What led you to wanting to work with camps? And what was it about this particular challenge that made you want to be part of the solution?

Well, I'm not sure how my answer is going to come across, but I never really wanted to work with camps specifically.

Like I didn't go out looking for camps.

I was kind of bounced around and was a problem solver for a while.

I worked for the airline industry.

I worked for Disney a little bit.

And then MJ and I started working together and he worked for camps and he started, we started doing some marketing stuff for them.

What were some of the big things you were hearing that caused you to rethink things?

[laughs]

Or, you know, "Oh my God, I just don't have any time for this right now," or, or, "Why don't w- my child listen to me?" And even things like, "Ugh, look at that tacky dress, and the shoes? Ugh." Um, but it is, it's rare that we actually listen to it, like pay attention to its content, which is really too bad because when we listen and pay more attention to it, we actually have the chance to step outside ourselves to be the witness, I'm holding up quotation marks, right? Uh, to be the witness to that chatterbox and, and know it for what it is, which is typically along with loving and, and constructive thoughts, it's a lot of ego-based hooey, pointless worrying about the past and the future, negative self-talk, et cetera.

But the simple act of naming your inner dialogue and then being able to, to witness it once in a while is really a form, it is a form of higher consciousness, and I know you agree that, with, with that, um, um, because you, you are someone who is, um, you know, you're familiar with the Eastern, uh, concepts.

Um, so, um, the, the more, uh, you witness your inner voice, the more present you are, the more in control you are, and the more powerfully you can employ other practical zen life-improving strategies like I'll be sharing a few of them.

So indeed, witnessing your mind's cacophony is step one in shut- shutting up your mind, and I'm gonna just quick- quickly share one example of how being the witness can reduce stress immediately, and this is based on the latest Western research, and this is from Judson Brewer at Brown University.

He runs the mindfulness lab at, it's something like that it's called at Brown University, and this is relatively recent research.

So when we are stressed or anxious about something, right, our inner dialogue is running a loop of thoughts, right? Think about, you know, let's just say you get a flat tire at night in the rain or your, your child is, is out of control and really misbehaving or doing something and you're getting s- stressed.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I, I remember I could just feel her hands there, and I felt like I'm in just the normal reality, and then all of a sudden I wasn't And that shift was like this profound awareness.

She had talked about this block that she saw in me, and all of a sudden I felt connected, so I could feel like there was like fire on the top of my head.

And that connection was so, so overwhelming, and I was so grateful to have it.

Then she laid me down on a table, and she started healing, like putting her hands on my heart, and my heart was, it felt like, you know, just 1,000 volts going through my heart, releasing this block in my heart that I didn't even really know was there.

And it just, it just took off this, this weight off my heart.

Something had come open inside of Alan, something he didn't know was closed.

I mean, it was like I didn't have symptoms.

It's just in terms of how that shows up in GDP, there's a much more tenuous connection on some level.

Can I, can I jump in? Because I think one of the big issues here is what I might call the value fallacy, which is I think this idea of creating value and then realizing that value are two different things.

And I think part of what we see in, in the figures right now is that people are seeing ways that they can apply AI, and that may do some of the things that you just described, you know, freeing up some time.

But where does that get deployed and how does that get recognized is a different problem.

So, so let me give you a very simple and perhaps a little, a little trite example here, which is the government has said how much money they might save as a result of applying AI in the civil service.

When you look at the figures, and I'm gonna simplify just a little bit, the way they come up with the figure is they say roughly 25% of what a civil servant does is administration.

That's amenable to AI.

What do you think, Alan?

Yep.

I think something that happens in a lot of advisory programs, when I'm talking to schools that are struggling with advisory, it's like, how do you help the advisors do something different? And when I start diving under the hood, like, tell me about your program.

What, how does it work? And inevitably there are design decisions like, well, the kids don't really know each other very well.

And the, uh, But they only meet once every two months.

It doesn't feel relaxed.

It doesn't feel like a family.

Oh, but we have this curriculum and they have to get through four lessons a week.

Yeah.