Humility

We can all appreciate when a person shows deep humility. We've also seen how often humility gets invoked as a way to control people, to virtue signal, or to lay low when the mud's flying. How can we tell the difference between true humility and false modesty? And what does it look like to be humble while fully expressing ourselves? Is there even a difference? 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. Last week I asked listeners to share their questions about humility and just ask us anything that they wanted on Twitter or in our Circle community. And so today Joe and I are going to talk for a little bit about humility and then dive into some of those questions. How's that sound, Joe?

Sounds good, let's do it.

Excellent. All right, well, let's just get straight into it then. So, okay, so let's just start by defining, defining our terms again. And, uh, what is humility?

Oh, ah, that's like the one, one of the more tricky ones. That's one of the more tricky ones to define. One of the quotes I loved about humility that I listened to recently, which was on All Things, a show on on Apple called, I think Ted Lasso is the name of the show. And at some point, one of the characters says, "Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." And that's not exactly perfect in my mind, but it's a very pithy way to say it, which is great. To me, what humility is, is that you're not taking The world personally. I think that's a great way to define. You could probably, like, the more your ego has died, probably, is another way to say the more humble you are. I think that the difficulty that people have is that our society has defined the ego as somebody who's like, I'm so great, I'm so awesome, you guys suck. Somebody who's arrogant. It's like, he's got a big ego, he's got an ego. Is the same as saying somebody's arrogant nowadays. And for me, the definition of ego is really any self-definition that you take personally. So if you're like, I'm no good, that's as much ego as I'm the best. Both of them are very limiting. Both of those, both of those two things, um, take you away from who you actually are. Both of them are, are, uh, ways that you will It's their identities that you will defend, whether subconsciously or consciously. And so to me, humility is really where you stop defending yourself. Humility is when you see that there is nothing to defend, when you don't take it personally, when you don't take life personally, so to speak. And the weird thing about that is that the more you're not taking life personally, in a weird way, you become more intimate with it. So the more that you're not like, oh, that, that hurt, that offended, that did I need to defend, um, the more intimate you actually become with life, the more you're, you're meeting life as it is, and you're— the more you are not fighting the moment. And so to me, that's humility.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And one of, one of the things that kind of brought this topic up for me was kind of a recognition— a lot of what you've spoken to here is like what is not present when we're humble, which is like we're not taking shit personally. We don't have some identity that we're defending. And what is present that you were just kind of alluding to there is that there's sort of an awe. There's sort of a wonder of what, what is it that we are like, who, who is it that we're going to be in this moment? We just don't know. And if we just don't know it, then we get to discover it. And that's, that's a very different stance than having a self-concept that is whether it is the traditionally egoic self-concept that society sees, or if it's the 'I am small, I need to be small' kind of belief.

Yeah, I think that the other thing is that when I mean intimacy, there is some awe in that as well. There's also like you're feeling everything, like you— like there's an intimacy in the fact that I'm actually in touch with— I am touching life in a weird way. And the thing about the way society looks at you is they can look at a very humble person as arrogant. Like, I'm sure in the halls of British power when Gandhi existed, that there's people like, that arrogant little blah, blah, blah, diaper wearer. I'm sure that was said, thinking that he can take on the British Empire, that like, what arrogance. And, and there's a quote that I love that says, if you— like, one of the most arrogant things you can say is I'm humble, and one of the most humble things you can say is I'm arrogant. And, and, and there is something, something else happens with humility where you can see that you're arrogant, you can see that you're an asshole, you can see that you're, you're— you, you don't see things clearly, you can see that you're incapable, you can see But that doesn't mean that you then act incapable or you act like an asshole. It actually makes you more capable. It makes you less of an asshole when you can see those things. And that's also a part of what humility does is because you're not defending it to the outside world, you're also not defending it to yourself. So you can see how there's a part of you that could become a murderer or become a dictator or become an asshole or whatever the thing. Yeah, it's, it's, it's like Carl Jung said around the darkness. It's like you can't be denying your darkness. There's actually a deep acceptance and love in your humility. There's a love for the thing that you would defend. And so there's a love for the darkness which actually dissipates the darkness, which is very strange, but that's, that's how it works. It's like to be able to love the fact that you're an asshole changes the fact that you're an asshole. Yeah.

Yeah. So in, in the humility of being able to say I'm arrogant, I'm not defining myself as the opposite of arrogant, and I'm able to see the truth in the statement that I'm arrogant without then defining myself by that.

Correct. Right, right. By not then going, oh, now I'm arrogant. Yes, exactly. And not take it personally. And not— and not— it's like just less— humility is less of an identity. There's just less identity.

Yeah, beautiful. So, so briefly, before we get into these questions, what is— what is humility not? What is— what— unless we've covered that already.

Humility is not defining yourself as humble. Humility is, is, um, not making yourself small. Humility is not trying to be caretaking for others in a way to avoid conflict. Humility is not necessarily giving your life to service, frankly. I know people, like I remember my grandmother, lovely lady in so many ways, but man, she was so defined by all the service that she did. She would brag about it to her friends. Oh, I did this service, I did that service. It's like, that's not, that's not humility, even though there was service there and the service felt good. But she was so deeply defined by it, and she would so deeply defend it if you were to challenge that aspect of her. So it's, it's a lot of what society calls humble is actually not humble. What it is is like conflict avoidant often, or caretakey, or, you know, or codependent is often, or, or making yourself small. And that's not what humility is. And you can see those people will defend oftentimes with guilt or passive aggression or stuff like that, and, and while calling themselves humble. Yeah.

And what, and what's wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing.

We all, we all, we all have our identity that we're all, you know, defending from time to time. So there's nothing wrong with it. To make it wrong would then be another level of identity that you have to get through. There's nothing wrong with it. The only thing I can say is it's painful. The only thing, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't give you a direct connection with yourself. It doesn't it doesn't have a sense of freedom to it. It doesn't fill your heart. It doesn't, like, it doesn't allow you to feel joy. All those things. But it's not— it's absolutely not wrong. It's, it's human.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the reasons why I ask it is just that a lot of the things that we talk about can be, can be weaponized if we're using it to avoid our own feelings and manage others. And this could just be another way of doing that. Um, and so, yeah, kind of the, the invitation here is anywhere we notice that we're defending something or we have an identity that we're holding onto here, or that we're taking shit personally, is just some new way that we get to explore our own deeper freedom.

Yeah.

And with that, yeah.

In fact, if you start to weaponize, it means you have to have been defending something. Like, like, you could take this and say, ah, right, like, if you— I— it— you can't weaponize this without starting to identify as humble. You can't be oppressed by the definition that I just gave, and you can't, like, feel bad about yourself by the definition that I just gave unless you also are identifying with something. So, so even the idea of, like, oh, I'm shitty because X, Y, and Z That isn't humility. I am X, Y, and Z. That's true about me, and I can love that. That's humility. I'm a horrible person because I did X, Y, and Z. That's not humility. That's like you're still thinking about yourself a shit ton, and you're still heavily defined, and you're still defending that because that shame is locking it in place. And anything that locks it in place is a form of defense.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

All right. Well, with that, I'd love to dive into some of the questions that we received from listeners.

Okay.

So our first question is from Pavel. Hey, Pavel.

Yeah. Hey, Pavel.

Pavel asks, how are impartiality and humility different?

Um, impartiality is a symptom of humility, and it also— if you practice impartiality, it creates humility. But, um, just being impartial isn't particularly a full— it isn't non-defensive in, in any— in many other ways. So If you're impartial, what you're doing is you're allowing life to unfold in a way, or you're allowing other people and yourself to unfold in such a way that you're not resisting it. And so that, that is a form of non-defense. It, uh, it allows people to come to you and, uh, be more intimate with you, be more transparent with you because they don't feel judged or managed. And humility in general creates that around you as well. However, just being impartial doesn't mean you can't be defensive in other ways, doesn't mean that you can't attack in other ways. And so I would say impartiality is a byproduct and a good practice to get to humility, but it is not the same thing.

Hmm. All right. Thank you, Pavel. And our next question comes from Lucy. Lucy asks, "How do humility and disempowerment get confused?" Yeah, so they get confused.

Disempowerment gets confused with humility because people are actually just being conflict avoidant or they're being codependent, which means that they're trying to make somebody else happy so that they don't get attacked or they don't get in trouble. That's generally what's happening there. If you take somebody like Martin Luther King, for instance, and like there's a huge amount of humility to do what he has to do, to be attacked all the time on all levels, apparently to the point of being shot, and yet still do what's true for him and be non-defendant in it, nonviolent in it, non-attack-back in it, right? To do that requires a lot of humility. He wasn't avoiding conflict and he wasn't saying, "Oh, you know what? It would just be humble for us to let the white man do what he wants with us," or, "It would just be humble for me to just not create a scene here," or, "How do I know what America really needs? That's for the president." 'Who am I to say?' That's— none of that is humility. So, oftentimes humility means that you're walking into an attack. It means that you're walking into a situation that you know you're going to be attacked and you're doing it with an open heart instead of doing it with a defensive shield. And so, some people aren't conflict avoidant, but they come in ready for the attack. The humble person doesn't avoid the conflict, but comes in with an open heart, comes in undefended. And that is incredibly empowering. When you actually experience somebody, maybe you could even call it turning the other cheek. When you experience someone coming at you and you're undefended and like, it's like in Taoism, they talk about it like, if someone's coming at you with a sword, be water. Like if you ever like see a man with a sword attack a lake, like that's what it feels like. And you're like, oh shit, I'm the lake. The sword means nothing. That's like a deeply empowering feeling. But to avoid it and to be small and to think that you can't do it, that isn't humility. That is just another definition. That's just another way to defend yourself through avoidance.

Right. And I can see that also coming up in the example of like accepting or asking for a promotion or receiving an award of, you know, like, oh no, no, no, no. Like let's say you, you win a Grammy and you and your entire team did all this work, maybe Grammy or whatever award. And yeah. And you're just like, oh no, no, no, it was nothing. You know, like, right. The recognition doesn't actually get in. For you or, or yes, whoever else you're accepting the award on the behalf of.

Yeah.

And the people who are giving it feel like, okay, well, that was dumb. Why'd we do this? What are we even here for?

Right. Yeah, it doesn't— you're right, it doesn't. And so that's what's interesting here is the other piece of it. If you allow yourself to feel for just a moment fully, deeply empowered, like, oh, I am completely empowered here, Most people wouldn't think that that feeling is associated with humility. Like if you actually like, oh, I'm totally empowered to create the life that I want and to create the world that I want. And I feel deeply empowered to do that. Most people are going to think, oh, that feeling is really like it's a sister or brother of arrogance. But it ends up not being that at all because that that feeling can't actually really happen unless there's a lot of love and not very much fear happening. And that is— so there's this like deep well of emptiness behind that empowerment, which is the humility. The humility often feels like an emptiness.

Well, I think that leads right into our next question. And thank you, Lucy. Our next one is from Janine. Hey, and Janine asks, I imagine humility is seeing the self as empty and acknowledging the wisdom beyond the self. Perfect timing for that part of the conversation. And how can I have both an empty self and self-empowerment?

Oh wow, and those both sound a lot like the same thing. Yeah, I mean, my answer to you, Janine, would be, how would you not? How would you not feel? How could you feel humility without feeling empowered? If it— so typically the disempowerment comes because there's a you there that's going to get hurt, or there's a you there that is supposed to be one way or another. And if there is no you there, like you, you're— the experiences you are everything. And that's a very deeply empowering thing. So that emptiness comes with a deep sense of empowerment. And this is the— it is such a weird thing because we have been trained, most of us have been trained not to fully step into our power. And so one of the things that I've done that I don't know if I've ever done on the podcast, but I'd love to do on the podcast is if anybody who's listening closes their eyes for a minute, don't do it if you're driving, obviously, but, um, close your eyes for a minute and you feel what it's like to feel unconditional love. And you put that into your body for a minute. And just, what does unconditional love feel like in your body? And then stop feeling that for a second and feel what it's like to be empowered, where you're not responding to fear, where you're not preparing for anything. Where you know you've got whatever is needed to handle the next thing. You're like Superman with no kryptonite in the fact that there's nothing to be concerned about, and you feel that deep empowerment. And then you go back to the unconditional love for a moment and really feel that unconditional love for everything, for yourself, And then you go back to feeling that deep empowerment, nothing to prepare for, all is right in your world, and whatever movement you can handle. It's like, how different are those two feelings? And what happens if you put those two feelings together? What happens when you actually feel that unconditional love and that empowerment together? The sensation of empowerment and the sensation of unconditional love are— they're like, they, they're not full without each other. You don't get to full empowerment without unconditional love, and you don't get to full unconditional love without empowerment.

Yeah, in my system they feel like just different aspects of the same the same thing. Yeah, different, different flavors of the same feeling. Yeah.

And that, like, if you look out into the world of the, the, the paragons of unconditional love, they don't look disempowered, right? Can you imagine someone who's just like unconditional loving and feels disempowered, right? Or somebody who's deeply undefended and feels disempowered. But somehow or another, when the empowerment starts coming up, we're like, "Uh-oh, I'm being arrogant. Uh-oh, it feels like arrogance." And so we push it down.

Which brings us straight into our next question from David, who asks, "How do you know if you're being arrogantly humble?" Because you think you're humble.

Because you're defining yourself that way. Because, um, yeah, because you're putting yourself over people with your humility. You're making yourself better than— if somebody calls you arrogant, you get defensive. All those things, it's part of the self-definition. It's, it's how you compare yourself with others. That's all of that is what tells you that you're arrogantly humble. Yeah, it's a great question. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, David. So our next one, this one comes from Edmund.

Yeah.

And thank you, Janine.

Oh, hey. Hey, Edmund.

Yeah. Hey, Edmund. Okay. So Edmund has sort of an observation and some questions. He says, I learned the Hebrew word anava earlier this week. I probably, I'm sure I butchered that. Uh, it translates to humility, but literally means occupying our God-given space in the world. So he asks—

Yeah, that's right.

Several questions. I'll bring two of them here. Uh, how do we be humble and yet take up our full space? How do— and then how do I promote myself at work and my work, or, and how do I promote myself and my work while being humble? Once again, all of that sounds like the same, the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I have a story about that. I remember I was doing my first course and it was like 18 people or no, I'm sorry, 14 people. It's my first course and there was a person who applied for it and I had 3 people call up and say, don't accept this person. 3 people who are in the course. I might not stay in the course if you accept this person kind of phone calls. And, and when he came up to the house to meet me and for me to see if he was right for the course, my kids were like, don't, don't hire that guy. I'm like, I'm not trying to hire. We're finding out if it's like, if he's right for the course or like, don't work with him. Both my kids, you know, meeting them are like, no, he's, he's, uh-uh. And, and my whole system was like, oh, I don't want to work with this person. But what I couldn't deny was this call. It was like, yeah, this person is supposed to be in your course. I didn't want it. My kids didn't want it. These other people didn't want it. But I couldn't deny that there— where my calling was, the thing that was pulling me to do the work that I do was like, yeah, and you— this is a person that's supposed to be in your course. And it turned out this person was absolutely supposed to be in the course. It was a pain in the butt for, for, from, from time to time, but created so much for the course. And so there's this interesting thing that happens when humility sets in, is that you follow like a call. You follow even if you don't want to do it. And the reason you follow it is because you realize every time I don't follow that thing, it fucking hurts. So I just, I just No matter what my ego wants to say about it, I'm going to do the thing that I'm called to do. Even if I disagree with it, even if I don't want to do it, I do that thing that I'm called to do. And you can't really hear that calling really without a certain amount of humility. And then when you hear it, you kind of reject it for a while, push up against it, and then you start realizing, oh, this is just going to be painful if I don't do the thing that I'm called to do. So, so that's how it works is if you're called to do something, whether it's like a Gandhi calling or it's a calling to have kids, doesn't really matter. If you're called to do it and you're feeling that, then, then you follow that call. Even if that call is self-promotion, even if that call is self-promotion, which makes you feel uncomfortable. I do things in our business all the time that make me feel uncomfortable, right? But that's the calling, that's the thing. And that requires a certain amount of humility because every one of those uncomfortable things that I do in my business, like, sand away at my ego. They sand away at my identity because they're uncomfortable specifically because they are in the way of my identity. They're uncomfortable because it's like, I'm not the kind of person who does X, Y, and Z, right? I'm the kind of person who does A, B, and C, right? So the other thing I would say, at the same time, it's— there's some, there's some wisdom in the discomfort too. So self-promotion is one of those things that is not— it doesn't come to me automatically. It's something that I, I also have to allow. But there's also, specifically for you, Edmund, there's also self-promotion can be dangerous to the, to like your unfolding without a doubt. And to actually hear that, listen to that, and still do the thing that you're called to do, but do it in a way that really pays attention to the danger of it, that pays attention to the fact that you might get caught up in it, that, that Pays attention to the fact that people might attack you because you self-promote and how are you gonna be undefended in that situation is really an important part of the process. So it's, it's, you're following the call, but you're also listening to the, to the wisdom in the, in the, in the resistance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It sounds to me like the promoting myself while being humble involves like the, the question for me is really How do I promote myself without taking on new identities and without taking on new identities by defending when people start to see and, and challenge me in my, yeah, as I take up my space. And to, to the earlier question about how do we be humble yet take up our full space, it sounds like to me being humble is taking up our full space. Like how, how humble would it be for me to decide that the universe has— the, the order of the universe is wrong, and that I didn't— like, that I shouldn't actually show up fully. Like, for some reason I am in particular not supposed to show up somehow. Like, how could I decide that?

It— for me, it's also like, it's not following your calling, right? It's like to take up your full space requires you to follow the calling. You can't take up your full space and, and, and be doing it for yourself. You're doing it for something beyond you. And so that is the humility. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's so— it is so seemingly contradictory until you feel it, until you're in that position of actually taking up your space, actually being fully empowered, that you realize that it's not you. The great example of this is if you've listened to artists, there's so many artists who say this. They're like, somebody says, "Oh, wow, what a great masterpiece you created." And they say, "It just moved through me. It just came through me." Or there's a healer named Fools Crow. I think he was Lakota. And he talked about he isn't doing the healing, that he's like a hollow bone and his job is just to keep the bone clear of dirt. And then the healing moves through him, through him, like through that channel. And his job is just to clean the channel. It's, it's all those things. It's the, the humility is when you're actually in that space, you realize it's not you, it's, it's moving through you. And, and it's a deep humility. And, and there's literally a visceral experience of having things move through you. And it's, it's, uh, like if somebody— as in a great example, this is somebody gives you a compliment and you go, no, no, no, or you don't let it in. All of that is ego. None of that is humility. Humility is when that compliment moves all the way through you and cleans the dirt out of your out of your channel. It's like whack, whack, whack, whack, whack. It destroys your ego if you let a good compliment move all the way through you. It just takes out your ego. That— it's— that's the feeling of letting it all move through you. And then there's— then it's really hard to see what you are. Yeah, except for—

yeah, I love, I love, I love that example, cleaning the dirt out of the bone. Yeah, thank you, Edmund. That was a really good question. Uh, I, um, okay, our next one comes from Alex. Alex says, I can use humility as a way to hide. Sometimes this is playing it safe professionally, other times by not leaning into relationships that want more of me. I've been told this and can at times understand it intellectually, but have struggled to feel it enough to change my behaviors or beliefs. Any advice for how to move through this?

Um, yeah, let's say, um, a man has a father who's really abusive and doesn't actually— isn't attuned to or listening to the son. So the question, Alex, is What is the humble behavior from the son? Is it to make themselves small and back away? Is it to stand up and fight and rebel? Like, what's the humble behavior? And if a son is raised in that environment, then they might take that humility and they might use it to hide from other relationships because relationships were very early on defined as something that was hurtful and abusive. Or they might make themselves small in a job so that they don't get noticed, so that they don't get attacked. So the question is, if you, if you have, if you, if you're talking to a 12-year-old kid who has an abusive father who's not attuned and they say, how do I act humble here? What's the the answer that you give them, right? And one of the things that you might notice is go make yourself small doesn't feel like humility, right? Right.

Yeah, I feel like my answer would be whatever is required to take care of themselves, right?

Isn't that a fascinating thing that like humility can actually requires self-care. And in fact, that is exactly what it requires. You'll notice people who actually have a deep sense of humility are very good at taking care of themselves, generally. And so, and it's also— there's also humility that's in stepping into the scary piece, because like, if it's like If I am going to take on the student that I don't want to, it's because I'm scared, but I'm called to do it. If Gandhi's like, I'm going to take on the British Empire, you bet he's scared. You bet, you know, he knows certain things are going to happen. He's going to get imprisoned, he's going to get beaten, he's going to be tortured, whatever. He's like, of course there's fear there. And so the only reason you do it is because you, you're not protecting yourself and you're not being defensive, protective of yourself. You, you might protect yourself, but you're not defending and protecting yourself. You're saying this thing that I'm following, this cause, this, um, way of living, this vision, this love that I'm following is worth me offering myself up to some sort of annihilation so that I can find the part of myself that can't be annihilated. Mm-hmm. Yeah, great.

And thank you, Alex. All right, our next one comes from David, and David says, I was taught a form of extreme humility as a child to the extent that it cut off certain directions in life. My like acting and performing, and made me mistrust or despise people who are more expressive and open. How can I transform my experience of that wound into a healthy form of humility? Beautiful question.

That is a great question, David. It's gonna be uncomfortable. It's gonna be uncomfortable. That's what I'm gonna say. Like, find the joy of expressing yourself. That, that's, that is the quickest, absolute quickest way to do it, is to find the joy of expressing yourself. Find the joy of making yourself big, and find that in making yourself big that you disappear. That's the quickest way to do it. And it's not just big in like go out and learn how to do improv big. It's big as in when you're talking to your wife or your boss, make yourself big. Allow yourself to fully be in that space, as Edmund was talking about, fully take up your rightful space. And notice how, how your ego gets shooken and starts getting eroded in that process. And that's what's going to be the discomfort. Mm. You had an idea?

One observation I had was that this question highlights sort of the societal cyclical element of this, where David was taught an extreme form of humility, or he was taught a definition of humility and a value system around it that made him then mistrust and despise people who were expressive and open. And so I also see like, not a very—

sorry to interrupt— not a very humble thing to despise people who are open. To be taught to despise people who are open is judgment, is not humility.

Right?

So that's oftentimes where people will say, hey, you should be humble. What they really mean is there's a feeling out there that I'm uncomfortable with. Please don't make me feel it. But anyway, sorry to interrupt. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, so, so I guess that another side of the freedom here is in— as for David, could be in just noticing and then like loving that mistrust and the, the despising, like loving the part of himself that, that has that mistrust and just really inquiring into what's underneath that. And what is, what is uncomfortable? What would be uncomfortable about loving someone who's more expressive and open?

Yeah.

And what shows up in the way of that love? And that's, that's, that would be beautiful, uh, ground for exploration.

Yeah. One other thought here, David, is, um, who's taking up more space, the person who loves the expressive person or the person who hates and despises the expressive person? Like, who's actually— which, which of those two actions is more humble?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'll just leave David to simmer in that one for now. Thank you, David. Beautiful question. Yeah. And next one's from Agnieszka. Ah, hey Aggie! And she asks, how can one experience humility in its full intensity?

Oh, the same way that you experience silence.

It—

the intensity is more in the length of time than it is in, in the moment. The moment is very soft and gentle, but it's the length of time that really is the intense part. Be in silence for 10 days, you'll experience the intensity. Be in humility for an extended period of time and you'll— the intensity, it'll just rip away your ego. While most likely people are calling you very egoic and arrogant, it's typically how it works. Yeah.

Which— and receiving that flak will also wear away at your identity and point to the— yes, yes, point to what you're defending.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, next question from Slava. How do you show humility in your coaching and courses, and what are some steps one can take to see humility beyond authority and arrogance of @FuJoe, your Twitter handle? I struggle with this a lot yet keep coming back again and again.

That's funny. The fuck you, Joe, um, the fuck you, Joe handle came from, uh, what I noticed when I was doing live sessions was every time I got in front of somebody who was like practicing Vue and I'd go around the room, they'd get self-conscious like they had to do it right. And so I, one of the hacks that I found, um, to get so somebody wouldn't be self-conscious is if they just looked at me and said, "Fuck you, Joe," and then all of a sudden they wouldn't be. So they'd laugh, they'd get out that little anger that's behind the self-consciousness, and they could go back to— So it was an invitation to take anger out on me as a way for them not to be self-conscious. And that's where the Fuck You, Joe handle came from. So I don't know the assumption that you have, Slava, behind the Fuck You, Joe handle. And how that may or may not be humble, but I'd love to hear about that. In general, how does the humility happen in the work itself? There's two ways in which it does. One is that when we teach like old students in masterclass, the people who are like in all the groups that are being trained to be in all the groups. One of the most important thing of training and facilitation and in coaching is that you have to be invisible, that people get to project whatever they want on you. They get to project that you're an asshole, that you're the dad, that you're the mom who doesn't love them, or that you're the greatest person in the whole world, you're perfection. Like you have to allow all those projections for their healing and not get caught in it. So it's allowing it, but allowing it to move right through you and not take on the like, yeah, I do have all the answers because none of us do. And or yeah, I am that asshole dad. I am that authority figure. And you can't join them in the routine or the pattern that they're playing out. But your job is to receive that all the way, let that move all the way through you. So the very basis of what we do in any facilitation and coaching is allowing yourself to be a mirror, which means there's no you there. And so that's how it happens. That's the most basic part which it happens. The other part is that you do things that are uncomfortable all the time in this work. If you've seen my rapid-fire coaching, I will say some deeply fucking uncomfortable things to people. Because it's their potential freedom that's on the line there. And when I do that, I'm taking a risk. Like, I often pucker when I say those things because, oh, I'm inviting a potential attack. I'm inviting potentially somebody to judge me or to say that I've treated them poorly or whatever it is. And it seems to work out most of the time, not all the time, but it seems to work out most of the time for the benefit of others. And so it's easier to do that, but especially at the beginning of doing this work, it was really like, I would be— my nervous system would be shaken after sessions because I said things that were really scary to say because it was the thing I was called to say. So that's how it works. That's how the humility works in this game. Yeah. Yeah, and, and you do have to be reminded, like, or remind yourself, or allow yourself to be surrounded by people who make fun of you. I think, like, one of my biggest joys is to be surrounded by people who make fun of me on a regular basis, or I make fun of myself, like, with the Fuck You Joe handle, um, because that's something that really helps in keeping it level when, you know, there's some group of people out there who think that you're I don't know, some authority figure or somebody who's going to judge them or some— yeah, or somebody who, whose approval they need or whatever allows that to, you know. And having two teenage daughters does that really, really well. They make fun of you all the time. Yeah, cool.

Cool. All right. So this will be our last question. This is from Max. Max asks, how have your— that is Brett and Joe's— how have Brett and Joe's relationship to humility changed over time? And has the growth of the AOA community and following had any effect on this? Yeah.

What has changed over time? Just our— what, of humility?

Our relationship. Relationship to humility.

How's our relationship with humility? Yeah, my, my, my relationship to humility is that it is far more important to me the bigger this gets. I don't think I would be here otherwise. I don't, I don't think I could do this otherwise, right? Like, if I thought that I was responsible for this, if I thought that I was in control of all of this, it would be— the pressure would be something that I wouldn't want to live with. And I wouldn't— the only way that I can do it is to see it as a gift, as a calling, as a, as a, as the thing that— the space that I'm supposed to take up, and that it's beyond me, that what's happening here is beyond me. That doesn't mean that I'm not responsible. It doesn't mean that I don't have like empowerment in the situation, oddly. But it does mean that like, you know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, it comes and it goes on its own. It has an intelligence that I am— that I'm following far rather. It's, it's, it's like I have the humility of not thinking I'm the river, but that I am navigating the river. And if I thought I was the river, I would be out of here. It's nothing I'd want to be a part of.

Yeah, speaking, speaking for myself, I feel like, like, for example, starting a podcast with my teacher has been a different journey. Like, early on, there was far more ego in it. I was like, oh yeah, cool, like I'm doing a podcast with Joe. Fuck yeah. And then as the community and following started to grow, it would bring me up against, you know, a lot of amazing surface area to do the work, noticing where I was getting attached to that, noticing where, uh, it seemed at times my development would even slow down because I was like, oh, now I'm seen publicly. So I have to have somehow, I have to be there already. And yeah, uh, I'm now— I'm representing something which is absolutely not what this work is about, representing some identity of perfection. But it was my— that pattern in me definitely has like, has come up over the course of this journey. And, uh, and of course, in, in the combination of those phenomena occurring and people starting to come up to me and recognize my voice and talk to me, and having these tools and having this work, uh, and this community, I've, uh, I've been able to loosen a lot of that and just feel much more of the grace and the, the joy of it. Going back to the early definition of humility that, that Joe brought up, there's this— there's a deeper contact that I get to experience now with, with less to, with less to defend and less to, uh, less of an image to uphold in, in the way that I show up on the podcast. And the journey continues.

Yeah. What I, what I loved about what you just said, Brett, was that you used that word grace. And it reminds me of being on that chat, the chat the other day where somebody was, you know, one of the people that we were working with, it was like going into like a little bit of self-abuse and announcing it around being a part of this group and thinking that they didn't deserve to be there. How did I get there? Kind of thing. And, um, and my response was, and I remember when I responded, I just was bawling. I just started crying when I responded. And my response was, the same way I fucking got here, through grace. And, and that's, that's probably the best way to describe humility, is the recognition that it's like every thought, every moment of gratitude, every trial is grace.

Yeah. Wow. Well, that's a great way to wrap this one up.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Joe. Thank you everybody for all your questions.

Yeah, this is fun. Thanks. Thanks for the questions. I appreciate them. Awesome.

Yeah. And you don't have to wait for us to invite questions to ask questions. You can always reach out to us on Twitter. There is @fu_joehudson. There is @artofacomp and I am @erikkistler and you can You can also just hit us up on the website, use our contact form, our circle forum. Till next time.

Okay. All right. Bye, Brett.

See you, Joe. See you, everybody.