Connection: A State Beyond States

And the truth is that you being in connection with yourself and others is not dependent on anybody else, because being in connection with what is doesn't require anybody else.

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. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. Good afternoon.

Hey, Brett. Nice to see you again.

Do we just—

we just got to hang out. Now we get to hang out again for this.

Yeah, we just did a 3-hour coaching group call and it was really good.

Yeah. What a group. What a group. Yeah. Super fun.

Started out with an exploration on tension. We walked through some sort of a process of connection and a lot of discussion around it. And it seems like connection is really alive for our, for our conversation right now. And you've been wanting to do a podcast on connection for a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

So this seems like a perfect way to lead right into that.

You know, it dawned on me some time ago, 2, 3 weeks ago, I'm like, we have something called the Connection Course and we've never done a podcast on connection. That can't stand. We gotta do something about that.

So yeah, there, there was a moment in the call today where somebody had kind of a tension between like being in the curriculum or being in connection. And the question that came up in my mind was, well, what is the difference between this curriculum and connection, if at all. It really seems to me that whatever it is that we've ever done in any of your courses has been aimed towards connection, even identifying those ways that we think we're in connection, but is actually pulling us out of connection, like caretaking, for example.

Yeah.

And power versus empowerment, all these different kind of things that get in the way of us in our life tend to also be all of them seem to point back to actually being in connection.

Yeah, I haven't thought about it that way and it feels very right to me. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about connection is the question that comes to mind is what is it? What is connection? And 'cause it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And I think that it's one of those things that's like a meta state or like a state that can encompass all states. But what I mean to say is that I can be in connection when I'm sad, I can be in connection when I'm crying, I can be in connection when I'm angry, I can be in connection when I am having sex, and I can be out of connection when I'm doing all those things. And so though it's a felt sense in the body, it at the same time is not It's not like a particular state. And you can be connected with somebody when they are angry and when they are sad. And there's somebody out there I know who's like, "What? You can be connected with people when they're angry?" Yes, you can. I promise. And so there's a way of— the way I think about connection is that you're being in touch with what is in the present. This is what is. I am in touch with that. And that leads to an expansion, more energy, and it puts you in touch with something bigger. It's literally seeing beyond, feeling beyond yourself so that you're in touch with something bigger. And I think one of the things that people get confused about a lot, and I hear this in the language, it's like, oh, I'm out of connection with this person because they blah, blah, blah. And the truth is that you being in connection with yourself and others is not dependent on anybody else. Because being in connection with what is, to be in contact with what is, doesn't require anybody else.

Yeah, an interesting nuance there is that you can even be in connection with a sense of disconnection.

Yes.

With that. So I've seen this happen in groups often where everybody's subtly kind of pretending to be in connection 'cause they want to be in connection in the group or in their team or in their family, in their relationship. And then the moment somebody says, you know, I feel out of connection right now, all of a sudden a bunch of relief happens. And then it's actually like connection. Somebody had to recognize and then honor the fact that they are feeling out of connection. And being in connection with that sense of disconnection begins the, you know, the process of coming back into connection.

Yeah, we saw that this morning in our call. And we saw that exact same thing happen. Yeah, exactly. You can even be in connection with the state of being out of connection, which is, you're right, mind-bending.

Right. So given that all of this work comes back down to, on its root level, connection, what makes that so important to you? What makes connection the thing that you, I don't know, I could say specialize in, in a sense? What is it makes like Joe Hudson work? You know, what makes it all focused on connection and not like, you know, there's self-love in it, there's self-trust, there's all these different pieces, but just something about connection seems to be your personal focus.

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, even like when we do long courses, the first principle is connection, connection, connection. The name of the course is The Connection Course. So it makes sense that it's, that like that would become part of what I'm known for. But what, the way it happened is that I very much like living my life principled. I like saying, Okay, so instead of saying, how do I make a particular situation that I'm in work out and strategize over it? I say, these are the principles I live by, and if I live by them, no matter what the situation it is, that's gonna create the best outcome for me. And so connection is the most effective principle that I have found. It is the principle that if that's my bottom line, if I'm a business and my bottom line is connection, my life is the best life that I've experienced in all the experiments of having different bottom lines. And so there's, I'd say, 3 stories that I could tell about this that describe how I came to that or what made, what made me see that so clearly. The first one was Case, who I know you've heard me talk about. And Case, I met him in a business context and I was in venture capital at the time and I was so serious. I was like every— I was trying to make everything work and I was so serious about everything. And here comes Case who constantly is laughing. He's doing this. He's not investing, but his job is to fix companies and he's doing the same serious work, but he was doing it with like so much love and he was creating deep relationships everywhere he went. He would go into farming communities where he was like, stuck out like a sore thumb and he'd be making friends with like conservative farmers. He'd be making friends with people in the city and some people didn't like him, no doubt, but he was just constantly creating this connection around him and it was incredibly effective at his work. And I just noticed that you can do the same work and you can be happy in it and you can feel capable in it. And so I started saying, oh, well, I want some of that happiness. So I started working on my own sense of connection and connection with others. And as that happened, I became more effective. I was all of a sudden, people were more, there was less management, it was more collaboration, there was more trust, there was more understanding of one another. I understood customers better, I understood funders better, I had better relationships with all of them. I would, you know, all of it, everything became easier as I started focusing on on connection. And so that was the first big hit that got me.

Yeah, I'm curious to go into, and this might be a rabbit hole right now, but what were the things that you had been focusing on and what was your attachment to those things that made it that you had to see all this evidence for connection in order to follow it?

Yeah, that's a— oh, that's a— that's a question. I was interested in results. I was interested in proving my value. I was interested in showing people that I was worthy, I think, and making sure that I was— there was also a huge amount of responsibility. I felt very responsible for the money that I was caretaking. And that's where my head was. I wasn't thinking that it was possible to enjoy myself and then that would make me more effective. It just wasn't. It was just a limiting thought that I had had. And it wasn't until I could see an example of somebody— there's very few examples of somebody living in really deep connection in the business world. And then when you see it, you're like, "Oh crap, I can do that." And so that was it.

Okay, so you've got this example with Case, a person that you met and you got to see live out a life that was focused on connection and also be successful in business and it not just be some separate thing. And then what else? How else did you come to this?

Yeah, then I ran into a study. There's a Harvard study that is the longest lasting study in the States. I thought it was in the world, but it's not. Apparently there's one in England that's longer lasting, but they've been studying— it started off as a group of young men and they studied them through their lifetime and they just got all sorts of data. And now they're studying their offsprings and wives and stuff apparently. And, but they're, they're studying that every, all the facets of life, health, and every year they come in and do questions, et cetera, et cetera. And What they discovered through this is that a happy, successful life is one that's in connection generally. And they're measuring it as external connection. They're measuring it as—

Social connection?

As quality of relationships. Are you in relationships that you care about, that are invigorating, which I think is a result of connection. I don't think you can be in those relationships if you're not in connection with yourself. People aren't in inspiring, loving, supportive relationships if they're— if they don't have a certain amount of self-connection as well. And so this reduces, you know, heart disease. It's like, makes you live longer. This makes you happier.

This—

it doesn't particularly say that you're going to be wildly financially successful, but it also says that you have a successful life in whatever terms you want that success to look like. And so it's the number one indicator of like a long life and happiness. Is this, these qualities of relationship, this, these high-quality relationships.

Yeah. This reminds me of some other, some other studies that went into, you know, populations in certain parts of Italy, in certain parts of some parts of the US, and they compared a whole bunch of variables including diet, exercise, health, and they found places in, you know, like France and Italy where they were eating poorly by certain standards. I mean, you could say that standards are different for different people, but the factor that they found that was most important was that these were communities that were living in multigenerational households and having a lot of family around them and community around them. And that, that was what they gleaned as the most important factor was the connection to a social fabric.

I've read the same stuff. And what I remember some of the studies showing that it wasn't just because there's multigenerational houses where they don't live long.

Yeah, right.

It's the one where there's these healthy relationships where people feel like a sense of belonging to the community. And they, a sense of connection. Again, see, it's not, I'm just with the community. It's, I feel in connection with the community. Yeah. And there was even one in the United States. I think it was like Pennsylvania. They were like, why is everybody living so long here? And they, that's the other thing that they found. Yeah. So, so that was another one. I was like, okay, so now I have some evidence and there's a whole bunch of psychological evidence once you start looking for it, like ACEs and all sorts of things that, point to this. ACEs are adverse childhood effects. And then—

Experiences.

Experiences, thank you. Got me. And then the final story was, we had this healthcare company that we were invested in, and there was a woman who was a CEO, and she was an excellent leader. And she was brought in to grow this company, but it was really a turnaround. She hadn't particularly done a turnaround before. And usually if you're working with somebody who's doing a turnaround and they're successful about it, one of the things they do is they just fire half or all the people. And, you know, within the first 6 months and kind of reestablish the business. And she didn't do that. What she did was establish connection. It was, you know, she had like surveys that went out weekly to people. She was constantly like connecting with the customers, connecting with the employees, making sure that people were happy. And, you know, I'd heard about that in things like Southwest Airlines where they, Back in the day, they would talk about employees first, customers second, shareholders third. If your employees feel that sense of connection with the company, then the customers will be happy. If the customers are happy, then the shareholders will be happy. It's how they formed that business. But to see it at work and to see the turnaround that happened and the inspiration that the people had and how much everybody liked working with her. And she did. She successfully, like, in 2 years, brought the company, you know, 5x the company or something like that. It was just a tremendous thing to watch her. And it was her number— she was more prioritized on that. You know, as a CEO, what you notice is you have to focus on like 2 or 3 things and the thought process is, "If I focus on these 2 or 3 things, everything else will work around it." And she was just maniacal on that sense of connection. And feeling connected and being connected herself. And it was just, it was amazing to watch that turnaround. So those were the 3 things where I just was like, oh, okay, so this is a tool that works and it doesn't just work as far as effectiveness, it works because it also creates happiness, it creates joy, it creates a long life. And then this realization happened, which is like, well, how much would I sell my connection for? Like, how much would I sell my ability to connect for? Like, you think about that question, it's ridiculously, it's like, first of all, bends the brain a bit, but like, how much would you sell your ability to connect with people for? Or let's say sell half of it. So it's not like you'd be zero, but you just, you could sell half of it. How much would you pay? How much would you want to get paid for that?

You mean to give up it, to give up that ability to connect and have somebody else walk away with it as a superpower and?

Yes, yeah, exactly. Half of your ability to connect, it's gonna, it's gonna add on top of my capacity to connect. How much is that worth to you? How much are you gonna charge me?

That is a mind-bending question. 'Cause I mean, I mean, maybe assuming that I know that I could rebuild my sense of connection, my ability to connect, then—

No, can't.

No, no, no.

That's permanent.

Then hell no. Like no amount of money. Because with half the ability to connect and infinite money, my life is still gonna be half or some, you know, logarithm weird curve more out of connection, then it doesn't matter how much money I have. And you could even replace that with other variables too, like give you the hottest wife or something, or the, you know, the most power. Yeah, it's like, well, if I'm out of connection and I have a lot of power, then that's not good for anybody and definitely not for myself because the dictator is just as trapped.

Yeah, that's right.

As everybody else.

Yeah, so that's exactly, and when I saw that, I was like, oh wow, like this is the most priceless thing. And what's interesting to me is I will often ask people that I'm coaching long-term, like what's the bottom line of your life? What's the bottom line? What's the thing that if you have that, and it's amazing how many people come to some version of connection. If you really think about like, okay, how do I know at the end of my life I feel like You know, if I have a lot of something at the end of my life, what's that something? And so we all know it inherently. We all know it inherently.

Or you just imagine the idea of, you know, heaven or like a lot of the way a lot of religions imagine heaven or just people would imagine, well, what would it, but what would it be like if I got everything that I ever wanted? And, you know, there'd be like maybe some golden streets and stuff, but it would basically just be my, family and friends surrounding me and being in harmony and peace and connection. And so this really points to what you were just saying with a lot of the people that you've, that you've asked this question of, that they sent— the responses tend to be some intermediate need or want that underlies all— underlying all of it is connection.

That's right. Yeah, they'll— they— it takes them a while to follow the train to the station, but eventually, yeah, they're like, oh yeah, it's some version of connection.

I wonder if that'd be true for all social mammals.

I wonder, well, yeah, all social mammals. Yeah, I wonder.

Social being the key.

Yeah, the keyword, right? Yeah, and it's also like, if you wanna work in a team, it's the number one thing as well, right? So it's like a team that doesn't feel connected to one another, doesn't have that sense of connection, is not gonna perform as well. They're gonna have trust issues, right? You have to have the trust for the connection. People who feel deeply connected have the trust and it's, if they're gonna be most effective. So all of it, all of it, it just, it all seems to come down to that. And it's this thing that you can feel anytime, anywhere. It's really just a noticing, a choice that you're making.

Yeah. So if all of this boils down to connection and not even just your work, but the way that we're talking about, you know, the core human need, that makes it for a really simple principle, as you mentioned, being the first principle, Connection. It's simple enough. You might as well repeat it 3 times and say connection, connection, connection.

I actually repeat it 3 times because you start with connection, you stay focused on connection, you end in connection. So it's a principle means that for me, it means you have to like, can I act on it? And so it's like, oh, things aren't going well, I focus on connection. If things aren't going well with my customers, I focus on connection. If things aren't going well with my marriage, I focus on connection. I start my interaction with connection. I end my interactions with connection. So that's why I have it as 3 times.

Which makes for a really good heuristic too, because in any moment you can be like, am I optimizing for being right or am I optimizing for connection? Am I trying to convince somebody or am I trying to connect with them? Am I trying to change myself or am I trying to be in connection with myself? Yes. Yeah.

That's it.

Okay, so let's assume our audience is somewhat sold and they're like, okay, okay, okay, connection, connection, connection, whatever.

I say to our audience, don't be sold. Do not be sold. Test it, test it. Go live your life. And every time you have a choice that's hard, choose connection and see what the hell happens. Don't trust me, do it.

Okay, great. How do we do that? How do we get into connection?

What does that look like?

Walking or does that mean text?

Don't ask me hard questions. Okay, go ahead, sorry. So how do you do that? So that's the weirdest thing is connection is almost the opposite of doing, right? It's more of a sense of being. I think there's lots of ways to be in connection. In the course, in the connection course, we talk about view. And those are hacks. Vulnerable, it puts me into a deeper sense of connection. If I'm impartial, if I can be with what is, that gives me a deeper sense of connection. If I can be with you in empathy, it gives me a deeper sense of connection, or myself in empathy. Wonder, awe, those things all help us get into connection. So there's those kinds of hacks that you can use, and there's also just a noticing that you're always connected. There's never been a moment in your life where you're not connected, right? Like, you depend on so much to survive. You— every thought that you've had is connected to some other part of the world influencing you, um, from the amount of omega-3. So to just— there's also just a noticing that can happen, and, and, and that's how it works in my system. It's just there's a choice in that moment? Oh, and then interact. And so that's my internal state of connection. My external state of connection view works really well, that vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder. And also, there's often a question of what is it that I, if I was in that shoe, that person's shoes, how is it that I would want to be interacted with? And the question is, how do I actually most deeply want to interact with that person? And usually if you mine those two wells, they become the same well. You'll start to see that the thing that I, how I wanna be, how I would wanna be treated and what is my truth, if you get down far enough, you'll get to the same thing. Meaning specifically, like I want the person to stop being an asshole, and they want, and if I were them, I would want me to just walk away. Eventually I'm gonna get down to, oh, I'm gonna say I'm hurt and I'm gonna be vulnerable. And they want to actually see that I care about them enough to be able to do that. So eventually you get down there.

Yeah, which is, that's an interesting point here because often we project that someone else If we were in their shoes and we imagine what they would want if we were them or what we'd want if we were them, we'll project what we would actually want, which might actually be some form of disempowerment or caretaking or something that we've conflated with connection or conflated with love. And so what you're speaking to is getting asymptotically closer and closer and closer to the core of what the actual connection is, which might not be stopping being an asshole. It might be owning. I would love that person to own their truth with me. Or I would, if I was this person, I would want to hear what I have to say, but in a way that is in connection and loving and owning my own shit.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's a triangulation piece there, which is not in the bad sense, not in the psychological triangulation sense of the word, but there's a triangulation piece that is, The Sufis had this great thing about the Golden Rule, and they would say, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I hope that person's not suicidal, because if they're suicidal, then they're gonna kill everybody. That's the thought process. And so there's a triangulation between do unto others as you would like others to do unto you, and what is my deepest truth? What is the thing that I feel most deeply in my own want or my own truth.

So how do you know if you're in connection with this truth?

Yeah, so there is a visceral feeling that tells you when you have a sense of connection, right? There's, and this is the weird part, is that it's like I said, a state that is beyond states. If you close your eyes right now and you feel a moment that you are sad and disconnected, and sad and connected. You can feel a moment when you were working, doing, working at your computer and you felt connected and working at your computer and felt disconnected. That's how you know.

This reminds me of the way that you talk about meditation where you can be meditating and enjoy it and being in connection with yourself, or you can be meditating and torturing yourself. And there's a difference. If you sit down to meditate, there's a way that it can be discomfort, discomfort can arise because there's just discomfort in your system and now you're connecting to it and you're allowing it to be felt and it moves. And that's how you tell, I guess, if it's connection, is that it moves without you having to move it. Yeah.

Yeah. It moves. And there's a feeling of expanse and there's a feeling of like beyond yourself that comes along with it. And then if you try to get there, if you're trying to get connected, if you're trying to get to expanse, if you're trying to get to movement, then you're out of connection 'cause you're not being with what is. You're trying to get it there. And this is part of like that practice of connection. There's a practice to it. And there's also a, so on one level, connection is always there and there's no practice required. On another level, there is this practice to it.

Yeah, I think this ties in a lot to the work that we do with the voice in the head and the internal conflict of when there's a part of us that we feel in conflict with, getting into connection with it is actually in some sense tracing that part's connection back to ourself. Like, oh, the part of me that's a perfectionist and judging me, how is it actually trying to take care of me and love me? And getting into connection with that part and seeing them connecting back to the same source.

Right. So if I'm thinking about it in a group context, like we have a group of people in this coaching thing that we're doing and And to me, how deep, real connection is built and constantly goes deeper and deeper and deeper is the following. We have some sort of tension. We allow that attention, that tension to be there. We embrace the difficulty in that. We work through it. We get back to love. We get back to a sense of safety, love, and then repeat. And so the more that you go through adversity together and get back to some way of feeling connected and loving and supportive of one another again, the more that connection happens in a group. And you can see this in soldiers who have been through really, really tough things and have trusted each other deeply. You can see that sense of connection build and it'll stay for a lifetime. Similarly with teams and where they've gone through really tough stuff and they've made it through, they feel like this deep sense of connection. It's no different internally. Internally, if I have the different parts of myself, if I embrace them, if I embrace the friction between that from my fear, the part of myself that's scared or the part of myself that's angry or the part of myself that's greedy, if I can be in that tension, embrace that intensity and get back to connection, get back to love, get back to supporting, the different parts of myself supporting, I become just a more connected being over time.

Yeah. It seems very importantly related to the, the podcast that we did on embracing intensity, you know, rather than creating intensity. Cuz I think it, it could be possible to interpret what you're saying as, oh yeah, you know, my, what my team and I need right now is to go through something really hard together. So, you know, like let's go through like green hell, like the military does. And you know, that does create really cohesive teams. And also, you know, like I had in my childhood a lot of times where like, I was taught to build character and then I carried from that a habit of putting myself through shit to build character. Right. When in reality, one, one of the things, one of the nuances in the, the call that we had this morning was that the tension will arise, the tension will already be there. And what I notice you doing in this work is just allowing the tension to be there. You're not trying to drag it up. You're not poking to bring it up unless it's, unless it's like right there at the surface already.

And I will say that. Being able to be in the tension without wanting it to go away. So it's just like we were saying on the call this morning, there's, um, it's like if you were to listen to a symphony with no connection— I mean, sorry, with no tension— you'd be like, eh, I don't want to listen. I don't want to watch a television show without tension. I don't want to have a course where there's no tension. It just takes all the life out of it. And as soon as you feel tension, or any of us feels tension, we want it to go away. So it's this really interesting phenomenon that we want it on the long run, but we don't want it on the short term. And so one of the great tricks of connection is to be able to be with tension in a connected way. How do I have that tension and still feel deeply connected with myself?

Yeah, so what makes it that we don't focus on connection as, like, if it's this effective, And it's this baked into our mammalian nervous system. What makes it that we lose the plot so frequently and end up going in some direction orthogonal to connection?

We get the idea that our happiness is in the future, I think mostly based out of fear, or our demise is in the future, but we get focused on the future, potentially the past, but mostly I think it's the future. And we're out there thinking, "Oh, okay, I can get happiness if I do X, Y, and Z," or "I can get connected if I do X, Y, and Z." If I'm famous, then everybody will love me. I have money, then I will feel safe. And so we're constantly sacrificing the connection of the moment for the idea that we're gonna have something in the future rather than thinking, oh, if I'm connected in the present, people are gonna want to be around me, want to support me, and everything I'm gonna want to achieve is gonna happen easier. My accomplishments are gonna happen easier because I have a community of support. And so we're constantly giving up out of fear sometimes, and you can be connected with your fear, which changes the way fear is. But through that kind of disconnected fear, through that, oh, in the future, then we lose track of connection. It can't be that simple.

Yeah, that's interesting. So something that I pulled from that is like, if you're holding your connection with yourself hostage or making it conditional over something happening in the future, then you can never actually have it.

That's right. Yeah, carrot on a stick.

You can't be connected with yourself if it's dependent on something that is not actually present with you right now already.

Yes.

Oh, interesting.

Right. And you see people do this all the time. I'll be there when I quit smoking. I'll be there when I have the money. I'll be there when so-and-so loves me. I'll be there when— Yeah, you're there right now. Hmm.

Yeah. Even if it means being there with the fear of your future happening or not happening or—

Yes.

Your past following you or all the things.

Yeah, you see it all the time. Like, especially in my line of work, there's, you know, people get everything that they wanted and they're still miserable. You see it all the time. They had this idea of what was gonna get them the thing.

They did 20 years of schooling and then another 20 years of career to have everything, the checklist, the husband, the money, the power, the notoriety, the everything, and they're like, "I'm fucking miserable." Yeah, ironically, I've found myself sometimes to be more miserable the more of what I think I want that I have, and then less miserable, more engaged, and more connected when I have less of what I want and I'm just living moment to moment because that's all that's available to me. You know, like the times that I was like traveling through Africa and like no money didn't know where my next, you know, whatever was gonna come from were actually some of the like golden moments of my life.

Yes, that's right. Yeah. There was a great billboard in, in LA that spoke to this at some point. They, they were basically saying, why is it that our best memories are when we're, when we're young and without money? It was a bank. It was a bank one. And, and speaking to that same thing, it's like there's a, There's a way in which when we start— one of the ways to get out of connection, like if you think about those times when you're 20, there's this deep sense of connection with life, with, oh my gosh, like food and the people around you. And then if you're in some sort of thing where you're constantly looking at the future, it's very hard to feel that sense of connection. You can do it. You can look at the future and feel that sense of connection, But it takes some doing.

Yeah. So another thing that's interesting here is that the way that we've been talking about connection is that it's all internal. It's something that is within your own agency, your own internal locus of control. And I think that a lot of times when people think about connection, it's sort of a two-way street, takes two to tango. And some might imagine that if someone wants to break connection with you, you can't stop that. And then the connection is lost and then that impacts you. And you're like, "Now I lost this connection." So I can't be as happy unless in the future I get it back. And then the conditional thing begins again.

Yes. Okay. There's two parts to that. The first one is that there's the locus of control being yourself. That's true to a point and then very not true to a point. And the, the not true to the point is where it's not where it's dependent on somebody else, but you can see that it's a gift. Like there's a deeper level of connection that occurs when there's surrender in you. And so to think that you're in the locus of control often makes it so that, so that you forget that you're here by the grace of God is a way to say it, but that, that you're here by the grace of the laws of physics and the universe and nature and existence. Yeah.

And that can even separate you from your reality.

That can as well. That's true. And Putting yourself in the center of control can separate you from your reality as well. So what's interesting is almost anything, those thoughts and almost anything can both put you out of connection and put you into connection depending on how you approach it. And the thing that you're saying is that's also very true is that you can't break connection with me. I have to agree to it. I have to agree to it. You can say, it just happened to me recently, had somebody who had been client who just did something that hurt. And we found out intentionally, you know, when we talked about it, you know, she did it to hurt me because whatever, the love was scary. The thing that was happening was scary for her. And the, like, it reminded her too much of like love that she felt where she got abused. And so it was like she was having this trauma response. And so she did this thing and I was like, I know you know that you're hurting me. I know you know that. And I'm just here to tell you at some point, I expressed some anger, I expressed sadness, I expressed hurt. And at some point I said, I'm not gonna let you stop me from feeling connected and love for you. I'm not gonna do that because that hurts me. So you're doing all this stuff, that's fine. And I'm not gonna stop loving you. I'm gonna stop doing business with you. 'Cause I'm not gonna get her, I'm not gonna allow that damage to be done again, but I'm not gonna stop loving you. And, you know, that was a huge event for her. Now, sometimes people are gone by the time, you can't say that to them. They've just decided, we're outta here.

Yeah, I could imagine even in like romantic context that that might even sound a little stalkery. Like, okay, yeah, you can leave me, but you can't stop me from loving you. I'll be loving you from over here. Just, you know, every time you think about me, remember that I'm over here. Loving you.

If you say it like that, if you say it like that, that is kind of creepy.

Yeah. But I mean, that's, that's also the way some people might take this, you know, if that, if that's the energy.

That's true. Yeah. And yes, they might. They're going to take your, your connection in lots of different ways. There's going to be lots of projection onto it. Some, some people will think it's needy, I'm sure, and some people will think it's stalkery or whatever. But the But that's their reaction to being their own presence and their own love. It's their own sense of connection. 'Cause what you'll notice is that any person has kind of the capacity to get to a certain level of connection, and then that's kind of their, "Okay, now it's getting more intense. Now I'm gonna lift up. I'm gonna go get into the phone. I'm gonna go watch television. I'm gonna go do heroin," whatever it is. There's some kind of some level of it that is, within their normal range, and then they're gonna react to it. And that's why it can't depend on anybody else. It's really about— and it can be all very silent. For this particular case, it was really important for me to say it because of the relationship that we had. But there's other cases— I'm in a grocery store, I see somebody, I feel like a deep sense of connection. I don't have to say anything about it. You know, I often walk around the world feeling like a tremendous amount of love for people I don't know. And I'm not like walking around going, "I love you, I love you, I love you." It's not happening.

Yeah, it's like metta meditation. Nobody in the world, Kim Jong-un can't stop you from doing a metta meditation in which you are sending love to all beings. And that's your own internal experience. And that is beneficial for you and has impact on all those that you have contact with in some sense due to the impact on your consciousness. And nobody can stop you from doing it and you're not crossing any boundaries.

Right. I mean, it's kind of, that's a part of all religion. I mean, that's a very Christian ideal too, right? It's like loving, love thy neighbor. There is a freedom to it. Like we somehow think that freedom comes from having a set of ideas that are right and that we never have to leave. And what I've noticed is the truth to freedom is far more about being able to feel and love everything, feel and be connected to everything.

Which would include falling out of connection in the most ungraceful ways. So let's say, let's say somebody leaves me, I drop out of connection with them, I leave in a rage, I go do the heroin, I get a bunch of self-criticism and— Yes. The spiral. How do you— I mean, how do you get back into connection from there? And I know I'm walking into a trap with that question with you.

Yeah, I don't— so this is kind of where grace and surrender come into play, meaning that, um, on some level, it's not until you think about that, I want to be back in connection, not until connection presents itself that you remember that you're even able to. So if you're completely non-present, there's no way. But as soon as you think, oh, I could be present again, then presence has already occurred. Then connection has already occurred. As soon as you think, oh, I wanna be in connection. So there's a way in which connection is always there and it's always available. And if you start trying to get it, you push it away. And so that question, I always answer it with the, How do you drop a hot frying pan? Some version of how do you drop a hot frying pan? It's, it's, there are things that you can do. You can meditate, you can get in your body, you can exercise, you can eat healthy foods, you can, and those all will help. You know, they'll all point to it for you. You can do Metta meditation, you can pray, you can do community acts of service. There are 1,000 things you can do. And on some level, you also need to see that it's always there and always available, 'cause the effort takes you away from it.

So then once you're back in it, once you recognize that it is something that is there all the time, then what do you do?

Then the best thing is gratitude, is just to be thankful for it. That's the easiest thing, is to be, even right now, if you feel into this moment, you can feel your connection. It's always there and you can be grateful for it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. That was my— that was the kindergarten teacher for my daughters used to always say, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

This kind of reminds me of a question that I've heard posed that it was like assigned to some university students to just throughout the day ask themselves, am I conscious? And then they did some studies on them after they had that practice. And it was just like, asking yourself the question increased the sense of feeling conscious in the moment or being aware and less on autopilot. And it sounds very similar here where it's just, oh, am I noticing that connection is a thing? And once you've noticed it, rather than trying to judge it and try to figure out how you can improve it or what's wrong with it or what's missing, just noticing, oh, Oh, there's my desire for connection. And then feel gratitude for it and let that deepen it and then see what happens from there.

Yeah. Even the desire for connection is a form of connection. Hmm. Beautifully said. Yeah.

Beautiful.

Awesome. Brett, what a pleasure. What a pleasure again for both of our times together today.

Yeah. I love this one.

Yeah, me too. All right.

All right.

Talk to you soon.

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