Sam Altman's coach destroys your limiting beliefs for 86 minutes straight

1. 0:00 – 2:35

   Intro

   1. JHJoe Hudson0:00

      I had this experience of I am one with everything, and everything is good. It was like getting [beep] hooked to, on heroin.

   2. SPShaan Puri0:07

      [laughs]

   3. JHJoe Hudson0:07

      Which I was like, "Whatever the [beep] that is, I'm obsessed." [upbeat music]

   4. SPShaan Puri0:16

      I'm excited to have you here, Joe. Welcome to the podcast. I don't know if you know kind of what this podcast is all about, but basically the people who listen to this podcast are very much like me and Sam. We're business junkies, we're s- we're entrepreneurs, we're sort of perpetually always starting things, but also students of the game, always trying to learn. You've done many things. You started, your life story in 10 seconds was ki- kind of like, uh, kind of punk rock kid to discovering a, an entire area of wisdom to go work in. You've been in the business world as a VC, and now you coach some of the highest level players of the game. You are one of the coaches to some of the top, uh, CEOs and entrepreneurs in the game, including Sam Altman and some other friends that we've, we, we were talking about before we started.

   5. JHJoe Hudson0:57

      Yeah.

   6. SPShaan Puri0:57

      And so we're really excited to have you here.

   7. SPSam Parr0:59

      Are you able to name drop at all? Can we give you, like, 10 seconds just to brag?

   8. JHJoe Hudson1:03

      The names that I can drop are the ones that are on the website. It, I find that it's better if you all name drop for me than me name drop.

   9. SPShaan Puri1:10

      Oh, got it. We've seen Mark Pincus, we've seen Sam Altman, we've seen Eric Tornberg. Ev Williams, I think.

   10. JHJoe Hudson1:16

       Ev at, Ev. Ev is a good one, yeah. Um, Stacy, Phil Pot, Brown, she was, uh, head of Google India and ran TaskRabbit.

   11. SPSam Parr1:25

       Is your specialty, like, type A high achievers that just need a little bit of help? Like, how do you summarize the, um, you're starting here and you end up here?

   12. JHJoe Hudson1:35

       Uh, no. I, I li- I really like to have a variety of people, you know? Like, all sorts of people. The only thing that I think all of, all the people that I work with have in common is they're ambitious. Uh, only some of them are maximalists, but they're all super ambitious.

   13. SPSam Parr1:49

       What's a maximalist?

   14. SPShaan Puri1:50

       I don't even know what that is. Yeah, what, what's maximalist? [laughs]

   15. JHJoe Hudson1:53

       Maximalist is someone who's like, "I want it all right now, and I can get it all right now." I would put, like, Sam Altman in the maximalist category. Any limitation that a normal person would see, they're just like, "No, we can figure out how to do both."

   16. SPSam Parr2:07

       Is that achievable?

   17. JHJoe Hudson2:09

       No, I don't think it's achievable entirely, but I think that much more is achievable if you think that way, right? So the limitation, like limiting beliefs are like, hold us back dramatically.

   18. SPShaan Puri2:20

       Let me ask you a question about limiting beliefs. I had never heard this phrase till I went to a Tony Robbins event, and then he started explaining it, and I started... Now and then I started seeing it everywhere in myself and my, my family members, different people, where pe- we tell ourselves these stories. Can you, can

2. 2:35 – 6:48

   Limiting beliefs

   1. SPShaan Puri2:35

      you talk a little bit about this? 'Cause I think it's pretty universal.

   2. JHJoe Hudson2:38

      The, yeah, the idea of a limiting belief outwardly is just any thought process that you have holding you back, and so I'll give you, uh, one that probably everybody has experienced. They have some sort of transformation, something happens, and then they ask themselves, "Will it last?" That's a great limiting belief.

   3. SPShaan Puri2:55

      Mm.

   4. JHJoe Hudson2:55

      'Cause all that really is is just a whole bunch of anxiety presenting itself as a thought process for you to believe. And in- instead of saying, like, "Oh, every learning that I've ever had ebbs and flows. Like, I've totally learnt stuff and then I've forgotten it, and then I relearn it. Or I've been able to make that shot in golf and then I can't make it, but then I learn to make it over time, that there's this natural pendulation of learning that occurs." And so the ebbs and flows are actually good because that is what learning is. Instead it's, "Oh, I might lose this thing," and then they have a moment where they've lost this moment of transformation and then they go, "Oh, I've lost it," which is a second limiting belief. So that would be, like, a very common limiting belief that people have. Or they're like, they're on a diet and they're like, "Will I be able to maintain the diet?" And then they have that one piece of chocolate cake and they're like, "Oh, well, I, I couldn't maintain the diet."

   5. SPShaan Puri3:50

      Right.

   6. JHJoe Hudson3:51

      As if they couldn't, like, just have the piece of chocolate cake and then go back to the diet.

   7. SPShaan Puri3:55

      Well, you don't need to make it personal, Joe.

   8. JHJoe Hudson3:57

      [laughs]

   9. SPShaan Puri3:57

      I don't appreciate that.

   10. JHJoe Hudson3:58

       Yeah.

   11. SPShaan Puri3:58

       Sam, when, when we say limiting belief, does one pop into your head?

   12. SPSam Parr4:02

       Um, yeah. Like, for example, you have to grind really hard-

   13. SPShaan Puri4:07

       Yeah

   14. SPSam Parr4:07

       ... um, and do tons of stuff that you don't like-

   15. JHJoe Hudson4:10

       Yeah

   16. SPSam Parr4:10

       ... in order to get to the end result, which in this case, let's say selling a company or making a lot of money.

   17. JHJoe Hudson4:16

       Yeah.

   18. SPSam Parr4:16

       And you must suffer and suffer and suffer, and once you achieve whatever the end goal is, you will be at a place where you are new and happy.

   19. JHJoe Hudson4:23

       [laughs] That's a great one.

   20. SPSam Parr4:26

       Hypothetically. H- all, yeah, you know, I, I've heard that. [laughs]

   21. JHJoe Hudson4:30

       Two, two, yeah. Asking for a friend. Yeah, there, there's two beliefs in there. The first one is that you have to suffer to achieve what you want to achieve, or that you have to grind to achieve what you want to achieve. So I have a client who I can't mention their name, and probably one of the most successful VCs ever, has been involved in some of the biggest companies, and most of their investments have been in big companies. I think they work, like, three or four hours a week, and they had, like, a grind period of a couple of days, I mean, a couple of years, kinda in their 20s. But they just, just don't work really hard. And I can name another 10 people who have been able to be incredibly successful without grinding like that. They've just been able to be in the right place at the right time. And then the secondary piece of that grind is... [upbeat music]

   22. SPSam Parr5:21

       If you wanna hit your goals, you need a system. And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step-by-step process showing you how I use ChatGPT as a life coach. So I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, and the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I'm having issues with in my life, like, "How should I respond to this email?" "What's the right decision?" Things like that, and it's literally changed my life. And so if you want that, it's free. We will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes, and I'll show you how I use it. So check it out. The link is below in the description. Back to the episode. [upbeat music]

   23. JHJoe Hudson5:58

       Here's something that I've never seen. I've never seen a venture company or a startup fail because of lack of effort Everybody is... Like, anybody who's got a startup, in Silicon Valley anyways, they are efforting all the time, and yet a tremendous amount of them fail. But the idea is, "If I work harder, I'll succeed." But obviously, that's not true. So then the question is, like, what is the most important thing that you're doing? And it's usually the relationships you hold and the decisions that you make.

   24. SPSam Parr6:29

       How do you teach people how to flip that? Because, like, for example, if I go to the news all day, I see, like, these big exits or these big funding rounds, and you constantly, particularly right now, have this feeling of, "I'm being left behind because everything's changing so fast." And you just said it's the relationships. So

3. 6:48 – 8:20

   Mind, heart, gut

   1. SPSam Parr6:48

      that's one of these things where you read a book like How to Win Friends and Influence People, and you're like, "Duh, that's obvious," and it almost becomes a reminder.

   2. JHJoe Hudson6:55

      Yes.

   3. SPSam Parr6:55

      And yet I'm like, but how do you tactically make that switch where you say, "Enjoy the relationships, not seeking the outcome"?

   4. JHJoe Hudson7:04

      Yeah, so if you're gonna make any transformation effectively in your system, you have basically three levels that you need to address it at. The first level is the ch- the level of the mind, and this is what we're usually pretty good at, meaning most people know that they should work out, but it doesn't mean that they work out. Most people know they shouldn't be dicks to the people who they need to run their business, but not everybody is. So intellectually understanding, that's actually usually the easiest part for Americans, is to actually get that, to grok that. And then there's the emotional level, the mammalian level of the brain. So the prefrontal cortex is the thinking level of the brain. It's very human. And the mammalian level, I would, like, call it the heart. I'd call it the emotional. And so a lot of the times, if we're trying to make transformation, we have to look at what's emotionally needed to make that transformation happen. And then there's the part of our system that's more of the reptilian. It's the nervous system, and is that nervous... Can we address the nervous system? So if you want to make real transformation, you have to address all three levels of the, the system.

   5. SPShaan Puri8:08

      Can you walk through an example of that? So, like, what's a transformation and then w- w- 'cause, uh, you know, you-

   6. JHJoe Hudson8:12

      Yeah

   7. SPShaan Puri8:12

      ... you had me at the head, you sort of lost me at the heart, and then by the time we got to the nervous system, I, I, I, I didn't know what to do.

   8. JHJoe Hudson8:17

      Right.

   9. SPShaan Puri8:18

      I don't know, I don't know how to, I don't have the, the ma- instruction

4. 8:20 – 14:45

   The self-reliance pattern

   1. SPShaan Puri8:20

      manual for that one, so-

   2. JHJoe Hudson8:21

      Yeah, yeah

   3. SPShaan Puri8:21

      ... let's take an example and walk through it.

   4. JHJoe Hudson8:23

      So let's do an example that probably touches most of the entrepreneurs that listen to this: self-reliance. So the self-reliance pattern is basically a pattern that somewhere when you were young you were taught that you had to fend for yourself. You... A- and 90% of the time it meant you had to fend for other people, you had to take care of other people. Maybe that's because your parents were super critical, or maybe it's because you had an alcoholic father and you needed to take care of that father, or you had a depressed mother. But somewhere you learned, "Hey, no one's gonna be there to take care of me. I gotta take care of myself. My needs aren't gonna be met otherwise." And then the outcome of that is that those people have a hard time asking for help, typically. They have a hard time owning what they want, being able to just say, "This is clearly what I want." They usually have an authority problem, which means they neither want to be the authority because they don't tru- they, because they don't trust the authority of their childhood, they don't want, they don't fully step into their own authority, and they kind of rebel against other authorities. So they have, like, uh, this mixed relationship with authority typically. And then they have a very hard time announcing that they're hurt. Like, it's the last move that they'll make is to say, "Hey, I'm hurt," right? And so that's the pattern that comes out of self-reliance. So now how would you address it? The first way is to talk about it like the way I just talked about it. I saw both of you, and probably most of the people in the audience, click, and, "Oh, I never... Is... That's all related, really?" Like, to be able to tie that together to show that this is a pattern that came from your childhood. It is, in particular, a reality. And so that kind of, like, creates a little space for a different action, different movement. But oftentimes, just seeing it's not gonna really deal with it. So then there's the emotional level. The emotional level is two things, right? Typically, but th- there can be others. But typically, there's an emotion of helplessness that I refuse to feel. I'm not gonna feel helplessness. I will go and, like, storm the gates of hell. I will [beep] grind forever over the idea of feeling helpless.

   5. SPSam Parr10:21

      Dude, I'll walk into the grocery store and not see what I want and refuse to ask the counter guy where the thing is.

   6. JHJoe Hudson10:26

      [laughs]

   7. SPSam Parr10:26

      So trust me, I'm-

   8. JHJoe Hudson10:28

      Exactly. [laughs]

   9. SPSam Parr10:28

      I'll leave. We're not, we're not eating that tonight. [laughs]

   10. JHJoe Hudson10:31

       Exactly. [laughs] Exactly. So, so there's this feeling of helplessness that those people will absolutely not feel. Because as a kid, if you felt that helplessness, if you're like, "Holy shit, there's nobody here taking care of me," it's like death and destruction. So you don't do that. And so this feeling of helplessness never got to be felt as a kid, and so emotionally, it means you have to learn how to feel the helplessness and, and how to actually look forward to and enjoy the helplessness. Which sounds radical and impossible, but the way that this works is w- what I will call the golden algorithm, what we call the golden algorithm. So the emotion that you're trying to avoid is the emotion you're inviting in the exact way that you're trying to avoid it. So you don't want to feel helpless in the grocery store, so you don't ask for help, which means you walk away without the thing in the grocery store. Or you don't want to feel helpless about your business not doing well, so you grind, which keeps you more burnt out, making less good decisions, destroys your relationships so you feel more helpless. So the action that you're taking to not feel the thing is actually what perpetuates the thing, in this case, helplessness. So learning how to say, "Oh, I'm helpless. I know how to experience that feeling. I know how to actually go, oh, this is just an emotional thing that's moving through me, and I don't have to be ruled by it. It, it's not my boss anymore." 'Cause if your, all your decisions are based on not feeling helpless, it means there's certain risks you're not gonna take. It means you're not gonna rely on other people that you need to to scale the business. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So that would be the emotional

   11. SPShaan Puri12:16

       Is, is the right way to think about it like, um, it, it's a counter to the idea of what you seek, you know, what you seek, you shall find? It's almost like what you avoid, you shall experience [laughs] ?

   12. JHJoe Hudson12:27

       Yeah, yeah. The self... Yeah, exactly.

   13. SPSam Parr12:29

       So then if, but if we were gonna play on, like, the phrase that, what Shaan just said or whatever, um, the sh- I think you said, "Whatever emotion you try to avoid, you end up inviting into your life."

   14. JHJoe Hudson12:37

       Yeah.

   15. SPSam Parr12:37

       So then what's the opposite- what's the inverse of that? What's, like, the sentence that, um, is the solution?

   16. JHJoe Hudson12:43

       Fall in love with the emotions you're avoiding.

   17. SPSam Parr12:45

       Hmm.

   18. JHJoe Hudson12:45

       Like, think about it this way. It's just like working out. You wanna work out, you're gonna have to, like, lean into the burn, and eventually you're like, "I like working out. I like that burn."

   19. SPSam Parr12:57

       Right.

   20. JHJoe Hudson12:57

       It's the same thing for emotions.

   21. SPSam Parr12:58

       And then on, like, a day-to-day basis, let's just say that we are doing the hard work, or, like, this has to suck in order to get a good result.

   22. JHJoe Hudson13:05

       Yeah.

   23. SPSam Parr13:05

       Do you tell your- what do you tell yourself every day for the next two years? Like, are there, like, common inner thoughts that you find to be productive for this emotional state?

   24. JHJoe Hudson13:14

       So that answer is part of the pattern you're trying to interrupt. What do I do every day? One, every day. Two, what do I do? Those are the two things that make you grind. It's up to me. I gotta do it. There's no grace. There's no surrender. There's no letting other people help me, and I gotta do it every day.

   25. SPSam Parr13:36

       Yeah.

   26. JHJoe Hudson13:36

       What's the thing that I do that I can control, that I can grind at, that will fix my grind? So if you're really taking a look at it, ye- it's, it's actually not... It doesn't work like that at all. And, and the cool thing is it, it can often just be... I've literally seen the moment that somebody fully understands the beauty of the emotion, "Oh, I can't wait to feel helpless because when I feel helpless, what I know is that I am not delegating well. What I know is that I'm not letting other people help me. What I know is that my decision-making is constrained by a false limitation. So I'm so stoked that I'm feeling it because I have those three signals now, and I'm gonna go take action on those three things because I know that signal in my system." And as soon as they get that, they don't, there's no more effort required.

   27. SPShaan Puri14:27

       Is the right way to think of these feelings as like a messenger, kind of the way you're describing it? If you, if you reframe them as a messenger or a signal, then it's not something to... You know, you don't shoot the messenger. You don't avoid the messenger. You take the message, and then you, you, you, you use it and move through it. Is that the right way to think about this, or is that a-

   28. JHJoe Hudson14:43

       It's kind of ha- half, I would say half

5. 14:45 – 16:35

   Unkink your hose

   1. JHJoe Hudson14:45

      of it. The other half is to see that the, that the emotional thing that's happening is, let's say, like, it's a tube of energy, right? And so, like, a, a, a hose with water running through it. And if it runs clear, meaning it's not, that hose isn't kinked, then life is good. If it kinks in one way or another, then there's all sorts of problems that happen. So let's take anger for, as an example. So you have anger moving through your system, and you kink it one way and it's like this: "Nice dress." And you kink it another way, and it's like this: "I'm not angry. I just need you to do the thing. I'm not angry." And you kink it another way and it's like this: "You mother [censored] , [censored] you." But if you unkink it, if you actually let that emotion go through, which means you're not having resistance or shame, you don't think that you're bad for having it, then anger looks like Martin Luther King or Gandhi. It's determination and clarity. And when you see CEOs do this, where they go, "Oh, right. I'm constantly pissed because I constantly feel like I'm alone in it, and I constantly feel like no one's got my back, even though I have 20,000 people showing up to work every day and none of them have ever thought, 'Boy, I really hope the CEO is upset with me today,' or, 'Boy, I hope that the work I did doesn't please the CEO.'" So you got 20,000 people trying to please a CEO who feels all alone in it, and so they, they're getting angry. And when they realize, "Oh, wait. If I don't resist this, if I just listen to it, then there's actually some wisdom here." And if there's the... And then they start listening to it without that shame, without that kink, and all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, that means I have a boundary. It means that's, something inefficient's happening in the company and I need to go pay attention there."

6. 16:35 – 18:20

   Phrases that change your thinking

   1. SPSam Parr16:36

      You s- you seem very into words, and I, and I buy into that. I think you, like, use these phrases and then it kind of, like, shapes the way you think, and you called out some of the words that I use and that, that's pretty helpful. But are there other, like, on the emotional level, words or phrases that you have found that if you change or shift or tell yourself consistently, that they seem to have, um, positive impacts on Type A people?

   2. JHJoe Hudson16:58

      Yeah, absolutely. There are. However, the, the, the awareness is more important than the words. So let, let's, let's take for instance a common thing that is, is effective is, you know, positive affirmations or, uh, you know, visualizing things going right. I'm gonna go into a meeting and I'm gonna visualize things going right. So you can do that and there's a certain amount of effectiveness. It's even more effective if you visualize it going right and you feel the emotions of it going right. It's even more effective if you visualize it going right in the present instead of in the future, so you can actually feel what it's happening right now. So all of those things that's, like, that's really effective. But if you really have the awareness of what's behind that, then it's gonna be a lot more powerful. And so what's actually happening, say, with the positive reinforcement, is that you're changing your identity. You're saying, "Okay, I'm no longer this person. I'm gonna visualize myself as this person and that's gonna change my identity." And if you're really looking at identity shift and being comfortable with identity shift, then you also have to visualize the negative outcomes so that you don't get scared of them. The samurai use this. The I mean, so many traditions

7. 18:20 – 21:35

   Visualize the negative outcomes

   1. JHJoe Hudson18:20

      use this, which is visualizing their own death and they-- a Tibetan book of living and dying samurai, and then also, what was it? Is like the Marcus Aurelius

   2. SPSam Parr18:32

      Yeah. There's a great sto-stoic book, stoicism book where you, like, close your eyes for five minutes and you assume everyone's dead, your kids have cancer, the worst things on earth.

   3. JHJoe Hudson18:41

      Yeah.

   4. SPSam Parr18:41

      You open up your eyes and you say, "None of that is true. How grateful am I?"

   5. JHJoe Hudson18:44

      [chuckles] Right. So, so the... If you visualize this and you actually feel the destruction that you're trying to avoid, then you've already lived it, so you don't have to be scared of it anymore. So I, I give you an example of this with my, with my wife. So m- we've been married twenty-seven years. I've been married to at least three women in that twenty-seven years. She's like, she's changed dramatically. I've changed dramatically. And so we come to points in our relationship where it's not working for us and what our, what our path is, is that we both grieve the relationship. It's over. We're getting a divorce. We visualize the divorce. It's horrible. We, like, have the entire experience because once we've had it, we don't have to be scared of it anymore. And so when we show up, we act as ourselves. We don't try to accommodate. We don't walk on eggshells. We don't... We're like, "No, this is what I want." And then we can actually have a conversation how we can both be happy as we are now, not trying to save the marriage.

   6. SPSam Parr19:47

      The, the visualization thing's interesting. Um, The Inner Game of Tennis talks a lot about that.

   7. JHJoe Hudson19:53

      Great book.

   8. SPSam Parr19:53

      And I actually just listened to, um, a talk by the coach of George St. Pierre, who's one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time, and they talk about preparing fighters for the most dangerous, scary sport there is. And he was like, "We find the competitors walkout music. We wear our outfit, you know, our... We're like dr- a dress rehearsal. We listen to the music constantly, and so we do that when we practice, and we practice the walkout. We have the bright lights. This way you are visualizing this to the point of not just visualizing, but you hear it." And like, he was even saying something about the smell. They try to use the same glove so it smells the same.

   9. JHJoe Hudson20:27

      Yeah.

   10. SPSam Parr20:28

       And this way when you first, when you're going into this thing, that's a life-changing thing, you have been there before because you can sort of trick yourself into thinking this is real and you are prepared.

   11. JHJoe Hudson20:39

       It's the same thing. Like, so I don't know how many entrepreneurs I've walked through that, the visualization of the death of their company. Everybody gets laid off. You know, people go broke. Same thing. It's the same thing. You visualize the end of the company so that you can stop acting from fear, and you can actually build the company that you want to build and be the person that you want to be.

   12. SPSam Parr21:00

       Do you do that daily, monthly? Like, how often should someone practice that?

   13. JHJoe Hudson21:04

       It's more until the fear is gone, and it's not really how often, but it's how you do it. So example would be like if you do it and you actually deeply feel the emotions of it, then it's probably you don't have to do it very many times until the fear dissipates. Then that's gonna... Like, it's how you do it is more important than, than, than repetition and reps.

   14. SPShaan Puri21:28

       And what is the how you do it? Do you s- you sit in a room, turn the lights off? Like, walk me through. What, how do you actually do this?

8. 21:35 – 23:45

   Most common fear of founders: homelessness

   1. JHJoe Hudson21:35

      I just sit down, close my eyes, and visualize everything, and anything that I don't want to visualize, I slow way the [beep] down and feel everything I don't want to feel.

   2. SPShaan Puri21:44

      Mm.

   3. JHJoe Hudson21:44

      The, the big trick is to feel the things you don't want to feel. The reason that that's the trick is because, like, if I said to you, like, most entrepreneurs, one of the things that they get scared about is being homeless. Uh, who knows why, but it is something that many entrepreneurs get scared about. And if I said to you, "Hey, you're gonna be homeless, but you are gonna be happier, more content. You're gonna feel great." Like how... Think of the best time you've ever felt in your entire life. It's gonna be 10X that all the time. If, if you knew that to be true, how scared are you to be homeless?

   4. SPSam Parr22:18

      I wanna be homeless.

   5. SPShaan Puri22:19

      I'm not scared. [chuckles]

   6. JHJoe Hudson22:20

      Right. Exactly. So what's actually occurring is that we're scared of an emotional experience, not an actual experience. And, and, and, and it's, neurologically, this is proven. So if I was to take the emotional center out of your brain, you would have an IQ that is the same as it is now, but you would have an incredibly hard time making decisions and your total life would fall apart. So, and you can read a book about this. It's called Descartes’ Error. It was written by a neuroscientist in like 2012 or something. And so we've known this for a long time. So basically, if I pull out that emotional, um, part of your brain, it's gonna take you like a half an hour to decide what color pen to use. It's gonna take you an hour or two to decide where to have lunch. So your whole life falls apart because you can't make decisions.

   7. SPShaan Puri23:09

      And, and this was people who had brain damage or the, like a stroke in a certain area that, and you've... Oh, your logical center is still working, and decisions are logical, right?

   8. JHJoe Hudson23:18

      Yes.

   9. SPShaan Puri23:18

      And it's like, no, no, no, not, not right.

   10. JHJoe Hudson23:21

       Not right.

   11. SPShaan Puri23:21

       Not even simple decisions are-

   12. JHJoe Hudson23:23

       Right. The, the only decisions that aren't emotionally based are the decisions that bypass the emotional center b- like a snake coming at you.

   13. SPShaan Puri23:30

       Mm.

   14. JHJoe Hudson23:31

       Like you jump back without it, without it going through that s- part of your brain.

   15. SPSam Parr23:35

       What about the, the nervous system bit? Because that seems like the most challenging. I've read The Body Keeps the Score, and I, like, intuitively know that, like, trauma is a physical thing.

9. 23:45 – 27:35

   Tricking your nervous system with repetition

   1. SPSam Parr23:45

      But like, to put it on a really practical level, you ever get like a Slack or an email from a coworker that says, "Can we talk?" And you're like, "They're quitting."

   2. JHJoe Hudson23:54

      [laughs]

   3. SPSam Parr23:55

      I feel... Like, you feel like-

   4. JHJoe Hudson23:57

      Yeah

   5. SPSam Parr23:57

      ... you get goosebumps and you like, you feel something.

   6. JHJoe Hudson24:00

      Yeah.

   7. SPSam Parr24:00

      Um, how do you ad- how do you address this at a neurological level?

   8. JHJoe Hudson24:04

      Yeah. So nervous system, that's like a super tricky one. There's a lot of things that you can do, but this is like, it's all very primal and this is where like repetition and h- do I do this every day? This is where it really comes in handy. So there's not like an intellectual or emotional aha that can change a nervous system just like that. Occasionally, like high doses of like psilocybin or something I've seen change nervous systems, but and it's very undependable. And so this is actually where repetition matters in the nervous system. So one of the like the key principles is how do you allow yourself to experience pleasure more and more deeply? Because pleasure means that we're not under attack. So our nervous system thinks that we're under attack when we're not, and so it, it amps up. Now, sometimes that occurs because we have an abusive self-talk, and so if there's... If I had a... If I was your boss, and I was like, "Oh, you, you [beep] that up. You did that wrong. What? Like, why are you biting your nails? Why aren't you looking to Joe while you're, while you're podcasting? Why are you taking notes instead of being connected to your co-host?" Like, if I was doing that perpetually, it would cause you [beep] stress because you're perpetually under attack. But often we're doing that to ourselves, and so that's activating the nervous system. So that is the intellectual. That's like how the, how the intellect and the nervous system relate. But there's a whole bunch of things that also happen with the nervous system. I'll, I'll use my own example in this, is my mom, German, super rigid woman, loved me dearly in her capacity, but like if I was five minutes early, I was late, and I would get in trouble. You know, it was like that kind of a thing, and like things needed to be very perfect, and so there was a sense of obligation, and if I wasn't gonna fulfill that obligation, I was gonna be in trouble. And so my nervous system gets activated when, you know, I'm a minute late for a podcast, though it's not gonna affect anything. My nervous system's gonna get messed up. So there's some nervous system stuff that happens just like through training. And so one, the, the kind of the overall background thought process is how do I allow as much pleasure as possible as to, like, to reset my baseline? But the second thing is to really start to notice and be present with for like one or two seconds those moments when my nervous system is activated or when your nervous system is activated. So when that phone call comes in and you're like, "Oh, shit," you just stop, and you're like, "What is it like to be me?" Two seconds, and then you go ahead and do your thing. Like, go ahead, be anxious again. Like, don't, don't try to control yourself because trying to control your anxiety is just an anxiety producing, right? Like it just, it just creates more of the same thing. It's just being really, really in touch with what's going on, like bringing awareness into that moment is all that's really necessary. But it's necessary to do it over and over and over again to see what's actually occurring in your system and, and what's really necessary, and then pretty soon it unpacks what's going on beneath your nervous system. Your intellect starts to understand it, but your intellect will never get it at first. It,

10. 27:35 – 32:40

    Avoiding conflict

    1. JHJoe Hudson27:35

       it really requires lots of just being with present for one or two seconds when you notice that activation occur.

    2. SPShaan Puri27:42

       Hey, can I ask you about avoiding conflict? Something that I, I thought, you know, I think I'm usually pretty good at, but man, lately there's been a situation where I'm just... I can see myself doing it, I can feel myself doing it. I know I'm not supposed to be doing it, but I'm doing it. Like, by God, I'm doing it. And, uh, you know, I don't really have a lot of language or kind of experience or wisdom around this, and I was really hoping you could help me out with that. So, so can we talk about conflict? Avoiding conflict, uh, especially with those who we're closest to-

    3. JHJoe Hudson28:15

       Yeah

    4. SPShaan Puri28:15

       ... when I think it's maybe the hardest.

    5. JHJoe Hudson28:17

       Yeah. So I think intellectually, the, um, the important thing to recognize about conflict it is imagine you're working in a factory and somebody can tell you where the machine is gonna break or the... someone can point to you, "This is where the machine's broken, this is where the machine's broken." And you're like, "Great, thanks," and you ignore it. That's what avoiding conflict is like because conflict is the place where efficiency can be gained, whether it's in a marriage or in a business or between business partners. So I, I, I'll give you a, um, a, a story about this. So recently we had a facilitator in our business and somebody who probably wants to be a facilitator in our business and, uh, who felt like the facilitator wasn't doing a good job and wanted to give the facilitator feedback. And we have a very open culture where everybody can give anybody feedback. And we could say, you know, you need to go to their boss, and then their boss will have the conversation 'cause we're gonna avoid the conflict and, and we're... and as a, as a company, deciding like how does this feedback, is this feedback gonna work? And what we realize is that if this person gives feedback to the facilitator and the facilitator gets hurt, that's something that for the facilitator to work on. And if this person's doing it out of some sort of like arrogance or, um, uh, narcissism, like, "I think I can do a better job," and the feedback is shit, then that needs to be addressed. But either way, if he has arrogance and narcissism, h- addressing that's gonna make our business better. If this facilitator isn't doing a good job, that's gonna make our business better. And so every time that we're avoiding conflict in a business, we're looking at a place that we could potentially make the system better, and we're not gonna do it.

    6. SPShaan Puri30:14

       Right. Yeah, you're avoiding progress, not, not conflict. [laughs]

    7. JHJoe Hudson30:18

       Exactly, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and-

    8. SPSam Parr30:19

       Yeah, but that's what a lot of people feel like. Like for example, I've talked to like really big, big shot tycoon types, and they'll be like, "I need to let go of this person, but I'm too afraid of the conversation." And so like you just said this on a, on an intellectual level-

    9. JHJoe Hudson30:35

       Correct

    10. SPSam Parr30:35

        ... totally, I'm, I'm on board.

    11. JHJoe Hudson30:37

        Yeah.

    12. SPSam Parr30:37

        Totally agree. Everything you're saying makes tons of sense.

    13. JHJoe Hudson30:39

        Yeah.

    14. SPSam Parr30:40

        And yet I'm still like, but I don't have the courage or I don't have the toolbox or the language-

    15. JHJoe Hudson30:45

        Right

    16. SPSam Parr30:45

        ... to do this effectively.

    17. JHJoe Hudson30:46

        Yeah. So let, yeah, let's get into that. The, I think that the... I, I do wanna say one more thing intellectually too because it's, um, the... If I was, if I go in and monitor a company's health, I literally just use two metrics: how quickly do they have the hard conversation and how quickly do they resolve it? So let's say you have a CEO who's a yeller. I guarantee you that the, a lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and they're not resolving quickly. And let's say you have a CEO who's conflict-avoidant. A lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and a lot of things are gonna be avoided. So it doesn't really matter what the actions are of people, just to think about those two metrics as the health of an organization is just a great way to go in and very quickly see how healthy that organization is. Okay, so now how do you do it? So typically, before we get into how you do it, let's talk about the resistance to it. So the resistance is usually I'm gonna be abandoned, not loved. This is a waste of my time. I'm not gonna get anywhere anyway, and it's gonna take so much energy, I could use the energy somewhere else. That's the second reason that people choose not to do it. And the third is I'm gonna destroy something that I care about. Like, I have the hard conversation, that person leaves, and then the company's gonna collapse, or then the sales department's gonna collapse or whatever.

    18. SPSam Parr32:05

        I- is there a fourth one which is like, I don't even know if this is a problem worth addressing, maybe I should just give it time?

    19. JHJoe Hudson32:10

        I feel like that's like a, a reason for one of the other excuses, but y- I'm sure that there's moments where that, that's the case, and sometimes that's, there's actually some, there's some validity to that. Like, I've given them feedback, I'm gonna wait a couple weeks and see what happens instead of like be on their ass every day about the thing. I can see that there would be some validity to it. And so some of that speaks to the fact that the person doesn't know how to make the conflict

11. 32:40 – 38:35

    How to address conflict

    1. JHJoe Hudson32:40

       productive reliably. Like, I have conflict and it just ends up in a worse fight that just like doesn't go the place that I wanna go. So typically if I'm talking about it, let's just take one example 'cause it, this gets a little complex. If I'm taking just I wanna have a hard conversation with somebody, what do I do? The first thing that I'm gonna do is I am going to not solve the problem for them, to most people in a hard conversation say, "Hey, sales is off and what I need you to do is make more phone calls and we're gonna monitor those through this set of data," right? That's incredibly disempowering and that conversation usually doesn't go very well. But if you say instead, "Hey, sales are off. I need a plan. Please present it to me tomorrow about how we're gonna get sales back on track," that's a far more powerful way to do it because you're not, you're not disempowering the person and you're not coming in and telling them what to do. So letting them solve the problem for you rather than you solve the problem for them, you solving the problem for them is self-reliance again, and it's what most CEOs do instead of let them solve the problem for you, which is far more empowering to them and it makes them feel like, like they can't blame you for it. So that's one of the like skills that I would teach. The other one is I would really try to understand their situation before having the hard conversation, so I'd ask a lot of open-ended questions. I would make sure that they feel very heard and so I understand what's going on. So as a CEO I sit down and I'm like, "I have an idea of what's going on over here in billing," but I [beep] don't. I do not have the full picture. If I have the full picture I should fire the person because they're not doing a job good enough where I don't have to pay attention. So the first thing I wanna do is really ask their context and understand what's actually going on with them and see like if they're even happy with the job that they're doing or what's going on actually. Another thing I would do is I would actually be very vulnerable about where I am with it. So I would say something like, "Wow, I feel like, um, we've lost trust. Like I, I'm, I notice that like I'm not trusting that this is gonna get done and so I'm not having confidence around this, and that sucks for me and that's gotta suck for you, and so I wanna know how we're gonna fix it." So I'm gonna be very vulnerable with how I am rather than making about them. So this is again back to the self-reliance piece. Uh, entrepreneurs who are self-reliant have a hard time expressing when they're hurt, have a hard time expressing some sort of this isn't working for me really well, and therefore the problem is always about the other person instead about them helping fix y- fix your issue, which is the way an organization is designed, right? I-I, the energy is backwards if you're trying to like fix everybody's issues rather than everybody's fixing your issues. Like if I was to invest in your company as an example and I got to pick one person who was just stoked as hell, I would pick the CEO because that's gonna be the best investment. The CEO is happy with the way the company's going, the company is going the way it should be going. If the head of marketing is happy but the CEO is miserable about the way the company's going, that's not a good investment. So the happiness of the CEO is where everybody needs to be pointed. It doesn't mean that the CEO's job isn't to be helpful to people, but it means that the general energy of the company is supposed to be towards pleasing the CEO, making the CEO happy, which self-reliant CEOs have a really hard time like getting through their head because that puts them in the position of the authority that they don't particularly want to be because authority was bad in their childhood. So So that's an example. So, so those are all ways that I would talk to somebody if I'm having that hard conversation. So there are like very practical skills of having hard conversations, but the biggest skill on all, o-over all of this stuff is the internal space. If you feel like you're bad for having the conversation, if you feel like this is completely reasonable for me to ask, if you feel like I'm actually helping this person become more empowered and, and I'm doing them a service and helping them become a better at their job, like that state of mind has a huge impact on how the person receives it. So I'll just give you like a very short example. If I was like, "Hey, Shaan, you're such a [beep] dick." Like, "Why are you such a [beep] dick?" Or if I said, "Oh, Shaan, you're being a dick," you're gonna take those two things very, very differently because in one case, I don't want you to be a dick, and in the other case, I'm like, "Oh, you know, you're being a dick. That's okay." And so your attitude coming in, if you're scared, you're, you're like more likely to get attacked, you're more likely to have a bad experience with it. So your, your calm, your what I would call vagal authority, your nervous system authority coming into the room and your understanding of you're here to be of service to this person is gonna make all the difference.

    2. SPSam Parr38:13

       You have, um, this cool quote, I think it... I don't have it in front of me. I think it was something like, "Negative self-talk is always wrong," or something like that. Which like, I read that and I was just, that was kind of shocking to me, and it seems like self-talk is a really important thing, and a lot of like ambitious people, I think, are like, they're like their biggest hater.

    3. JHJoe Hudson38:33

       Most people, generally.

    4. SPSam Parr38:34

       Most

12. 38:35 – 42:45

    Abusive self-talk patterns

    1. SPSam Parr38:35

       people, yeah.

    2. JHJoe Hudson38:35

       And then, yeah. [laughs]

    3. SPSam Parr38:36

       Are, do you have any, um, patterns that you have seen of self-talk, and what are the practical tips on improving that?

    4. JHJoe Hudson38:44

       So there's, there's like three or four different kind of self-talk abuse cycles that you, you, you like... There's like the really overt one, which is like, "You're [beep] up. Why are you [beep] up? Why didn't you..." Like, "Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that?" There's that version. There's the, then there's the version of, "You gotta do this. Now you gotta do this. You gotta do this. Why don't you do this? You gotta do this. Don't forget to do this. You gotta do this." There's another version of negative self-talk. Then there's like some like kind of hidden ones, which are like, uh, "You've got it. You can do this. It's all good. You've got this thing. You can do this thing." Which you would like, could you imagine going to, you know, Michael Jordan and going, "Yeah, you can do it. You c- you can shoot the basket. I know you can, Mike." Like you would never do it because you have confidence in that person, so it's this, this subtle undermining saying that you actually need this, right? It's not you're fine either way and like there's not like a natural confidence in it. So that's all. There's about 20 tools to work with self-talk, negative self-talk. One of the ways that you know it's negative self-talk is 'cause it's repeating, right? So when, when negative self-talk starts dying in your system, when it starts a- atrophying, you just have a lot less thought, just there's a lot less thought occurs, and the thought that you have is more like epiphanies. It's like, "Oh, here's a cool idea. Oh, that's a cool idea." They're not repetitive over and over again thoughts. So I'll give you just a couple really practical ones. Um, if you try to change the self-talk, it's very inefficient. If you change the way you react to the self-talk, it's far, far more efficient. Your self-talk is like, "Wow, you just really screwed up that podcast, Joe." And like most people, they listen to that the way that they would listen to a... [laughs] Think about the politician you hate most talking on stage, and then think about the person in the audience who's like, "Yep. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Uh-huh. Yeah." That's how we listen to our self-talk. Most of us listen to our self-talk as, you know, "Oh, you screwed that up," and it's like, "Yep, I screwed that up. I should do something about that." Like, that's, that's the relationship. So instead, you change the reaction to it. Like, "Oh, you screwed that stuff up. Oh, I see how scared you are. I see. I'm right here with you. You can be scared." Or, "You [beep] up. Uh, wow, that's really shitty management. Could you try to manage me in a different way, please?" "You [beep] up." "Prove it." "You [beep] up." "Oh, really? I think you [beep] up." So you're changing the reaction, and so like a great experiment to run on this is think about the reaction that you want to experiment with. It doesn't have to be good or bad. It's just an experiment and you, every time your negative self-talk happens that day, every time you remember, you react in this way that you're experimenting with. And then two days later, you do a new experiment. Two days later, you do a new experiment. So you're constantly changing the way that you're reacting to your self-talk. And just like both of you are different when you're interacting with each other than when you're interacting with your significant other or your kids if you have them or your best friend from college, we, the, the voice in our head reacts differently depending on how we treat it, and you get to start seeing that. And so that's a really simple way to start mana- n- not manage, but start like bringing awareness and therefore changing and transforming your negative self-talk. The other, another really good one that's just really easy is like name, like write out, here are the 20 things a negative voice in my head says the most and look for seven ways they're not true, and if you can't find them, ask your friends because what your vo- negative voice in your head is saying is not true. I, I mean, I can give you any. If you tell me anything that your negative voice in your head says to you on a regular basis, I can-

13. 42:45 – 50:40

    Is this stuff worth doing?

    1. JHJoe Hudson42:45

       Proven. I can tell you five ways it's not true.

    2. SPShaan Puri42:48

       Hey, can I ask you a question that, um, sort of violates that rule, you know, uh, never ask a man a question that his salary depends on, uh, the, the answer-

    3. JHJoe Hudson42:56

       Okay

    4. SPShaan Puri42:56

       ... or whatever?

    5. JHJoe Hudson42:56

       You can try, yeah. [chuckles]

    6. SPShaan Puri42:57

       So, so, you know, uh, whenever I learn about this stuff, and as you can see, I got notes and notes right now, like, I lo- I get, like, really fascinated by this. You're saying words like vagal authority. I'm like, "Oh, I gotta go look into that. I wanna learn that. I wanna learn to do this."

    7. JHJoe Hudson43:10

       [laughs]

    8. SPShaan Puri43:10

       And then within, like, I would say as soon as I pass, like, the 90-minute mark of any of this, I'm, like, completely exhausted-

    9. JHJoe Hudson43:17

       Yeah

    10. SPShaan Puri43:17

        ... and I almost, like, go through, like, this cycle where I start out as a idiot caveman, then I think I'm becoming this, like, elevated higher level being who's really in touch with everything, and then I'm like, "Oh, my God, this is so much work. I just wanna go back to being a, a lovable idiot again at the end of this," and, like, dude, it's all good. Don't worry about it.

    11. JHJoe Hudson43:36

        Yeah.

    12. SPShaan Puri43:36

        Like, you know, and I go... And, and I think actually recently this kind of a retard maxing kind of phrase caught on, at least in Silicon Valley. Other people are probably like, "What the hell is this guy talking about?" But-

    13. JHJoe Hudson43:45

        [laughs]

    14. SPShaan Puri43:45

        ... um, this idea of, like, you know, you're trying too hard to be too smart. You're too in touch with your emotions. You're over-therapized. Like, there is a reaction to the reaction.

    15. JHJoe Hudson43:55

        Yeah.

    16. SPShaan Puri43:55

        And I almost wonder, like, are people better off just being kind of, like, more like a dog, like, just dumb and happy, you know, just wagging our tail and, and running around and, you know, licking our butts? Like, aren't we just happier that way than trying to go do all this work and kind of master the, the psyche and all of its different parts?

    17. JHJoe Hudson44:13

        Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you have... It seems like you have two questions in there. The-- So let me address the first one, which is that cycle that you get into, which is, "Oh, I'm super inspired, and now I feel exhausted." And the, the, uh, the thing that's happening there is that in your mind, you're telling yourself you have to do all this stuff, and that's what makes it exhausting, rather than, like, "What's the one cool experiment I'm gonna run this week?"

    18. SPShaan Puri44:43

        Mm.

    19. JHJoe Hudson44:44

        And, and that's maybe yours. Another person's is like, "I have to be perfect," and so that, like, takes all the joy out of it and, and, and makes it, like, less effective. So to me, it's like how you approach it is incredibly important, both for the effectiveness and for whether it's worthwhile. Um, you know, the way I think about meditation is a, is a, uh, uh, is kind of an example. One of the things that I say is meditation for most people is just self-abuse because they're just sitting there trying to manage themselves for 90 minutes, right? And there's no enjoyment in it. And so the question is, like, how do you enjoy meditation? That, that's a question. Or how do you enjoy self-growth or self-awareness or understanding yourself better instead of making it a grind? If you can do that, then it's great, and it's totally worth it, and it's lovely, and you'll be inspired to do it. But if it becomes, like, this to-do list so that one day you'll be good enough so that... You know, if you make it like your company, right? [chuckles] Which is, "Once I get enough money and I have enough power, then I'll be happy. Once I, you know, understand myself enough and I deal with the voice in my head and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I'll be happy, and then I'll be done." Or you can be like, "Oh," like, "what can I learn today? What's the, what's the experiment I can run?"

    20. SPShaan Puri46:13

        Right.

    21. JHJoe Hudson46:13

        And this is the same way that I would suggest if you want to learn how to market, it's the same thing. Like, what's the experiment you can run? What can you learn today? What can you read about that's fun to read about? What's the cool thing to try? Rather than, "Oh my God, I got to do this because my business completely [censored] depends on it."

    22. SPShaan Puri46:31

        Right.

    23. JHJoe Hudson46:31

        You're gonna make a lot more progress on the first than the second.

    24. SPShaan Puri46:35

        I think that's a great insight. I want to come back to the second question, but just to add onto that-

    25. JHJoe Hudson46:38

        Yeah

    26. SPShaan Puri46:38

        ... last year I decided to learn the piano, and I had two teachers. The first teacher I went to made me almost quit the first day because we sat down and they were like, "All right, so here's what you're gonna need to learn. Uh, here's the musical notation. We're gonna memorize all these letters, and here's what, blah, blah. Then we're gonna learn rhythm, and we're gonna learn the scales. But you can't get to scales if you don't, first don't have finger control and posture. Why are you sitting like that?" And like, she basically presented the whole elephant I'm gonna have to eat, and I was like, "Oh, God, I'm s- like, I'm just tired thinking about what all I'm gonna have to do just to be able to... This stupid dream of mine. How much did I really want this anyways?"

    27. JHJoe Hudson47:11

        Yeah.

    28. SPShaan Puri47:11

        And then the second teacher, [chuckles] so I, luckily I didn't quit, I just, I bumped into a second teacher, and then the second teacher was like, "Cool, so, like, what, what made you want to do this? What's a song you like? And what would be cool if you could play?" I'm like, "Ah, this song." She's like, "Oh, you know what? That's actually not that hard. Here, forget the left hand. We're just gonna do the right hand, and we're just gonna learn this intro lick. When you walk out of here, you'll be able to play this little thing."

    29. JHJoe Hudson47:31

        Right.

    30. SPShaan Puri47:31

        And, you know, it just got c- And then it's like, "Oh, do you want to be able to play the next thing? You're gonna have to learn what a chord is. You know what a chord is?" And then I learned the next thing progressively, and now I can play the piano, right?
14. 50:40 – 54:45

    Experiments to try this week

    1. SPShaan Puri50:40

       a good word. Like, if somebody listened to this, great. What, uh, you know, what's a beautiful place in the next twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours that they could go? Like, what's a thing they could do that would just get, get them on the road?

    2. JHJoe Hudson50:51

       Yeah.

    3. SPSam Parr50:51

       Yeah, and like what are s- And then what's the progression and where are some other weekly experiments that I could, like, follow to-

    4. JHJoe Hudson50:56

       Yeah

    5. SPSam Parr50:56

       ... improve myself?

    6. JHJoe Hudson50:58

       Yeah. So there's, I can tell you how I did, and then I can tell you the resources that we have for people. So I just basically picked topics that I was interested in. I would read something on that topic, and I would design an experiment for myself, and I'd run that experiment for a week. And I actually have a book that I just finished writing that'll be published in, like, whatever year and something that has fifty-two experiments on different topics.

    7. SPShaan Puri51:25

       Oh, cool.

    8. JHJoe Hudson51:26

       Um, and, and then a whole bunch of writing on these topics.

    9. SPShaan Puri51:29

       What's one of them?

    10. JHJoe Hudson51:30

        A really cool su- super cool experiment is, so right now, enjoy yourself. Don't change what you're doing at all and, but just enjoy what you're doing ten percent more, right? Totally possible, totally capable, no- nothing to it. So just do that five times a day for the next week.

    11. SPSam Parr51:52

        Hmm.

    12. JHJoe Hudson51:52

        Five times a day go, "Oh, how do I enjoy myself?" Without changing anything, just five percent more, ten percent more.

    13. SPSam Parr51:58

        That sounds, like, so basic and almost stupid, and then I think of myself wanting to do that, and I'm like, "That's actually really helpful." [chuckles] Like-

    14. JHJoe Hudson52:04

        Yeah. Super. Yeah. It's like all of a sudden, like, you'll be sitting in a meeting, and you'll like, your whole mindset will change.

    15. SPSam Parr52:10

        Yeah.

    16. JHJoe Hudson52:10

        And then the thing you say will change, and yeah. That's a simple, like, really cool little experiment to run. The other one is, I think we talked about the one with the voice in the head. That's another great experiment to run. Another great experiment to run would be, um, oh yeah, this one's good, especially if you're a grinder. Don't do anything you don't enjoy for a week. Do, go to work and you can only do the shit that you enjoy, and at some point in that week, there's gonna be something that happens, and I'll tell you my experience with this. I did this before I had a business, and I was sitting in front of the trash, and I [beep] hated taking the trash out. But I also didn't enjoy smelling the trash. So I was sitting there like, "Well, what do I do?" 'Cause I've committed to not doing anything I don't enjoy. And then I was like, "Oh, I have to figure out how to enjoy taking out the trash." And so that's another cool experiment, is just see what it's like to live a week doing only what you enjoy. Because a lot of the lack of enjoyment that occurs is because we tell ourselves we have to endure it when we absolutely could be enjoying it.

    17. SPShaan Puri53:20

        So you said, you said something in that first experiment. You said, "Without doing anything different, enjoy it more," which to me-

    18. JHJoe Hudson53:26

        Yeah

    19. SPShaan Puri53:26

        ... reads like, and, uh, you know, 'cause one version of how do I take out the trash more? Oh, I'm gonna listen to my favorite song while I do it. Okay-

    20. JHJoe Hudson53:33

        Yes

    21. SPShaan Puri53:33

        ... I changed what I was doing, right? That's-

    22. JHJoe Hudson53:35

        Yeah

    23. SPShaan Puri53:35

        ... that's fair.

    24. JHJoe Hudson53:36

        Yeah.

    25. SPShaan Puri53:36

        But there's the other version, which is I'm literally not gonna do anything different. I'm just gonna feel it more. I'm gonna f- like, bring my awareness to it.

    26. JHJoe Hudson53:40

        That's why they're, that's why they're two experiences.

    27. SPShaan Puri53:43

        Right.

    28. JHJoe Hudson53:43

        They're two experiments, right.

    29. SPShaan Puri53:44

        And I, I had this when we sold a company, and then I asked my business partner, Ben, I was like, "Dude, how does it feel? Big, you know, big win for you. Like, you know, first, like, how does it feel? Is it f- is it what you thought?" And he's like, "Honestly, no, not at all." He's like, "I don't feel anything."

    30. JHJoe Hudson53:56

        Yeah.
15. 54:45 – 59:35

    Why bliss destroys you

    1. SPShaan Puri54:45

       does that line up with like... I, I've never done the research.

    2. JHJoe Hudson54:47

       Yes.

    3. SPShaan Puri54:47

       This is my life experience.

    4. JHJoe Hudson54:48

       Yes. Yes. Definitely. Definitely. Uh, especially the positive emotions, but they're the scariest emotions for most people to feel because they're the biggest identity-destroying emotions. They just [beep] wreck your identity.

    5. SPShaan Puri55:00

       The positive ones are?

    6. JHJoe Hudson55:01

       The positive ones, yeah.

    7. SPShaan Puri55:02

       Why, why does that destroy your identity?

    8. JHJoe Hudson55:04

       Go be in bliss and find out where you are. [laughs]

    9. SPSam Parr55:06

       Well, I, I experienced that when I had kids. When I had kids, I, I wrote a post about this. I was like, not having kids was so much better in terms of ambition because it's quite simple. Uh, I just work, work, work, and there's a clear ladder, and you just climb it. And then you have kids, and you're like, "I only mostly care about this, and everything else is insignificant."

    10. JHJoe Hudson55:28

        Yeah.

    11. SPSam Parr55:28

        And you're like, "That part of me just died." I, you- I guess you grieve it a little bit. I don't know how you feel, but, like, it- when you have children, you're like, "Everything that I thought I cared about, I now care about significantly less."

    12. JHJoe Hudson55:38

        Less, yeah.

    13. SPSam Parr55:39

        And it like... And I'm happy. I prefer this life.

    14. JHJoe Hudson55:42

        And yet you're still working and still being effective, which is also an interesting thing to let your mind recognize, that the identity doesn't have to be so attached to be able to be successful. Yeah. One more experiment that I think is really cool for entrepreneurs, especially if they have, because we've been talking about self-reliance, thank five people a day. Consciously look around and go, "What did somebody do for me that I'm grateful for?" And thank five people a day. It'll totally change your self-reliance pattern.

    15. SPSam Parr56:13

        Hey, how do you find joy, and how do you find what you should be doing? Because you're like, find... Y- one of your exercises was do only what you like or, you know, like, uh, or enjoy something more. But that's actually kind of complicated because I don't think a lot of people have actually asked themselves or can answer, "What do I love doing?"

    16. JHJoe Hudson56:33

        Yeah, I think because it, it's a false... I think that's really just, like, a self-abuse in disguise, right? Like, what's my purpose? What's my purpose is just a way to beat yourself up that you don't have your purpose. What do I enjoy? I think that the people that I find who have purpose and, and enjoy what they do, they ne- a lot of them weren't like, "I think that what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, like, really get into risk analysis." But they ended up there, but they learned how to geek out on it and enjoy the thing itself. So I think the way that you find what you enjoy is, on a day-to-day basis, asking yourself, "How would I enjoy doing this? How do I enjoy this? What would make it a little bit better? How would I change this?" And, and I think for entrepreneurs, they think that that's a nice to have, but it's, it's far more important than that. So if I had an a, a car... If I wanted an efficient company, we think of it as a fast company. I got from A to B quickly. But if we had a car, A to B quickly isn't an efficient car. That's just a fast car. An efficient car is a car that gets to A to B without a lot of energy. And so if you want efficiency in your life, it's how much energy you spent in that day, and often that does end up making you go faster. And so if I get to the end of the day and I say, "How much did I enjoy myself?" that's the best measure of efficiency because I have energy for the next day, and I want to come back. If I do a yoga class and I enjoyed the hell out of it, I'm far more likely to come back and do yoga and do it well tomorrow than if I had a yoga class that [beep] sucked and I hated it. And so as people learn that, like, how enjoyment works in their system, how to enjoy what they enjoy, what they're great at, then their whole business becomes far more efficient. And as a matter of fact, we get a lot of people who come and say, "Well, I'd like to work for you," and I'll just say, "What's your passion? What's the thing that you care about that you would love doing?" And if they say the thing that we have a slot for, then we'll talk to them because it's so... Like, if someone's naturally motivated, it's so useful.

    17. SPShaan Puri58:50

        It's interesting you say that. You know, I... When, when Sam asks these questions, I'm kind of like, how do you know? You know, my guess was that you were gonna just be like, [laughs] you know it when you see it. You feel it. It's not a, it's not a heady thing. You can't think your way into this or out of this or, you know, to analyze your way into success in these. Like, there's a whole, like, kind of east-west or two, two sides of the brain type of thing.

    18. JHJoe Hudson59:14

        Yeah.

    19. SPShaan Puri59:14

        But I, I feel like when you're answering some of these, you, you are kind of thinking your way through. I guess, can you talk about just noticing or feel rather than, uh, uh, where does that play in for you?

    20. JHJoe Hudson59:23

        I can give you a great story on this. So my wife and I were sitting... We, we do these very intense, long retreats, and so it's very tiring, and we were at the end of one of the retreats and there was this investment we could have made

16. 59:35 – 1:01:00

    Finding your billion-dollar purpose

    1. JHJoe Hudson59:35

       that would have given us enough money where we didn't have to start a business. And we were sitting there thinking and, and, um, I said, "I'm really glad that didn't happen because we wouldn't have done this." And she said, "Yeah, me too." And I said, "I'm just curious, would you, would you sell this business for a billion dollars if we could not do it again? Like, we would be done doing it, but we'd get a billion dollars?" And both of us went like this. We both went, " [beep] we wouldn't." [laughs] Like, that was our, that was our answer. And the... But I don't know. I told my... I came home, told the story to my daughters, and then, like, two or three months later, one of my daughters comes in and says, "I found my billion-dollar idea." I'm like, "Cool. Uh, uh, something you can grow into a billion dollars?" And she's like, "No, something I wouldn't sell for a billion dollars."

    2. SPShaan Puri1:00:27

       Huh.

    3. SPSam Parr1:00:27

       Huh, that's cool.

    4. JHJoe Hudson1:00:28

       [laughs] And so if you're doing something that's, like, deeply meaningful to you, that's one way to test if that's something that's deeply meaningful to you. If you're doing it for other reasons, if you're doing it because you think it's gonna make you happy, if you're doing it because you think people will like you or because you'll have enough money or to just be better or to win or something like that, those are... Those can actually create very big and successful businesses, but they won't create contentment.

    5. SPSam Parr1:00:56

       I like, uh, talking with people like you because

17. 1:01:00 – 1:04:00

    What's the Illuminati like in person?

    1. SPSam Parr1:01:00

       you have this really cool perspective where you've talked to the titans of industry, the best of the best, the Illuminati. You know, you, like-

    2. JHJoe Hudson1:01:07

       [laughs]

    3. SPSam Parr1:01:07

       ... you have seen them. And we all know what they appear like in the media or on-

    4. JHJoe Hudson1:01:13

       Yeah

    5. SPSam Parr1:01:13

       ... podcasts like this, where they usually look like they have their act together or they'll show just a little bit of vulnerability to show that, like, they're one of us.

    6. JHJoe Hudson1:01:20

       Yeah.

    7. SPSam Parr1:01:20

       But are there any interesting stories or observations about the 1% of the 1% of performers that would surprise us or at least entertain us on how these guys might think that might surprise us or be different?

    8. JHJoe Hudson1:01:35

       Yeah. Uh, specifically I can't do, obviously, but, um, what I could say is that the, there's nothing I've said on this podcast that I haven't said to one of the titans of industry. Like, there's, there's, the, the things that you're wrestling with are the exact same things that they're wrestling with, right? The-

    9. SPSam Parr1:01:55

       What, what attributes do you tend to notice are they 10 out of 10 on and/or one out of 10 on?

    10. JHJoe Hudson1:02:00

        The really, really, the exceptional ones of, like, very fast-paced businesses, so not... Like, if you can be a slow-paced business, then there's a different kind of attitude. A, you can be, you can actually be quite self-abusive in a slow fa- paced business. But in a fast-paced business, you can't second-guess yourself very much. So very, very few of them are second guessers.

    11. SPSam Parr1:02:24

        Hmm.

    12. JHJoe Hudson1:02:25

        So they just are like... And part of it is because they have to make so many decisions in a day. And, and so decisiveness is another one, especially for the fast-paced industries. There are some s- um, like investment, if you're an investor, and you can be a billionaire investor, you can really second-guess yourself a ton and still be a successful investor. But if you're the CEO of a, of a tech company, you, uh, that's in fast pace, you can't do that. The other thing that I think those very high performers, it's not all of them, but I would, I would say, like, at least 60, maybe 70%, they both feel like they're better than everybody and worse than everybody simultaneously. So they, on one level, in their conscious mind, they're like, "I am more capable than people, than the average person." But underneath, they're like, "Uh, I'm broken." And so they're kind of doing this thing because they know that they're better and they're trying to prove that they're not broken. It's not all the time, but it's, it's m- more common in that population than in any other population that I've seen. There's a lot of people walk around thinking that they're better than everybody, right? I mean, you can, you can go down into, like, the dregs of our society and you will find somebody who thinks they're better than everybody. But that, like, underlying like, "Oh, I'm broken," simultaneously with it and the way that that presents is very, there's a lot of it in that realm.

    13. SPShaan Puri1:03:54

        W- you know, one of the things we did in this podcast that's sort of backwards probably from most podcasts is most podcasts start with like, "Tell me about

18. 1:04:00 – 1:22:00

    How Joe got here

    1. SPShaan Puri1:04:00

       your background and your story."

    2. JHJoe Hudson1:04:01

       Yeah.

    3. SPShaan Puri1:04:02

       And we do it the opposite. We say, "Show me all the gold you've collected on your journey."

    4. JHJoe Hudson1:04:07

       Right.

    5. SPShaan Puri1:04:07

       First we start there, and then we say, "Where'd you get all this, man?"

    6. JHJoe Hudson1:04:10

       Yeah.

    7. SPShaan Puri1:04:10

       "Where, where, where did you, what kind of journey did you go on?"

    8. JHJoe Hudson1:04:13

       Yeah.

    9. SPShaan Puri1:04:13

       Can you give us now, now that we've s- you know, gotten to see some of the gold, can you give us a little bit of the, the, the journey? And, uh, I'm curious about one thing in particular. When I read something about, like, an, uh, an eight-second meditation experience. I'm very curious about that.

    10. JHJoe Hudson1:04:28

        Yeah, yeah.

    11. SPShaan Puri1:04:28

        But if you give us the journey-

    12. JHJoe Hudson1:04:29

        Yeah

    13. SPShaan Puri1:04:29

        ... but make sure you hit that along the way.

    14. JHJoe Hudson1:04:30

        Okay. Uh, yeah, I mean, I grew up going all over the world. I think by the time I was 28, I had lived in 26 places. My dad was a CEO, but also, um, became an alcoholic, and so I, I would rebelled against that, had a Mohawk, was a skateboarder, got kicked out of my first college, graduated valedictorian from my second college, and then first thing I did when I left college was like, I'm just having a- adventures one after the other. So I butchered fish in Alaska, and I hitchhiked, um, throughout the United States, and then I did international stock lending, and I was in a band, and I... So I was just like, "I'm having whatever adventure I want from life."

    15. SPSam Parr1:05:16

        Like James Bond, man.

    16. JHJoe Hudson1:05:18

        Because, well, it's 'cause my, I saw my dad just, like, do this corporate thing and end up in misery. I was like, "Yeah, I'm not [beep] doing that." Then I met my wife, and my wife was like, "If we're, we're gonna get married, we're gonna see a therapist, we're going to do a 10-day silent retreat, and we're going to travel through, um, third world together for, like, six months. If we can do those three things, we're gonna be capable of getting married and being successful." So those were her tasks, and so I did them. The therapy was amazing. Uh, we got blessed with a really good therapist, and they're pretty rare. And then the silent retreat was my first time meditating ever. And on day three of Vipassana, they have, you know, so when it changes from putting all your attention into your breath to, like, moving your attention through your body. And I had this experience of, like, evaporation, samadhi is what some people would call it, but this experience of I am one with everything and everything is good. And it lasted eight seconds, and I, it was like getting [beep] hooked o- on heroin. I, my entire life changed. I was like, "Whatever the [beep] that is, I'm obsessed." And unfortunately, I went, I went about it in a very inefficient way. I very much was like, "Once I get there, I'll be happy." It was just, the search for enlightenment was just like porn for perfectionism. It was just like my porn, right? And but the, the plus side was that, like, I just, because I had authority issues, I just went and explored everything and took nothing very seriously and made everything an experiment. So, and so, and then now that's how we teach. Like, when we do our courses, everything is done as an experiment. There's not like we're talking and saying, "This is how things are." We're like, "Go and experience this shit for yourself. Here's how you do it. You can do it with people right now." It's very in-the-moment experimentation. And I wasn't willing to say, "You're the authority. You're the guru." I was like, "I'm gonna listen to every single modality that I can find from neuroscience to psychology to, you know, traditions that are 2,000 years old. I'm gonna try 10 forms of meditation. I'm gonna do the Hoffman process. I'm gonna do somatic work. I'm g- I just did everything." And I was pretty dedicated to that. I'm not pretty. I was, like, totally dedicated. I didn't work for seven years. I, like, lived off credit cards. I meditated for, like, seven hours a day looking, searching and, um, I was, I was obsessed with it. The search ended. The, what, what people would call awakening happened and it wasn't an end at all. There was no finish line just like, you know, selling a company. It was just like, "Oh, I see how this whole thing is just easier and, and more spacious than I thought it was." And then my identity got trapped in that for a while, like I was the awake guy and then that evaporated. And in that time period we had kids and then the kids were where the big emotional work came in. Was like really learning w- I, there was this thing called Hand in Hand Parenting which I highly recommend, a book called Listen which is like one of the most profound practices in my life and that was really where the big emotional understanding started coming in that, that like, "Oh, I can be with my children in these big emotions and all they need to do is feel them and accept them to like become amazing kids." And now my girls are, you know, 17 and 20 and they are freaking amazing and it is I think all because of Hand in Hand and my wife. She's amazing. And, um, so that was it and then some point I became a venture capitalist and, um-

    17. SPShaan Puri1:08:59

        As one does.

    18. JHJoe Hudson1:08:59

        As one does. Yeah.

    19. SPShaan Puri1:09:00

        [laughs]

    20. JHJoe Hudson1:09:02

        I, uh, I literally went from meditation, I did art and then became a venture capitalist. I-

    21. SPSam Parr1:09:07

        You s- you're like a sellout.

    22. JHJoe Hudson1:09:08

        Uh-

    23. SPShaan Puri1:09:08

        Well, both of them just sit around all day doing not a lot.

    24. SPSam Parr1:09:11

        [laughs]

    25. JHJoe Hudson1:09:11

        [laughs] No, what happened was, uh, I was doing this large scale art installation for a, a wealthy family and I was giving them business advice 'cause before I had done international stock lending and other things and I w- it was like at the time when oil was going through the roof and gold was going through the roof and I was just telling them like, "Hey, here's this thing," and they did and they made a lot of money.

    26. SPSam Parr1:09:32

        That's, that's like a hilarious thought by the way. A guy doing an arts installation at a rich person's house got like the guru energy and it's like-

    27. JHJoe Hudson1:09:39

        [laughs]

    28. SPSam Parr1:09:39

        ... "Hey, uh, do you guys wanna ex- discuss your bond portfolio?" [laughs]

    29. SPShaan Puri1:09:42

        Yeah, wait. W- w- what did you actually tell them? What was going on and what, what was the call?

    30. JHJoe Hudson1:09:46

        I was, "Buy oil and gold." This is a long time ago, right? But, um, I was like, I've always been obsessed with business as well so, and the way I think about those years is I was meditating and worrying about money. [laughs] Those are the two things I did. So I had like a stack of Financial Times in the corner and so I'd, you know, I was, the, when they still had papers and I would read the Financial Times and, uh, because I started, I, m- one of the jobs I did was international stock lending and I, I got like promoted three times and so I was inside of like a 16-month period and so it was just kind of, it was just something that I always thought about and like one day we were sitting having lunch and I was just like, "Hey, here's this thing." So he comes to me and he goes, "Hey, do you want to come and work for us and like help us in the family office?" And I was like, "No, I'm, I love being an artist. It's good." And he says, "Well, if you could do anything you want just tell us what it would be." And so three months later I was like, "Well, I think the biggest change agent on the planet," this is around 2006, I was like, "Is gonna be clean tech. I think that this is like the, the biggest technological changes on the planet I think have come from, from venture." So I do that and then I would work in the nonprofit like helping increase consciousness particularly in children and so he said, "Yeah, let's do it." And it turned out I was not a great investor [laughs] because I needed to be needed too much. Like w- like a great investor is the investor who's like they do, "I am investing because you don't need me at all."
19. 1:22:00 – 1:26:05

    Where you click matters

    1. JHJoe Hudson1:22:00

       So does nuclear weapons, and so does global warming, and so does... And something will eventually, [chuckles] you know? And the, the question that I ask myself personally is like, what can I do that can affect a positive outcome, and am I participating in that? And somebody can say, "That's easy, Joe, because you're, you know, coaching people like Sam." But I would say it is a democracy of clicks and, and money that's gonna determine AI more than any one leader, and I think we shirk our responsibility by saying it's about one leader who's gonna do it.

    2. SPSam Parr1:22:44

       Does that make you feel better, Shaan, or no?

    3. JHJoe Hudson1:22:45

       [chuckles] I don't think so.

    4. SPShaan Puri1:22:46

       Honestly, no. [laughing] Not, not at all.

    5. SPSam Parr1:22:51

       So we're gonna die. [chuckles]

    6. SPShaan Puri1:22:53

       No, not even that. Uh, it's... I, I guess it's on, on one level, there's a sort of humor in the situ- To use your analogy of like, you know, they're sort of birthing this technology and you, you said a lot of the opinions of these people has less to do... This-- Let me paraphrase what you said.

    7. JHJoe Hudson1:23:07

       Yeah.

    8. SPShaan Puri1:23:07

       A lot of their opinions has less to do with the facts on the ground or the research, what they're seeing in the data, versus how they were rai- You know, their, their daddy issues, and it's like-

    9. JHJoe Hudson1:23:15

       Yeah

    10. SPShaan Puri1:23:15

        ... AI's daddy has daddy issues, therefore-

    11. JHJoe Hudson1:23:17

        That's right

    12. SPShaan Puri1:23:18

        ... maybe AI's gonna have daddy issues as it grows up. Um-

    13. JHJoe Hudson1:23:21

        Yes

    14. SPShaan Puri1:23:21

        ... you know, so, so I, I-

    15. JHJoe Hudson1:23:22

        Yeah, just, just like, just like Meta's business is a reflection of the consciousness of Mark Zuckerberg.

    16. SPShaan Puri1:23:29

        Yeah, I think that's why you coach, 'cause you can affect that.

    17. JHJoe Hudson1:23:31

        Yeah.

    18. SPShaan Puri1:23:31

        I think that's why maybe you have comfort, 'cause you know some of the people. I think that's why a lot of the people who are just in the YouTube comments, who have a sort of billionaire aversion, tech guy aversion, right? This is like, this is like, if you go look at the sentiment-

    19. JHJoe Hudson1:23:44

        Yeah

    20. SPShaan Puri1:23:44

        ... the sentiment around-

    21. JHJoe Hudson1:23:46

        That's horrible

    22. SPShaan Puri1:23:46

        ... billionaires, tech leaders, and specifically the billionaire AI tech leaders, it's awful. Like-

    23. JHJoe Hudson1:23:51

        Right

    24. SPShaan Puri1:23:51

        ... there is zero trust-

    25. JHJoe Hudson1:23:52

        Yeah

    26. SPShaan Puri1:23:52

        ... zero, um, belief in the, uh, that those are our great kings and fearless leaders that we wanna get behind.

    27. JHJoe Hudson1:23:59

        Yeah.

    28. SPShaan Puri1:24:00

        Part of that is because of their own poor communication and presentation, uh-

    29. JHJoe Hudson1:24:04

        Yes

    30. SPShaan Puri1:24:04

        ... you know, so it, it's not like they're, they're just hated because of who they are, right? They, they contributed to some of that.

Episode duration: 1:26:05