How to Survive the Death of Your Old Self - Charlie Houpert (4K)

Chris Williamson 0:00 You're in a very different place now to when you started doing your thing-

Charlie Houpert 0:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 0:04 -online. What's the unifying thread? Is there one between sort of all of this stuff, or do you see it as different Charlies? How do you come to sort of construct the narrative of what your interests have been and y- your personal growth over the last decade and a bit?

Charlie Houpert 0:19 Sure. The terror was in not having a thread. So there was a time about three years ago where I could not form a story that connected who I had been in my twenties to who I was becoming in my thirties. And I was thinking about this. I've heard you talk about the lonely chapter, where you go from, "I'm just blending in," to, "I'm gonna take control of my life, and I'm gonna dial in these optimizing things. I'm gonna start my business, get in shape, eat the right food, et cetera." I've, I discovered a second lonely chapter [chuckles] which is when you, you bottom out on the optimizing thing, and your friends are still very much in that optimized zone, and I did not know where to go, but I just knew that it wasn't working.

Chris Williamson 0:57 Wow!

Charlie Houpert 0:58 So the common thread for me was that there was this problem in my life that started with, "I'm too shy. Nobody wants to talk to me." And you start off in victim consciousness, which is, "This is just who I am, and I will just deal with this for the rest of my life." You read The Game, which is what I did. You have this breakthrough, re-read Dale Carnegie, read all these other guys, and you go, "Oh, my gosh, I can change my behavior, get different results." But then once I had all the different results, which was I was thirty years old, had this business that I dreamed of, the girlfriend that I'd imagined myself dating, a bunch of friends, money was coming in. The most cliché thing happened, which is there was an emptiness [chuckles] that I could not pinpoint or explain, and things-- I started unconsciously breaking things because I didn't know where to go from there. So to answer your question, the thread has been I'm tr-- I try to attend to the greatest problem in my life-

Chris Williamson 1:52 Right

Charlie Houpert 1:52 ... and figure out who I can learn from to solve it.

Chris Williamson 1:55 What does breaking things look like?

Charlie Houpert 1:58 It looks like I'm in the business that I love, that I dreamed of. There was a... One day, it was like, if I could just make two thousand dollars a month, live in Latin America, and do work that I found meaningful, that's the dream. And I hit that, and then I moved the goalpost, and I moved the goalpost, and all of a sudden I'm complaining, and I go, "I have to make one video a week." Three years prior was, "I get to do this," and it became, "Ugh, [chuckles] so annoying. These people are asking me, and I have to h- hit all these targets that I'd set for myself to surpass views and all sorts of things." I started having issues in my friendships. I started having issues in different kinds of relationships, and I did not know that what was happening, and I would say, is like my soul was waking up. I had no concept of a soul. I wasn't a religious person, but the lack of emotional and spiritual nourishment that I'd allowed myself to experience for the last decade plus had caught up with me, is what happened.

Chris Williamson 2:54 Hmm. Was the success and the pursuit materially antithetical to spiritual connection?

Charlie Houpert 3:08 No. That's the tragedy, [chuckles] right?

Chris Williamson 3:11 I didn't need to sacrifice one-

Charlie Houpert 3:12 I didn't need to

Chris Williamson 3:12 -to get the other.

Charlie Houpert 3:13 I had it. It was... I think the temptation is when you have unresolved emotional issues, which I think we all do from childhood, and you've spoken to people about trauma, I know, and the ways in which we have these events in our past that happen, and we make vows to ourself that I will never experience that again, and then our entire life bends around not having that particular experience again. And so we all have these unconsciously in our lives. And I started off with this business that was-- it was just it. It was-- I was learning in every video. I made this Donald Trump video. I learned so much in doing it, and people liked it. I had both. I was filling myself up and helping the world and making money. And then that people pleaser kicks in, and then that, "you could be doing better" kicks in, and it became, "I have to top the last thing that I did," which was never the early motivation. The early motivation was always, "How can I solve my own problem and help people that are like me?" But it, it devolved into, "Can I have another video that is better than the one before? Can I make more money this month than I did the prior month?" And that endless loop became, uh, deeply depressing [chuckles] to exist in.

Chris Williamson 4:24 Yeah. Well, you know, when you are at the start of your journey, you have all of the hope that somewhere on the path from the bottom of the mountain to the top of it, you will find a thing that fills the void that you're trying-

Charlie Houpert 4:40 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 4:40 ... to fix. But when you get to the top of the mountain, you've achieved all of the stuff, and the void's still there.

Charlie Houpert 4:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:46 You go, "Oh, fuck!"

Chris Williamson 4:49 And this is... Have I-- have you heard me do my unteachable lessons essay?

Charlie Houpert 4:54 I may have, but please.

Chris Williamson 4:56 Okay, so this is the most robust... I, I chat a lot of shit, right? I come up with lots and lots of ideas and, and insights and stuff like that. Some of them are more scalable and, like, replicable than others. This is, this is maybe, like, the most robust of any of them, and it just keeps coming up, and I think it's because of my age and where I'm at and where my friends are at, people like you or, you know, Dr. K or whoever it is. Um, but this is unteachable lessons.

Charlie Houpert 5:26 Hit me.

Chris Williamson 5:27 "No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it is going to be for us to find out for ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical catastrophes, public scandals, and instead think some version of, 'Yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me.' " [chuckles] "We decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way over and over again. Unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things, too. It's never insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about."... Things like money won't make you happy, fame won't fix your self-worth. You don't love that pretty girl, she's just hot and difficult to get. Nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. You will regret working too much. Worrying is not improving your performance. All your fears are a waste of time. You should see your parents more. You'll be fine after the breakup and will be grateful that you did it. It's perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life. Even reading this list back, I'm rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is. These are all basic bitch, obvious insights that everybody has heard before. But if they're so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives? And if they're so obvious, why do people who have recently become wealthy or famous or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to proclaim these facts with the renewed grandiose ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious revelation?

Charlie Houpert 6:55 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 6:57 It's also a very contentious point to say on the internet. If you interview a billionaire who says that all his money didn't make him happy, or a movie star who said her fame felt like a prison, the internet will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch. So not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them. Even more than that, for every one of these, if I think a bit deeper, I can recall a time, including right now, where I convinced myself that I'm the exception to the rule, that my particular mental makeup or life situation or historical wounds or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable.

Charlie Houpert 7:37 Mm.

Chris Williamson 7:38 No, no, no, my unique inner landscape would be fixed by skirting around the most well-known wisdom of the ages. No, no, no, I can thread this needle properly. Watch me dance through the minefield, avoid all the tripwires that everybody else kicks. And then you kick one, and you share a knowing look with somebody else, the kind that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in exactly the same way.

Charlie Houpert 8:03 Mm.

Chris Williamson 8:03 And a voice in the back of your mind will say, "I told you so."

Charlie Houpert 8:06 Mm, mm, mm. [inhaling] Yeah. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 8:16 [laughing] Yes.

Charlie Houpert 8:18 The... So I've, I've wrestled with this, 'cause the- you close with, "I told you so," and I actually think that is a part of the trap, which is you're not supposed to make the same mistakes that everybody else makes. You're supposed to listen to your elders, and what I've seen is that it's kind of like grades. Like, you're not supposed to skip counting on your fingers to jump to mental math.

Chris Williamson 8:40 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 8:40 You are supposed to bump your head. You are not supposed to listen to other people tell you that it hurts to bump your head or burn your hand on the stove. As much as it hurts to have done, I think there's something beautiful about the process, and part of the most difficult thing for me was that I kept beating myself up for exactly the reason that you were talking about.

Chris Williamson 8:56 Why didn't you foresee it?

Charlie Houpert 8:57 Everyone told me this was gonna happen, right? Why didn't I catch it?

Chris Williamson 9:00 Such an idiot.

Charlie Houpert 9:01 So there's a, a model that is... It's not uniquely mine, but it helps me understand it, that I think of as a pyramid, that I think is appropriate here and is somewhat related, which is we start, if this is a pyramid, at the very top thing, which is with our attention on results, and this is sort of victim mindset. Which is to say, we're in, uh, junior high, high school, wherever, and we go, "Man, I wish I had that girlfriend," or, "I wish people liked me." And we talk with our friends, and we pontificate about what we would do if we had $100 million, but we do nothing to make it happen, right? When you leap from that to the lower level, which is foundational to it, which is behavior, you don't get to bring all your friends with you, right? 'Cause some of them wanna just stay there, and this is what I think you were talking about with this lonely chapter idea. As you shift into, "I'm gonna take action, I'm gonna start going to the gym, I'm gonna start counting calories, I'm gonna start making sure that I do enough work every day," and I'm not just gonna go, "Did I get the result that I want?" I'm gonna go, "How are my inputs, my, my behavioral inputs?" You lose people, but you gain something, which is, as you focus on this, this stuff just ha- it, it occurs. It's secondary to that. But then the journey that I think I started probably ten-ish years ago was, you have everything you want [laughing] and it's- and the hole is still there. So you start paying attention to the emotional layer, which is underneath that. Because at the action level, it's all about discipline. Don't wanna go to the gym? Just do it. Feeling sad? Turn it into rage and make- [laughing] and, and propel yourself forward, right?

Chris Williamson 10:28 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 10:28 But you start to realize that those corrosive m- emotions are a type of fuel that just hurts, and you can get all of the actions in place and all of the results can flow, but you will feel crappy. So you start tending to your emotions. Joe Hudson shows up in your life, right? [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 10:41 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 10:41 When the student is ready, the teacher appears. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 10:42 Motherfucker, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 10:44 And you start sitting with shame, and you start sitting with helplessness and-

Chris Williamson 10:47 Grief

Charlie Houpert 10:47 ... and grief. Oh, grief! Rage instead of just anger, right? And so as you get in touch with all of these, your emotional fuel starts to shift. You're taking not exactly the same actions, but you're still taking effective actions, and then over time, your results come back, but there's a dip in between every one of these levels. When you switch from results to actions, you're the loser who's going to the gym and is still skinny. When you switch from actions to emotions, you're the guy whose business is shrinking [chuckles] while everyone else is kicking butt, and why are you lagging? They're having so much fun conquering the world.

Chris Williamson 11:20 Mm-hmm, and denying how they feel.

Charlie Houpert 11:22 And yes, and the problem that I did and everybody else does, is you try to drag people who don't wanna take that journey. So I, I was, uh... I realize now, at each stage, I have been very aggressive with the people closest to me in trying to incentivize and pull them to the level of development that I feel called to, and it's not appropriate. There are people waiting as you achieve these levels, even though it feels like there's not.

Chris Williamson 11:45 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 11:46 And I s- I say, "achieve," that's even a, [chuckles] a different mentality.

Chris Williamson 11:49 Yep.

Charlie Houpert 11:49 But what I'm seeing, and there may be many more beneath this, is I spent years now on the emotional place, and the unlock for that is obviously you have more joy, and you can operate from that. But the thing that I have not said before that scares me to-- [chuckles] I'm afraid to say it, is that there's a level beneath that which is spiritual-religious. And it's terrifying to acknowledge that-... the deepest wound that I've been able to find inside of myself is, is there. It is a separation from life, a separation from God, a separation from all of these things, and we don't- everyone has their own story in the West of how that came to be. But culturally, if you look at us, we are all recent immigrants in America. [chuckles] You especially so, right? There was something going on with our family and our homeland where it was like, "It's kind of crappy," or, "It's, it's not working here. We're gonna cut ties with our ancestral lands. We're gonna cut ties with our extended family. We're gonna cut ties with this sense of belonging to a larger community to go try to form a better life for ourselves." And so a lot of people, particularly in America, I have found, are ancestrally disconnected, spiritually disconnected, disconnected from the land. They've found convenient ways to get everything from food, to friends, to whatever they need, and they can't, myself included, identify the location of the pain, the location of the hole, 'cause you would need to have a soul in order to feel that pain.

Chris Williamson 13:15 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 13:15 And if you don't have a soul, you just need more stuff. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 13:18 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 13:19 Or, or you just need better behavior, or even you just need to feel better. But as I've dropped into this layer, it's like, oh, w- like the, the relief, the, the gift, the joy, the beauty is... I don't even want to sell it too much. It's staggering, and, uh, humbling and beautiful. And so that's, that's been my arc lately.

Chris Williamson 13:38 Well, Huberman was sat there yesterday-

Charlie Houpert 13:40 Mm.

Chris Williamson 13:41 ... and he basically said the same thing. [chuckles]

Charlie Houpert 13:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:43 So you're in good company.

Charlie Houpert 13:44 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:44 Uh, this [chuckles] God pivot-

Charlie Houpert 13:48 The God pivot. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 13:50 ... you call it.

Charlie Houpert 13:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:53 Uh, is- it seems to be reliably happening to people who get to a certain place.

Charlie Houpert 14:02 Mm.

Chris Williamson 14:02 Uh,

Chris Williamson 14:04 so I'm interested in... There's a bunch of, uh, like, ideas that are being mapped here. So I love what you said about the unteachable lessons thing, that it's kind of your job to burn your hand, and the reason that I like the term unteachable lessons-- And o- one bit that's probably missing from that essay is to reassure people that the voice in the back of your head that tells you, "I told you so," that's a prick, and you shouldn't be listening to that. The reason that these lessons are unteachable is that nobody learns them.

Charlie Houpert 14:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 14:31 So the fact that, uh, you supposedly know that it's going to happen, you disregard it, it happens, that is the lesson. The lesson is that everybody doesn't learn the lessons-

Charlie Houpert 14:44 Mm.

Chris Williamson 14:44 -if that makes sense.

Charlie Houpert 14:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:45 And that should hopefully rid you of at least a little bit of the, "I told you... I should have told you so" shame.

Charlie Houpert 14:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:49 "You should have known that this thing was going to happen."

Charlie Houpert 14:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:51 Okay, that's the first thing-

Charlie Houpert 14:52 Beautiful

Chris Williamson 14:52 ... which is great. Um, I love your, uh, hierarchy of results, actions, emotions, spirituality, and that at each level, as you try and pull somebody through, there is a lonely chapter that comes along for the ride.

Charlie Houpert 15:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:09 And there is a pullback in terms of real-world results because you have p- you have moved ever out of outcomes and ever more inward.

Charlie Houpert 15:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:20 Right? Ever more from the world, from the material, to something that's a little bit deeper, a little bit closer to self, a little bit like, um, w- more central, right?

Charlie Houpert 15:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:30 It's increasingly sort of turning you-

Charlie Houpert 15:32 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:32 ... inside out, and, um, at each level of this that you move through is interesting. Uh, for me, a few things come up. [clears throat] First off, the first lonely chapter, which I think is accurate, your friends are gonna leave you behind because of that pivot. There's another side to the lonely chapter, too, which is, uh, your actions throw into harsh spotlight other people, so the looking glass self-

Charlie Houpert 15:57 Yeah

Chris Williamson 15:57 ... right? That you are observing yourself through the influence and the, uh, expectation and the perspective of other people, and they have an incentive for you to not change-

Charlie Houpert 16:05 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 16:05 ... because it's effortful for me to update my opinion of Char- Charlie's the charisma guy.

Charlie Houpert 16:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:09 Like, Char- y- you know, he's like Russell Brand videos and Donald Trump, and like, you know, fucking Robert Downey Jr.

Charlie Houpert 16:15 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 16:15 Like, that's... I know Charlie. Charlie's the opin- the, the, the charisma guy. Oh, fuck, Charlie's changed. I don't like that. First off, it means that if he can change, I can change-

Charlie Houpert 16:25 Mm

Chris Williamson 16:25 ... and his change throws my lack of change into harsh spotlight.

Charlie Houpert 16:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:28 Also, that's effortful. L- go back. Can you not be... 'Cause I already- I had to do a bit of work to work out who you were.

Charlie Houpert 16:35 It's a decade. [chuckles] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:36 Stop fucking changing, right?

Charlie Houpert 16:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:37 Another part is, well, if I really care about Charlie, especially if I'm in a relationship with him and he keeps changing, well, maybe, what if one of the bits of change that he does means that I'm- he sees something in me that's- that can't come along for the ride?

Charlie Houpert 16:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:54 What if, what if his evolution results in a discarding of me as his friend or as his partner-

Charlie Houpert 17:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 17:01 ... or whatever? Well, that's not b- like, so the people around you have a lot of incentives to keep you where you are, and this isn't-- Sometimes it's malicious or, you know, sort of conscious, but for the most part, it's just someone going, "Please don't abandon me."

Charlie Houpert 17:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:16 "Like, you're changing so much, and it's wonderful for you, but, like, I feel inferior, I feel insufficient, I feel behind. I have this sort of sense of lack, of not enoughness, uh, and this fear of abandonment. Please, like, just can you not, like, just..."

Charlie Houpert 17:31 Mm.

Chris Williamson 17:32 And it leaks out of us in all of these different ways.

Charlie Houpert 17:35 Mm.

Chris Williamson 17:35 Uh, so I'll pause there.

Charlie Houpert 17:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:37 Just to-

Charlie Houpert 17:37 No, I mean, I... It makes me, I'm s- sa- not, you're not making me sad. I'm reminded of my grief over so many of these, and I'm reminded of there's the people and the perspective that can often be talked about of people holding us back. But what I look at is the f- terror of being the one who is changing and recognizing, "Oh, my God, you're staying the same. I'm the one who is forcing our relationship into a new structure."

Chris Williamson 18:03 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 18:03 And the shame and pain and grief of that.

Chris Williamson 18:07 I see in you, person who isn't changing, the pain of watching me, person who is changing, change. I might stop changing in order to-

Charlie Houpert 18:14 And it's hard for me to be around you. So when you're in a liminal space, and I've seen this many times, when I was in this in-between space of still really wanting material success at a, in a way that just hooked me, and also sensing that it was unsatisfying, I would have these days where I'd, like, start work, and then like, "Oh, get away from me!" [laughing] And so, and so when I sit down with someone who is firmly in that achiever phase, and they're rock solid-

Chris Williamson 18:37 Yep

Charlie Houpert 18:37 ... in it-... it, it is, it's more congruent than I am, and I find myself frustrated and angry with their congruence. And so I think this is an interesting way to analyze someone, we don't have to go deep into this, but like a Donald Trump or an Andrew Tate, they are deeply congruent at the level of ego. Like, they are fully on their own, and I don't mean this judgmentally, on their own ego's side. There's not a waiver, there's not a flinch, there's not an anything. When you enter into an in-between paradigm space, you're flinching all over the place. [chuckles] You're not sure-

Chris Williamson 19:09 I'm not certain about this.

Charlie Houpert 19:09 Should I go this? Am I this?

Chris Williamson 19:10 Yep, yep, yep.

Charlie Houpert 19:11 I kinda think, what do you guys think? You're testing the waters. Will anyone come with me? And so when it's very difficult to be around high-conviction, highly congruent people in a different stage, that is particularly a stage that you're coming from when you're in that thing. And so I look back and go, "I had to internally and sometimes externally demonize people that I had been close to because they were external representations of the thing that I, the sh- the thing that I was growing out of."

Chris Williamson 19:37 You were trying to shed this.

Charlie Houpert 19:39 Not even trying. That was... I wish I, I was trying to stop sh- [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 19:42 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 19:42 It was happening at this point. I couldn't undo it. That was the most frustrating part. I was like, "If I could go back, I would." [chuckles]

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Charlie Houpert 21:00 Mm

Chris Williamson 21:01 ... so deeply?" And he says, "You take more of the thing that poisons you until you turn it into a tonic that girdles the world around you." Very apocalyptic from Jordan. But then he said, "You can try and regress back into a sort of more animalistic state.

Charlie Houpert 21:19 Mm.

Chris Williamson 21:19 You can try to sort of devolve. You can put Pandora's toys back into her box-

Charlie Houpert 21:23 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 21:23 ... and try and pretend that you don't know what's on the other side."

Charlie Houpert 21:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:26 "But it's too bloody late for that. It's too bloody late for that!"

Charlie Houpert 21:29 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 21:30 And, um, that's what you're talking about. You're like, "I, I... Fuck, like, it was so much easier when I was just on my grind.

Charlie Houpert 21:38 Mm.

Chris Williamson 21:39 I had congruence. I had conviction."

Charlie Houpert 21:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:41 "And my conviction looked outwardly like confidence, even if it was ignorance-

Charlie Houpert 21:47 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 21:47 ... uh, but it presented as certainty, and people really like that, and they seemed to be attracted to me 'cause my aura was energizing and electric-

Charlie Houpert 21:56 Yeah

Chris Williamson 21:56 ... and I had, like, shit happening, man, and I didn't doubt myself."

Charlie Houpert 22:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:00 "I didn't doubt, and it didn't tarnish the whole process."

Charlie Houpert 22:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:04 "And now I'm, like, trying to evolve, and my evolution is making me miserable because on the s- uh, I ne- I don't have the certainty that what I'm doing is what I'm supposed to be doing anymore."

Charlie Houpert 22:14 Yeah. You, I mean, you said a couple words, like confidence comes from confide, trust, right? It's the ability to have trust within yourself. So you're in these stages of high conviction, high confidence, and they're authentic to a particular time in your life, where for me, it was, "I know what's important. I'm in pursuit of what's important. When I look someone in the eye and I tell them this is what I believe, it's congruent for me."

Chris Williamson 22:35 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 22:35 And the terror that happens when your sense of self expands outside of that congruence, where you no longer feel the ability to fully trust this new piece of yourself that you're becoming aware of, perhaps not a new piece, but a piece that you're becoming aware of.

Chris Williamson 22:49 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 22:50 And as someone who teaches charisma, I have long recognized that conviction is, if I had to say one thing, it is the backbone of charisma, is the, is the ability to be congruent on your own side and internally aligned. But it's not the end-all be-all because if you... it doesn't allow for growth in that phase. So you look at, like, Conor McGregor, super high conviction, has had some emotional issues that he doesn't seem to have been able to integrate well, 'cause that would require him to doubt, "Hey, maybe I haven't been behaving in the best way lately." But the conviction is what's taken him to where he is, so why trade it in?

Chris Williamson 23:26 Yep.

Charlie Houpert 23:26 Right?

Chris Williamson 23:26 Yep. You're, you're asking somebody to get rid of the thing that they have evidence is effective at getting them results in the real world, and respect and admiration-

Charlie Houpert 23:37 Yeah

Chris Williamson 23:37 ... in order to do a thing which loses all of that, and feels like shit, and puts them back to before a white belt.

Charlie Houpert 23:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:46 Uh, well, is it any surprise that people choose to not take that trade? Like, it's no, no surprise to me at all.

Charlie Houpert 23:53 It's shocking that anybody does otherwise. It's [chuckles] that's, that's the bigger surprise, and it only... And if I've heard people talk, and Joe Hudson says something similar, which is, you enter into, to increasingly s- a state of choicelessness. Like, this is not what I would elect from a strategic choice. My mind, uh, does not see the value of this so clearly. But some other part of me, and we can talk as your sense of awareness moves from, I am my thoughts, I am thinking about things, I have strategies, plans, ways of engaging with the world. Like, I, I locate myself up here to a bit more embodied. I feel my butt on the ground, my feet on the floor, and really, like, the central column, the heart, th- this piece right here. This is the tender piece. This is the piece that can do vulnerability. This is the piece that can weep, and cry, and love, and hug fully.

Chris Williamson 24:38 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 24:38 ... and this is the piece that has wonderful strategies. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 24:40 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 24:41 And it's really cool, and I don't want to throw it out.

Chris Williamson 24:42 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 24:42 I think that's, that was something I also tried to do for a period of time, which was a mistake.

Chris Williamson 24:47 What, what did that look like?

Charlie Houpert 24:49 So this is where I think part of the reason that I think people, men in particular, have negative associations with sensitivity and vulnerability is because it, uh, some of the early stages of arriving there, where it's not more fully integrated, can look like you're just a raw nerve, and anyone who touches you, you just cry, and there's, there's a lack of containment. There's not a full embodiment of the vulnerability.

Chris Williamson 25:14 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 25:16 And so part of what helps you have some consistent thread of past, future is your head. It's the part of you-- like, you need it to strategize. But I think the big shift, and again, I'm very much a student in this, I'm learning from people far ahead of me, is that this switches from the master to the, the tool, right? The, the mind, the strategy, all of that sort of stuff becomes something that you can deploy from time to time, but not something that when you sit and meditate, chats the entire time. You can drop into a quieter, felt place more often. And again, I'm, I'm a bit above my pay grade here 'cause I don't live there. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 25:51 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 25:51 I'm talking about the thing.

Chris Williamson 25:53 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 25:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:59 How many people have the choice with this?

Charlie Houpert 26:02 This is another thing that upsets me, is I had the impression that there are so many guys that are, like, similar to you and I, have hit achievement thresholds and moved goalposts so many times. And I admire them, and I look up to them, and I've learned a ton about business from them, and I, I see so many of the influencers like you and at, in the space, I feel like they're there. I have this conversation with a lot of people.

Chris Williamson 26:30 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 26:30 And what I've heard before is like: "Oh, wow, the hair on my arms is standing up as you're talking about this stuff. I feel it. It's... Yeah, there's some demons that I'm running away from, some stuff in my past that I thought that I could bury, that I'm willing to verbally acknowledge, but not necessarily dive into." And so I do think that there is a choice at the edge of all of these thresholds, just like there's a choice at the edge of results, which is, hey, I've seen that people who take these actions start to get in shape, start to earn more money. Am I willing to let go of the safety and comfort of not trying in order to apply myself? I think similarly, there's a question of: am I willing to let go of the certainty and the control that I have by completely managing all of my actions all the time, and to enter into this irrational, feminine, emotional space where I am not totally in control?

Chris Williamson 27:19 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 27:20 And I think that there's a, a lot of people have that choice today. I think we all have choices.

Chris Williamson 27:25 Well, the, the raw nerve thing I think is an interesting analogy because almost all cross-cultural definitions of masculinity include emotional control-

Charlie Houpert 27:36 Yeah

Chris Williamson 27:37 ... or some variant of that.

Charlie Houpert 27:39 You can shortcut it. So, so the way to sh-- I think the depth of masculinity is to feel everything, but to have a vessel that can contain it, right? So that it is not just immediate, instinctual, "Ah, you hurt me, I punch you!" Right?

Chris Williamson 27:56 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 27:56 It, it's not, "You hurt me, I, I just dump on you, I cry, I this..." That you're still feeling intensely, but there's a system that can feel it, tend to yourself, not abandon yourself, be vulnerable in front of the other person, which would be to show them that you're hurt without dumping it on them, and then choose how to behave. You can shortcut that, though, by just not feeling. You can just, you can just go, "Somebody insulted me. I don't care. That's a hater." [chuckles] You know? Like, like you can get mental models and all sort of stuff-

Chris Williamson 28:25 Yep

Charlie Houpert 28:25 ... to just cut everything beneath this off and just say, "Well, that-- it's wouldn't be practical for me to listen to what the haters say, and it would..." And you can, you can just lose all of the feeling.

Chris Williamson 28:34 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 28:34 And what you gain from that is an incredible efficiency in terms of getting stuff done. I mean, if you look at the wealthiest people in the world, they are very good at disconnecting from their feelings most of the time. It's tough to make billions and billions and billions of dollars and stay in the game for that amount of time at that intensity level without abusing your own feelings, [chuckles] right?

Chris Williamson 28:55 Because you're permanently having to suppress?

Charlie Houpert 28:57 Yes, and you can make a lot of money doing it.

Chris Williamson 28:59 But that's in the way, right? This is, this is one of the reasons why an interesting definition of vulnerability, Joe Hudson's definition of vulnerability, uh, telling the truth even when it's scary-

Charlie Houpert 29:09 Mm

Chris Williamson 29:09 ... speaking your truth even when it's scary.

Charlie Houpert 29:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:11 Um, that is very much a lean-in definition of vulnerability.

Charlie Houpert 29:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:17 But especially as you transition from, uh, like, results to action, and then action to emotions, your outcomes in life are reliably going to get worse, and you're going to feel worse, and people are going to treat you worse. So well, why would I do that? Why would I... I'm, I'm gonna sacrifice the only observable metric that anybody cares about-

Charlie Houpert 29:38 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 29:38 ... and that I can flex on Instagram and in an increasingly meritocratic, rationalist, materialist society, is the only one that people can judge me based on outwardly.

Charlie Houpert 29:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:47 Right? No one knows the peace of mind I have when I go to bed at night, and I can kind of forget that. It's like, yeah, sure enough, I haven't had a peaceful night of sleep in, uh, three years, but like, eh-

Charlie Houpert 29:57 Mm

Chris Williamson 29:57 ... you know, like, fucking look at my car. Um, so I think an interesting unifying thread that I see between at least some of the people trying to come up with-

Charlie Houpert 30:10 Well, so, so there are ways of conceding, and I think you're raising a really good point here. That is, you, if you just-- to become a monk is not available to many people. Technically, you could fly to Nepal and, and wear a loincloth and, and hold a cup, but that's, that's not a likely outcome for a lot of people. So there is this need to exist in consensus, economic reality, where the opinions of other people affect you, they matter, they have a direct impact on your level of survivability and also just your ability to be social and happy in life. So that's real, all the things that you're saying. But then there's also...... the unique spiritual calling that everyone has, which is that it's the little voice that you can learn to drown out. It's not in an- it's not a loud voice, but it is a ca- persistent voice, [chuckles] and it's always there. Like, warned you at the beginning of the relationship, warned you midway through the relationship, [chuckles] it's there at the end of the relationship, right?

Chris Williamson 31:05 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 31:05 It's just, it's just there. And I think w- I know that what I'm trying to do is to find a marriage of those two things, where I am honoring the need to function and live in the world and produce stuff that other people want and like, and having attention outwardly focused in order to do that.

Chris Williamson 31:23 And to respect your own, uh, evolutionary programming, which is you're a social creature.

Charlie Houpert 31:28 Of course.

Chris Williamson 31:29 You need validation, recognition. You don't want to be abandoned by the tribe. You don't want to be so weird-

Charlie Houpert 31:33 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 31:33 ... and fucking esoteric that nobody can relate to you, because that's probably gonna be pretty tough to handle.

Charlie Houpert 31:40 Yes, to... And I think a huge aspect of communication and empathy is the ability to go, "Where is this person at?"

Chris Williamson 31:45 Meet them where they're at.

Charlie Houpert 31:46 And meet them where they are, and that requires external focus. Then there's the internal focus, which is, can I shut it all out? And if, if, y- no matter what anybody says or does or thinks or cares, what's true about me? And this is hardest in the realm of like, why am I here? For some people, it's what is my sexuality, right? Yeah, there's, there's these very, very challenging questions, and there's always this tug, "Well, how are people gonna respond to it? What will they like? Ah, that wouldn't work financially." And I think to become able to hold or allow both of those currents to exist in you at the same time is the work, and there's not, like, a checklist [chuckles] that I can give you in order to do it.

Chris Williamson 32:25 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 32:25 I'm still learning it myself. But I'm waking up to the tension between those, and I'm also waking up, as you go... I think the cool thing is you can follow either one, and they will lead you to one another eventually.

Chris Williamson 32:39 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 32:39 Because if I, I had this period of, if I look at the beginning of Charisma on Command, it was very external focused. How are- do people like what I'm doing? Does, does the girl at the bar happy with what I'm saying? [chuckles] Right? All of that stuff. I'll make a video. But it actually took me this roundabout route to this beautiful, creative thing that I got to build, especially early on in the business. And so in pursuing this external, egoic dream of living on the beach with my friends, doing work that I wanted while doing yoga, I found myself. [chuckles] Like, I found this internal guy, and then I lost him. [chuckles] And then in the last couple years.

Chris Williamson 33:10 [chuckles]

Charlie Houpert 33:11 You can also lean to the internal side, which is you go deeply internal. And, uh, for a while, I mean, I know we don't want to do too much personal stuff, but I was like, "I'm gonna do these weird projects. I'm gonna make a Dungeons and Dragons show, and I'm gonna make-

Chris Williamson 33:22 I loved it.

Charlie Houpert 33:22 [laughs] I'm gonna make stuff that nobody wants to watch, right? And I don't care. I don't care. This is me, me, me, me, me. And then you go, "Oh, this isn't as satisfying. Like, I want to serve. I want- I actually do want to give of myself, but in a way that is meaningful to other people."

Chris Williamson 33:39 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 33:39 And so I think if I look at the arc of what charisma meant to me, there was this, "Who do I have to be in order to get what I need from the world?" was, is a foundational question, I think, of every child, every adolescent. And I think entering into maturity is about recognizing oneself as capable, still interdependent, but the love comes from me.

Chris Williamson 34:01 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 34:01 The love is who I am, and I radiate that. It's not, "How can I get love?" It's, "How can I return to the love that I am?" And when you do that, a different kind of economic activity comes online, which is service, and I feel like I'm at the precipice of this. Like, for the first time, the energy of the questions that I'm asking isn't merely, "How can I people please and serve? And yes, I'll get some money from that." It's, it's that level of service.

Chris Williamson 34:26 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 34:27 It's, "What's the most honest, true way that I can meet this person where they are and still tell the truth?"

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Charlie Houpert 35:46 What about the one that's in between? So you've gone, "How can I get the outcomes that I want in the world?"

Chris Williamson 35:50 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 35:51 The h- I, I assume that there's one that's in between those two, which is how do I serve other people, which is how do I serve myself?

Chris Williamson 35:57 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 35:57 Like, how do I learn about me-

Chris Williamson 35:59 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 35:59 ... and do the inner work thing? And I think I get the sense that that's the last seven, six-

Chris Williamson 36:04 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 36:04 ... five years or whatever it is for you. So is, uh, is that right to say that there is a kind of a middle-

Chris Williamson 36:09 I, I b- I think that serving oneself is a wonderful point at any stage, anywhere.

Charlie Houpert 36:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:14 'Cause they, they eventually become the same, serving oneself-

Charlie Houpert 36:16 On your journey, though, with this, I want the outcomes I want in the world.

Chris Williamson 36:19 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 36:20 Got some, fuck, that didn't get it.

Chris Williamson 36:22 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 36:22 Ah, you don't go straight from there to service.

Chris Williamson 36:25 Correct.

Charlie Houpert 36:25 You do this-

Chris Williamson 36:25 Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're all levels of self-service at the level that you're capable of doing it. So self-service looks like when, at that level of awareness, if you will, "I need something. They have it. Who do I have to become-

Charlie Houpert 36:37 Yep

Chris Williamson 36:37 ... and be to get it?" That's me serving myself. Now, it's an interactive way of doing it. Then service becomes, "I'm tired of doing that. I want to be more honest about my emotions." So self-service is taking a break, slowing down, withdrawing for a period of time, going inward. There's this dark night of the soul. If you look at the hero's journey, you know, if you look at it [chuckles] like a clock, there's the lower half of the clock, which is the trials and tribulations.

Charlie Houpert 37:01 ... and we can talk more about that. But that, those mythic stories have this period of time, as Jordan Peterson would say, the belly of the whale, where you are compelled to acknowledge the darkness inside, the pain inside of yourself. And so that is what self-service looks like, is something is m-- keeps tapping me on the shoulder, telling me that I gotta pay attention. I'm gonna go attend to that. And we could talk about specifically what that might look like, but I know you're talking to Joe Hudson. He's wonderful for this sort of thing.

Chris Williamson 37:32 I wanna get your perspective-

Charlie Houpert 37:34 Sure

Chris Williamson 37:34 ... on, on both of those things, the, the, what do you say? The3 PM to 9 PM-

Charlie Houpert 37:38 Yeah

Chris Williamson 37:39 Of-

Charlie Houpert 37:39 3 PM to 9 PM.

Chris Williamson 37:40 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 37:40 So first off, I, I love mythology these days. I think Carl Jung is perhaps the most brilliant man of the 20th century, and I think deeply underrated, even his thing. I look at Jordan Peterson and the impact that he had on society, and, like, there must be a Jungian giving us some lessons [chuckles] somewhere. Like, we, we crave it as, as a country, uh, in the West, because I think it is the synthesis of the analytical mind thing that is so popular in the West, materialism, with the Eastern spiritual side. I think Carl Jung, like, is that bridge for many people. So then you have Joseph Campbell, who comes and creates this hero's journey arc. I'll talk broadly about it, but what I've seen is that these occur in twelve-year cycles, roughly. I'm not saying this, but I've noticed the first twelve-year cycle for me was starting Charisma on Command. And the entire idea of the hero's journey is that you enter into a part of yourself that you didn't know existed, you come out with a treasure, and you bring it back to the world. And so the entering into the hard part the first time around was I have to dig deeper, work harder, take financial risks, all that kind of stuff, and what I bring back is this way of being with courage, I would say. That was, like, the gift that I had to share, which is you too can go to Brazil and start your own business and talk to that person that you're attracted to, and it was this... It's, it's a spiritual gift that you're giving, and it can come through the medium of YouTube or whatever. Descending into it this time, I would say the gift that I'm finding is through reconnecting with all the split-off parts of myself, if you-- if one connects with as many of the split-off parts of their self, which means going into the times that someone was cruel to you, that you were cri- cruel to others, the pain in your life, the grief that you haven't processed, all of those sorts of things, as you bring more of those together, you find an abiding love [chuckles] that is there. And that's, for me, was the turn from the emotional inquiry, which is like... Really, it's tough to sometimes describe the value of it, 'cause you're like: This is really challenging. [chuckles] But I would say the other side is, it's like, oh, I know peace. I know... I cried, uh, listening to a song on the way over here twice because music is beautiful. I watered flowers the other day, and they came more back to life, and I cried [chuckles] because it was so beautiful-

Chris Williamson 40:05 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 40:05 ... to participate in something so lovely. And the world is just more stunning, and it's not like, oh, that's stunning if I get, uh, ten million followers, or it's stunning if I win the prize, or if the girl likes me. It's like, no, no, like, it's all stunning. I told you, sitting here with you today, watching your growth path is fucking-

Chris Williamson 40:25 I mean, the word that comes to mind is, like, wholeness-

Charlie Houpert 40:28 Mm

Chris Williamson 40:28 ... or enoughness.

Charlie Houpert 40:29 Thank you for speaking it more clearly than I did. That's exactly it. Yeah, it's wholeness. It's, it's if we fragment ourselves in order to effectively fit in as children, right? So we've got this eclectic, weird interest, or we have a sexuality that doesn't fit in with our-- so we go, "That's not me. That's other people." And you see it come through in all kinds of projections. So often in some of the most strict religious communities, they have, as we know, these pastors or these priests, and I'm not saying all priests, but are some of whom are most likely to be vocally anti-gay but have secret dalliances on the side because they've split off that piece of themselves, because they believe that their community and God does not approve of who they are, right? So we all do this in different ways. Our community doesn't approve of our sadness, it doesn't approve of our sensitivity, of our artistry, whatever it is. And so in recovering all of that wholeness, you get back more of yourself, and what that looks like is more creativity, more connection, more joy. You stop trying to impress the people that you've been so f- caught up on for the last ten years and actually start hanging out with the people that have loved you all along and are there. You become aware that there are more people like that all around you. Uh, I know that I spent a lot of time focused on the person who was just out of reach, right? Like, as you described in your-

Chris Williamson 41:43 Zone of proximal development-

Charlie Houpert 41:44 Yeah

Chris Williamson 41:44 ... socially.

Charlie Houpert 41:45 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:46 Or relationally.

Charlie Houpert 41:47 Yes, yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 41:51 Hmm. So the, the question that I have, and I think is kind of an important one, is to try and get people to think about what their definition of success is. Like, what does getting the outcome that you want look like?

Charlie Houpert 42:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:07 And at each level of resolution or depth, or the outcome that I want is to be financially secure. The outcome that I want is for the people that I admire to admire me. The outcome that I want is to be attuned with my-

Charlie Houpert 42:19 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 42:20 ... emotions and be able to feel things. The outcome that I want is to truly know God, whatever it might be. Um, and the conflict that I see comes between people who have differing definitions of the outcome that they want for their life.

Charlie Houpert 42:34 Mm.

Chris Williamson 42:35 So the person that's action-oriented-

Charlie Houpert 42:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 42:37 ... is saying, "Well, you are trading the thing that I want, which is outcomes, for the thing that you want, which is emotional presence, connectedness, sense of peace." And I think the reason that we have this bit of self-doubt in the back of our minds, as you're the person that's moving through it, is you turn around and look at the person who is congruent, who has the thing, plus the confidence and conviction that you used to have, and you're like, "W-... I've lost all of those.

Charlie Houpert 43:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:12 I've had to let go of all of those. My real-world results are fucking falling backward-

Charlie Houpert 43:17 Yeah

Chris Williamson 43:18 ... and I no longer appear as certain, and I don't have the certainty myself-

Charlie Houpert 43:22 I don't feel it [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 43:23 ... to carry myself through. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Charlie Houpert 43:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:25 So they don't respect me as much, and I'm less effective in the world, and I also have self-doubt about whether or not the thing that I'm doing is the thing I'm supposed to be doing.

Charlie Houpert 43:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 43:33 You go, "Well, uh, w- wherein there is the reward?" And at each level, it-- the same as, um, you're telling me that I'm not going to sleep in, which is something that's comfortable for me-

Charlie Houpert 43:44 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 43:44 ... to do, in order to get up and do my meditation-

Charlie Houpert 43:47 Yeah

Chris Williamson 43:47 ... or go to the gym on time, and I'm gonna be ostracized by my friends-

Charlie Houpert 43:49 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 43:49 ... because I can't go out. My drinking buddies aren't my drinking buddies 'cause I'm not drinking no more, and I don't have my gym buddies yet because I haven't gone to the gym enough to get respect from the people that go to the gym, and I haven't worked out how to speak to them and what their culture is.

Charlie Houpert 44:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:01 So at each different fucking level-

Charlie Houpert 44:03 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 44:04 ... you're becoming less effective in the paradigm that you know, on the sort of plane of existence that you're aware of-

Charlie Houpert 44:10 Yeah

Chris Williamson 44:10 ... to go through dark night of the soul, to then come back out the other side.

Charlie Houpert 44:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 44:15 And, uh, do you remember when Jordan talked about, uh, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?

Charlie Houpert 44:21 No, I don't know this one.

Chris Williamson 44:22 Oh, dude. So, uh, they have to go... King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, they need to go and get treasure from the dragon.

Charlie Houpert 44:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 44:32 They all set off on a journey. In order to get to the dragon, they have to go through the forest. Each man enters the forest at the point that looks darkest to him.

Charlie Houpert 44:41 Mm. Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:44 Oh, I fucking love that visual!

Charlie Houpert 44:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:45 I think it's so sick.

Charlie Houpert 44:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:47 It's so cool.

Charlie Houpert 44:48 Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:48 Okay, what is your particular pathology?

Charlie Houpert 44:51 Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:51 What is your particular fear? Because that's the thing that you're going to face. Is it your people-pleasing? Is it the inability to sit with silence? Is it the fact that you, uh, desperately need the validation of other people? Is it... You pick your, you know, mental malady of choice.

Charlie Houpert 45:05 Mm.

Chris Williamson 45:08 That's the thing that you end up facing.

Charlie Houpert 45:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:10 And, uh, yeah, I, I just-- I really s- wanna, like, plainly call out what the pain is. For every level, there's a devil.

Charlie Houpert 45:19 Yes.

Chris Williamson 45:19 And what is the devil that you're... Uh, to try as best as we can to be like, "Okay, I think this is probably what it's going to feel like to go through each one."

Charlie Houpert 45:30 So for someone moving from action to emotion-

Chris Williamson 45:32 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 45:32 ... you, I mean, you, you just nailed it, which is I am-- at every level, you are giving up success in that thing to get something that you have no promises. Brian Wetten has an interesting framing, not just around this, but he says, "A travesty is when you give up the higher for the lower." So travesty is when you trade your inner peace for money.

Chris Williamson 45:53 Yep.

Charlie Houpert 45:54 Sacrifice is when you give up the lower for the higher, and so you give up the utter freedom of being a bachelor to start a family-

Chris Williamson 46:01 Mm

Charlie Houpert 46:01 ... or something like that. And so I think this is, this is, it's, [chuckles] you know, to pull in another myth, this is Abraham. This is the sacrifice. This is the willingness to give up the lower for the higher, and that story's pretty horrifying in a lot of ways 'cause he ties up his son and is about to kill him. But the underlying idea is that there is a higher. There is, there is a command inside of me that I'm not going to deny. I f- I'm terrified of it. I don't want to do it. Søren Kierkegaard wrote Fear and Trembling, which is exactly what you're expected to feel when you f- when you have that divine call tell you, "Leave your job. Exit this relationship. Get... Marry her." [chuckles] That's a terrifying one. "Have a baby." Like, when that call from this place, as you get familiar with it, calls, it asks you to trade in your identity of who you were, and it is an ego death every time.

Chris Williamson 46:49 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 46:50 Every single time, that little identity must die, and something else is born, and there's not, like, the guarantee, even though we can rationally go, "I'm still gonna be alive," and all these things.

Chris Williamson 47:01 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 47:01 But that's the feeling, is ego death.

Chris Williamson 47:03 Well, what...

Chris Williamson 47:04 Yeah, d- dig into the fear and trembling because I think a lot of people, the sort of people that have made it this far into this episode-

Charlie Houpert 47:10 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 47:11 ... uh, I, I, I assume are either going, "What the fuck?" And-

Charlie Houpert 47:14 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 47:15 ... or they say, "Oh, there's something here. There's-

Charlie Houpert 47:17 Yeah

Chris Williamson 47:17 ... like I, I, I'm, I'm resonating, and there's something here."

Charlie Houpert 47:20 Neutonic. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 47:22 Exactly. There is something here.

Charlie Houpert 47:22 There is something here. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 47:23 Fucking a evidence-based, very tasty, zero-calorie energy drink. Um, that fear and trembling, that, uh, peering over the precipice, that sort of-

Charlie Houpert 47:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 47:36 ... like existential vertigo-

Charlie Houpert 47:38 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 47:38 ... where you go like, "Phew."

Charlie Houpert 47:40 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:41 You're like, "Holy fuck!" Like, that's... Uh, w- what more is there to say about, about that sensation, and about stepping into it, and about the first steps and the biggest steps?

Charlie Houpert 47:53 You don't have to force yourself. It will call. It will call you. And if you're going, sitting here, and you probably haven't made it this far, but if you're going, "I don't know," I kind of just... I really encourage and love people being where they're at.

Chris Williamson 48:04 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 48:04 So I think a mistake that I had made, which is everybody needs to move as quickly as possible through these phases. That's old optimizer idea. Your time will come. The... If, if, if what I am saying is true, this is not something you have to do. Like, your ego is not gonna be the one doing this. It's going to, in s- many ways, you have to participate and say yes at some point. You'll have your choice, as we talked about earlier-

Chris Williamson 48:28 Mm

Charlie Houpert 48:28 ... but the call will come, and you can ignore it about ten million times. It will, it will keep ringing for you.

Chris Williamson 48:35 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 48:35 And the consequences will get more and more dire. You ignore it once, you know, you go out, it's a little bit of a difficult relationship. Ignore it for twenty years, you're in a loveless relationship [chuckles] and now you've got kids and a divorce on your hands. Like, all of that sort of stuff. The consequences of, of not listening begin to erode the actions, the, the results, the emotions anyway.

Chris Williamson 48:54 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 48:54 So the good news is, you don't, you don't have to do anything. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 48:57 Yeah. One way or another, this-

Charlie Houpert 48:59 It'll get you [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 48:59 ... realization is gonna arrive. Uh, w- what do you think is going on there is that, do you come to think about it in material terms? Do you come to think about it as the universe having to ramp up the volume of the lesson-

Charlie Houpert 49:10 Mm

Chris Williamson 49:10 ... until you go like, "Hey!"... Charlie?

Charlie Houpert 49:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:13 Now, please.

Charlie Houpert 49:16 I- if, if all of this is right, fundamentally, you are so much more than you are aware of, and we all recognize this implicitly, which is if I were to say, you know, "What's your blood pressure right now? What's happening in your liver?" Obviously, there are pieces of you of which you are unaware and do not need to be in charge of. When you go to sleep, they just keep humming along, keeping you going.

Chris Williamson 49:35 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 49:36 There are massive psychological pieces of us, spiritual pieces of us, that exist that we're unaware of, that you just don't have to be aware of. It's taken care of for you, but it's still you. So the idea is that this always has been the case. It always will be the case. You're just waking up to it and becoming more aware of it as you can swallow it.

Chris Williamson 49:58 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 49:58 Because if you were to be dumped into it, as some people do with intense psychedelic experiences, you can crack. You can break yourself if you, if you go a little bit, a little bit, if you go too fast into these sorts of things.

Chris Williamson 50:10 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 50:10 And so actually, rather than speeding through these, it's like, enjoy. Enjoy the ride. I remember believing that optimization and getting everything on, be like twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, was at, the end-all be-all. The, some of the happiest and most joyous times of my life was, was doing that stuff.

Chris Williamson 50:27 Me too.

Charlie Houpert 50:28 You just can't go back. You can't step in the same river twice, [chuckles] right? And so the, the... where, where I want to help people, and you asked, "Who's there?" It's, it's when you're like: "I remember it was so good! Like, why can't I make it go back to that?" It's you can't go back. You know too much. You have learned too much. You have come too far.

Chris Williamson 50:44 It's too bloody late for that.

Charlie Houpert 50:45 It's too bloody late. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 50:47 [laughing]

Charlie Houpert 50:47 You've got to move forward. And so what I hope to do with the rest of my career, and I'm learning in this conversation and others-

Chris Williamson 50:53 Mm

Charlie Houpert 50:54 ... is to really help people at those paradigm shift points, those lonely chapter moments-

Chris Williamson 51:00 Mm

Charlie Houpert 51:00 ... to move gracefully into the next phase. 'Cause it is a bear. For all the reasons that you said, it's not fun to do. Nobody is really encouraging you to do it in your current sphere.

Chris Williamson 51:10 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 51:11 I would just love, love, love to hold space for people to make those leaps. It's such a privilege to watch somebody, as you've... If you've ever seen someone exit out of victim consciousness and start to go to the gym and start to dial it in because of something that you've said, it's like, "Oh, my God!"

Chris Williamson 51:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 51:27 "It feels so good."

Chris Williamson 51:28 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 51:29 It just is, it's true at every level.

Chris Williamson 51:30 Well, this, the next one, the problem is the movement from action to emotion-

Charlie Houpert 51:36 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 51:37 ... is so unsexy in a way that the movement from results to action-

Charlie Houpert 51:45 Mm

Chris Williamson 51:45 ... is not.

Charlie Houpert 51:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:47 Like, that every underdog movie ever in history has a montage of a guy sorting his life out by learning to be disciplined and upward aiming.

Charlie Houpert 51:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:57 Very few of them have a guy deeply learning to get in touch with the inner child inside of him and crying at Christmas movies.

Charlie Houpert 52:05 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 52:05 Right? Very few. Very few, and if, if it is, it's wrapped in this sort of redemption of a person who n- was too far on one side in terms of their masculine. And this was, this was a righteous correction that was, like, karmically needed in order to-

Charlie Houpert 52:20 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 52:20 ... rebalance the people around them. For the most part, a, a man specifically getting in touch with his emotions is not in service of him-

Charlie Houpert 52:27 Mm

Chris Williamson 52:27 ... it's in service of the people around him.

Charlie Houpert 52:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:28 And in some ways, that's beautiful, but the way that Hollywood portrays it is not that.

Charlie Houpert 52:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:33 It's not this sort of existential gift to the world. It's like, "No, his wife needed him to be more attuned when she wa- like, he was on his phone and di- filling in Excel spreadsheets when they were at dinner." Like...

Charlie Houpert 52:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:46 Ugh, okay, that's a pretty low-resolution way to look at it.

Charlie Houpert 52:48 Yeah. I mean, you're, you're very right. I think we live in a, an either childlike or adolescent culture in terms of most people's development, and even the term unsexy is like, that's really what adolescents care about. Adolescents are trying to be sexy. [chuckles] That's, that's the thing. And into your twenties, thirties, it's fine. It's not to say that you can't have it, but it's not sexy, it's loving, and there's a difference.

Chris Williamson 53:12 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 53:12 That like, like, you're not trying to be... Sexy is, do other people find me attractive and want to move towards me? Loving is, do, [chuckles] do I feel love, and am I radiating it to myself and to other people? So you're right, it's not sexy, it's, it's loving. And even I think those words are apt because the quality of romantic interactions that you choose in this period shifts from what's sexy, who's cool, who's physically attractive, who can, uh, help me with my status, to who do I love and what do I love? And that changes the quality of, of your romantic relationships dramatically.

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Chris Williamson 54:56 What if... I know that you mentioned, um, basically, the volume of the lesson will get turned up until you start to hear it-

Charlie Houpert 55:03 Mm

Chris Williamson 55:03 ... would be a way to maybe-

Charlie Houpert 55:05 Yeah

Chris Williamson 55:05 ... say that. Um, or you die.

Charlie Houpert 55:08 Or you die.

Chris Williamson 55:10 Let's say that there's someone who goes, "I feel like the volume's, like, kinda loud already, and the fleeting thoughts and the little whispers are kind of-... I, I feel ready to pay attention to them, but I'm still scared of making that transition. You mentioned that you want to be kind of a, a careful shepherd. Who was the, who was the boatman that helped get Dante across the, the river?

Charlie Houpert 55:37 Mm.

Chris Williamson 55:37 Who's that dude? You know, Dante's Inferno.

Charlie Houpert 55:39 It's, it's not Charon from-

Chris Williamson 55:41 Yes

Charlie Houpert 55:41 ... Greek mythology. Okay.

Chris Williamson 55:41 Yes. Yeah, yeah. Um, so he's blind, I think.

Charlie Houpert 55:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:45 And, um, sadly, I've forgot my fucking mythology glossary. [chuckles]

Charlie Houpert 55:49 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 55:49 Uh, you wanna be this, like, boatsman-

Charlie Houpert 55:53 Mm

Chris Williamson 55:53 ... shepherd thing. You're like: "Hey, you're going from this bit of land to this bit of land here-

Charlie Houpert 55:56 Yeah

Chris Williamson 55:56 ... and let me make it at least a little bit less scary-

Charlie Houpert 56:03 Mm

Chris Williamson 56:03 ... that this is a journey that you can do with grace."

Charlie Houpert 56:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:06 Right? Graciously, I think was-

Charlie Houpert 56:08 Yeah

Chris Williamson 56:08 ... uh, one of the ways that you said. B- if someone is, like, on the precipice, they're on the cusp of-

Charlie Houpert 56:14 Yeah

Chris Williamson 56:14 ... "I feel like this is a evolutionary step that I'm prepared to take, and I'm kind of, like, ready," without pushing-

Charlie Houpert 56:23 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 56:24 ... and without going, like, wait for the volume to be turned up, what are some of the things that you would say to that sort of a person?

Charlie Houpert 56:30 Yeah. One, what I hope to convey for the first chunk of this is, this is normal. This is... You're not broken, that this is happening to you. In fact, if you wanna take some spiritual pride in it, like, you're, you're advanced. You're moving quickly, and even though it's hard, nothing's broken.

Chris Williamson 56:47 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 56:48 The second thing that I would offer would be, you're going to enter into a stage, probably if you're coming from the optimizer stage, that is far more irrational and feminine and intuitive than you're familiar with, and those three words probably terrify you because-

Chris Williamson 57:01 [laughing]

Charlie Houpert 57:01 ... they're associated with, they're associated with the victim stage, which is I just, I'm a tumbleweed, and life just happens to me-

Chris Williamson 57:08 Oh, yeah

Charlie Houpert 57:08 ... and, uh, I, I have no command of anything.

Chris Williamson 57:10 It, it is evolution but feels like devolution.

Charlie Houpert 57:12 Correct, and that's- I totally get the optimizer sees somebody who is doing work intuitively, and they're like: "That's who I used to be ten years ago, and my life was miserable. No way am I leaning into that!"

Chris Williamson 57:23 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 57:23 But there's a difference between listening to craving and listening to intuition. So we're trying to turn up, experiment with, and explore the feminine, irrational, intuitive callings that you feel.

Chris Williamson 57:36 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 57:38 So there's a number of ways to get closer to this, and there's, uh, degrees of safety and risk involved with all of them. So some of them are, go with the one intuitively that seems interesting to you first, would be what I would say. So you've got standard meditation practices, you have breathwork practices, Wim Hof and o- otherwise Stan Grof. You have therapy, you have men's groups, you have psychedelics, you have sound healings, where they play the bowls, and you just allow the vibration to wash over you. You've got long walks in nature. You've got, uh, strenuous physical activity that is not rigidly structured. Like, I think that the gym, where it's you're pushing yourself, and you have to do it, but even you could still drop into like a, a zenless zone state in that sort of thing. But I would say, like, more sports, recreational, those sorts of things.

Chris Williamson 58:22 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 58:23 Music, all of these sorts of things. F- find the one that hits you, and I've done all of these. Singing, dance, all of these kinds of things are this intuitive flow, feminine, reconnect you with joy, feelings, emotions, and then from that, what you'll start to realize is, if you do a breathwork or therapy, you're like: "Oh, man, I need to have a conversation with my dad." [laughing] And, and so then-

Chris Williamson 58:47 I came here to do breathwork.

Charlie Houpert 58:48 Yeah, I came here to do breathwork, and sometimes it's, I just need to call this person and tell them I love them. I need to apologize. I need to say that that upset me and hurt me. You're gonna start cleaning up the messes that you've left untended, things that you pretended were okay that are not okay, actually.

Chris Williamson 59:05 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 59:06 And be g- be gentle with yourself. It's not like I did the breathwork. I go, "Okay, call them right now, immediately after." It's, this is gonna be a time span of like, I'll do breathwork again tomorrow in a day or two, and, you know, if I still feel that way, I can call them when I'm a little bit less raw, and I have a little bit more of that containment. So I'm able to have this conversation in a way that is both emotionally vulnerable without emotionally exploding on this person.

Chris Williamson 59:28 Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Charlie Houpert 59:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:29 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 59:29 And so as you start to do these different intuitive, feminine practices, you're gonna get little hits of, I wanna make a Dungeons and Dragons show. I wanna make this phone call. I want to do this thing. I don't care how much it costs. [chuckles] You know, like that sort of stuff.

Chris Williamson 59:45 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 59:46 Um, and you want to experiment in little ways, and this was crazy, but I was playing a video game t- two weeks ago. I know, crazy, but [chuckles] so I'm playing a video game, and after every little level... It's called Hades II. It's got my Greek mythology. I love it. After ev- every minute or so, you have to make a choice between upgrades that you get, and as I'm playing this game, I'm, like, doing it, and I am optimizing my upgrades 'cause they have percentages associated with them. I'm doing the math in my head to see which one is gonna output the most damage to do the thing, and for some reason, finally, thank God, it clicked to me. I was like: What am I doing? Like, I've turned this game into a test, where I am, every time, picking the same upgrade. I'm not exploring, I'm not having... So I went, "I want the purple one." And it's like, "That one's objectively worse!" "I want the purple one." [laughing] So I start doing random things in this game, and there were a number of things that happened. One, I remember that I was meant to have fun. That, like, I was playing a game that I had made a job somehow, and this is what I did with my business, but this is just another apocryphal story of, yeah, I do it even in video games. So I started r- having fun. I unlocked-- I escaped my local minimum. So what happens when we're optimizers is we optimize around the world that we understand and know, right? So if you're optimizing for muscles or for whatever, you've got an idea that this is what people like, that maybe women respond to it, and it's best for my health. But if you explore it a little bit further, maybe you'd find other modes of exercise that better served your deeper want and deeper need.

Chris Williamson 1:01:12 There are longer levers that you're just not aware of.

Charlie Houpert 1:01:14 Exactly, but if you can't explore 'cause you're such a hyper optimizer, you can't figure that out. So I actually got better in this game after a dip. I was like, "Oh, wow, I found these new build paths." And then third was I started looking at the artwork in the game, which is stunningly beautiful, and again, it's, it's-- this is meant as a metaphor, is smell the roses. Look at the artwork in the game that you're playing, right?... I had gone through life trying to get to the next end as fast as I could, and it had permeated even to my recreational video game playing. [chuckles] And so letting go of that, I was like, "Wow!" And then I'm looking up myths of Aphrodite and Aries and all these things, and I realized, oh, I didn't want to play the video game to veg. I wanted to play the video game to get inspired about these myths so that I could sit down later with ChatGPT and just reflect on them. And I was like, "Oh, that's where my intuition was taking me." It was taking me to the game, to the artwork, to the deeper exploration of this myth, but you have to remain in contact with your intuition. One other thing on this that I think is worth mentioning is that a lot of people give their intuition a horrible reputation, because at one point, they knew they shouldn't have gotten into that relationship with the girl, but they said, "No, I need to, like, I feel it. It's, it's calling me."

Chris Williamson 1:02:25 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:02:25 Three years later, it explodes. She cheats on them, it all goes sideways, and they go, "That was the part of me that didn't have a checklist, because my intuition pulled me there, my instinct." What they don't realize is that, yes, it might have pulled you into the relationship, but then at month one, it was dinging, saying, "Okay, something's off here," and at six months in, it was saying, "Uh, time to get out!" So the problem is we listen to intuition a tiny, tiny bit, and then we try to bail, but intuition doesn't work like analytics does. Our mind sees the end that we're headed towards. I want, uh, a physique, and then it backwards breaks things into, into steps so that we can achieve the desired outcome.

Chris Williamson 1:03:03 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:03:03 Intuition starts at the next step. It keeps you foggy as to the actual place that you're headed. You don't know, and it's greater than you could possibly imagine, but it only tells you, "Play the video game." But if you want to use intuition fully, you've got to stick with it through these various steps and let it take you to its desired end-

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:03:24 ... which is terrifying for people who want control.

Chris Williamson 1:03:27 Yes.

Charlie Houpert 1:03:27 Because you're playing a video game, this is a waste of time, and I don't know why I'm doing this, but it my, my intuition is telling me to. Now I'm looking at a f- f- an artwork in this dumb video game, right? But if you stick with it, I have found this is, this is a deeper layer of self-trust is, oh, I, I can trust my analytical mind, and I can trust my intuitive, flowing, feeling thing now.

Chris Williamson 1:03:47 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:03:47 Which is, which is a really cool something to have come online.

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 Well, the, the perennial over-optimizer, insecure overachiever thing, uh, walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity-

Charlie Houpert 1:03:59 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:03:59 ... like Andrew Wilkinson says.

Charlie Houpert 1:04:00 Hmm. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:04:01 Uh, the reason, the reason that people are hyper optimizers, at least in part, is if you know every different permutation of every different potential outcome, and you have prepared for it, you have constrained the uncertainty of the future down. You've created order from chaos.

Charlie Houpert 1:04:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:19 Right? I don't need to worry about the potential branching futures-

Charlie Houpert 1:04:21 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 ... because I have obsessed so much that ninety-nine point nine%

Charlie Houpert 1:04:25 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 ... of potential future universes are ones I've already predicted, accounted for, and been ready in order to be able to deal with.

Charlie Houpert 1:04:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:32 This leaves me with just, "I'm ready."

Charlie Houpert 1:04:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:35 "I'm ready for this," right? Uncertainty- A- anxiety is uncertainty.

Charlie Houpert 1:04:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:39 It's ambiguity about what is going to happen. I, I- anxiety is a, a expectation versus outcome.

Charlie Houpert 1:04:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:46 Like, I do not know what is going to happen, and, uh, this is how much our minds abhor uncertainty, that we would rather create a nightmare in our mind than we would deal with a more preferable level of uncertainty.

Charlie Houpert 1:05:01 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:01 Like, we would pr- prefer to imagine the worst possible outcome because at least that collapses the choice architecture down to a single place. Now, the place is the worst. It's significantly worse than maybe what even be, uh, physically capable by the universe. Like, we imagine things that would break the laws of physics, that fucking someone comes back from the dead to torment us-

Charlie Houpert 1:05:20 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:05:20 ... in this version of something. But we prefer that to uncertainty.

Charlie Houpert 1:05:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:26 So when you've got this choice space, you think about, uh, thinking in superpositions, right? And you collapse the superposition down, you observe it, and you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna ma- I'm-- This is what, exactly what's gonna happen." The over-optimizer decides to have as many branches open in their mind as possible, prepare for each different one of them, and that is antithetical to, "I trust myself. I'll be okay, no matter what happens. I'm whole now, and I'm enough."

Charlie Houpert 1:05:58 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:00 "And whatever comes in the future, I will be okay and whole then, too."

Charlie Houpert 1:06:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:05 Um, and if you have come from a situation where you go, "Well, I happened to life. I had agency and intention, and I took myself from a place that I didn't want to be to one that I did through intention, and agency, and action, and leaning in, and making a fucking dent in the world," like, that, that, that's the, that's the str- that is the strategy.

Charlie Houpert 1:06:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 And that was the big first... Like, this is literally every first-level archetype, movie, underdog, Rocky, fucking cut scene thing ever.

Charlie Houpert 1:06:40 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 Like, that's literally what-- That, that's the, that is the hero’s journey, and it's like, uh, that gets you to, like, three o'clock.

Charlie Houpert 1:06:45 Hmm. It's- uh, there's a masculine thread, which is the one you're talking about, which is order out of chaos, analytical, structured, I happen to life, initiating. And then there's the feminine thread, which is receptive, listening, what does life want from me? Feeling, flowing, et cetera. And so it's not to just be feminine. I think this is very important. It's not merely... 'Cause if you see people that don't have this masculine piece, this is almost like the LA woo woo, "I'm a spiritual coach at age twenty-three. I just follow my bliss and follow my intuition, and I can't pay my bills." There's something that they have there, which is a willingness to go with the flow, but they lack the ability to unify these two. And so Carl Jung talked about the hieros gamos, which is the sacred marriage of the divine masculine and the divine feminine principle.... I think as a society, this is perhaps what's going on with men and women at some level. What we've done is say, "Okay, look, men, you can do the masculine piece. Women, you can do the feminine piece. The union is gonna come at the level of both of you guys getting together." It works. We've- [chuckles] it's been stable for a long time. There's problems with it, [chuckles] as we've sort of seen, which is, uh, women are encountering the problems that men have had. Now that they enter into the workplace, they're finding meaninglessness, which men have known for a long time, [chuckles] right? Just slaving away to take-

Chris Williamson 1:08:03 Welcome to the potty, dolls.

Charlie Houpert 1:08:04 Yeah, slaving away to take care of the family that you don't get to really participate in or be emotionally connected to. That, that's a- that's been hundreds of years of men in the West-

Chris Williamson 1:08:12 Yep

Charlie Houpert 1:08:12 ... have known that, and now all over the world. Men are experiencing the, the difficulties of women, which is, "Hey, when I get in touch with my emotions, it hurts. [chuckles] It hurts like hell."

Chris Williamson 1:08:21 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:08:21 "So now I'm realizing that I would like people to consider me and take care of me, and I'd like more systemic issues to make things a bit easier for me." And women are going, "Yeah, we've been saying that for a long time." [chuckles] You know? So I feel like there's been this, uh, initially painful but beautiful flip that is occurring culturally, where women have entered into masculine roles and are getting the benefits of it, but also are beginning to see the costs and the things that the men in their lives have shouldered-

Chris Williamson 1:08:46 Mm

Charlie Houpert 1:08:46 ... that they have not understood. And men are getting into the feminine realm of starting to get in touch with their emotions and go, "Oh, wow, this is a lot harder than I had recognized."

Chris Williamson 1:08:56 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:08:56 And my hope is, in my personal relationship and more broadly, instead of having the primary unit of masculine and feminine togetherness be husband and wife, I think there's an increasing opportunity for more integrated individuals to be integrated inside of oneself and then to meet the other person-

Chris Williamson 1:09:14 Mm

Charlie Houpert 1:09:14 ... and to form something greater. Because when you are dependent upon the other person for feminine access, meaning you have a wife, you are the breadwinner, you're the guy, but she's the one with all the positive e- emotional feelings, and she's connected to the kids, there's a sense of dependency and resentment and frustration and control.

Chris Williamson 1:09:33 Why do you get that thing, and I don't?

Charlie Houpert 1:09:35 Mm-hmm. Yeah, and because I'm doing all of this, I'm in charge, I get to tell you what to do. You see the woman's side of it, which is, "I'm completely dependent on this man for survival. I need to people-please him. I'm frustrated. I'm gonna cheat with the pool boy. I'm gonna [chuckles] you know, I'm-- I want to escape this. Even though I need him to survive, I'm frustrated that I need him to survive." So the idea that we've talked about for a long time, that old clichéd advice, which is, "Don't get into a relationship until you are whole in yourself," I think a really useful way to think of that is, how are my masculine and my feminine threads integrated inside of myself? Am I capable of achievement, initiation, structure, analysis? And am I also capable of flow, receptivity, intuition, and feeling?

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Chris Williamson 1:11:30 What have you learned about... E- the, the language of masculine and feminine is not one that I am super familiar with, and I think maybe part of it is that there's a good amount of shame-

Charlie Houpert 1:11:42 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:11:42 ... attached to that, as you suggested. Like, what man- the- i- it's cool to say attuned-

Charlie Houpert 1:11:49 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:11:49 ... connected, dropped in-

Charlie Houpert 1:11:51 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:11:51 ... aware, uh, um, transcending, including, like Wilberian language-type stuff as a guy.

Charlie Houpert 1:11:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:58 Like, that still feels-- it's the same as Joe's vulnerability definition, right? It still feels, like, kinda strong. But to say, "Oh, I need to embrace my feminine energy," like, do f- go fuck yourself, man.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:09 [chuckles] My irrationality.

Chris Williamson 1:12:11 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:11 That's a big one. Irrational, yeah. This-- I mean, this is the critique that men have of their wives and girlfriends. "She's so irrational!"

Chris Williamson 1:12:18 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:19 We are irrational. I think this is one of the big tricks that men play on themselves, is they pretend that the women in their lives, and they project all of the irrationality onto them. How irrational is it to try to get more and more and more money and more and more status past a certain point? That is hyper irrational.

Chris Williamson 1:12:31 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:31 Like, to what end are you-

Chris Williamson 1:12:32 You have proved to yourself that the thing that you are attaining is not the thing that makes you happy, and yet you're still trying to attain more of it.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:38 Deeply irrational. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:12:39 Well done, dude. Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:40 [chuckles] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:40 Super, super fucking clever.

Charlie Houpert 1:12:42 So the, those is-- those pieces, feminine, irrational, singing, dancing-

Chris Williamson 1:12:48 Mm

Charlie Houpert 1:12:49 ... flowing, uh, enjoying one's body, right? I think even from what I hear and have experienced with myself, part of what men get out of their sexual relationships is many times they're able to be with someone that is more capable of pleasure than they are, and they're able to vicariously participate in the pleasure, and they're making it happen, and that's good enough for them.

Chris Williamson 1:13:09 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:13:09 Now, they're not experiencing it at the same full-body level that their partner is perhaps capable, but they're close to it.

Chris Williamson 1:13:16 Well, think about that, you know, if you wanna really fucking point the finger at guys. How many guys during sex treat sex as another business that they need to-

Charlie Houpert 1:13:25 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:13:26 ... successfully exit?

Charlie Houpert 1:13:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:27 "Well, if I can go through this particular sequence of steps-

Charlie Houpert 1:13:30 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:13:30 ... and, you know, in the past, I've managed to build and exit a similar business"

Charlie Houpert 1:13:34 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:13:36 [chuckles] "... in this particular way."

Charlie Houpert 1:13:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:37 "So I've got a blueprint, and I got a... You know-

Charlie Houpert 1:13:39 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:13:39 ... I got a few, I got a few tricks up my sleeve that I can deploy in this way." It's like, oh-... not only did you turn your video game Hades II into a business and that you had to optimize, but you turned this thing which is supposed to be like loving presence-

Charlie Houpert 1:13:53 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:13:54 - into a business that you're supposed to build and exit.

Charlie Houpert 1:13:58 Yeah. And w- what I've seen in myself that I believe could be a pattern, at least with some men, is the part of what drove early Charisma on Command and early Charlie was deep people-pleasing that was particularly directed at women. Like, I was okay if some of the guys didn't like me, but I desperately, desperately wanted women to like me and was willing to shape my habits, my, uh, exercise routine, everything to, like, bring in as much female attention as I could. And I know that experience in sex of, like, trying to make it good for the other person at a, at a high level, which I didn't realize. You do that for long enough, you just, you just wanna get out of there. You like, "I'm tired of just trying to make this other person happy." And it can create... You don't realize it, or I didn't realize it, shadow frustrations, shadow resentments, shadow things because you don't know, and I've heard you talk about this, you're so obsessed with meaning that you don't know how to access pleasure.

Chris Williamson 1:14:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's, I mean, the, uh, Frankl's inverse law-

Charlie Houpert 1:14:59 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:14:59 ... I think is so fucking prevalent, dude.

Charlie Houpert 1:15:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:15:01 That's another one that's robust. It's a little bit harder for people to grasp and, and took a real long time for me to look at. But yeah, if, uh, pleasure doesn't come easily to you, you say that pleasure is basically for suckers-

Charlie Houpert 1:15:12 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:15:12 ... and you focus on meaning. It's like I will grindset my way through life-

Charlie Houpert 1:15:16 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:15:17 ... because the, uh, slow accumulation of progress, uh, towards something which is supposed to be a, a well-meaning goal, uh, is kind of more reliable, actually, I think, to a lot of men. It's like it, it's, it's more objective.

Charlie Houpert 1:15:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:15:37 It's like, "Ha, I see where I was on graph yesterday versus today."

Charlie Houpert 1:15:42 It's masculine. It's, it's pr- forward projected. The outcome is the meaning in many ways. Like, I'm fighting for the freedom of my country. It's, it's this, "I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna break it into smaller steps. We're gonna have these little battles on the way."

Chris Williamson 1:15:53 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:15:53 This, this is persistent and clean, and I'm directed at that thing.

Chris Williamson 1:15:57 Limited chaos, limited uncertainty.

Charlie Houpert 1:15:58 Pleasure is right now. It's right now. Right now, I could be left; right now, I could be right. I have to-- I'm gonna follow this flow, and it, and it doesn't provide any long-term guarantees, context, or anything. It's gone the next moment. And so it's, it's this obsession with the [chuckles] masculine thread, I think in many ways, of, of future orientation and driving in towards something, rather than, can I just be present and understand that I can't control it? It's gonna leave, and that's okay.

Chris Williamson 1:16:22 Mm. Two examples from my, my life of your Hades II thing. Um, George Mack's thirtieth birthday in Miami last year, uh, we were playing, uh, like foot tennis over a net, and we were playing this game, and I realized that it was competitive but not very beautiful. And I said: "Okay, well, why don't we change it to be even though we're on opposite sides of the, uh, net, we'll be part of a team, and the goal is to have, like, the fanciest tricks?" Like, two of the guys are ex-champion freestyle footballers, but neither of them were using their skills.

Charlie Houpert 1:16:57 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:16:57 Both of them were trying to win the game.

Charlie Houpert 1:16:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:16:59 I'm like: I don't want to see who can do this. I want to hand the ball off to the guy that can do three round-the-worlds in a row-

Charlie Houpert 1:17:06 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:17:07 - and, like, watch him do something and go, "Fucking sick, dude."

Charlie Houpert 1:17:09 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:09 And then, and then watch him pass it across the net. Uh, so we did that, and as soon as I said it, one of the guys was like: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then we can, like, count how many we do, and that can be..." I'm like, "No!" [laughing]

Charlie Houpert 1:17:19 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:17:19 "Like, we're doing the thing again. We're reverse engineering it." And, uh, the second time, it seems to happen around, uh, nets, I suppose.

Charlie Houpert 1:17:25 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:17:26 The second time I was playing pickleball, a co-ed game with this, uh, girl who was twenty-one, and, uh, Austin, Texas, me and her versus another guy and girl, and it's, uh, one-one on games going into best of the final game. And we're like, we've done the little thing where you tap paddles over the top of the net, and we turn around, and we're walking back to the baseline. And I'm like: Okay, so we need to remember that, like, when he comes up to the net, he's really bad on his backhand, so we can force that in, but we need to play into the kitchen. The dinks need to be a little bit wider, and we gotta do this. And like, look, I'm loving yourselves-

Charlie Houpert 1:17:57 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:17:57 ... but we go with being a little bit deeper in this. She turns to me, and she goes, "Yeah, let's not forget to have fun." I was like: "Yeah, yeah, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, very good."

Charlie Houpert 1:18:08 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:18:09 And that moment of [exhales] I can just enjoy what's happening right now.

Charlie Houpert 1:18:15 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:18:15 Sure, there are times if you're a neurosurgeon, probably the in-moment enjoyment of what you're doing, that's not the time for it. But... And this is where I think the w- the definition of success that I mentioned earlier on, i- is a, a really important piece. You can go through life trying to optimize for maximum outcomes, like maximum objective success. Like, other people can see it, I can touch it, feel it, put it in a photo album or a bank account or a follower number or whatever online. Uh, but you will peer over the present moment's shoulder a lot-

Charlie Houpert 1:18:55 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:18:55 ... looking for what's coming next. The hypervigilance will cause you to never really have your mind rest where your feet are.

Charlie Houpert 1:19:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:19:00 Uh, I'm seeing this with my live shows. I'm on tour at the moment, playing, uh, Regent Theatre this Saturday in LA, and, uh, I can go out on stage and do my show, uh, like, as close to perfect as I can get and never be there.

Charlie Houpert 1:19:17 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:19:18 I'm not there. I'm not at the show. And in some ways, maybe that's part of a flow state, but I think even within, like, the flow stateness, like, when you lose yourself in it, you're not, you're not fully like, "This rules. Like, this fucking rules!" So you have to-- I've found for me, there are moments where in the set I can pause and be like, [exhales] for just, like, two seconds-

Charlie Houpert 1:19:44 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:19:44 ... I'm like, "Fuck, I'm there." And when I look back, this is how I kind of know that it's working at least a little bit. This is super white belt, like fresh clay shit. But-... That's what I remember. I don't remember delivering the lines. I don't necessarily even remember the laughs, or I remember incidents where that break the pattern. So the sound went out in New York-

Charlie Houpert 1:20:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:20:03 -and, uh, I was working with just the stage wedges pointing at me, bouncing them off the back wall to fifteen hundred people while they tried to fix the sound.

Charlie Houpert 1:20:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:20:12 So I had to, like, freestyle some bullshit on stage, and I remember that, and that was cool. But the only other bits that I remember are where I've gone, like, "And scene,"-

Charlie Houpert 1:20:21 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:20:21 -inside of my own mind, and gone, "Here I am. I'm walking back to the baseline, and we're about to have fun."

Charlie Houpert 1:20:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:20:27 "We're playing foot tennis, and we're going to try and make it beautiful." And I get the sense, this is where the success thing comes in, that I don't know if this is true. Maybe it gets you from a hundred percent of performance to a hundred and fifty or a hundred and one, or maybe it gets you to ninety-five or even ninety, but regardless of that plane of success, uh, outcome-based stuff, it's like, how much more presence and how much more joy and, and awareness have you got of what's going on? And ultimately, why are you doing these things? Presumably, you're trying to achieve success to create some sort of an emotional state that is sufficiently enjoyable for it to be worthwhile.

Charlie Houpert 1:21:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:21:10 Or else, why, why would you be doing it? Like, even if you ask the why question enough times, it ends up being like, because it feels good.

Charlie Houpert 1:21:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:21:16 It's like, why do you need money? To get the house, to get the car, to get the girl, to get the-- because it makes me feel nice-

Charlie Houpert 1:21:22 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:21:22 ... and enough. And you're like, well, what if you could access that more directly by just going, " [exhaling] Fuck, I'm here. Yeah, I'm here. I'm fucking here! Like, holy shit, we're alive."

Charlie Houpert 1:21:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:21:38 That fucking rules!

Charlie Houpert 1:21:39 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:21:40 Like, you know what I mean?

Charlie Houpert 1:21:41 That's it. That's it, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:21:43 How-- I'm so curious. You've asked me. Without trying to say it for this conversation, like, where are you in your s-- using maybe some of the models that we've talked about-

Chris Williamson 1:21:55 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:21:55 ... like, where does success honestly lie for you these days?

Chris Williamson 1:21:59 Yeah. Uh, it depends how juvenile I'm being-

Charlie Houpert 1:22:03 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:22:04 ... uh, and how brave I feel.

Charlie Houpert 1:22:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:06 Uh, so for me, a lot of it is around courage. It's the courage to step into listening to that intuition, those fleeting thoughts, and those whispers in the back of my mind. It's the courage to let go of patterns that I know have given me things that I desperately wanted in the past-

Charlie Houpert 1:22:23 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:22:23 ... validation from people, recognition, a sense of mastery, admiration from people I admired, uh, respect, um-

Charlie Houpert 1:22:32 You know, it's crazy. I, I-- sorry to interrupt.

Chris Williamson 1:22:34 No.

Charlie Houpert 1:22:36 The feminine thread is so important here because it's the feminine thread that is capable of receiving. So there's-- part of the reason that we keep pursuing validation and money is 'cause we haven't been able to receive what has already been heaped upon us-

Chris Williamson 1:22:48 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:22:48 ... because we haven't well developed that ability to just go [inhaling] and, yeah, without forcing it on you, man, I mean, I come in here. [laughing] Dude, y-

Chris Williamson 1:22:59 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:01 You called me. I'll just-

Chris Williamson 1:23:03 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:03 You called me four years ago, five years ago?

Chris Williamson 1:23:05 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:06 I had three million. You had less than a million.

Chris Williamson 1:23:09 Oh, it was like less than a hundred thousand, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:11 Yeah, and you were way too confident for your size and [chuckles] like, like really gregarious and friendly.

Chris Williamson 1:23:17 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:17 You're like, "Let's get on the phone. We get it."

Chris Williamson 1:23:18 Assumed a bunch of familiarity with you-

Charlie Houpert 1:23:20 Yeah, it was great

Chris Williamson 1:23:20 ... that, like, finessed you into being my friend.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:22 And you were-- I think you probably had your computer on a bureau.

Chris Williamson 1:23:25 Yeah, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:23:27 Just like, my God, like, you've made-- you've manifested this stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:23:34 But if this is, if this isn't arriving, dude, what is?

Charlie Houpert 1:23:37 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:23:37 And i- i- it's strange because the, the line between high standards and satisfaction or enoughness is, is delicate because you go, "I want to further refine my art. I want to become better at the things that I do. I want to continue seeing creativity and finding opportunities and ways to progress and deliver things that are cool and different," like filming in a fucking garage in the middle of-

Charlie Houpert 1:23:58 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:23:58 ... LA for no reason other than it's gritty.

Charlie Houpert 1:24:01 That's, that's the feminine thread. And you, so you, you do have it. 'Cause you actually can't get this far without some of it.

Chris Williamson 1:24:06 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:24:06 And I've been, I've been all or nothing people. I mean, e-- like, all, all of these people have this intuitive hits. You can't get very far without it.

Chris Williamson 1:24:13 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:24:13 But your guy's attention to detail-

Chris Williamson 1:24:15 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:24:16 ... the, the unnecessary nature-

Chris Williamson 1:24:18 Completely unnecessary

Charlie Houpert 1:24:19 ... the, that is, "Why do we need a big rock, honey? I don't wanna-- That's a lot of money." It's like that is to see beauty in the unnecessary-

Chris Williamson 1:24:28 Right

Charlie Houpert 1:24:28 ... and to ha- and to be energized to participate in, create, cultivate that sort of beauty that maybe no one else recognizes. That's, like, for you.

Chris Williamson 1:24:37 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:24:38 That's a beautiful intuition to lean into in your business.

Chris Williamson 1:24:41 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:24:41 I, and I think it has, it has paid you dividends, but not in the immediate sense that a lot of ROI uh, uh, options that you might have chosen.

Chris Williamson 1:24:50 Well, I mean, we just put out this, the first tour diary, which was tracking the trip to New York and then Toronto and then back home over that. I-- honestly, I think it might be one of the most beautiful things we've ever put out. It was so fucking cool, and I watch it back, and it's just this gorgeously shot, very slow pacing on the edit. The cuts take fucking ages.

Charlie Houpert 1:25:13 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:25:13 There's payoffs that don't occur until, like, the end of this-

Charlie Houpert 1:25:16 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:25:16 ... over-hour long vlog.

Charlie Houpert 1:25:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:25:18 Uh, there's entire scenes that are just left untouched for, like, seven and a half minutes. And, uh, I'm like: This is so fucking cool. I'm so proud of it in ways that I'm not of the best-performing TikTok-

Charlie Houpert 1:25:31 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:25:31 ... that we've got. So, okay, you asked about what the current stage of evolution is that I'm at, and I mentioned that on the days where I feel the bravest, on the days where I feel the most in tune, on the days where I've picked my phone up the latest, um, and gone for a walk and done my meditation and done my breathwork and stuff, not from a place of I need to over-optimize, but from a place of this makes me feel good-

Charlie Houpert 1:25:55 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:25:55 ... and I just like doing it. Like, that's how-- that's my preferable morning.

Charlie Houpert 1:25:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:25:59 Um, I-... I would say I, I kind of took the emotion red pill probably about a year, just under a year and a half ago, like summer of last year. Uh, and getting ill and, like, eating shit with that was, uh, probably partly needed. Maybe this is my, like-

Charlie Houpert 1:26:23 No, no, that's, that's very common.

Chris Williamson 1:26:25 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:26:25 It's-- it has to break.

Chris Williamson 1:26:27 Uh-

Charlie Houpert 1:26:27 It has to stop working. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:26:28 It, it was a, um, a market correction-

Charlie Houpert 1:26:33 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:26:33 ... on a stock that had had a fucking serious bull run.

Charlie Houpert 1:26:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:26:36 Uh, you know, I moved to America three, no, four, nearly four years ago now, and, uh, the channel was at, like, two hundred thousand subs, and we're gonna hit four million this month.

Charlie Houpert 1:26:47 Wow!

Chris Williamson 1:26:47 Uh, uh, there was me, Dean, and a Mormon in a Facebook Messenger group chat that was, like, the whole team, and you've walked in, and you can't even remember the names of everyone that's here today. Um, and, and not that any of those things are, like, markers of validation or, or, like, even efficiency, but what they do show is that growth has happened-

Charlie Houpert 1:27:06 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:27:06 ... in like, a relatively short space of time. And, uh, the slowing down of momentum, like the curtailing of that inertia, like that forward momentum thing, stops you from hiding a lot of patterns and whispers and fleeting thoughts in bravado. And, you know, this is how the rock star that just continues to release r- fucking slammer after slammer after slammer, the album after the album, after the tour, after the... And they end up developing all of these patterns that they've never had to reflect on because the world is just-- the volume of success from the world is so great that the fleeting thoughts and the whispers in the back of their mind just can't compete-

Charlie Houpert 1:27:53 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:27:54 ... at all. And yeah, it takes you getting to the stage where the world turns up the volume of that, of the repercussions and the consequences. So that was a big part of it, and then I, I kind of made this... I, I think if people went back and looked at the podcast at the back end of last year, I said something to the effect of like, "I'm really interested in emotions. I'm really interested in trying to be, uh, less emotionally decapitated, like, feel things below the neck." Okay, well, I'm gonna work on that, and I'm gonna, you know, ask a bunch of questions. I, I would go as far as to say that your-- I would say that that video, the first video that you did, Theo Von Sean Strickland-

Charlie Houpert 1:28:31 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:28:31 ... was probably twenty percent of, to maybe a little bit more, maybe even a third of like, "Oh, there's some there there."

Charlie Houpert 1:28:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:28:43 Like, I see something in what Charlie has uncovered in the way that he's speaking about this, in the patterns that he has sort of unearthed. Oh, that's like a, that, that is nourishing to me in a way that reading Atomic Habits for the first time was nourishing to me, or listening to Peterson tell the truth was nourishing to me, and stand up straight with your shoulders back and clean your room. I'm like, okay, so that was moving from, like, results to action-

Charlie Houpert 1:29:14 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:29:14 ... and then this is moving from action to emotions. I'm like: Okay, there's another level to this, and the fact that it was at the time where you go, "You know, things are going pretty well," but like, huh, there is something here that is not whole. I have learned unteachable lesson number fucking fifty-four.

Charlie Houpert 1:29:31 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:29:32 Um, and then this year has been me trying to increase the bravery to step into that stuff. It is, it is a challenge when you have planted a, a flag in the ground, and I love this analogy of planting a flag, especially if you've got, uh, expectations from people around you. Because you say, "This is me, and this is what I stand for, and this is who I am," especially if you've got a public platform. Because what you thought was a flag you'd planted in the ground on a piece of territory is a tether that you're attached to.

Charlie Houpert 1:30:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:30:07 It's a, a stake that you've driven in, and you're like, "Oh, this wasn't a flagpole. This is something with a fucking leash attached to it-

Charlie Houpert 1:30:14 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:30:14 ... and I'm on the end of the leash, and I can't really run away that much without upending it all," and people going, "Well, who the fuck is this guy? You said this thing previously, and now you don't believe in it." Like, um, spending the first three years of this podcast doing life hacks, optimizer episodes about the best note-taking, like space repetition, Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, flashcards thing. I'm like-

Charlie Houpert 1:30:37 Five steps to talk to a girl. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:30:39 It's the same-

Charlie Houpert 1:30:39 I get it

Chris Williamson 1:30:40 ... it's the same fucking arc, and then this sense of, well, people came for that. And then also, uh, the potential of i, i-- the thing that I previously thought was the solution, I've realized is maybe the problem. And you go, well, I'm gonna have to like, undo not only my own thinking, but I'm gonna have to publicly state, [exhales] I thought that if I was able to remember everything I learned, that that would be the answer.

Charlie Houpert 1:31:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:31:09 I've managed to do pretty much that.

Charlie Houpert 1:31:11 Ha!

Chris Williamson 1:31:12 It's not the answer.

Charlie Houpert 1:31:13 Ha.

Chris Williamson 1:31:13 Fuck!

Charlie Houpert 1:31:14 That's well seen in yourself. Really well seen.

Chris Williamson 1:31:18 Uh, so n- yeah, now at this stage where it's quite precipice-y for me, uh, doing the retreat with Joe was, um, uh, challenging in a way that I've not been challenged, and beautiful in a way that I, that-

Charlie Houpert 1:31:36 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:31:36 ... I've never really seen before. Um, so that was like a sober but psychedelic dose.

Charlie Houpert 1:31:43 Yeah, that's another thing I hadn't listed, which is these, with the right person, those sorts of, uh, weekend or week-long retreat things, very powerful-

Chris Williamson 1:31:51 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 1:31:51 ... for this kind of stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:31:51 Yeah. So that kind of-- that was the equivalent. They say that, you know, like whatever meditation or the, the level zero, um, consciousness-altering stuff, uh, taking psychedelics, heavy dose of psychedelics is basically-... taking the, uh, stairlift to the top of the mountain briefly, and then you come back down and you're like, "Okay, I kind of got an idea about where it is that I'm going." That was a, a way of seeing that soberly, I think. There were a few experiences there which I, again, hadn't taken anything. Like, I have no explanation for what the fuck happened. Like, I, I literally have no explanation for what-

Charlie Houpert 1:32:29 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:32:30 For what-

Charlie Houpert 1:32:30 In the Theo Von video, one of the things that I hadn't realized when I did that, that I reflect on now, is that you know what made Sean cry in that Theo Von video? For those of you who haven't watched, Theo Von is interviewing Sean Strickland, and I-- Sean breaks down in tears talking about his abuse, and Theo beautifully is just with him.

Chris Williamson 1:32:49 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:32:49 And a big, strong UFC guy. Do you, do you remember the sentence that he said before?

Chris Williamson 1:32:54 "It's okay, buddy. We don't need to talk. We can just- "

Charlie Houpert 1:32:57 No, sorry, sorry. Sean's. What made Sean cry?

Chris Williamson 1:33:00 Oh, no.

Charlie Houpert 1:33:01 Okay. He says, "I stopped believing in God."

Chris Williamson 1:33:05 [exhales]

Charlie Houpert 1:33:07 That's the wound. Like, he was talking about the abuse that had happened to him and hiding under his dad's bed, and yeah, yeah, yeah, and he goes, "Stopped believing in God." [exhales] That's, that's it, man. Like, that's... Yes, the abuse is horrible and terrible and is enough, but the, the wound-wound is there.

Chris Williamson 1:33:27 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:33:29 And it's, uh, there for everybody, and I just, to, to get my atheist bonafides in, [chuckles] I had a, I have the chapters of a book that I was gonna release before Christopher Hitchens released God Is Not Great, that was my atheist book. Like, I was, I was gonna go in line with Chris and Sam and-

Chris Williamson 1:33:45 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:33:46 ... deeply admiring-- and Alex, too. Like, love what Alex is up to.

Chris Williamson 1:33:48 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:33:49 And, uh, yeah, man, ripped-- I didn't want my skull ripped off either. I wasn't hoping that, [laughing] that that would happen with me, but it did. And, uh, I, yeah, I, I you have those mountaintop experiences. They're beautiful. And then the question is, and I-- it will take me still years, I'm sure, like, how do I live like this? Like, how do I function and live and with this integrated into how I treat people and how I treat myself and how I conduct my business?

Chris Williamson 1:34:21 The first time that we left the farm that we were on, so we'd been there for-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:26 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:34:26 ... you know, seven days, pretty much twelve hours a day of unrelenting, very deep emotional work-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:32 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:34:32 ... with this one group of people, eleven other people, plus four facilitators. The first day that we left, uh, we were advised, "Go and do..." Uh, the, the actual first day we left, we went to the beach. We went to the beach, and I, uh, cried at the sun, cried at the moon, uh, cried at a dog, and then nearly cried at a seagull.

Charlie Houpert 1:34:52 It's a supermoon tonight. It's gonna be rad, dude.

Chris Williamson 1:34:54 I-- well, there was something happening-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:55 Super full moon

Chris Williamson 1:34:55 ... last night. It was-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:56 Super full moon

Chris Williamson 1:34:56 ... pretty big last night-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:57 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:34:57 ... right, when we talked about the-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:58 Tonight's the full moon.

Chris Williamson 1:34:58 Okay. Fucking-

Charlie Houpert 1:34:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:34:59 We'll be, we'll be ready.

Charlie Houpert 1:35:00 We'll be ready. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:35:03 Um, but then the-

Charlie Houpert 1:35:03 You know, but just sorry to interrupt. The separation from the stars and the moon is a profound nationwide, mostly citywide, travesty.

Chris Williamson 1:35:13 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:35:14 Like, the inability to locate yourself in something that eternal-

Chris Williamson 1:35:19 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:35:19 ... which isn't eternal, but it's like that durable. Oh, my God!

Chris Williamson 1:35:22 Yep.

Charlie Houpert 1:35:22 Yeah. Tremendous loss.

Chris Williamson 1:35:23 Yeah, I was watching-- That's actually another... Look at me, just my-- this is my crying diary. Uh, the blood red supermoon that happened in twenty twenty-one-

Charlie Houpert 1:35:32 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:35:33 ... or twenty twenty-two, I remember where I was. I was in the Airbnb that I lived in for three months when I first moved to America, and I was watching Peaky Blinders on my own. So I could not be more, like, engaged in this historic period drama thing, and someone texted me and was like: "Have you seen the moon?" And I go outside onto the balcony of this Airbnb that I'm staying in, and I look up, and it's this huge, bright pink moon, and just immediately I'm like, floods, like floods of tears-

Charlie Houpert 1:35:57 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:35:57 ... like, sobbing floods of tears.

Charlie Houpert 1:35:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:35:59 Like, what the fuck? This is a while ago now, so I don't think I necessarily had the language. What is going on? Like, why, why is this happening? Like, shame around, like, why am I crying at the fucking moon? Like, am I broken? Is there something up with me? This is weird. Am I feeble? Is this-

Charlie Houpert 1:36:14 Hmm

Chris Williamson 1:36:14 ... like, weak? Uh, what, what, what is this? Like, I don't-- I'm glad that there's nobody here to see it. Uh, and then w- when we finished the, uh, retreat, cried at everything. Um, and then the next day, one of the pieces of advice was, "You should go and get some bodywork done."

Charlie Houpert 1:36:31 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:36:31 "Like, it might be nice, like, some gentle bodywork would be, like, a good way to kind of reintegrate." Me and one of the guys that was there, we were like, "Right, okay." Nobody wanted to drive. Nobody wanted to get into their car. So, like, I don't feel, I don't feel particularly human.

Charlie Houpert 1:36:44 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:36:44 Uh, what did they, what did they call it? Uh, uh, not karma sick. Uh, uh, fuck! Not dope sick. There was so- it was something, something sick, uh, for how... like emotion sick or something, which was basically like an emotional hangover that you'd had from that week, where everything was [exhales] a little spacey. It felt very psychedelic.

Charlie Houpert 1:37:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:37:10 No one wanted to drive, but one, one of the people did and drove us into the local town. We went into this Thai massage parlor place, and at the front desk was the classic little running waterfall and, like, very gently playing music and one woman behind the counter. We had to fill this form in, and me and the guy that were there, we were like: "We need... Can we- we're gonna wait outside. Is that okay?" Being inside of this very calm, very normal, one other person reception area to a massage place that we were gonna go in and enjoy was, like, too much.

Charlie Houpert 1:37:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:37:45 It was too much stimulus.

Charlie Houpert 1:37:46 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:37:47 People didn't wanna drive. People d- we didn't wanna talk to people. Someone went into Whole Foods and left without having bought anything.

Charlie Houpert 1:37:52 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:37:52 They were like: "I don't... I can't... I, I don't know what to buy. I don't know where to go. Like-"

Charlie Houpert 1:37:57 Wow!

Chris Williamson 1:37:58 "... there's people in there." It was just too stimulating and overwhelming, and the main thing that I realized coming out of that was how many of the patterns I have in life that are compensatory mechanisms for a world that is not very gentle with somebody that is an open vessel.

Charlie Houpert 1:38:11 Open vessel, yeah. I think this is, this is, uh, this... Okay, so now we can get into the final, my, my, my, uh, intuitive crackpot theories. [chuckles] Okay?

Chris Williamson 1:38:19 Here we go.

Charlie Houpert 1:38:20 ... I think that as I watched Love on the Spectrum, and I've been going through this stuff myself, and I see the, the, the stimming that these autistic people are doing as they're dating, and they're rocking, and they have-- the noises are too loud, I'm like: Oh, this is someone that doesn't have the coping mechanism to deal with the world, where the volume is turned up way too loud. And the gifts that are often connected with autistic people, which is like, d- that guy can just s- like, play music like nothing. He, he's just in it. The way that that person is obsessed with buttons, like, they see something that the rest of us don't see.

Chris Williamson 1:38:54 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:38:56 They're-- they, they struggle to fit into a world where that is just not sensitive, [chuckles] right? And so I think what you're experiencing, and you'd asked at the beginning in one of the questions, uh, that you'd sent to me was sensitivity. I think what happened as you take your armor off, you're like: Oh, this is me? I'm sensitive as hell.

Chris Williamson 1:39:14 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:39:15 And in order to function effectively in a world that is too loud, too brash, bumps into me, all these kind of things, I've got-- I've, I've learned effective armoring coping mechanisms to make me function well-

Chris Williamson 1:39:28 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:39:28 ... but at cost of the beauty, at cost of some of my deepest gifts.

Chris Williamson 1:39:33 Can I-- I need to, I need to interject. Sorry.

Charlie Houpert 1:39:35 Yeah, please.

Chris Williamson 1:39:35 So, uh, I don't break the fourth wall around, like, the way that the business operates basically-

Charlie Houpert 1:39:39 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:39:40 ... ever, but I think this is a particularly revealing conversation. It, it probably makes sense, and it's also related to something that happened today. So as a perfect example of, uh, being sensitive, open, and sort of transparent, being a transparent vessel for this sort of stuff is antithetical to operating in the world somehow, or at least i- i- it requires a degree of openness that you're not typically rewarded for in the past, which means it's hard to do in the present. So this morning, I told you maybe one of the most beautiful things, and I've, like, got all excited about this, and we've got this edit, and, like, used some of my favorite tracks, and we did all of this stuff. And then, during the episode that I recorded this morning, there was an error on the upload.

Charlie Houpert 1:40:21 Ah. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:40:21 And it meant that after ten minutes of it being up, it, that got taken down-

Charlie Houpert 1:40:25 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:40:25 ... and we had to re-upload it.

Charlie Houpert 1:40:26 And so you get your notifications, and-

Chris Williamson 1:40:28 Everyone's pinged it.

Charlie Houpert 1:40:29 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:40:29 They've tried to watch it. It's taken down, like... And I'm like: We've flubbed the release for this thing that was really beautiful.

Charlie Houpert 1:40:34 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:40:35 And during the break of the episode with Matthew, when I go to the bathroom to have a pee, like, the episode go up-

Charlie Houpert 1:40:41 Find out.

Chris Williamson 1:40:41 ... and someone's like, "That thing happens," and instead of me saying, like, what, what I felt was like: "Fuck, why did this happen? We need to find a solution. This is the objective metrics, and they should've anything, and eing, eing, eing." What I should have said is like: "Ow!"

Charlie Houpert 1:40:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40:55 "Oh, fuck. [exhales] Look, I'm sure nobody meant for this to happen, but, like, oh, that hurts. Like, I really loved that thing-

Charlie Houpert 1:41:04 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:41:04 ... and I felt so proud of it, and I wanted other people to feel, feel the way that I feel about it, and now I'm worried that not as many people are gonna see it." I didn't do that.

Charlie Houpert 1:41:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:13 I didn't say that. My initial response was like: "Well, what we need to do, we need to come up with a solution. We've got to have a five-step process to get through the thing," as opposed to me just sitting people down and going like, [exhales] "Ow-

Charlie Houpert 1:41:23 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:41:24 ... that hurt."

Charlie Houpert 1:41:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:25 "Uh, and, and fuck, I hope it doesn't happen again."

Charlie Houpert 1:41:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:41:30 Whatever. Like, and maybe not even that. Uh, and that pattern that, that I realized, like, this armoring that you have of yourself, because if you're always this open, like, you're getting ow'd a lot.

Charlie Houpert 1:41:42 You're getting ouched a lot.

Chris Williamson 1:41:44 There are lots of ows out there.

Charlie Houpert 1:41:45 There's lots of ouches, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:41:46 Yes! Yes.

Charlie Houpert 1:41:47 Credit to Joe, uh, a fantastic developmental thing to deepen into this is to say "ouch" out loud when you are hurt by someone or like-

Chris Williamson 1:41:55 That's where I, that's where I took the ow from.

Charlie Houpert 1:41:57 I was saying ouch the entire ride over based on a phone call that I had this morning.

Chris Williamson 1:42:01 Ouch.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:01 Ouch. And I got to... It was just-- anything. I could have powered through it. I've behaved totally, you know, it would have been simple to just, this was not a big deal.

Chris Williamson 1:42:08 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:09 But as I did the ouches, I got to, "Oh, my God, I didn't feel love from this person, and that hurts."

Chris Williamson 1:42:13 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:13 "It just hurts." Like, and well, not-- they don't have to give you love. It just, it hurts anyway.

Chris Williamson 1:42:17 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:17 And d- we have a choice. We can feel the pain and not cut off that aspect of ourselves that... And it, what you described, like, the sacrifice in not feeling the pain is that you lose that, that f- oh, I really wanted people to feel the way that I felt about this.

Chris Williamson 1:42:30 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:31 And then that has downstream effects of maybe the way that you treat the next blog is more efficient and less beautiful-

Chris Williamson 1:42:36 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:42:36 ... and it's, and-

Chris Williamson 1:42:36 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:42:37 ... you lose the essence of the thing to avoid experiencing pain around its fragility.

Chris Williamson 1:42:42 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:43 And that is just, yeah, that's everywhere.

Chris Williamson 1:42:45 Keep going through your developmental kooky world theory.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:48 My kooky world?

Chris Williamson 1:42:49 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:49 Where were we? With-

Chris Williamson 1:42:51 Uh, you'd said...

Charlie Houpert 1:42:53 Oh, autism.

Chris Williamson 1:42:54 Yes.

Charlie Houpert 1:42:54 Autism is r- related to, uh, I th- I really think it's people entering the world with an intense sensitivity, and I think we can look to people, au- autists, autist savants, for not how we will become at all, but, like, for some of the pains of sensitivity and some of the gifts that are associated with sensitivity.

Chris Williamson 1:43:15 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:43:15 And what we can still do is we can still have our armor that we can put on when necessary, and we can have our containment for our board meeting and this, that, and the other thing. But the ability to just go, "Oh, my God, it's so loud. It is so loud."

Chris Williamson 1:43:27 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:43:27 Even right now, you know, there's planes and this, and our attention is able to dial in and tune everything out, but when you tune everything out, you miss the beauty of the flowers, and the cars, and the, the, the cicada that is making noise and how awesome everything is. So that's one piece. This is a hard tangent, but whatever, we've, we've been all over the place today. [chuckles] So we talked about mythology. Mythology is a beautiful connection between emotions and that, like, God thing, and 'cause mythology often deals with gods, but it deals with this archetypal realm that is, I find more understandable, approachable, and this is what I said, Carl Jung is, like, so great because he bridges that emotional level with the divine. And so a beautiful bridge is mythology, and I already hear that some of them, you've talked about Cassandra and that sort of thing.

Chris Williamson 1:44:19 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:44:20 These myths, I mean, I, I don't know which one. Is-- let me see if there's one that is particularly relevant to you.... there's not one that comes to mind immediately, but using ChatGPT to just be like, "Hey, what's the myth of so-and-so?" If it, if it pops up, really, really powerful thing that I have experienced. And-

Chris Williamson 1:44:37 And w- what do you, what do you think about sort of mythology? Is it a, it, it's not the full dose of religion-

Charlie Houpert 1:44:45 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:44:45 ... with some of its sort of stodginess and inaccessibility?

Charlie Houpert 1:44:48 Yeah. So here's, here's my broad view of religion, spirituality, et cetera. There are these mystics all around the world: Jesus, Muhammad, Rumi, you know. Uh, they get it at various levels. It's tough to translate. It's-- I, like, how do you say it? First off, how do you- how does it come out of your mouth in a way that is honest to your experience? Extremely challenging. And then for somebody who hasn't had that experience, they're gonna write it down now in a book and codify how everyone else needs to be. So I think that's what's going on with a lot of the big books, is that there is a mystical insight from somebody who got it at a very, very, very deep level. Difficult for them to speak, difficult for other people to write down sixty years later.

Chris Williamson 1:45:29 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:45:29 And then we're a lot of people that aren't, uh, directly connected with that experience, projecting their mother and their father onto the creator of the universe, that He's upset with me, and He wants to punish me, and a lot of that made it into the text, you know?

Chris Williamson 1:45:41 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:45:43 So I don't treat the Bible as, uh, literally every word is true. I, but I treat it as a repository that has been mistranslated some of the time of a brilliant mystic-

Chris Williamson 1:45:53 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:45:53 ... like somebody who was, who got it. And I treat other texts like that. Like, there's some level of understanding, integration that the person who came up with this had. That's why it survived so long. That's why it was so meaningful to people, even if they couldn't describe why it was so meaningful to them. So Greek, Egyptian, these pantheon gods are really useful for relating to you the archetypal emotional patterns of life.

Chris Williamson 1:46:20 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:46:21 So for instance, the story of Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. Hephaestus is the craftsman god. He's, uh, got a lame leg. He's a craftsman. You might call him a brainiac. Uh, he's not a physical powerhouse. He's the only god that is crippled. He is betrothed and wedded to Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, but she cheats on him all the time with the alpha Chad, Ares. [chuckles] Right? So they have a bunch of kids, but the story of Hephaestus and Aphrodite and Ares is that Hephaestus learns that he's being cuckolded. He creates a cage above the bed. Ares and Aphrodite go at it, he drops the cage on them, and then brings in all the other gods to laugh at them. And it's like an archetypal exploration of the pain of the, uh, academically [chuckles] inclined guy-

Chris Williamson 1:47:09 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:47:09 ... who is, uh, try-- who is hurt by the aggressive masculine man, who takes something that he loves, and then re- moves into his zone of power-

Chris Williamson 1:47:20 Yep, yep

Charlie Houpert 1:47:20 ... which is intellectual, and shames him.

Chris Williamson 1:47:22 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:47:23 And you see this play out. I've, I've heard Brennan Lee Mulligan, who you might be familiar with, he was a Dungeons and Dragons guy, very smart, tell his very personal story of he was a smart kid. The tough kids pushed him around, made fun of him, but he got really good at insulting them, so he could just cut them to the core because he was smart enough to do it.

Chris Williamson 1:47:39 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:47:39 And so there's these patterns that if you look at these archetypes, almost like Rorschach tests, which is: Which one is, is calling to me? I don't know. There's something about... I'm curious about Ares. I'm curious about this. You look up the story, you read it. What do I make of it? Is a beautiful way to start to recognize some of these archetypal patterns in your life-

Chris Williamson 1:48:00 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:48:00 ... because they have existed for thousands of years before you.

Chris Williamson 1:48:03 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:48:03 And I could go on and on and on and about all the different ones that have been valuable to me. But-

Chris Williamson 1:48:07 So symbolic, there's, the, it, the story is more than just the story. It's less literal. Is that kind of the... W- what's the key?

Charlie Houpert 1:48:16 Okay, so the key that Jung, Peterson, et cetera, would say is that these are, these are, [chuckles] like metaphysically real in a way that is not just metaphorical or symbolic. That there are... How, how can I describe this? That there are near universal structures in human psychology, for instance, for father and for mother, that we do not come in utterly blank slate, and there are recurring patterns based on, you could call it evolution, or if you're spiritually based, just like this is what it is to be human. That by relating to these archetypes, seeing how they strike us, we can learn the pieces of ourselves that are missing. So maybe we didn't have the world's greatest mother or greatest father, but if we relate to an archetypal story of a good mother or of a good-- the wise father or something, we can get- we can re-come into contact with the piece of us that we felt should have been there when we were kids, but we couldn't put our finger on, we couldn't describe, and so we can't explain the pain that we're experiencing of the loss.

Chris Williamson 1:49:17 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:49:17 These stories help us reconnect with that. In the same way that the hero's journey inspires young men to go out, be heroes, understand that there's a sacrifice and a rocky montage that they have to go through, these stories give you steps, uh, and, and relationship with, "Oh, that's what was missing," or, "Oh, that's what's up next for me." I'll give you one small example of this is I was re-- Joseph Campbell has this hero's journey that he charts out, and it's basically a clock, where you start up here. Three o'clock, you meet the mentor. You descend into the underworld. It's the belly of the beast. It's the Garden of Gethsemane at the bottom. You come back up, you get the divine revelation, you come back to the community. I had been charting where I was, and he's got, like, basically, I think twelve to seventeen different stages, and I found myself [chuckles] I was like, "Oh, this is belly of the beast. I am lost, utterly lost." And shortly after that, I was like: What's up next? Temptation of the woman. So in the story, The Odyssey... And stop me if I'm rambling here.

Chris Williamson 1:50:12 No, dude, I want more-

Charlie Houpert 1:50:13 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:50:14 ... more myth.

Charlie Houpert 1:50:14 Okay, more myth. In the story of The Odyssey, Odysseus has gone through everything. He had six hundred men, they're all dead. He's washed up on this island. He still hasn't arrived home after near, like, thirteen years after the, after the Trojan War. He still can't get back to Ithaca.... and he's b- defeated, and he lands on this island. Every island he's gotten to has been torturous, and there is a beautiful nymph named Calixo- Calypso, a goddess, who just wants to marry him, have sex with him, and keep him there. That's it. Just stay. And so he gets to the end of the journey, and he's offered, "Just stay with me." He's with a goddess, and he stays for a while, but he ultimately makes the decision. He's like: "No, I have to go back. I, there, I know it's gonna be hard. I know it's been brutal to get here, but I have to continue." And this is what Campbell calls the temptation of the feminine, temptation of the woman. And I found myself here, went through the bottom of this arc, and a buy offer comes in for Charisma on Command. And it's, "Dude, you just ride off into the sunset. You could just, you put it away. It's-- You're frustrated with it. It's not working. Just, you could take the money." I'm dividing it up in my head, how many years, how much this? And I knew where I was in the journey, and I was able to go, "Ah, I know this, and this isn't what I want. Even though it's gonna be hard, I want the struggle. There's something-- There's a home that is calling me." And so I was able to navigate that with a bit more understanding, and then I knew after that comes atonement with the father, [chuckles] right? And so there's this other stage that I had to go through, and I could go on and on and on. And then I knew after that comes apotheosis, which is the connection with the divine, and then the ultimate boon. And right now I sit at [chuckles] the return, which is the refusal to return, is basically where I'm at right now. So after you get the grail, the lamp, the thing, and you've done all that work, oftentimes the hero's like: "Well, that was really hard. I don't think I wanna go home. [chuckles] I finally made myself comfortable in this other secluded inner world. I don't think I wanna bring this back to the community." And sometimes there's a chase, sometimes someone has to pull them out of it, but I was like, "Oh, maybe that's what this podcast is for me. This is Chris- [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:52:17 Wow.

Charlie Houpert 1:52:17 ... inviting me back to you."

Chris Williamson 1:52:18 I have a, I have a, I have a question.

Chris Williamson 1:52:21 How the fuck do you talk about charisma anymore?

Charlie Houpert 1:52:23 So it was really hard, and I said at the beginning, I'm sorry that this has been so disjointed. One day I'll have this smooth. I had understood charisma to be what do people like about me, and I still will make videos like that. How do they... What steps do I do, say, think, et cetera, yada, yada, yada, to get someone to like me? It was all based on if I was behaving in a way that was approved of. That was my understanding of it. But as I get deeper into myth, charisma is a Greek word. The etymology of charisma is from the same word as charity and the charities, which are the goddesses. But charisma is a divinely given gift, often associated with speech, but associated with someone from, that God moves through. And so you can speak charismatically, but you can dance charismatically. You can paint charismatically. You can, like, love and hug, and y- y- you can live charismatically. So as I go, "Oh, wow, I picked the perfect word. I picked the perfect name for this company for me to grow into," I just didn't know it at the time.

Chris Williamson 1:53:23 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:53:23 And so I am learning now how to serve the core audience that wants tips, tricks, all this-

Chris Williamson 1:53:28 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 1:53:28 ... kind of stuff, but I need to expand it into how does God move through you? And for me, that looks less like, here's the phrase, here's the thing to do, but finding the intersection of radiance and authenticity.

Chris Williamson 1:53:46 Hmm.

Charlie Houpert 1:53:46 I think in the past, I had been like: Look, I wanna be authentic, but... I'll just give you an example. The first day of the course, Charisma University, that we have, I think a lot of this stuff could be used, but is when somebody asks you how you're doing, don't say, "I'm fine." Don't say, "Busy." Don't say, "Good." Be better than that. Be phenomenal. Be wonderful. Be inc- you know, and you can treat that at any level of the pyramid. You can go to the results level, which is I-- no matter what I'm feeling, I am going to say I'm phenomenal, and I can betray my emotions. I can take actions to start to take steps in my life that I've worked out that day, and I've gotten something done, so I'm more likely to actually feel phenomenal when someone asks me. I can treat the underlying emotional level, [chuckles] which is have I been with my shame, my grief, my et cetera? So then no matter what I say, I'm like: Dude, it's kind of a rough day, there's still something emanating from me. Or I can do it at the spiritual level, which is like: Oh, my God, I remember God. I feel fucking incredible, [chuckles] and I can radiate it that way. So for me, it's, it's more about just like I had to grow out of the shell that I was in. It's, it's yes, the co-- the, the same piece stays, but it's also more than that. And so that's how I have come around to being like: Oh, I did want Charisma on Command. I wanted to grow it into much more than it was-

Chris Williamson 1:55:00 Hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:55:00 ... and have it mean something significantly more than it did. And there's a challenge of bringing the audience with me and leaving some of them behind, and, uh, I'm a weirdo, and all that kind of stuff is a stress.

Chris Williamson 1:55:10 How many subs you got? Six million, seven million?

Charlie Houpert 1:55:12 Six, between six point nine or something.

Chris Williamson 1:55:14 Right, seven million subs.

Charlie Houpert 1:55:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:55:17 The market for I want to say cool things to get girls to be attracted to me-

Charlie Houpert 1:55:21 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:55:21 ... and the market for I want to get in touch with my feminine and be able to dance without shame-

Charlie Houpert 1:55:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:55:26 ... uh, to music in my bedroom-

Charlie Houpert 1:55:28 Uh-huh

Chris Williamson 1:55:28 ... uh, not quite the same.

Charlie Houpert 1:55:31 Yes, and look at Jordan Peterson. Look, core, core, he is a Jungian psychologist who the, the first thing, yes, he came on the scene for politics, but it was Genesis. It was all of this unsexy-

Chris Williamson 1:55:44 Pinocchio.

Charlie Houpert 1:55:44 Pinocchio, Genesis, Lion King. I truly believe that the public needs a Jungian, [chuckles] a speaker for Carl Jung-

Chris Williamson 1:55:52 Wow

Charlie Houpert 1:55:52 ... to be present. Like, we need myth.

Chris Williamson 1:55:55 Is this a pivot that you're potentially-- you would, a, a burden you would potentially carry yourself?

Charlie Houpert 1:56:00 Yeah, a hundred-- I would deeply be honored, love to pray for that opportunity. I, I-- and I am trying to learn how to gracefully make that transition, and I have put out videos where I'm more experimental. They don't do as well, but I'm still in this zone of sorting through how to talk about this stuff. And perhaps I should have come in here and just been like: I got my list of myths, and I'm gonna tell them to you. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:56:22 No, no, no, no, no, no. This is-- This, I mean, this has been one of the most intimate conversations I think I've ever had on the show. Uh, you've got something-... You're there with something, and Dr. K is there?

Charlie Houpert 1:56:36 Mm-hmm. There's-- Well, let me ask.

Chris Williamson 1:56:39 Sure.

Charlie Houpert 1:56:39 I, I think you're, you're, you're there, too. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 1:56:42 I'm, I- I'm edging.

Charlie Houpert 1:56:43 You're edging. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 1:56:44 I've been edging for, for a, a

Chris Williamson 1:56:46 few months now.

Charlie Houpert 1:56:46 So let me, let me ask-

Chris Williamson 1:56:47 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 1:56:47 ... 'cause I-

Chris Williamson 1:56:48 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 1:56:49 If you were able to take that stake out of the ground-

Chris Williamson 1:56:51 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 1:56:52 ... and didn't have that tether-

Chris Williamson 1:56:53 Mm

Charlie Houpert 1:56:53 ... and the cameras could disappear for a moment-

Chris Williamson 1:56:55 Mm

Charlie Houpert 1:56:55 ... do you, and it's okay if the answer is no, 'cause I know I didn't for a long time.

Chris Williamson 1:56:58 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 1:56:59 Do you have any direction of where you would head, walk, do without the expectation?

Chris Williamson 1:57:05 [exhaling] There's a few. Uh, I'm, I'm pulled towards fun, at least in part, at the moment, and that-

Charlie Houpert 1:57:23 Love that for you, by the way.

Chris Williamson 1:57:24 Me too.

Charlie Houpert 1:57:25 I love things that integrate ancient past, which for you is, is being a club promoter.

Chris Williamson 1:57:30 I-

Charlie Houpert 1:57:30 Like, I love when things-

Chris Williamson 1:57:32 And-

Charlie Houpert 1:57:32 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:57:32 ... the way that that will come through is multi-guest episodes. So me, George Mack, Zach, and another person are gonna do a sort of regular, probably monthly, something like that, hang-style episode.

Charlie Houpert 1:57:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:57:43 Current working title is Smoke Break or Office Hours or-

Charlie Houpert 1:57:46 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:57:47 ... whatever, uh, Drop In or some shit close. Um, I like the idea of that because it is part of a, uh, releasing of a lot of the control. Like, what is the outcome that we get from this? Well, I'm not too sure.

Charlie Houpert 1:58:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:58:01 Uh, and what is it we're gonna talk about? Well, I'm also not too sure.

Charlie Houpert 1:58:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:58:04 Well, that, but it's doesn't need to be, you know, fucking last twenty-four-hour news slop. Tucker Carlson's in a beef with Nick Fuentes and Ben Shapiro, and we-

Charlie Houpert 1:58:11 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:58:11 ... need to, how does this...? Um, so that will be a little bit of relinquishing of control. That's part of it.

Charlie Houpert 1:58:16 Cool.

Chris Williamson 1:58:17 Um, and that gives me an opportunity to put more personality across, as opposed to this thing that I've done for so long, which is be a vessel and a, a, a, a pedestal for people who are, have great ideas.

Charlie Houpert 1:58:31 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:58:31 People I'm interested in about things I'm interested in.

Charlie Houpert 1:58:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:58:33 Like, what is it that I can distill from you and then make you look as amazing as possible? And that's been great-

Charlie Houpert 1:58:38 Yep

Chris Williamson 1:58:38 ... but I've subjugated myself a lot-

Charlie Houpert 1:58:40 Yep

Chris Williamson 1:58:40 ... throughout that.

Charlie Houpert 1:58:40 I see this, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:58:41 Uh, and it's like, okay, if not now, then when? Like, and it's the same for the success thing. If not now, when have you arrived? If not after a thousand episodes-

Charlie Houpert 1:58:51 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:58:51 ... and a quarter of a million words written in five years on my newsletter, like, when do you feel like your ideas have sufficient veracity or legitimacy or authenticity or whatever the fuck to be able to go, "I think maybe I can contribute a bit. Maybe I can make it a little bit about me"?

Charlie Houpert 1:59:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:59:08 And I never wanted to make it about me-

Charlie Houpert 1:59:09 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:59:09 ... and part of that was a defensive tactic because I found in my past, especially when I was getting bullied as a kid, that if I made myself small, if I didn't make it about me, if I didn't make myself too loud or too big, that the eye of Sauron sort of didn't get pointed at me. One of the things that I'd learned, I think, as a child was, if I'm too smart in class or put my hand up and get the answer right or perform too well in whatever, sometimes the bullies would notice me more. Whereas if I do something... Like, people, people can mistake smallness for a lack of a, a-- People can mistake, like, humbleness, smallness, self-deprecation for a lack of a threat.

Charlie Houpert 1:59:46 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:59:47 Uh, and the internet is the same with regards to this. Uh, so one thing, more fun, making it a little bit more about me. Here's some ideas that I've got. I'm gonna actually, like, move toward that. Uh, something Patrick Bat David mentioned to me a long time ago, actually. Uh, that-

Charlie Houpert 2:00:02 Is there, is there a core idea in there that is around which you're-

Chris Williamson 2:00:07 Uh, there will be. So this is the next bit, I guess. Um, [exhaling] the problem that I'm having at the moment is I only just arrived at accepting that emotions are an important thing to work on, and now I've got this, like... It feels like I took psychedelics and saw something I wasn't supposed to see. I'm like, [gasping] I f- I, the, I was, like, ready to map this next bit of the journey. Uh, or a better example, I love this. I've been thinking about this a lot. Maybe it's 'cause, like, Elon's kind of crushing it with space exploration. It's an old style of rocket, right? You remember the old school, like, uh, Apollo-style rocket?

Charlie Houpert 2:00:41 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:00:41 So when you're on the launch pad, there's a particular fuel source and a particular engine that gets used, and then after that-

Charlie Houpert 2:00:47 I have to try this.

Chris Williamson 2:00:47 ... goes in and get in. And then after that, it's booster rockets, and they, like, kick in. So at a particular altitude, there is a particular fuel source and type of propulsion that's used.

Charlie Houpert 2:00:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:00:57 And then you get to another one, and another one kicks in, and then you get to another one, and [mouthing] those fall away.

Charlie Houpert 2:01:01 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:01:02 And then another one happens.

Charlie Houpert 2:01:03 [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 2:01:03 And I'm like, I was just about accepting that the booster rocket had come on online, and now there's this... I'm like, am I f- where am I? So that's thrown a little bit of a spanner-

Charlie Houpert 2:01:14 Got you

Chris Williamson 2:01:14 ... into the works for me, like, trying to map stuff, which is why it's really useful to have this conversation.

Charlie Houpert 2:01:19 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:01:19 But the thing that I'm kind of prepared to, at the moment, like, really, really lean into is the pride of sensitivity, like, trying to find strength in sensitivity-

Charlie Houpert 2:01:32 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:01:32 ... and em- in emotionality, uh, and really asking questions around: How do you navigate the things that you feel and still get the outcomes that you want?

Charlie Houpert 2:01:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:01:46 Like balancing real-world results with an inner sense of enoughness. Okay, what's that? How does that piece together? I think that probably for the next twelve months is gonna be a real core theme for me. Funny, uh, story on that. You know Myron Gaines?

Charlie Houpert 2:02:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:02:00 From Fresh and Fit.

Charlie Houpert 2:02:01 Mm-hmm. I don't know him, but I love him.

Chris Williamson 2:02:02 We, we, we, we went for, like, shawarma or, like, some, uh, uh, Middle Eastern-y food thing in Miami, maybe two years ago, something like that, or eighteen months ago. This is before I'd started thinking about this, but I was, like, tapped in a tiny, teeny, tiny, like, weeny little bit. And we sat down, and he's, you know, like, kind of gregarious guy, da, da, da, da, da, like, sort of talking about all this stuff, and I was just interested to find out about him and, like, you know, uh, where does this, like, particular firework, like, spiral around to? There's, like, uh, ideas and stuff and the past and the future and all this shit. And he's talking about this stuff, and then he said, um-... He's telling me about this experience that he'd gone through, and like, "This thing happened, and this thing happened, and this thing happened." I just went, "Oh, h- how did that make you feel?"

Charlie Houpert 2:02:48 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:02:49 And it stopped the conversation. Totally stopped the conversation, and he, like, must have paused for maybe five seconds, looked at me, went, "I've never really thought about that."

Charlie Houpert 2:03:01 Wow!

Chris Williamson 2:03:02 Like, "No one's ever-- um, I've never really thought about it, and no one's ever really asked me," or something like that. I was like, "Oh, that's cool."

Charlie Houpert 2:03:09 That's really cool.

Chris Williamson 2:03:09 That's cool!

Charlie Houpert 2:03:10 Also credit to him.

Chris Williamson 2:03:11 Yeah, for seeing it.

Charlie Houpert 2:03:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:03:12 Really, and I was like, "Huh!" And there was a bit as well, like, when everyone like that, sort of like super forward-leaning, dopamine energy thing, uh, there is a little bit of like: How do I get through this? I've got to be a bit more person in there.

Charlie Houpert 2:03:28 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 2:03:28 Like, I want to excavate it, and like, that-- I'm interested in that. But the first five years of the show, I wasn't. I was interested in, like, the shell. I was interested in the outside, like the action and the results.

Charlie Houpert 2:03:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:03:42 I'm like, okay, like, how do I, like, poke in? Not because I want to see you cry-

Charlie Houpert 2:03:46 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:03:46 -not because I want like some, like, over- overly unnecessary-

Charlie Houpert 2:03:50 I'm not Steven Bartlett. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:03:51 Yeah. Well, hello.

Charlie Houpert 2:03:52 Love Steven. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:03:53 I mean, Steven, Steven's got, Steven's got a skill set in that.

Charlie Houpert 2:03:54 No, Steven's amazing. I love Steven.

Chris Williamson 2:03:55 But I don't... I, I'm not sure. I think for him, what he's wanting is, like, the expression of how that made somebody feel. Whereas what I'm interested in is, like, what is the marriage between the outcome that happens and that feeling-

Charlie Houpert 2:04:07 Yeah

Chris Williamson 2:04:08 ... and how, how is that? I'm, like, fascinated by tension.

Charlie Houpert 2:04:10 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 2:04:10 So I'm like: Okay, how does the tension between these two things happen?

Charlie Houpert 2:04:13 Huh.

Chris Williamson 2:04:13 Uh, also, sitting with somebody crying, and this is a failing of mine and a, a, a strength of Steven's, is, and I learned this during, uh, Groundbreakers with Joe, if somebody else cries, I cry-

Charlie Houpert 2:04:24 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:04:24 ... a lot. Like, if I see someone in pain or discomfort, or I ask somebody a question, and it's either, uh, sadness or happiness, and like, they go, I go.

Charlie Houpert 2:04:34 Me too.

Chris Williamson 2:04:35 And I have shame around like that.

Charlie Houpert 2:04:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:04:37 So I'm like, right, okay, in order for me-- the number of times that somebody's cried on Steven's show, and like, I, I'm not sure how many times I've seen him cry-

Charlie Houpert 2:04:47 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:04:47 ... certainly in response to somebody else, he seems to be able to hold space.

Charlie Houpert 2:04:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:04:50 Now, I don't know whether I'd love to... I, I, I should-- We were talking this weekend, I should ask-

Charlie Houpert 2:04:55 What's going on inside? Yeah, I'd be so curious.

Chris Williamson 2:04:57 Yeah. Are you, are you numbed to it? Are you insulated from this, or are you drop-- are you so dropped in that you've, like, alchemized it-

Charlie Houpert 2:05:05 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:05:05 ... and you're like, I'm able to, like, full Joe Hudson view framework, like... [exhales]

Charlie Houpert 2:05:11 Either, uh, my experience of it, I cried. [laughing] It was, uh, I felt his presence.

Chris Williamson 2:05:17 Oh.

Charlie Houpert 2:05:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:05:18 That's a fucking-- I mean, that, that's like, to be able to do it, to sit with somebody in that and to hold space in that-

Charlie Houpert 2:05:23 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:05:23 ... and to not- I mean, some people, I guess, are just, like, less emotional in that way.

Charlie Houpert 2:05:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:05:28 Like, their emotional trigger, they don't present it in the same sort of a way. Um, but if you're able to hold the space, uh, and not have, like... Th- that this is the impartiality and the empathy thing, right? Like, uh, "I'm not going to try and change you, and I'm with you without being in your emotions."

Charlie Houpert 2:05:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:05:47 Uh, that's like black belt shit.

Charlie Houpert 2:05:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:05:51 That's, like, very, very, very impressive. I don't have that, uh, whether it's a skill or what- whatever you want to call it, I don't have that trait. Um, so for me-

Charlie Houpert 2:05:59 Uh, dude, there's, there's like a super team that we can make, I think. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:06:02 I-- This is what, this is what I was about to say. This is what I was about to say: You, Dr. K-

Charlie Houpert 2:06:05 No, it's a-

Chris Williamson 2:06:06 Joe Hudson.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:06 Dr. K called me a year ago. Credit to him. He's like, "Something's happening." [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:06:10 [laughing]

Charlie Houpert 2:06:10 He's like, "Something is happening around masculinity, and it's not time yet, but it's gonna be time soon." And, uh, I just f- and I think he said your name.

Chris Williamson 2:06:18 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:18 And he was like-

Chris Williamson 2:06:19 He spoke to me about this.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:20 Yeah, he's like-

Chris Williamson 2:06:21 Sort of, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:21 He's just like: "I don't have any takeaway, but sh- keep your phone on you." [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:06:26 He said something similar.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:27 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:06:27 He's like, "Look up for the fucking bat signal, dude."

Charlie Houpert 2:06:29 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:06:29 I mean, look, uh, there is...

Chris Williamson 2:06:31 Here's, here's a couple of frameworks. Here's a couple of frameworks that might be interesting for you. Uh, as far as I can see, we've had two waves of the manosphere so far.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:06:40 First wave of pickup artistry was Neil Strauss, The Game, Mystery, it was negging, and, and, and like, "Have you seen the midget fight outside?" And it was-

Charlie Houpert 2:06:47 Which was also like, that was a switch from results to actions with regard to being attractive to women.

Chris Williamson 2:06:53 Uh-huh.

Charlie Houpert 2:06:53 'Cause prior to that, it was just, you're as handsome and as wealthy as you are, and that is your outcome with women. And it was like: Oh, you can behave-

Chris Williamson 2:07:00 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 2:07:00 ... in a certain way.

Chris Williamson 2:07:01 Then, second wave manosphere was post-Me Too, because-

Charlie Houpert 2:07:04 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:07:04 ... pickup artistry was never gonna survive the wave-

Charlie Houpert 2:07:07 Yeah

Chris Williamson 2:07:07 ... of, of sort of calling to account men for using position to coerce people into-

Charlie Houpert 2:07:11 Yep

Chris Williamson 2:07:11 ... into sex. And then we got a kind of sanitized, slightly adjusted version of it, and it was red pill, black pill, blue pill, soy boys, cucks. It was like simps and betas and alphas.

Charlie Houpert 2:07:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:07:23 And it was, like, that whole world.

Charlie Houpert 2:07:24 Which interesting, a- and I'm, I'm, I'm kind of projecting, but is these guys started to feel upset about the things. They were getting bothered, and they said they took a almost more feminine approach, which is, "We're gonna talk a lot about our problems-

Chris Williamson 2:07:36 Well, don't forget that-

Charlie Houpert 2:07:36 ... and ask the world to be different." [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 2:07:38 Don't forget, don't forget that, uh, the, like, incel, black pill, red pill community came out of PUA Hate.

Charlie Houpert 2:07:44 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:07:44 Like, PUA Hate was the original Reddit.

Charlie Houpert 2:07:46 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:07:47 And PUA Hate was people who had done pickup and had found that the strategies had n- either not worked or worked and made them aware of their own shortcomings. "Look at how much I need to perform in order to get women to like me."

Charlie Houpert 2:07:59 That's really frustrating.

Chris Williamson 2:08:00 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:08:01 Yeah. [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 2:08:01 "Oh, fuck! Like, I am, I, at core, am so far away from what women want-

Charlie Houpert 2:08:07 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:08:07 ... that I need to construct this elaborate fucking cathedral of bullshit in order to get them to like me." That is another comment on my self-worth.

Charlie Houpert 2:08:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:08:16 So-

Charlie Houpert 2:08:16 And I do want to pause because I think these are huge spheres, and I don't-- I've spoken to people in it, and there are well-seen cultural commentaries that do come from the red pill community. I broadly-

Chris Williamson 2:08:28 From all of these.

Charlie Houpert 2:08:28 Yeah, all of these.

Chris Williamson 2:08:29 This is a cassation of-

Charlie Houpert 2:08:29 Yeah, and I-

Chris Williamson 2:08:30 ... everything

Charlie Houpert 2:08:30 ... I broadly disagree with the, I think, the emotional undertone of it is, is pain.

Chris Williamson 2:08:34 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 2:08:34 But yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:08:35 Well, I, d- uh, who was it that said-- I think it was Dr. K that was like, um, uh, "Everybody in the red pill is a hopeless romantic."

Charlie Houpert 2:08:42 [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah, there's... It's false.

Chris Williamson 2:08:44 It's, like, cool!

Charlie Houpert 2:08:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:08:45 It's, like, pretty kind of nice. Anyway-

Charlie Houpert 2:08:47 Yeah

Chris Williamson 2:08:47 ... and I'm like, okay, that was second wave.... but one of the things that it denied was sensitivity.

Charlie Houpert 2:08:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:08:53 Because sensitivity didn't show upfront the dimension of masculinity that was supposed to look commanding.

Charlie Houpert 2:09:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:09:02 And, uh, I'm writing a lot about vulnerability and about emotions at the moment, and I think you're right. Like, whether it's my current working title for it, The Manopause, uh, or the, like, third wave manosphere stuff, Mack and Murphy, William Costello, Rob Henderson-

Charlie Houpert 2:09:19 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:09:19 ... from, like, the academic sphere of this, uh, Alexander Datecike, like, they're kind of pointing at it from a, a more, like, academic lens.

Charlie Houpert 2:09:27 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:09:27 All post-grads or doctoral students or whatever the fuck. And then Dr. K, Joe Hudson, kind of marrying master coach, East and West stuff, modality-focused. You coming in with, like, psychedelic, a psychedelic sort of lens to it, and then I guess I'm ancillary to that in kind of like the bro sphere-

Charlie Houpert 2:09:49 I think that's-

Chris Williamson 2:09:50 type stuff.

Charlie Houpert 2:09:50 Yeah, you, you're credible in, in a bro sphere, which I think is really important.

Chris Williamson 2:09:54 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 2:09:55 Really, really important.

Chris Williamson 2:09:56 But there's something going on, dude, and I don't know what it is. And, uh, I-- the conversation I had with Tucker Carlson, I think, correctly identifies a lot of the problems. Uh, d- one other thing just to add in on the, the men piece. [clears throat] When I first... The, the, like, arc of me working through a lot of the mating stuff, which inevitably ends up just pointing back at yourself, like whatever it is that you enter at, it ends up coming back to you. Uh, you start off going, "Wow, there's some stats around sexlessness and, like, matinglessness that are kind of, uh, scary. I wonder what's going on?" So you go to evolutionary psychology, and you say: What are the underpinnings of our motivations? Proximate, ultimate reasons for behavior, uh, mate guarding, jealousy, male parental uncertainty, resources, intrasexual competition, intersexual competition. God, that's interesting, but that's not all, the whole picture. And then you move down to, uh, environment mismatch.

Charlie Houpert 2:10:49 Mm.

Chris Williamson 2:10:49 And you say, "Okay, so how is modern environment and ancestral programming coming together to create these odd mismatches?"

Charlie Houpert 2:10:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:10:56 That's interesting, and that's currently where a lot of the red pill, uh, and a lot of the conversation from both men and women, mostly men, is at. But the next step down from that, which is kind of where I'm at currently, this is my model, is even if you know what's happening in the world demographically in terms of stats-

Charlie Houpert 2:11:13 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:11:13 ... you know our ancestral programming in terms of what are the underlying motivations and incentives for how we work. You then marry those two together to get modern mismatch. At no point in anybody's relationship ever has anyone directly interacted with their environmental mismatch. They interact relationally. Okay, so what is the emotion that I feel when my partner out earns me and I'm a man?

Charlie Houpert 2:11:38 Mm. Got it, got it. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:11:40 That's the vanguard. Like, the tip of the spear of how this shit works is-

Charlie Houpert 2:11:46 It's mediated by emotion, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:11:48 Emotion, bingo.

Charlie Houpert 2:11:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:11:49 So that's where I'm at.

Charlie Houpert 2:11:50 Oh, it's like, yeah, the, well, she makes more than me, and that's a problem. It's like, it's a problem 'cause of how I feel. It's a problem 'cause how she feels.

Chris Williamson 2:11:55 How she feels.

Charlie Houpert 2:11:55 It's a problem 'cause... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:11:56 Yes.

Charlie Houpert 2:11:57 Got it.

Chris Williamson 2:11:57 So the, the tip of the spear of this shit, and this is, uh, Gay Hendricks' work. Fucking awesome stuff.

Charlie Houpert 2:12:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:12:06 Uh, and in part, um, uh, uh, uh, no more Mr. Nice Guy, Robert Glover, like, he's sort of like a, a, looking at a part of this-

Charlie Houpert 2:12:15 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:12:15 ... and a wing of it. So yeah, there's like some fucking autistic Avengers thing going on. [laughing]

Charlie Houpert 2:12:21 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:12:23 Where there's cool, there's cool information and vibes that, if combined correctly, I think could make for, like, a really fucking good holistic bit of development.

Charlie Houpert 2:12:39 Let me, let me ask, 'cause this is... I think, love my dad, and I didn't feel like I had-- I didn't want to be my dad in a lot of ways.

Chris Williamson 2:12:48 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 2:12:48 And I look around, and I see a lot of people that, as cheesy as it sounds-

Chris Williamson 2:12:53 Mm

Charlie Houpert 2:12:53 ... did not have male role models. I don't know if it happened in your neighborhood, but I couldn't find a marriage that I wanted.

Chris Williamson 2:13:00 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:13:00 I, I still struggle.

Chris Williamson 2:13:01 It was a role model desert for me where I grew up.

Charlie Houpert 2:13:03 Yeah, and I, I think it's a role model desert of a world for our thing. I don't know how many people are familiar with, like, male-female relationships in suburbia that work-

Chris Williamson 2:13:13 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 2:13:13 ... in a way that feels good. And the complete lack of that meant that my generation and my-- we were like lost boys. I was the farthest ahead. I was the old one, [chuckles] right?

Chris Williamson 2:13:24 Yep.

Charlie Houpert 2:13:24 And so I think there's a huge opportunity, 'cause we've decried the loss of ritual, and the loss of male connection is for you, me, et cetera, to be both digital five, ten years, uh, in front, mentors.

Chris Williamson 2:13:37 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 2:13:38 But I also think there's some possibility for a digital/physical hybrid, which you experienced with Joe, where you were in person with people-

Chris Williamson 2:13:45 Mm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 2:13:46 ... of, oh, my God, the, the missing older brother, the missing younger uncle, [chuckles] the mi- like, that archetype is just... We're starving for it.

Chris Williamson 2:13:57 But this is why the live shows, this is why the tour then.

Charlie Houpert 2:13:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:14:00 It's like, just like-

Charlie Houpert 2:14:01 Jordan, and that's what Jordan Peterson was. He was everyone's dad. He was the guy who said, "I believe in you, but you can do better." You know, he, like, he filled that father role for people all over the world, and it's not ideal that he had to do it-

Chris Williamson 2:14:13 Mm

Charlie Houpert 2:14:13 ... but it was in, in tremendous service to those people, and I think that there's a... He was so much older. I think there's an older brother, younger uncle- [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 2:14:23 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 2:14:23 ... thing that is like-

Chris Williamson 2:14:24 Well, also, there's a, there's an issue with sort of selling it, that I don't know how many people want to be Joe Hudson or want to be Jordan Peterson.

Charlie Houpert 2:14:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:14:32 I don't even know how many people want to be Joe Rogan.

Charlie Houpert 2:14:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:14:35 So you're like, ah, fuck, if your main audience is thirty-four, like, can they look at someone that's twenty years their senior-

Charlie Houpert 2:14:43 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:14:43 ... and be like, "Oh, that, that's where I, like, that's where I might want to be-

Charlie Houpert 2:14:47 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 2:14:47 ... but not right now"? So yeah, d- bringing it the fucking distance a little bit closer.

Charlie Houpert 2:14:52 He, he-- Jordan was able to talk at a high level about male-female dynamics in a way that was helpful, but he wasn't five, six, seven years out of the dating pool. He met his wife when he was- [chuckles]

Chris Williamson 2:15:00 Fourteen

Charlie Houpert 2:15:00 ... like, elementary school or something.

Chris Williamson 2:15:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:02 Yeah, so, so-... how do I do it on Snapchat [chuckles] or, or TikTok?

Chris Williamson 2:15:06 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:06 Is like, that, that tactical level was not available with him.

Chris Williamson 2:15:11 Mm-hmm.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:11 And so I- that's what I think is really-- I hope that people can find my content at the level of, "What do I text her?" And stick with me all the way through the things that I haven't gotten to, which is like, "How do I propose? How do I be with her? How do I be a good dad?" I think there's a really potentially beautiful ladder of male development that is being-

Chris Williamson 2:15:29 Mm

Charlie Houpert 2:15:29 ... broken down and reconstructed so that people can enter at various levels, but also see that, "Oh, there is another stage coming. I may have to leave some people behind. It's not the end of the world."

Chris Williamson 2:15:40 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:41 "I see that my older digital brother, uncle, has gone through this before."

Chris Williamson 2:15:45 Mm.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:45 And that-- what I, why do I wanna do that? That's what I didn't have, like-

Chris Williamson 2:15:48 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 2:15:49 ... you know-

Chris Williamson 2:15:49 Yeah

Charlie Houpert 2:15:49 ... reading Tim Ferriss books.

Chris Williamson 2:15:50 Even with... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even with the people that we did have that our parents didn't have-

Charlie Houpert 2:15:54 Yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 2:15:54 ... and it still wasn't enough.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:55 It wasn't enough.

Chris Williamson 2:15:56 It wasn't enough.

Charlie Houpert 2:15:57 It was-- yeah, it was... With Tim, who I love-

Chris Williamson 2:16:00 Mm-hmm

Charlie Houpert 2:16:00 ... and saved me, it was, "Here's how to do it. You know, here's, here's how to do it," but it wasn't like, "I see you. I'm there for you."

Chris Williamson 2:16:06 Yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:06 "I get it."

Chris Williamson 2:16:07 And this is what it's gonna feel like.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:08 And this is what it's gonna feel like. [chuckles] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:16:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:16:10 Yeah, yeah.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:10 And you can stick maybe... Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:16:14 Bro, this has been so much fun.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:16:15 It-- I feel, I feel, uh, oddly exposed-

Charlie Houpert 2:16:18 Mm

Chris Williamson 2:16:18 ... as well. I feel very like the tide's gone out, and my pants are off.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:22 Oh.

Chris Williamson 2:16:23 Uh-

Charlie Houpert 2:16:23 Well, you have control over the edit, so you do whatever you want. [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:16:25 That's, that is, that, that is true.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:27 [laughing]

Chris Williamson 2:16:27 We will see how, we will see how much of it, uh, makes it in, um-

Charlie Houpert 2:16:29 Well, thank you for sharing with me, and yeah, it was-

Chris Williamson 2:16:31 What can people expect from you over the not-too-distant future?

Charlie Houpert 2:16:38 Hmm, what can they expect? Chaos. I don't know. I'm really excited. I don't-- I won't even put my stake in the ground. I'm excited to find out myself.

Chris Williamson 2:16:47 Unreal. Charlie Houpert-

Charlie Houpert 2:16:48 Yeah

Chris Williamson 2:16:48 ... ladies and gentlemen. Dude, I love you. Thank you.

Charlie Houpert 2:16:50 Thank you, man. [upbeat music]

Chris Williamson 2:16:52 Thank you very much for tuning in. Uh, personal conversation there with Charlie. I, I, I really loved it. I think he's brilliant, and if you enjoyed that one, Scott Galloway is also fantastic and available right here. Bye.