How to Build a Great Support System

What's scary about having a really good support system?

How does it help to watch somebody go through the transformation you want to go through before you go through it?

How do you know you're ready to teach something in your support system?

What makes you think you could ever be ready to teach anything?

All right, welcome back to The Art of Accomplishment, everybody. I am here with Joe Hudson. I'm Brett Kistler. And today we're gonna talk about how to build a great support system. In the world of extreme sports, people live and die by who they keep around them, by who they choose to have as their support system.

The way you said that is awesome because I was like, "Live and die?" It was like, "Oh no, he's actually talking about living and dying." Yeah, no, I mean literally. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, the people who are with you when you're about to do something extremely dangerous are the ones that you're looking to for assessing the safety of what you're about to do, for assessing risks. They're the ones whose, you know, fears or ego drives are going to be ping-ponging off of yours and interacting with your psychology. And so this is true for extreme sports, but I've also seen this in business and in relationships. A marriage, having a support system is a very different experience than a marriage having no support system or in isolation.

That's right, yeah. So tell me what, like, what was your experience in extreme sports about creating a support system? How did that go for you? How did it start? How did it end?

Yeah, the way it started was just who was nearby. For example, I started BASE jumping in Northeast Ohio. And so there were maybe, 6 to 10 BASE jumpers in maybe a 6-hour drive from me at that time. So the support system was who was around, who was available. And luckily there were people with a reasonable amount of experience to learn from, but there were also some other, I'd say peers, people who just started jumping when I started jumping. And so by default, it was sort of the de facto support system. You know, the culture around it at that time was, You find somebody who's a BASE jumper, you make friends with them, and maybe you bring them a case of beer, and in exchange for them to bring you to an object where they're gonna jump, and then you do the getaway driving, and then you learn a little bit that way.

Right, right.

And then over time, they might show you how they're packing their parachute, and you learn a little bit about packing a BASE jumping parachute.

Yeah.

And eventually I found an instructor who I flew out to Idaho and paid, got a formal instruction, which at that time, it was the first time there was any kind of real formal instruction. It was still a very much apprenticeship-based journey. But over time, it became about who are my friends that I enjoy hanging around with, jumping with? And then over time that started to transform into not just who do I enjoy being around, but who do I feel like I am at my best? As a jumper? And who am I around who brings out the best decision-making in me? Who can I have in my group who's most likely to say the thing that breaks the groupthink?

Yeah.

And who's most likely to challenge me and challenge me in a way that I can receive?

Yeah, yeah.

And who can I challenge and will receive it so that we can have the shared learning and not me have to shut my mouth to be accepted in a group when there's something that I see that's dangerous?

Everything you just said is exactly the things that you're looking for when you're thinking about creating your own support system in whatever you're doing, whether it's a support system in marriages, whether it's a support system in a business, whether it's support system in leadership, whether it's a support system in art. It's amazing how you just tracked each of the points that are incredibly important. And one of the things that's there that is hidden for a lot of people is what you said happens naturally in sports, which is you're accountable to each other. So imagine a sports team that everybody felt accountable for their performance to the team, or everybody felt accountable to the performance to the coach. You know, the one that feels accountable to the team is gonna do a lot better. And yet in business, for instance, oftentimes what is supposed to be our support system is just other employees and we all feel accountable to the coach, right? We just feel accountable to the boss. So it's this amazing thing when the group dynamic is deeply empowered and that support system feels deeply empowered. Everybody's responsible for themselves, and yet you know that you're there for each other the way it is in a sports team. That's when you have like an amazing support network. And when it becomes that it's about one person, then the support system goes away completely. It becomes— more of a hierarchy or it's more of an accountability process, but the support feeling of it really goes away. And so if you look at the great support networks, whether they are like YPO, which is Young Presidents Organization, or the great art communities that spawned Gauguin and Van Gogh, if you look at those communities, it is people being accountable to themselves but being supportive of one another. And it's such a critical piece to creating a great support network. Support system.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And something that's interesting about that is that everybody listening probably has some form of support system in existence right now, right? And you can have implicitly the support system that's there for you, or you can explicitly, with intention, curate and build and create a support system.

Yeah.

And so I'm curious to talk about How can somebody assess the support systems that are available in their world right now?

The most important thing that I'm aware of is being conscious of the purpose of the support system. So is this support system all designed to help us have great careers? Or is this support system designed to help us all become great parents? So in my world, When Tara and I, it wasn't quite when we got first married, but as soon as we started having kids, we joined a couples gathering. That couples gathering has been going on for 18 and a half, 19 years now. We meet every quarter or something. And, but all of our intention is like, how do we talk about being couples and talk about being parents? Needing that, that sense of purpose is the first thing to be conscious about it. Right now, most people have their support network, but they don't have a shared sense of purpose. So for instance, we're creating this thing called The Council, which is all about leaders wanting to be great leaders, but not just, I wanna be a great leader, it's I wanna be a leader in a way that helps me transform, helps me on my journey of self-development. I wanna be a leader in a way that empowers other people. I wanna be a leader that helps people be more human, not less human by telling them to put half of their self in the door and not bring it into work. I want to be a leader that, people feel like they're becoming better people because they're in a team that I'm leading. That's the purpose of that group. I don't care if Elon Musk wanted to join that group, unless he had that purpose, he shouldn't be in the group. The second stage is really not just defining the purpose, but making sure that is the filter for anybody who comes into the group.

Yeah, which is an interesting question to look at where, where are there support systems in your life? What is the implied purpose?

Yeah.

In jumping, there were groups that I was with, and the implied purpose of the group was to explore to the farthest edges of the world and do the weirdest things. There were other groups where the implied purpose was to get well known and be seen as the most skilled and maybe get famous. And there are others who the implied purpose was, how can we be there for each other? And how can we use this sport as a vehicle for getting into deeper relationship with one another and ourselves and the world and cultivate love?

Yeah, that's so beautifully expressed because that brought into consciousness can change everything about your life. But right now, like if I think about the support systems I'm in, I have One for being a couple, being a parent. That's a designed one. I have one for this kind of business where there's 21 of us who come together. They're all content creators of some sort, do courses of some sort, where we're vulnerable about our businesses. In that one, everybody wants to be of service to humanity. Nobody is involved in that that isn't wanting to make people's lives better. So if I think about that, and then I have a support system that's all about community of practice, which is something that we do in our business all the time. And what's amazing is a whole bunch of things that you don't think would be true about them are true about them, meaning they work better if people are at different stages of development. Somebody who's earlier in the journey, someone who's later in the journey, we learn better when that's the case than if it's all super experts. I've tried to create communities of practice full of a whole bunch of people who are awakening teachers. It was a shit show. So it just— it seems to work better when there's this diversity, diversity in mindset. Like, when we're creating a community of practice, even in a single course, like the in-person Groundbreakers that we do, it's: do we have masculine energy, feminine energy? Do we have emotional processors, intellectual processors? Do we have people who understand their energetic Do we have people who are more auditory, more visual? We're looking for that kind of diversification because it makes such a huge difference. Because you see things differently, you learn different things from each other. You have different perspectives on the journey. And that's actually what's useful. As long as everybody treats each other like peers, right? It can't be, I'm better than you. And there's like one person who's leading. That support system. There might be some leadership, don't get me wrong, or the leadership is best if it changes hands. Oh, I'm taking this on, they lead for a while. I'm taking this on and I lead for a while. That hierarchy being gone, very effective.

So something that's really interesting here is we've talked about having a unified purpose.

Yeah.

But also having maximum diversity.

Yes.

And that's fascinating to me 'cause, you know, when I started skydiving, my very first coach gave me a really good advice. He was like, if you wanna get really good at jumping, find the best skydivers that you can and jump with them all the time. That's it. But also that might not get me really good at dealing with the grief of a friend's death. And there might be a lot of overlap there. But so if I'm looking at where I want to go in life, I can build a support system around a particular purpose, but where I want to go in life is ultimately in the direction of some form of rounded, human individual, rounded life. And so I wanna build a support system that has people who represent and can reflect and mirror different aspects of myself that I wanna develop and challenge me in those different ways.

Yeah, so what's really interesting about that is, let's say you were completely dedicated to become the best skydiver. And so that was the support system was just great skydivers. And you had nobody in there who knew how to grieve. Nobody who'd handled death well, and occasionally in your sport, people died. I mean, I remember when I met you and you were mourning like this long list of people who had died. Well, if you're not mourning the death of those people, it's gonna be really hard to become the best. You're gonna have all sorts of psychological blocks when you get up on that thing. There's all sorts of fears, unknown and known, that are fucking with your psyche when you're about to take your jump. You have the purpose, but then within that, you really want that diversification because that diversification of perspective is what's gonna catch all the things that you don't see. Yeah. And the other thing that you said, which I think is just so critical, is that challenge. Can you challenge and be challenged in a way that you take it not personally in that group, in that support group? And is there explicit understanding of when challenge is welcome and when it is not? So for instance, I was in a men's group for 15 years, support group, And we just didn't give advice unless asked for. Asked for, boom, you would get it. Otherwise, you did not get it. I assume it was somewhat explicit also when you're jumping off of a tower. It's like, yeah, it's explicit. If you say something doesn't feel safe, you say it. You don't say something to somebody right as they're about to jump like, "Oh, be careful," like I promise you, or whatever that thing is.

Sometimes you do that just to fuck with them. Watch out for your bridle!

Ouch.

Sometimes an appropriate amount of needling is actually a really good aspect of a support group.

Anybody who's been taught by me knows that I agree with that. Yeah, so that kind of explicit, how are we giving feedback and that agreement, whether it's implicit or explicit, but that it's known, I think is really important. For any kind of support group.

Yeah, and I can imagine a pitfall can occur, especially when you don't have the explicit curation of a support group.

Yes.

That you can have a support group that's an echo chamber. You know, you might have a business support group, and no one in there is going to challenge you on your balance of the time and energy you're spending with your family, for example. Maybe that's what's not happening in your support group. Right. And so you have a support group that is, challenging you, that is reflecting and mirroring, and you're growing a lot, but you're growing in a narrow direction.

Yeah.

There's something that you're missing.

Yeah.

And so that might not mean that that entire support group needs to change. Let's say you have a council of leaders.

Yeah.

But you might also have, like you said, a men's group. I have a men's group.

Right.

You might have a couples group. You can have more than one support group, each of them having a purpose. That is important in your life.

Yeah, it is interesting you say that. So last night I was hanging out with a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and they had just been accepted to this very prestigious entrepreneur hacking house thing and they got money and they were all doing their thing. And the whole setup was creating quite a bit of anxiety in all of them. And it was making them very inefficient, which is often something that you see in venture capital is like a lot of anxiety to make the deadline and to rush and to get it done quickly, which can be productive and can be very counterproductive. They were all there supporting each other on many, many things, supporting each other on the tech, supporting each other on leadership, but they were not supporting each other on dealing with the anxiety. And it was amazing because as soon as it got brought up, you just saw everybody, and as soon as they got that support, it was like water on a dry sponge. It was like, whoa, this is what I need to look up and not believe. This false sense of urgency.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's a very interesting thing to have different communities of support so that you can get a well-rounded perspective in your own life. It's not just one thing.

So you mentioned how important it is that the people in your support group are peers.

Yeah.

And obviously that's not always the case. Some people have more experience than you in some aspects and others have less. And there's something important about being able to receive teachings, give teachings, share your experience. See someone go through what you're about to go through shortly before you go through it.

Yeah.

And along the lines of find the best person that you could skydive with and skydive with them, building a support group can become a form of social climbing. Like, I wanna find who's gonna be the famous artists in Florence in the Enlightenment era and become friends with them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's a strategy that works. I've used it. And also there's a way that that can create a sense of hierarchy. And so I'm curious, how do you build a support system in your world without making it into some sort of social climb or creating an implicit hierarchy where I'm only gonna get support from people that I admire in certain ways and find myself in an imbalance?

Just realize how a support system works and you won't do it. Meaning, so if you look at little kids hang out and one of them learns something, the first thing they're gonna do is teach some other kid that thing. And by teaching them, they integrate and they learn it better. As a matter of fact, everybody listening to this podcast has learned something and immediately wants to go teach somebody the thing that they just learned. Everybody has done it. So great, you have a support system where you never get to teach anybody anything. How's that gonna work for you? That doesn't make any damn sense, right? And so that's one perspective on it. The other perspective on it is that I did this thing called L12, which was, about different leaders getting together, but they weren't all CEOs. So there was CEOs of very young companies, there was VPs of very big companies, there were CEOs of very big companies, all in this group of 12 people. And the young CEO had perspective that the old CEO of the bigger company needed. The vice president of a massive Fortune 100 company had perspective that was really useful for the young CEO. The common purpose is important, but the span of experience is what really is useful.

Yeah, and the span of role in that case too.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I imagine that in your parenting and couples group, there's also a lot that comes out about being sons and daughters of parents. You know, a lot of your own parent stuff comes out, I'm sure.

Correct. And theirs. And we also were oddly very diversified as well, just as far as where we live, what kind of lifestyle we're living, what kind of sexual lifestyle we're living. Like, and that was luck. That wasn't conscious. But it's been so useful to see, oh, they raised their kid very different. They had one kid. We had two kids. They had four kids. You know, they have an open relationship. We have a closed relationship. What does that do? It allows you to see what's really important. They've been around for 25 years with an open relationship. Holy crap. Like that, whoa. And they're happily married.

Yeah.

Okay, so what's really important? It just gives you that perspective.

Yeah, it questions all the assumptions. You see examples that are total counterexamples to your own hypothesis. And you're like, okay, there's definitely something that I've been missing in my view. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. And it allows you to really focus on the key leverage points of what's working. I remember this moment, I was teaching one of my first courses and we were doing anger release. And I was just having a hard time with this very stuck, angry, like angry, but very stuck in their anger. And I was just failing. And this person who had just learned it from me walked over and helped them get to their anger in like 10 seconds. I was like, what the fuck? I just taught you and you're teaching them better than I can teach them. And it's something that I learned is oftentimes the best teacher is a person who's just gone through it. I had gone through something very similar, but it was whatever it was, 10, 15 years before that. It wasn't fresh in my system. I hadn't just made the mistake. I hadn't just overcome something. And so that's also just a really, really useful thing about having diversification and not have it be a hierarchy. And that's the thing is if you are social climbing, you're really not getting the support system that is most useful for you.

Yeah, there's something resonant with the concept of like a multi-generational family living together.

Yeah.

Where you have people who have been there, people who are going to be there, people who are in the midst of it. On different levels in different ways.

Yeah, exactly. And there's also just a particular reward, meaning, I think it was Erik Erikson, learned from Freud. And he talks about how when somebody hits about 50 or 60, one of the things that they do for fulfillment is to give back. And so there's something very, very useful. It's like your legacy or it's your, that mentorship is an incredibly useful thing for your own sense of fulfillment. And you're not gonna get it if there's nobody in the group that allows that.

So I wanna get a little bit concrete on how somebody who's listening right now can further develop, build their support system. And one critical piece is how do you approach somebody? How do you take something that is implicit in your world? Like I have this support from these people and I've noticed that I'm missing this. Maybe this person in my life might enter the support system. What are some ways that you might approach such a person or structure that support in a way that is not creating a hierarchy or a sense of obligation, but is an invitation?

Yeah, I mean, there's the direct way and there's the indirect way. Like right now, my support system in being a, just being a man, is hiking with this group of guys every, Friday, we do this night hike. And that one is, do we like you? Do you have the right consciousness? Like, the implied thing is that we're gonna laugh and express our truth on this hike. Like, it's going to be ridiculous and fun. And all that requires is, hey, you want to hike with us? And then if it's somebody that ends up fitting, and great. But if it's something like a business, if it's something like creating your own personal board of directors, if it's something that is a community practice, a sangha, if you will, then I think it's really important to be explicit directly with what you want. I want a group of people who can support each other like this. I want a group of people who can be there for each other and challenge each other, but do it with an open heart. I want people who know how to get back to unconditional love. And they know that that's their responsibility. They're not holding each other responsible for their capacity to be in unconditional love. I want people who know that leadership is a way that they can work on themselves, that leadership is something that is a gift to the world and a gift to yourself, and it doesn't require you to burn out. So some sort of vision of what it is that you want, I think is really critical to be very explicit about. It's gonna feel awkward, that's because you're not completely okay with it yet. Right? So the more you're okay with it, the easier it is to say it. The easier it is to say it, the more likely you're gonna find the people who want to join you in that. And so I think that's a really important thing. And then the next important thing is to have a really clear set of rules or boundaries or ways of engaging so that everybody can teach, everybody can learn, everybody can feel supported. It doesn't feel like resentment is building. There's givers and takers, that whole thing, that it's a very flat experience instead of a hierarchical experience. All those things are critical. And just having the agreements of how you interact with each other.

There's a little snippet you said, like, you might not be okay with it yet. So I'm curious, what are the things that get in the way of us allowing a support system to be there for us or seeing what's available to us?

Yeah.

And how can we bring those to the surface and work through those so that we can actually welcome a support system before we even—

Yeah, one of the scariest things is you're gonna be seen. We might want that on one level, but it scares us on another level because the way we judge ourselves is gonna be seen, the way that we criticize ourselves is gonna be seen. So the way that we are short, We have shortcomings, it's all gonna be seen. So that's one of the things that can be really scary about it. The other thing that can be scary about it is the identity dissolves in groups in a way that you might identify as a person who wants to become a great artist, but it's very hard to shift that identity to the one who is the great artist. It might be very easy to have the identity of, "I don't really care that much," and be scary to get to the identity of, No, I really care. I want to be one of the best, whatever, recording artists in the world. So that change of perspective and the way that people challenge you to change that perspective in a support group can be incredibly scary.

Yeah.

And then the accountability can also be scary, right? Because I'm the person who wants to be this, but I'm actually the person who criticizes myself for not getting there. Now I'm in a support group and it's— everyone's like, hey, no, we get there. This is what we do. Make excuses or whatever that is. And all of that can be incredibly challenging.

Yeah, another one that occurs to me now is the challenge of letting go of hierarchy. If we're used to putting somebody on a pedestal or putting somebody else below us, and it's gonna be really hard for us to really create a support structure.

Yeah.

Because those relationships are gonna be some form of transactional or some form of one-sided or a particular shape that won't really allow for the full breadth of a peer support relationship.

Yeah, also power struggles, one too, and a whole bunch of other things, which is why the agreements are so important. So if you don't have a series of principles or agreements of this is how we interact in the support group, what happens is that somebody will feel uncomfortable because they're, who the fuck's in charge? And then somebody will try to be in charge and that won't work. So if you have, these are agreements and that's what's in charge. And then you don't have to worry about who's in charge anymore. And so there's that part of it also that's really critical. In my mind anyways, the last thing to say about it is that I guarantee you I wouldn't be where I am in my life without my support systems, right? So you might be dead without yours. Yeah, yeah, definitely, right? I know that like it was the men's group and the tussle that happened in the men's group. And it was, it's that couples group that I'm still a part of. And it's the community of practice that allowed me to have the life that I had, that allowed this like level of happiness that I get to exist in. And there's something about that, which like there's a humility and a gratitude, which is nice. But what's even nicer about it is to realize that like it's not fucking about you. You know, like you're part of something that's greater and it's a gift and it's a blessing. And rather than I have done this thing, right? So it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition of I'm gonna create my support group only for my support group to create me. And that second part, there's a relief because what I noticed most people are doing in the world and what I used to do is like, what do I have to do to fix it? What do I have to do? I, what do I, I, I, I, I, I. And then when there's this support group and you look up and you're still thinking I, I, I, I, but you're looking around and you go, yeah, except it never would have happened without them. And there's some sort of ease and oh, it's like, it's not all dependent on me, that there's a gift to this. To me, that's the biggest blessing.

Yeah. In the way that we are a product of our environment, you know, it's been said that you become something like the average of the 5 people you're closest to. And there's something self-compassionate in that recognition where whatever it is that I could have an ego about, about myself is actually a product of my environment as much as it is a product of any intention to myself. And so when I'm deciding where I wanna go in life, when I'm considering who I wanna be or what qualities I wanna explore in myself, I can try to create those qualities from within me and fight the world until I'm like, Yeah, I've sharpened that skill.

Yeah.

Or I can just create the environment that will naturally bring that aspect further into the light for me.

So I have this great experiment that I run with people that exactly touches on this. So I'll do it with the whole audience right now. So close your eyes for a minute and imagine you're on an island and you're stuck on that island. You got all the food, everything you need to be comfortable. But you don't get to leave that island. And on this island are 12 saints. And these 12 saints, they're fully human, but they all just know how to unconditionally love you and unconditionally love themselves. They have boundaries, they say what they want, et cetera, but there's just that unconditional love. Hmm. 10 years later, Who are you after living there? As soon as you see that, you're like, oh, I would be like them. And that tells you how important it is, this community of practice.

Yeah, I thought you were going to run me through The Lord of the Flies. Missed the opportunity.

Grrr! Awesome, Brett. Thank you. Thanks for a great podcast.

Yeah, thanks, Joe.

Yeah.

Thanks, everybody, for listening. Remember to subscribe. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. This episode was edited by Reasonable Volume. Munyi Kelly is our production coordinator. Thanks, everybody.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. That feels good.

Yeah, cool.