Yeah

... launch yourself in there." And that's when we start to get into this domain, this way of thinking about that life is more, it's more about exploring the possibility of oneself rather than trying to fix or change something about oneself.

It's about realizing there are feelings here, there are emotions here, there are experience, constraint.

I get that, okay.

Now what? What do we do with that? Do we, uh, maybe step in anyway and try life out from a different perspective? Try, allow ourselves, um, I think it was Kierkegaard who said, "Allow ourselves to be, you know, kinda thrown off.

Allow ourselves to be off axis a little." And you'll notice that you're actually really good at it.

You're actually really good in the uncertainty.

Yes.

And also, why, why do I need to find the meaning in this? Do you find that? Do you find that that is something that you look into? Or do you find that It's your more natural progression now is to, do you find that oscillation happening for you? I guess that's probably the best.

Um, I'm as much of a machine about that as everybody else says.

Um, the only thing that I have is.

cause for thinking occasionally to kind of remind myself of what I'm getting into.

I think one of the important parts here is, and I don't want to, I don't want to kind of dismiss something.

It's great to be productive, right? It's really great to be productive.

And it's great to feel like you can set things up and produce results and line your life up and function with some level of integrity.

What, where, where, like, what have you noticed and, or have, has surprised you about where you are at now?

Mm.

And I didn't consciously do it.

It's just kinda where I went.

And so telling my mom that I loved her was, like, it just...

I remember being a kid and telling my mom I loved her.

I remember holding her leg, and I remember holding her hand, and I remember all of that stuff.

And then I just remember, like, me here, her there, and now I'm just gonna kinda observe the job she's doing.

Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Like, you're, excuse me, you're unreliable for yourself.

So you've already, you've already kinda chopped the legs out from underneath your own word, right? So integrity isn't morality.

Integrity isn't be a good guy or something.

That's not integrity, right? Integrity is, do I honor what I say? Now, honor what I say doesn't mean I'm a fucking robot and I do everything exactly the way it's supposed to be done and la, la, la.

Honoring means I treat what I say like it matters.

And Alan, right now, you don't.

And, uh, privilege, and not to believe that about myself, but focus on this and focus more on creating myself rather than, uh, looking at the old story and taking it as like a base to build from, you know?

How does someone take a first step while the pain is still there?

Ontologically, language is critical.

When someone dies, for instance, and we talked about this a little earlier, but if somebody dies, we say we lost someone.

What kind of impact do you think that's going to have on you? You're already in loss now.

Now, someone died.

That's what happened.

I lost my mother.

I make you the bastard.

Yeah.

It's still ... [laughs] You know, an example that I, that I like to give is, this was a number of years ago when I had a coaching business, and that was really the start for me when I started to write books.

I, I'd been in the industry for a long time before that, but when I had my own coaching business and I was budgeting for a year, you know, what I was gonna do, and I had the Excel spreadsheet open, I'm working all that, and I'm like, "Okay, by the end of the year, I'm gonna make this." And I'm sitting there, like, staring at the number, and I'd no idea how I came up with that number.

Like, it was just there like, like a target or something to go to.

And the more I sat with the number, the more I realized that the number that was there was the number that I thought I could make.

Yeah.

And it's not about producing X, it's about who you have to become to even get yourself into that world, right? It's about the way that you have to confront yourself.

I think people do get wrapped up in what you're talking about, you know, 2X, 10X, 1000X, like that's what the game is.

Yeah

... that doesn't have that level of introspection.

You do.

But what we do when we do stuff like that, we move to the other town, we try to fix that.

And I'm saying there's nothing to fix.

You're just gonna keep doing the same thing.

What you have to understand is, for me anyway, in my philosophy, I feel as, as if life is unexplored and unexpressed possibility.

What are some other aspects maybe I should have asked you about the book that we should clear before we round up the show?

What, what's your viewpoint on what I experienced? Is it in line with what you write about?

Yeah.

So you're-- S- so there's something that's, I think, was really overdone once upon a time, and it's called gratitude.

And a lot of people really struggle with gratitude because they're in something that they don't wanna be in.

And so it seems like somehow I'm making this okay.

In, in the book, I say you're like a meerkat peeking out of a hole, and you're fascinated by what's going on around the hole, and you don't realize that you're existing in a grand cathedral, and that above you is the most amazing, expansive, glorious, spectacular existence you could ever imagine.

But you can't get your nose out of the next problem.

But- I would really love to unpack the, the difference 'cause I think one of the most confusing things for people that I think you could probably clear up very, very easily is, well, what does that even look like? So if I'm not creating, like, these better habits or this better mindset or this better discipline, what if it's actually somehow I need self-invention or creation? Can you, can you tell me what that means?

Wow.

And that I love you.

And so one of my sisters was like, she would stop picking the phone up to me, right? And so she didn't have a cellphone or anything.

It was only our home phone, you know? And, uh, I remember like one time I called the woman next door, I called her neighbor, 'cause I had that like an emergency contact, and I told her to go in and tell her there's a, there's an emergency [laughs] 'cause she wouldn't pick the phone up to me.

And she had to go in the neighborhood.

She's like, "Yeah?" I go, "It's me." She's like, you know, "What do you want?" And so I told her at the time, I said, "You know, you have no say in whether I love you or not, and you're not allowed to fall out with me over this."

In the future.

And that's what a visionary does.

Mm

... again, for instance, in that moment, I'm four years old, I'm watching my parents argue.

It's about me.

I'm not observing that like this is about them.

I'm observing that like this is about me.

Like, I, I can't...

Some, some de- self-determination in that moment.

Mm-hmm