop yourself from that pain from feeling that pain. And so what you might do then is shut down Right. So you're completely shutting yourself down and saying I don't need this. I don't I don't need to feel this I don't need that person. They're not important to me I'm self-sufficient and I don't need to feel anything And so this defensive mechanism worked for you when you were a kid and being beaten down But now that you're like say married and your wife like criticizes you and you shut down with the same Defensive mechanism. It's not so it's not serving you so well because she feels that and then she shuts down because You're like shut down and you're emotionally unavailable and now she feels abandoned And so like she has her habitual reactions to feeling abandoned Right. And so we have these habitual things that we developed as defensive mechanisms as kids And we still use them as adults all the time and they don't serve us anymore But they did when we were kids I see entrepreneurs doing this a lot. I know you probably work a lot with entrepreneurs as well Do you do you notice how this stuff crops up in business? I see this all the time where someone will Shut down with their business partners or will decide I'm you know, you're bullying me and the other person's like, what are you talking about and then you think This person's really sensitive to Perceptions of bullying and then they resist and then they self-sabotage the project and So I think a lot of people who think I don't really need this kind of thing I'm fine. My marriage is strong. Yeah, I'm right. My kids don't hate me They don't necessarily we don't necessarily know if this is infecting more our marriage our personal relationships Friendships or in business. I think a lot of us don't look for the business ramifications of this but They do creep in and they show up and sometimes they are amplified because it's business So there's relationships, but there's also money And it's just like all kinds of stuff. You're just pouring a lot of chemicals into that toilet, right? Yeah, yeah, so here's an amazing thing about entrepreneurs and creative types as well Is that we have put ourselves into a space of tremendous uncertainty We've found the courage to do that most people don't do that and and entrepreneurs do You're you're actually taking greater risk than most people do and putting yourself out there and creating something amazing in the world And that's amazing and yet that the stress and uncertainty and self-doubt that comes up because of that Will trigger all of our habitual reactions all of it comes up And so when we especially if you're working on a team with with someone else and maybe your wife Yeah, it's on the team like there's There though you're now in a situation of like great stress and uncertainty And you find ways to deal with that and so some of it is habitualizing things systemitizing So I'm like I found the perfect system I'm going to drink my bulletproof coffee and do my incredible morning rituals And this is a way that entrepreneurs and creative types use To deal with that uncertainty find some stable ground under their feet because you're now in this like floating around Jump jumping off the cliff nothing under your feet. So you have to like Erect a structure, right? Yeah, and that is useful And yet it doesn't actually allay all of the doubts and uncertainty And so what happens is because I've now systematized my whole life and I have everything down and I have my Virtual assistant taking care of all my emails and everything right like I should be great And yet I still feel all this this crap, right? Yeah, and so what happens is now I blame other people for that's my one of my habitual reactions first one was getting control and systemitizing second one maybe is Saying well, it's it's Jordan's fault because he's not doing all these things on time And he's doing things wrong and right I've got my systems. I'm doing my part Yeah, not doing his his systems are broken So you're blaming other people or you're finding ways to avoid And so these are some of our our systems of blaming We might lash out at people and start blowing up and you'll see this in In lots of entrepreneurs as they start blowing up for like Like small things but for them This is actually just the the tip of the iceberg the small thing is like they're there The iceberg is all the uncertainty they've thrown themselves into And so that one little thing just tips them off because their habitual reaction is already like I have a whole bunch of reactions going off and now This one little thing just set off that last one and it just made me blow up So we have these things going on And you'll you'll definitely when you put yourself into uncertainty You're going to see your habitual reactions come up and you will Justify those reactions. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna give my reactions are right and yours are wrong Here's an illusion. So if anyone's interested in seeing the habitual reaction, I'm gonna give you guys a challenge People listening to this and Jordan you too. Okay So five minutes of meditation Every day for the next 30 days Starting starting tomorrow. Okay Five minutes as soon as you wake up. So you wake up. Maybe you go to the bathroom Drink a glass of water and then no nothing between that And and meditating no no writing down any notes. No checking your phone. No nothing so Try and accept that challenge And if you don't accept the challenge See what's going on in your mind when you're trying to justify not accepting like five minutes is a long time I have things I have to urgently do. Yeah, but they can't wait five minutes. Yeah Yeah, so if if I issued this challenge and so people listening to this have already Let's say 90 of them have discounted it. They've already said all about that's dumb I don't you know, who's leo to tell me what to do. I'm not going to do the challenge But other people listening should totally do this challenge. Yeah. Yeah, I'm totally enlightened So see what your mind's doing when I issued the challenge and see how you've already justified not doing it Yeah, I actually was just like he's gonna tell the audience what they should do. Yeah, I don't need to I'm gonna stand over here and not listen. I'm already awesome So and that's fine You don't actually have to accept the challenge my point is by issuing the challenge I've now tried to put you into a box And you have now shown your habitual reactions to being put in a box And so some of you have said, okay, I can do this like that's not a big challenge And I can't prove out there people accepted it so readily I think that's amazing that you've now accepted my invitation And now what I would like you to see is when you wake up tomorrow morning What does your mind do when you know you're supposed to Meditate so first of all make sure you put some kind of visual reminder when like something next to your bed Yeah, when you wake up you should see this reminder. It could be a note. It could be Like a meditation cushion. It could be a big teddy bear or whatever it is Something that you'll see and you can't you'll have no excuse to not meditate And then see what your excuses are and when you sit down see what your mind does When you start to meditate And maybe it's not till day 15 that you see your habitual reactions But I think some point along the way either like by pushing off and saying i'm not going to do it Or maybe on the first day or maybe sometime along the way you'll see your mind's Habitual reactions. What's your escape because when you cut off the external escapes Your mind will try and create its own escapes and that's really fascinating to me is when you start to see that Yeah, because if you don't just forget because you have the visual aid Which is if you forget you forget right then you're you're like, oh well I didn't do that consciously so you let yourself off the hook So you have to take that out of the equation put the reminder down. Yeah, and that's when you go Yeah, but I oh I should be out for the kids because I just want to make sure the kids are fed and then I'll go Meditate we're actually, you know, I would but right now that I hear the landscapers outside So I'm going to wait until they're done and then I'm going to go Meditate well, you know, I'm going to brush my teeth first and then I'm going to make coffee and then I'm going to go meditate I don't know who says I have to do it right after I wake up I'm going to do all this other stuff first and then you just realize oh wait crap. These are all escape Mechanisms that my brain is like yeah distractions or throwing tasks in your own way So those are the the patterns that I get are and especially in years past was busy work I would have 300 unread emails many of which were important But I'm like but my LinkedIn profile needs updating So that somehow magically has equal priority on the list With going through that or or my accountants like hey, can we get on the phone today? And I'm like, I don't know man. I got a lot of Facebook messages. So I have to play that one by ear and he's like What's in your Facebook inbox that has to do with your taxes. This deadline is like in a month. Okay fine I'm gonna handle that first, but it's really easy to start justifying. It's ridiculous when I say it out loud But in the moment It really looks like you do have to get that email inbox down to zero or you really do need to Absolutely Do it feels true this other thing before you handle this really uncomfortable thing Because even though you know one thing is uncomfortable the other thing is also important So all the all other things being equal. Why not just do the one that sucks less, right? So I like to offer two other things So one is if you decide not to meditate a few if you decide to meditate and then you decide not to And you start to see your habitual you decide I'm gonna push this off and I'm gonna go check email email me my Personal email is l just the the letter l at zen habits net and you won't get any spam You won't get an autoresponder. Yeah, I'll get the email personally. I won't reply, but I won't also send you anything So there's no like marketing here. I want to know what your habitual reaction is like tell tell me what Your mind's justification was I would love to hear this What kind of stuff do you get in that inbox? Just like this is the first time I've Yeah, I've never offered this before so this is just to your listeners. You've got mail for sure though So if you put it off and don't actually meditate Tell me why tell me that your justifications. I would love to hear what your mind habitually does The second thing is if you do meditate Your what you're doing there is you're cutting off your escapes for five minutes You're saying I'm not gonna allow myself to habitually escape That is an amazing thing to do. You're taking some courage there and saying I'm gonna see what happens and maybe the first day like You know nothing happens And you can listen to a guided meditation, but I would suggest just staying with the breath What happens is your mind will start to Do some stuff within the meditation space, right? So what I would like you to offer you there is a practice with that is Notice what your mind's doing like what story are you telling yourself? And then notice why your mind's doing it There's a again a some kind of tightness in your chest. Maybe some kind of pain Maybe some kind of stress feeling of anxiety whatever it is like Oh, I need to go do something real quick because this is really important, right? So there's a feeling there. Yeah, that's so familiar Yeah, so there's it's a feeling that comes up in you and maybe it's a little bit feeling of panic Maybe just like oh, I need to do this But there's some kind of physical feeling so what I would ask you to do is notice what you're saying And then notice what you're feeling and go to the feeling and stay with that Just like shine the spotlight of your attention onto that feeling and just Investigate just be curious. Just welcome it and just stay with it as long as you can and that's to me like really Transformative if you can just stay with that feeling just focus on that itch do that for 30 days Yeah, wow, that's an email me when you're done with that I would love to know if you did the 30 days a lot of people a lot of this audience has a lot of folks That are going to do it or a lot of folks that have already been meditating for years Of course, come on Jordan. Well, how come you don't talk about meditation is So if you've been meditating for for 30 years and you meditate for for half an hour that I would I would challenge you to Double your meditation for 30 days. There you go. Wow 30 years 30 minutes a day those people They're crazy. They're crazy. They're like, I don't need to take advice. This is a cliff diver's whipper snapper Yeah, I've been meditating for 30 years Let's wrap with being decisive. This is a a common high performer Roadblock being indecisive, which is kind of counterintuitive. You would think people who get a lot of stuff done and a lot of people who are Really good at their career. They've got advanced education. Those are decisive people I've actually kind of seen the opposite. I know a lot of high performers even executive level folks that really struggle with being decisive because among other reasons They don't want to be wrong about something that's really important. They built a reputation or a self-image Yeah, and that's a very common fear. So of course instead of making a decision They'll do things or we will do things like Research something to death. Absolutely. And I mean to death Like should I I'm still deciding whether to go to this festival this weekend. It's thursday and it's in Texas, what are you talking about? You're still deciding. Yeah Well, maybe I'll get tickets online and I was thinking now is the point at which it's so stressful to go to this festival That you shouldn't go You know, but you're oh, I'm still deciding and I hear that a lot and I do similar things in my own brain With certain specific topics And then procrastination kicks in because there's so many factors to weigh now There's probably other areas where you're very decisive though I'm guessing for me. I'm I'm actually quite decisive personally now having worked on it for a long time But it didn't before that. I just thought I need to weigh all of the data Everything yeah, but it only in things that I was afraid to do it was never it was never like Should I go out with my friends? Well the pros and cons on notes What what's gonna happen if I take this particular risk, right? What happens if I ask Katie out in the middle of math class next week? Here's 7 000 paths of that chains of events that could happen as a result None of them by the way where what actually would have happened after that They're all just mental Exercises to waste time But a lot of folks even now as adults have a lot of issues with being decisive at work Which job do I want? Which person do I want to date? What kind of freaking dog do I want to buy? I mean, there's all kinds of In decision if you could guide us through some of the practice that you've had to become more decisive That would be super helpful Yeah, and honestly, this is still a practice that I'm practicing now. So I'm not perfect at it As with any of this stuff But what so one of the things that you mentioned that's going on is when it's an area in certain areas when it's an area Full of uncertainty You're undecisive and you have habitual reactions to that to not to beat a dead horse or anything But that's exactly what's going on is you want to research something because what you really want is some certainty So you'll google it. You'll like look at all the research You'll look for the answers that other experts will give and you'll read a book on it You know, like you're looking for someone to hand you the answer or give you some kind of certainty or permission Yeah, like of course I got that one. It's the best one I spent 17 hours looking online and the general consensus is lg tv's are the best Right. And so that gives you a sense of some certainty that this is the right choice, right? So you're filled with uncertainty and you literally react by looking for certainty And the truth is you actually can't get certainty You might get like a percentage certainty like this is 80 chances is going to do pretty well And all these other ones are like a little 1 chances and I don't really need to worry about those, right? So you can like do some kind of like statistical probability like analysis, right? And that's totally legitimate, but you still won't have any certainty So what I am suggesting is this is your habitual reaction Notice that you're doing it Even touch into the uncertainty that you're feeling in your body But then just realize like I at some point I need to just pull the trigger and You know see what happens and just look at it as like a science experiment That's kind of how I look at it. It's like I'm just going to You know just Test this and see what the results are and it could be like horrendous, but probably I'm not I'm not cliff diving, right? I'm not going to die So like if you can do these experiments and just constantly do small experiments and just see what the outcome is Eventually what you do is to develop this trust that things are going to be fine Like you're not going to like fall apart And that you know, you can trust in the process I think that might be easier when you can minimize the consequences. So it's Well, what if I choose the wrong job? Well, then you get experience and a different type of Job different company culture. You can always reapply to the other place You'll have to a year or two more experience. You're not losing the time But I think it might be different if Well, what happens if I make the wrong choice? Well, then I've got to lay off 3500 people absolutely and I'm going to be forced out of the company by the board And Etc. So I think if we can minimize the consequences, we could say this is just like a nice Experiment with my career, but at the top of the totem pole It's like this is an experiment with a lot of other people's careers too. Yeah, maybe this gets harder Absolutely I mean, and I'm not going to downplay the difficulty of those kinds of decisions and actually I think in those cases It's actually completely justified to do a little research. Yeah. Yeah a little just a little just a little bit You know like the slide deck Do some evaluation here. I mean at that point when like people's jobs are in the line or lives are in the line Absolutely do a little bit of research and you know like way out the consequences and and try and find the best path But I think most of the time that's not what's going on. I know most of the time. We're not we're not of that level And even if we are I think do you think we can build up the trust? In ourselves by building these up little bricks at a time because I notice with people who are indecisive It's often the same people Sure, sometimes we're all indecisive in certain areas But I I know some folks that can't even decide what they're going to order at a restaurant And they don't know what kind of relationship they want and they don't know what kind of career they want They're indecisive across the board. Yeah, and so I I remember talking to a guy like that And he was like, I don't I don't know what career to choose, right? And he had a bunch of other things like that like he just described And I said, well, how are you going to find out? And he's like, I don't know. That's why I'm asking you And I'm like, well, is there a way to know for sure which path you should choose before you set down on any of them? And he's like, no Well, then the only way to know is actually start to walk down one of the paths and say, well I've walked down this and I can tell definitely this is the path or it's not the path So that's the only way to find out is actually to start to to take action and do it And so that to me, you're actually the the risk of not acting is much greater than the the risk of acting Most of the time is is the risk of acting and finding out you're actually going to get a little bit more certainty By by taking some making a decision and taking some kind of action So, yeah, absolutely start small and and start to do those You know the easy stuff first Don't deal with the laying off 35 000 people decisions yet and start to get good at the decision making process early on But also see that sometimes you have to just make a decision and test it out and find out along the way by testing Sure, realizing that the consequences are I think the key for me was Minimizing the idea that the consequences were real especially if we're talking about pancakes versus, you know a bagel and then Also taking a look at the end because I think one key turning point for me with indecision was Looking back on it because in the middle of the moment you have to figure out. Oh my gosh I'm just going to make the decision and then you do it and you go good I made the right decision, but that's not really what necessarily happened What happened and you only find this out if you look at the end of the process is you go I made a decision and everything was fine. Yeah was the other decision potentially better We'll never know it also doesn't matter Right So then you have to remember that feeling and that outcome the next time you face indecision in decision itself You have to think okay last time I just made a decision No evidence that it was 100 correct still ended up with a positive result that's happened 68 times out of 100 This is a good path for me to take absolutely And on a less less like scientific note One thing that really works for me too is to come from a place of curiosity rather than fear So fear is stopping us from making a decision But what if we had a place of curiosity where we're saying well, I don't know the answer And that's perfectly okay to not know the answer But I would actually like to find out more about this I'll never know the perfect answer like you were saying But I would actually like to find out what this path is like and so you go down that path and you're like Well, I don't know what that other path is like, but now I've learned a little bit more and it's actually Amazing to explore something new rather than like oh, I don't want to go down the wrong path and I I'm not going to walk any path, right? So so curiosity and then for another one is just to like make it fun and play in the middle of that path It's like, okay. Well, I don't know what it's like to launch this new product that I'm I'm launching Let's find out. Let's have fun with it and play and and mess it up and Allow ourselves to just like Make a huge mess of everything and that can be a lot of fun and you know, like Like you said if the consequences are horrible of this product failing Maybe that that'll bring a little fear into the game But yeah, but at the same time, I think if you're if you're staying in that place of fear all the time That's not really to me. That's not a healthy place to be So I'd rather come from a place of curiosity fun playing and exploring exactly I mean, look the guy who invented crystal Pepsi is probably still there So if that if he can survive that we can survive anything Absolutely like what would it be like if there was no color and we could see through our Pepsi I love it. I love the idea. Let's do it Oh my gosh. Yeah, I actually don't know if that guy's still there. That was a pretty bad idea Hey, man, he made history. You gotta you didn't make history. Yeah as one of like the worst Product ideas, although really you only see that looking back, right? I mean, why do we need caramel flavor coloring? We really don't it's just it's we were to add it and that's why there's actually not much of a taste difference That is I don't remember. No, I don't even know if there's a taste difference at all Yeah, it's just like what we're used to So he was messing with people's habitual reactions and I love it. Yeah, now. He's probably a self-help writer Because I don't know if he's designing beverages anymore. We'll see. Thank you. Leo. This has been great super fun interview I had a lot of fun. All right, cool. We good