Ali Abdaal - How Connection Can Change Your Life (Coaching Session)

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. Today's episode is a session with a special guest, Ali Abdaal. Ali is a doctor and one of the world's most followed productivity experts. He runs a YouTube channel with over 5 million subscribers and wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Feel Good Productivity. In this session, Joe coaches Ali on what he wants to do now that he's reached his goal of releasing his book and getting on the bestsellers list. Enjoy. Hi, Ali.

It's good to see you again, man.

Yeah, likewise. I'm looking forward to this. Where are you?

You have quite an interesting background. It seems like you're in a warehouse of some sort, or—

I am in a WeWork in London right now. I flew in from New York this morning. Yeah, to spend some time in London with the family.

Awesome. I know you've been traveling a lot this year. How has that been for you?

It's been super fun. Yeah, it's been a few months of kind of nonstop travel. It was meant to be a few months here and there of like, oh, let's do Austin for a few months and then LA for a few months. But because my book came out like last week, it's just ended up being a whole whirlwind of book touring and podcasting and stuff. So now things are finally settling down a bit. It's nice to be back in London for a little bit of stability.

That's great. Yeah, I know that feeling. When I was a venture capitalist, I think there was one week where I was, like, on 3 continents in a week, and it was just— it's quite brutal.

Yeah.

So do you want to just tell everybody a little bit about you and give everybody some backstory, and then we'll jump into a coaching session?

Sounds good. Yeah. So backstory. Hi everyone. My name is Ali. I am a doctor turned entrepreneur, I guess. I worked as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service for 2 years. And while I was doing that, I started a YouTube channel on the side, which grew to like a million subscribers in that time, which was insane. And then I decided to quit my job and become a sort of online course YouTuber, author type person. And over the last 6, 7 years now I've been making videos about productivity and personal development, which is why I very much vibe with your stuff, Joe. And my book Feel Good Productivity came out like last week, and we found out yesterday that we actually hit the New York Times bestseller list, which had been a goal for a very long time. And that was super nice. But now I'm feeling a bit of a sense of like, what now? It feels like I've been building up for the last 3 years for this big sneeze, and now the sneeze is out.. And now I'm thinking, hmm, where does my life kind of go? So I feel like this session with you, Joe, might come at a good time because I was literally journaling about this yesterday, being like, what the hell do I want to do with my life now?

So, okay. So is that how you want to spend your time, or is there anything else also that's present that you would want to address in the coaching session? We might not get to any of them, but just out of curiosity.

Sure. I mean, one thing I'm very keen to talk to you about, I've listened to a bunch of your episodes around emotions, and I think I really struggle to feel my own emotions in that when people ask me, how do you feel? I'm like, that phrase does not even vaguely compute.

Okay, great. So that leaves us with emotions and what do you want to do next? Yeah, great. Okay, so let's start there. What strikes me about you is that you've probably always know what to do next. As far as, like, I can't imagine that there's been, like, a month of you really trying to figure out what you're going to do next instead of, like, you're actually doing something next. So, I'm wondering how right am I about that assumption or what might I be missing?

Yeah, that's pretty spot on. From, like, high school, I knew I wanted to get to med school. Med school itself is a conveyor belt. After that, it's like you become a doctor and it's conveyor belt. And literally the week that I took a break from medicine, I got an email from Penguin saying, do you want to write a book? And then that took over my life. And now we're 3.5 years later where I have no clear next thing to do. And it now feels like the possibilities have opened up a little bit.

Okay, great. So one of the things that has changed is the fact that there's no conveyor belt system here. It hasn't just been an opportunity that's dropped and that's what you do next. But what I also noticed is that You're also in a place in your life where I'll say it like you probably have most of what you thought you wanted when you were in your early 20s. Yeah.

I think for a long time, I was chasing the goal of financial freedom and like 4-Hour Workweek and all that stuff. And now, I'm kind of there. And so, I'm like, hmm, what comes next?

What comes next? Right. So, no conveyor belt. So, the rules of the game have changed. And now, and just to some degree, it sounds like there is just no rules. It's what do you want? Yeah. So what do you want? Like, if you don't think about it as like, this is what I have to do next, and you just think about it in gross wants, what do you want?

I want, I guess, to continue to live life on my own terms, to not go back to a day job. I really like teaching. That's always been a thing that's sort of lit me up inside when I can learn something cool and share it with with someone else. The making of YouTube videos itself as that vehicle for teaching, less fun now. I've had enough. I've been doing it for 7 years, but I really like the idea of teaching in real life. I attended a Tony Robbins seminar, 2 of them, and I was like, whoa, doing stuff like that seems like it would be fun. So I think there's something around teaching and also living life on my own terms.

So, what, if anything, would stop you from living life on your own terms at this point?

I have these weird fears around money, I think.

Okay. So, hold on. Stop right there. You stopped, you closed your eyes, you went inward.

Yeah.

What happened there? Like, tell me, describe your internal process. Was that a, let me stop and think and a whole bunch of thoughts move through your system? Was that like a you feeling your somatic experience? What just happened there? Hmm.

You asked what's stopping you from living that, and then I was like, hmm, that's a good question.

I said, what could stop you?

Oh, what could stop you? Yeah. And I've not been asked that in that form before. So I was like, what could stop me? And then, yeah, a bunch of options seemed to present themselves. And I did some quick calculations and sort of pointed at fear of running out of money or desire to make more money as being a thing that sort of ties a bunch of them together.

Right. And was that an intellectual, fully intellectual process? How somatic was it? How emotional was it?

Zero somatic, 100% intellectual. Yeah.

So it's like, right. Yeah. Apparently zero somatic, but your body took a very particular form. So, like, typically, if I see you on doing YouTube or talking to you in real life, you can access thoughts very quickly. You can speak very quickly, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. And I know by the way that you're doing it that you might not even know what you're about to say, but you can say it and it can all make sense and you haven't even said it before. And it's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, without any of that, this that happened without any of the stopping. Contemplation. So what made that different? If it wasn't somatic, what made it different? It's happening again now.

Yeah, I think what made it different is that I wanted to give a real answer and not just whatever was coming out of my mouth in presenter mode. And treating this as if I've got Joe Hudson here on the phone. Let me make sure I'm giving something that feels real rather than— I think often in podcasts, I'm in performance mode or whatever. I wanted to make sure I wasn't bullshitting myself. I wasn't bullshitting you here.

Yeah. So just to say what I noticed you say, you said, I wanted to make sure it feels like something real. Literally using the word feel. And to do that, you actually put yourself in— your body went into a very particular position that was unique from this other position. I just want to mark that. We'll get to it later, but I just want to mark it and then go back. So, so the big thing is that I'm now going back to the, to the conversation we were having before, which was that that there's a money fear that you have that maybe I won't be able to live life on my own terms if for whatever reason this money thing goes away. And so, my question for you then is if that fear existed in your system before you knew what money was, what would that fear be called?

Some sort of fear of not being safe.

Yeah. So, I want you to take a moment. And that was the first way to ask the question. I'm going to ask the same question in a slightly different way, which I want you to have the experience of lack of safety around money. Oh, all this money might go away, or I have to make sure I keep enough money. Just close your eyes and just tell me, don't even tell me, just feel what happens in your body when you think about it. And now without a single thought whatsoever, Trace that to the very first time you felt that particular set of sensations. And what's the story, if any, that comes up when you think about, not think about, feel this set of sensations in your early childhood? So, what's happening inside you right now? Is it that you came up with that idea and said that didn't make sense, or you're like, nope, it's not happening, or what's going on?

Yeah, I'm trying to vividly imagine the feeling of running out of money and I'm not like feeling anything. I'm just like, I feel like I'm sort of like, come on, imagine the feeling, imagine the feeling, like, feel something, goddammit, feel something. And it's like, right, okay.

Yeah. Okay. So do that again. Find the sensation of you looking for a feeling and not being able to get it. Like you're doing. What is that like in your body? Not the sensation of fear, but the sensation of trying to get there and not get there.

Yeah. It's a bit of a constriction in my sort of belly button type area.

Great. And I just want to teach you one more little itty-bitty trick. Do the same thing again and go ahead and feel what's in your— and now I want you to lift your chin up, like lift your chin a little more. Yeah. Like that. Great. And now, I want you to lower your chin and tell me what happens in your ability to feel in your body.

I feel like the feeling is stronger when I'm sort of doing this. Yeah.

Yes. That would be most of the literature would say that. And, what I noticed is when you talked about— I love that literature piqued you. You're like, "Literature?" when you did the first time when you were feeling into the loss of money in your system, your chin was doing this. Your chin was raising. And when you were like, let me find the real answer, your chin went down. So if you watch back the video, you'll just notice. And one of the main things that happens is that one of the two ways we stop emotions in our body is raise our chin, which is why a definition, say, of narcissism that some people have for narcissism is And narcissism is a very misunderstood word, but is basically not being able to feel your emotions. And you'll notice that like when someone's acting like a narcissist in a movie, they'll put their chin up. It's kind of part of the deal. If you look at like a famous narcissist, when you actually see them, their chin is up. So just say that. The other one is holding the jaw. It's like keeping the jaw tight. That's another one that people use to not feel emotions is to clamp the jaw. Just a somatic little trick for you. Okay. So, it's this kind of— what you said was, and I'll stop going meta for a second. We'll just actually deal with the thing itself. So, you're in this new transition. You've got what you wanted. So, you have that experience and there's no automatic conveyor belt next thing that's happening. And there is this money fear that drives some of what you want, which is to be able to maintain your life. And then the other part that you notice that you want is teaching, but online teaching is not as exciting as the idea of at least in person. And then on a non-business level, what are other goals that are just apparent to you, if any?

I want to get into the best shape of my life, take my health more seriously.

Yeah.

I want to host 6 mini adventures with friends/family and sort of connect people together. Those are the kind of big other ones.

What I notice is everything that— all of your goals are about connection. Connection to yourself or connection to others.

Yeah.

Including teaching in person is a far more connecting experience than teaching online. Yeah. Yeah.

So I thought of it that way.

Yeah. So if we assume that, I'm not going to say that that's right by any stretch, but if we assume that for a second and you think about your career, give me 5 ways that the experience of your career could feel far more connecting, connected.

More in-person stuff with my team. Like, I really enjoyed it when I was in London, we were all in person, and now we're kind of remote and digital nomading, but like, I miss hanging out with the team in person. I think definitely more real-life teaching. I used to do a lot of that when I was in med school and then sort of got away from it with the whole online world, and I'd like to get back to that. I'd like the teaching to connect more with myself in terms of the things that are alive for me in a given moment, rather than the things that I think will drive clicks and views for the algorithm in a given moment. Yeah, I like the idea of building some sort of online community type thing. We're sort of toying with this idea that seems like it could be fun and quite connecting. And I like the idea of doing what the— like doing like live coaching type sessions with people, but like helping them boost their productivity or like overcome procrastination or things like that. That feels like, oh, that would be a fun way of doing content in a sort of connecting you type way that also then is really helpful for people to see sort of the behind the scenes of how I would coach someone to be more productive, for example.

Great. And out of curiosity, how much of that actually excites you? Like, you'd be like, oh, that'd be cool if that all happened. Or is those were just the— that was the brainstorm. How much of them excite you? Like, if I could click my fingers and all those things happened, how many would you be like, yeah, cool?

Basically all of them. Okay. The working with the team in person one less so because I'm like, I also want to travel and do the digital nomad thing. So it's like there's a bit of logistical stuff around there, but it'd be really cool to have the community to do some in-person productivity seminars to like do this coaching-y type stuff and to make videos that I feel like making rather than videos that I feel like I should make because the algorithm or whatever wants me to.

Right. And just on that part about the team, if I could snap my fingers and there was like a 10-day period every quarter where you all sat down and were together connected, working together. How would that feel?

Oh, that's great. We're doing that already. So, yeah, it's so fun. I look forward to this. Yeah.

Okay, great. Great. Yeah. So it seems like what I notice is your natural progression is to move into something that's more connective. So here's my question for you. How do you connect more right now without changing anything that you're doing? Meaning you're not going to get off the podcast and go and sit in yoga mudra and do breathwork. How right now do you connect more?

Right now in this moment?

Correct. Yeah.

The thing that's coming to mind is sort of a sense of connecting with my internal self or something and trying to speak from the heart rather than from the head while we're having this conversation.

Yeah. Sounds good.

Yeah.

So I just want to note that means, again, putting attention into your body, not just the intellectual process. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm like, as you ask that question, I'm like, hmm, I'm like paying attention to like my feet on the floor and like, oh yeah, I've got my hands on the table and stuff.

Right.

That sort of, that thing that Eckhart Tolle talks about, it's just like sort of feel what's happening in your body. And I'm like, oh yeah, I don't do that by default. Right. So, that was a nice reminder. So, like, yeah, I'm sitting here right now.

And I want to note, A, it took no energy. If anything, I saw it take less energy from you. And you just said, feel my body. I just want to keep on talking about the feeling as I see it come up. Yeah. Yeah. So, if I could click my fingers right now and all of a sudden you were just 10% more connected in everything you did in the same way that you just became 10% more connected in sitting and talking with me. So nothing in your life changed as far as the practicalities and tactical what I do today. But when you got on YouTube, it felt 10% more connected. When you interacted with your team, it was 10% more. When you're writing your book, it was 10%. When you're doing the next podcast interview, how exciting would that be?

That would be pretty freaking cool. Yeah. And it feels like so easy. Why don't I just do that?

What do you think it would do for your career, your money? Just to like to address the money fear, what do you think it would do?

We obviously have no idea, but if you were to guess, if I were to put money on it, it would grow the business without me having to think too hard about it because I'd be operating from a place of connectedness or something.

Yeah. Typically, I noticed that as a public figure, people want to be able to connect with you. And so your connection with yourself is a big component in that recipe.

Yeah. I did a livestream about an hour ago just on my second YouTube channel where I was just having a bit of a chat with whoever was there and people were like, we want to see more of your life. And I was like, but I don't know what would be helpful for you guys. And they're all like, no, just talk about anything. We want to hear about you. Come on, man. So that kind of speaks to this idea.

Yeah, exactly. So what if that's— instead of the career goal being like the typical goals, write a book, make X amount of dollars, get enough clicks, what if the goal was be 10% more connected in everything I do.

That would be really cool. That would be very interesting to try out. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna ask this weird, this really weird question. Give me just the thing about the business, like, for some businesses, it would be billing. I don't think you do a lot of billing, but like, one of those rote things that your business does that hopefully you've outsourced or delegated at this point, but either way, is something that your business does. It's this kind of rote, mundane, non-exciting thing.

Filming sponsorship segments for the videos and for the podcast.

Awesome. I want you to do two things. One is I want you to think about how to do that in the most connected way possible, not Meaning as a whole system, not just you being there doing the sponsorship, but the whole organization being deeply connected in that process. And I want you to do it while being connected with yourself.

Yeah, I can think of some ways to do that.

Yeah, I love how quickly your mind just— your mind works so fast. It's so cool to watch it. So give me the ideas that just came just by doing that little experiment. What ideas just showed up?

Oh, the ideas were like working with sponsors and actively reaching out to sponsors that we really vibe with. Immediately Lululemon came to mind because like every piece of clothing I own is Lululemon and we just never bothered reaching out to them to be like, hey, do you guys want to work together and stuff? Because this something was holding us back and things that would be pretty connected. Actively reaching out to all of the tech companies whose stuff I actually use rather than just worrying about all the inbound from people whose trying to convince us to use their stuff and all that. And then at one point, I had the weird thought that I would love to do sponsored segments where I say a poem about the thing, or it rhymes in some kind of way, or I turn it into a song while playing on the guitar. And then a friend told me, no, that's bad for conversions. Don't do that. And I was like, okay, I guess I won't do that. But actually, that would be a way more fun and interesting way to do a sponsored segment if I'm composing a song. Plus ChatGPT really helps with rhyming stuff these days. So, those things came to mind.

Yeah. Great. And totally, as you know, in this job, it's experiment after experiment is what you learn. So, it all sounds like great experiments. Yeah. So, look at just what happened. So, you could take even the thing that is most mundane that you dislike the most, put it through this goal of, oh, how does this become— how do I do this in a more connected way? While being connected, thinking about it, and immediately it sparks this another level of creativity. I mean, you're obviously very creative in everything you do to come up with that much content. There's just a huge creativity there. But all of a sudden, it sparks this whole nother level of creativity that, right? So that same lens could be put at everything you do. How do I buy camera equipment? How do I— like, everything you do, there can be this question of, like, how do I maximize the connection?

Sick. Okay, I need to remember this somehow.

It's recorded. You're fine.

2024 goal. Even now, I'm just like, sort of, I've got my hands on the table and I'm just sort of like noticing my fingers on the table. And I never notice my fingers on the table, but like, yeah, for the last like 5 minutes, I've been like, there's this part of me that's keeping that, keeping some percentage of my attention on that while also talking to you. And I'm finding that as that's happening, I was feeling a bit of like, oh, shit, I hope this episode is good enough for Joe to put on the pod. I hope I don't embarrass myself. All of that's gone. I'm just like, we're just having a chat now.

Yeah. So one technical hack, there's this great app called Yap, and it just reminds you. I have a silent phone that does almost— makes no sounds. The only sound it makes is Yap, which is really great because then I don't get bothered. And for you right now, I'd put on that Yap Chat. The question would just be, how do I be 10% more connected right now? And that would just be this automatic reminder that happens. The other thing that I'll say is that as you move away from the brain and all the intellect stuff and you move into your body, you'll start to be able to trust that your body will catch stuff that you don't need to write on a list. If you're all in the head, then there's a lot of like, oh, I have to capture this. But if you actually allow it to hit your body and resonate in your body, oftentimes that works better than a list because you write it on a list. But do you remember to read the list and whatever happens next?

Yeah. And it's the whole thing of how do I make sure I remind myself to then go on that Google Doc or whatever the thing was.

Exactly. That whole thing. Yeah. So I just say it is that as you're starting to learn about the feeling and the somatic world, it's detracting to then immediately go and write it down if it prevents the integration of it in the body. So let it integrate in the body and then go write it down. Meaning, like, right now, you are feeling what it is to be 10% more connected in our conversation together. Keep the attention in the body, and then you'll remember it more likely than if you write it on a list.

Nice. Thanks.

Yeah.

Cool.

So the only thing that I see is the open thread that we have left is the feeling piece of it. So any other questions about what to do next in your career? What, if anything, is still open there?

Honestly, I think even just like running it through that filter of like, what does 10% more connected look like? I've got the answers. I can— Yeah. That's not a—

Cool.

Yeah. Okay.

Rock and roll.

Yeah. Thank you. Easy peasy.

Okay. So then on the feeling of emotion stuff.

Yeah.

So the question I have for you is how much of it is conscious and how much of is it that you're not feeling your body and how much of it is that you're not aware that you're feeling? How much of it is that you're not feeling, and how much of it is that you're not aware that you're feeling?

I'm not sure, but sometimes I'll be with like my brother and they'll say like, hey, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, because you've got tears in your eyes right now and it looks like you're about to cry. And I'm like, whoa. And I'm like, shit, you're right. That's weird. And then they'd be like, how are you feeling? And I'm like, I don't know. I've got tears in my eyes, and then I try and sort of reverse engineer, there must have been something that's come up that sort of triggered me in some way. But I would just have no sense of feeling in the body any different to what I was like 10 seconds ago. But I can feel my eyes sort of screwing up a little bit and the stuff.

Okay, so the body is doing something. There is an awareness thing that's happening. I just— a couple intellectual pieces on this. The first intellectual piece is if you take a kid who's physically abused and you put a quarter in one hand and a key in another hand without them seeing it, as an adult, they won't be able to tell you which hand has the key and which hand has the quarter because the human system is really smart. If something is too painful, it cuts off. And so, most of us, me particularly in my journey, I couldn't have told you what emotion I was having at all. And I wasn't particularly expressive of them because emotions were way too painful. There was too much emotional abuse. And emotional abuse is a word that I think is, I throw it around very easily. And what I mean by emotional abuse is that somebody held you responsible for their emotional state, or somebody told you the emotions that you were having were not okay to have. Those are the two ways of like, so jealousy would be a form of emotional abuse. Don't be so excited, Johnny. Don't cry, Johnny. Whatever. All those things would be forms. I would, in my definition, those would be emotional abuse. And so the first step in overcoming that is just learning to be aware of the emotional experience. And for some people, Like, for me, the way I first started to learn that I was in fear is that I had binary thinking. I was so aware of my thought process that I was like, oh, I noticed I'm thinking black or white right now. I must be in fear. And then it was later that I learned, oh, this is the somatic experience of fear in my system. So I looked at the way my thought pattern showed fear before I actually learned how to feel it somatically., but my body was in fear either way. So I just give that as a background that hopefully may be helpful. And I noticed that there's a way that, you know, being real, you put your chin down, you feel more, you allow yourself to be in the body. And last part, if you have a practice of just that idea of like, oh, some of my attention is in my body while we're sitting here talking together. Everything else will take care of itself. We don't need to have a session. If you just keep 10% of your awareness in your body as much as possible, everything else will take care of itself.

Really?

There's no need. Yeah. It's one of the most powerful practices, but most people can't pull it off. The transformation and change can happen so rapidly that they will leave their body because it's too much for them to feel. But anyways, just know that that's the hack. And I know you're good at and like hacks.

That's useful to know.

Yeah. So if there's anyone, you'll be able to do it. Okay. So now all the intellectual stuff is aside. What kind of a— if right now you start bawling, crying, just weeping and crying over the fact that you weren't allowed to have the emotions because as a child, because survival was such a bigger priority. And so your parents couldn't see your emotional life, and instead all they could see was preparing you to survive. For instance, I'm not saying that's true, but how would you feel about— well, you just cried on this podcast and everybody and all your— and your, you know, the 2 million subscribers all knew that you cried about this pain in your life, what would be your reaction to that?

That would be kind of cool if I had such an emotional response to like a thing. I'd be kind of intrigued. Okay.

Yeah, great. So there's not like a, I need to be seen not sad, or what's the emotion that if happened right now, you would be like, if any, you would be like, oh, I shouldn't have done that on on a podcast? Anger, fear, sadness, excitement, exuberance, joy, peace.

I'm cool with all those. The only thing that comes to mind is, like, I wouldn't want to say something bad about someone I love in public on a podcast or something. But there's not much risk of that happening. But any kind of emotion, I would love to express emotions openly on a podcast. That would be perfect.

Okay, great. Outside of the emotion that you just expressed, for instance.

What emotion did I just express?

Yeah. What emotion did you just express? I'll do it for you right here. This is what I was like. I would love to have a whole bunch of emotions on a podcast. That would be great.

Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah.

What emotion was that?

Yeah, I guess that was like joy.

Joy. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. Emotions. Sign me up. Yeah.

Right. Even some excitement in there, I would say. Like, it's like there is, right? And so how did you know that I was in excitement and joy when I did it?

Because you were smiling and your voice went like louder and you moved around a little bit and stuff.

Right. Which if you can't, if you're on the podcast just listening, you can't, you can see Ali doing this actually right now in his body. He's mimicking And you're literally, I don't know if you were aware of it, but you were literally like jolting and moving and smiling. And so somehow or another, your body knows how to do it when you're even just talking about it.

Yeah. Well, okay. So I don't have an issue with, I think, with experiencing positive emotions, but it's like, okay, no, I'm going to rephrase that. I don't think I have an issue with like feeling excitement. I do often feel excitement, but emotions like love or anything around sadness or sorrow, those are the ones where I'm not sure how I feel.

If you had to tell me the difference between sorrow and love, what would it be?

I would say that love is sort of like this subtle positive glow, and sorrow is like a subtle negative anti-glow or something.

Okay, so we're going to do— one of the great things about doing any kind of emotional work is you can experiment like real time, and it's really great. So what we're going to do is we're going to find a memory that brings up love you and then we're going to find a memory that brings up sorrow for you. And when you're going to catch one in your body, then you're going to catch the other one in your body and you're going to go back and forth for a while and then I'll ask you a question or two. So, come up with a memory you can share or not share, doesn't matter that immediately brings up the feeling of love in your system. Maybe it's a dog or a brother brother, younger sibling, cousin. Yeah. Okay. So go ahead and feel that, have that memory and just notice what happens in your system.

Okay. Yeah.

Great. That's enough. And then I want you to think of a memory that sorrow, loss of something or— so I noticed that your chin just went up.

Oh, interesting. Memory of sorrow. I have this weird sensation of like, oh, you know, I don't want to go there. But that's weird. I do want to go there. Yes. Hey, of course I want to go there.

Um, somebody taught you it wasn't safe at some point, or the world in general did. So there's a, there's an automatic reaction to it that is Yeah, great.

Experience. Sorry. Okay, I've got an experience of sorrow.

Okay, so bring yourself totally into your body again. You're a little bit out. There you go. Okay, now I want you to go back to love, and I want you to go back to sorrow.

Mm.

One more time, back to love and back to the memory of sorrow. And now I want you to hold both of them at the same time, both of those two sensations simultaneously. Great. So what, if any, difference did you find between love and sorrow? And then what happened when you brought them together?

Hmm. So for sorrow, I definitely felt some sort of thing around like here, I think.

So you're just— for everybody, what I'm hearing you say is like right around your— is it below your belly button or above?

Above my belly button, just sort of like below, sort of towards the bottom of my left kind of rib cage.

Great.

Okay. Like a sort of squeezy feeling there.

Yeah.

I don't really know I felt anything somatically for the love thing. It did feel like that feeling eased up a bit. And so when I was going in between the two, it was like when I was thinking sorrow, it was like the squeeziness happened a bit more. And when I was thinking love, it sort of eased up. And when I think sorrow, the squeeziness, and then it eased up again. And when he said hold both at the same time, I sort of, I felt the squeeziness, but I sort of took a sort of breath in. And then it was like the squeeziness was still there, but like the breath in was kind of like this, like almost like this lightness at the same time.

Yeah. So how much would you say that the love created a sense of spaciousness around other stuff besides just the squeeziness, or was the spaciousness just How much was the spacious or how much of the relief was just around the relief/spaciousness was just around the squeezy part or how much of it was just general?

Oh, interesting. Now that you mention it, like when I think of the love thing, there's a bit of like a sort of an expansion out sort of from I guess lower ribs kind of outwards a little bit.

Yeah.

But I'm not sure if that's just because I was taking a breath in. Maybe.

Yeah. The thing about emotions is that they do affect your muscles. So, a breath in, if you're anxious, you stop breathing. Anxiety affects the breath. Love affects the breath. Joy affects the breath. It affects the body position. It affects, right? So, any emotion that we might have, any emotion that we withhold, requires us to constrict our muscles in a particular way. So it's one of the things when people look at me coaching and they're like, how the hell did he just do that? I can do it because I can notice, oh, someone's head is up there. They're cutting off an emotion, or they have this line right here in their forehead, which means they have repressed anger or blah, blah, blah. There's the hunchback. They had a highly critical parent. There's all sorts of tells that people have in their body. So, anyway, so the idea that breath in and emotion are different is not particularly the most effective way to look at it. So, the question I have for you is if you had to guess what made it that sorrow was something that you didn't want to feel?

So the sorrow, I'm not sure, but the sorrow experience I was thinking of was, you know, I had this big crush on this girl in my first year of med school, and then she left the university for various reasons, and I was like, heartbroken.

Yeah.

I genuinely felt pain in my body. I was like, whoa.

Yeah.

And like, she was like my best friend as well. And it's like, I'm never going to have friends again. And then I sort of talked myself out of that. By bringing to mind dozens of counterexamples of that. I actually did have friends and actually life was going to be fine. And then just sort of buried, I think maybe buried that feeling of sorrow and sort of replaced it with, if I had to psychotherapize myself, replaced it with a drive to succeed. Right. A drive to like, like, you know, this was very much unrequited love. She wasn't interested in me, right? Okay, that's fine. Let's freaking like dominate the— with my business and stuff. Yeah, um, right. And then she came back to university a year later and a female friend said, oh, you know, the way you, you get a girl to be interested in you is to actively not be interested in her. And so I was like, all right, you know, at that point I didn't have any affection for her. Then she seemed to like me and it's weird kind of dynamic and the game. Yeah, but I don't know.

So I just want to tie in somewhere in, in your college experience, you've made the choice to have success over connection. And now here you are, you've got your success. And you're like, oh, wait, I also want the connection piece.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah. Just want to Yeah. And so here's the next question for you. Everything your mind told you is true. You had friends, you could continue to make friends, you were going to— this woman wasn't required for your happiness, all this stuff. How would you have allowed all that truth to be there but not have it repress your sadness and your sorrow? Yeah, that's all true, but I'm fucking sad.

Yeah, I think at the time, and maybe still to this day, I thought of sadness as being not a good emotion to have. And I think all the Stoicism Kool-Aid that I'd been drinking was like, well, we can control our responses to things, and it's just a story that you tell yourself, so you need to replace the story, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but I think if I were to have heartbreak or sorrow now, I like the idea of sitting with it. And I had friends in school, in college, who would have sad songs playlists on Spotify, and I'd be like, what? You have a sad song playlist? I mean, yeah, the music's good. Chasing Cars is a good song. And they'd be like, yeah, sometimes I'm feeling sad and I just play the sad songs. And I'm like, that doesn't make sense because now you're just wallowing in the sadness. And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, what is wrong with you? But I now kind of like the idea of if I feel sad, it would be nice to actually experience that and wallow in the sadness, in air quotes.

What would be another word besides wallow?

Indulge or revel or experience or surf or enjoy.

Yeah, I like savor. Savor.

Oh, that's nice. Savor the sadness. Yeah, yeah, that's part of the human experience, right?

So just as clear, there's a distinction. It's true that if you make meaning of certain things, it'll create certain emotions in your body. That's— there's no doubt about it. And you can change the meaning of something to change. But you can also just have an emotion without a meaning. It's not required. You don't have to have a meaning.

You can.

Yeah, of course. And mammals who don't think, mammals who don't have thought have emotions. Yeah, or at least, yeah, much lesser thoughts at least, you know.

Yeah. But isn't there that thing that like I don't know where I was reading this, but you only experience an emotion for 45 seconds, and then to experience it for longer requires you to reinforce the story you're telling yourself about said emotion.

I would say you've never experienced an emotion for more than a second, a single emotion for more than a second, but there's never been a moment of waking in your life where you're not having an emotional experience, is more the way I would describe it. There's never a non-emotional experience that you're having. We're constantly in an emotion, like we have an emotional thing happening, like music in the background. It's constantly there as long as we're awake. And it's never the exact same note or the exact same instrumentation and note and everything. I've experienced sadness thousands of times, but it always has a slightly different seasoning to it.

Okay.

Or it's a different combination. It's like a little more sadness and a little less anger or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say that's more of the— as far as telling the story to indulge it, there is something really, really important about that, which is you can be stuck in a story and then stuck in an emotional loop for sure. So if I'm helping somebody learn how to express their emotions, which is not something you can do on a podcast, I might use a story to get them into that emotional state, but I don't want to reify the story as true. All the stories are false. The story that your sadness was going to last forever and that she hurt you and that she didn't want you and it was unrequited and that you had other friends, every single one of those stories had some falsehood to it and there was no full truth in any of the stories. And so, if you believe in a story, it can also stagnate an emotional experience. That they're very related that way. But just as easily, you can have a similar emotional experience as, for instance, for me, I had the kind of recurring emotional experience of I can't get my dad's love. Then I moved away from, you know, which was a longing with an unrequitedness in it. And then, you know, I moved away. My dad wasn't there. It wasn't recurring. So I just went, I can't get money. And it was just the exact same emotional experience. But instead of not being able to get my dad's love, it became I can't get money. And so, so you can, you can have that. You can have a rut of an emotional experience and then change your story around it to maintain the emotional experience. The reason that there's the, the other side of it is told so well is because most people who are really good at describing shit can see how the thoughts affect their emotions, not so much how their emotions affect their thoughts, because they're more intellectually based.

There was a thing that came to mind as you were saying that, this sort of, um, I can't get my dad's love, I can't get money, um, in that I feel like I have this constant sense of there is more that needs to be done.

Yeah.

Like, you know, we got the call yesterday, like, oh, congratulations, you're a New York Times bestseller. And I was like, you know, my brother was asking, how do you feel? And I was like, hmm, I feel a sense of relief that like the work that we put into this has paid off. But it wasn't a sense of like, oh, okay, I can chill out now. It was like, well, there's always more to be done. You know, there's, we don't have any recurring revenue products. So like, let's build this community thing and like what are the goals? Let's get after it. There was this weird kind of— and I think I'm a pretty happy and content guy, but I have this kernel of dissatisfaction of like, no, there's always more to be doing.

Yeah.

And I find it hard to take a break and give myself permission to simply read fiction or just lie down and just do nothing. Because there is more to be done in terms of building up our monthly recurring revenue and all that crap.

To get where?

To get to a place of okayness, I think, to get to a place of safety.

Just to be clear, I have to be not okay to get to a place of okayness.

Yeah, by definition, somewhat. But yeah. Because if I was okay, then it's like the reason to do stuff would be for the connection, which would be quite a fun reason to do stuff. That's exactly the connection, for the fun of it. Yeah, rather than because there is a lack or a scarcity or a thing like—

yeah, yeah, yeah. There, I see the click. That's it. And you were mentioning— I was mentioning my dad. Is that— was that relation— did you notice that too, that somehow that was part of for you to be okay with your mother or father, that there was always something that needed to be done? Is that why that triggered that?

Now that you mention it, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I think the sense of— maybe I'm over-therapizing myself, but like, I remember when, like, growing up, we could never let our mom see us— like, me and my brother— I could never let my mom see me playing video games. Because if she did, there was always something else to do. There was always a chore in the house that needed doing or like some homework that needed doing or shouldn't you be studying for your exams type thing?

Yeah.

And obviously that's now different, but it's still a sense of, man, I can't continue playing Baldur's Gate 3 because there's like brainstorming to do about the next video or like building a landing page for the next freaking course that we're doing or whatever. Right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I wonder if it's the same.

That's a hell of a 4-hour work week.

I love, love the 4-Hour Workweek, right?

So how does that relate to, um, I don't have time to feel because there's something that has to be done? I don't have time to be sad over this woman because I have to be successful. Like, how, how, how much does that relate?

Yeah, it relates in the sense of People often say you should celebrate the wins. And there's part of me that says, screw celebrating the wins, there's more to be done. Right. Yeah.

What would celebrating your win look like having just hit the New York Times bestseller? If you were to celebrate the win in the most connected fashion possible, what would it look like?

It would look like firstly sending thank you messages and gifts to everyone who's helped along the way. And secondly, chilling out for a month and just like binging a great fantasy fiction series. That would be super fun.

That sounds really nice.

Yeah, that would be nice.

What was the emotion you had during that experience when you were thinking about it? Your face changed color a little bit. Your eyes did something. What was that?

I have a bit of like wateriness in my eyes. So strange. A sense of like, wow.

It's called gratitude. It's called gratitude. Yeah. The tears, that's gratitude.

Oh, is it?

Okay, nice. Yeah. Just so you know.

Um, yeah, it was like a sense of like, oh, I just didn't even remotely think that that was an option because there's more to be done, right? But now that I'm thinking, I guess that is an option.

Let's say you did it. Let's say you did it for a second. Let's say you wrote all those notes, you spent the time in a deep gratitude for each of the people, and you showed them that gratitude, and you totally checked out with fiction for a certain period of time. At the end of 2 years, would you be further ahead or farther behind?

Definitely further ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's how important the emotions are to your productivity. To actually, like, to stop and say, all we did was say, what's the most connected way to do that? You connected with yourself immediately. The emotional experience of gratitude showed up, which showed you a path, at least of working with other people, and gratitude of giving yourself rest.

Damn, this is some good stuff, man. I'd seen you do this on other people and I was like, hmm. Yeah.

It's not just to be clear, it's not me doing it to you, but yeah, it's me following you. My experience of it is far more me following you than— Yeah.

It's so cool to experience. Anyone watching or listening to this, like, this is pretty cool stuff.

You started— what the interesting thing is, I always know where the thing ends. For anybody listening to this, just like a quick little thing. I don't even know if we captured it in the recording, but the very first thing you said was, I just finished the New York Times bestseller list, and now I'm thinking, what do I want to do next? And so the very first thing you said was the kernel, always, almost always is, is the kernel of what is being worked on. Just, it's just a fascinating thing. It's like people, it, I'm, and that's why I follow you. You bring that up and I'm like, oh, that's what we're here for. Right? Like, so that you, you know it, I don't know it.

Yeah, that's so cool. Love it.

Total pleasure. Thank you so much. Pleasure.

Yeah, it's been wonderful. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.