The Golden Algorithm — Decisions Series #3

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. Wow. How's it going, Joe?

Oh, man, uh, it has been full on. It, it You know, creating the decisions course has been like lots of content in a short period of time. I'm loving it and it's definitely not a lot of breathing space in the last couple weeks. How about you, man? How are you?

Yeah, I'm doing really well. I just got off of a really good coaching session and something that came up in that session was the Golden Algorithm, which you've been speaking about this for a little while and we haven't done a full episode on it yet. And I'm really excited to, to do that.

Yeah, that sounds fun. Let's do it. That sounds great. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So then what? Let's, let's do it.

You look, you look jazzed though. I just have to say like, you look, you look really jazzed. Like it, I'm wondering, is it, was it a, a deeply felt, uh, uh, coaching session? It feels like it was very embodied. Yeah.

Yeah. It was, it was very, very deeply felt and there was just like a, constant kind of a theme of leaving, leaving self, leaving the present experience and recognizing it and then coming back and just noticing all the different ways that that happens in the moment and then just coming right back. And so we just spent so much of the session in, you know, in embodiment. And so I mean, that just— I get so much out of it when, when that's how a session goes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome. Oh yeah, I love that. Cool. Awesome. And I can see how that would relate to the Golden Algorithm. That's wonderful. Okay, so yeah, let's, uh, let's, let's talk about Golden Algorithm. What do you, what do you want to ask?

Yeah, so, well, I mean, we'll just start. What is it?

Oh yeah, so I mean, the most basic way to say it is, um, uh Whatever we're avoiding emotionally, we are inviting into our lives in the exact way that we are avoiding it. So if we are trying to avoid, uh, sadness, then we— the way that we try to avoid the sadness is inviting the sadness. The other way to see it is that if you are having a problem any problem at all, there is an emotion that you are trying to avoid. And by— in the way that you're trying to avoid it, you are bringing it towards you. And so this is like the emotional center of all the problems that we have. So that's— and, and, and I'm not a huge fan of the Golden Algorithm. I don't know how else to call it because it is— it's so critical, it's so important, it— and And once you get it, it makes such a huge difference in your life. So I wanted to call it something really important. And, and however, I, yeah, just know, I'm just noticing that the name of it, I don't want it to be, you know, glorified or anything, just that it's just super important. If you're really, once you grok it, it can totally change your life. So yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to send you a Golden Algorithm statue for your desk.

Actually, that kind of sounds cool. I'll take that. Name a problem that, that you're very familiar with, either you have had in the past or somebody you know is having now, but you can name, you know, all the parts of the problem and everything that's happening there. So yeah.

And then how about it's, how about it's, you know, wanting to work out and then just having a hard time getting motivated to go to the gym.

Great. Okay. So want to work out and not doing it. And then when you see somebody in that or you've been in that yourself, what's one, just one of the emotions that might be being avoided there?

Yeah, I'd say, let's say guilt.

Great. Guilt. Okay. And so what would be a strategy that a person uses to avoid feeling that guilt?

Yeah, well, I guess one thing that might come up is that the moment you think about going to the gym, you feel all the negative self-talk about how you're not in shape and you feel that guilt, and then you instead go do something else, like go to the fridge.

Right, okay. So, so the way that some, some people handle the feeling of guilt that they, they arise is to go eat instead of go work out. Yeah, right. Which then of course creates more guilt, right? So that's how the algorithm works. Like, here's— give us another one. We should do like 3 or 4 of these. Just any other problem that somebody is having.

Yeah, let's say, let's say somebody feels put upon or frustrated by a partner, with a partner, you know, great being. Yeah.

Yeah. And so what would be an emotion that that person would be avoiding when they get frustrated with a partner?

Well, they might avoid feeling anger.

Great. They might afford avoid the anger. And so what do they do when they avoid feeling angry?

So when they avoid feeling angry, they might suppress the anger, push it down.

Yeah.

And then, you know, come around passive-aggressively to try to get what they want without being direct.

Right. And so the more passive-aggressive they are, the more the people around them get angry and frustrated with them, which brings up more anger in them. And therefore the strategy in which they're avoiding the anger is creating more anger in their life. So this is— so another, like, example of this. So when I was younger, a big thing for me was that I really didn't like emotional abandonment. I felt horror, you know, it was a trauma that I had. So, I was constantly trying to avoid it. And, every time I started to feel like I was getting emotionally abandoned, I would get hard, I would get defended, and I would get short with people. And, of course, people are more likely to emotionally abandon me or abandon me altogether if I'm being a prick, which is what I was being. So, That's another example of it. But the important part is that every single problem that we're having, this is how it works. There's no problem that you can mention that you're having that doesn't have an emotion that's trying to be avoided. And in that strategy of avoiding the emotion is recreating it. And oftentimes there's several emotions that, that you may be trying to avoid. And so when you get to see that, when you get to see Oh wow, every one of my problems is an emotion being avoided. Oof. And then it becomes really clear how to solve a lot of problems really quickly. It's to fully love and invite and welcome your emotional experiences.

Okay. So you said there every single problem. So to play the devil's advocate a little bit, what if the problem I'm having is that I was hit by a car and I'm injured? Or I've tried everything and I haven't found a job while the economy is tanking. It's like, what, what scope of problems are we talking about here when you say every single problem?

Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. So what I'm talking about here is the recurring problems in our lives specifically. And I'm also talking about when we feel like there is a problem. So, but this, the algorithm is really useful especially for the recurring problems in our lives. But let's take, for example, the getting in a car accident. Now, let's assume for some reason that it's absolutely not your fault. There was no way that your emotional, you know, your emotionality in that moment influenced it. And it was just out of left field, or let's say a tree fell on your car while you were driving, right? Completely not within your control. Obviously, the emotional— the emotional— the thing you're trying to avoid emotionally didn't cause the tree to drop on your car. However, how you handle that and how quickly you recover from that deeply are influenced by the emotions that you are allowing yourself to feel or not feel. So recently, I've been working with somebody and they had a something significant stolen from them. And I mean, just tremendously significant. And them blaming themselves for that and trying to avoid the feeling of deep sadness and grief and anger is making that recovery time take a tremendous— longer than it would otherwise. The amount of shame that they are using to block the emotions or to not fully feel and love into their shame, that So to some degree, it's a problem because the emotions that you're feeling aren't being— are being resisted, and that makes it a bigger problem instead of, "Oh, this is this fluid thing that's moving through me." We have all had something stolen from us, and there's a time when it's a problem and there's a time when it's not a problem. And it maybe never feels good, but there's a time when it wraps us up, and I'll call that a problem, and there's a time when we've let go of it. And how we deeply feel into those emotions and allow those emotions has a huge influence on whether it's currently a problem or not a problem in our life. So that's first thing. Um, also, we often are stuck because there's no short-term way to feel good, right? So again, using that same metaphor of a tree dropping on your car, there's no way that you can feel good about that right away. There's no choice you can make. You can try to pretend, oh, it's great, it's just a car, no big deal, or whatever, but that there is some sort of emotional thing that's going to go through you that is potentially not very comfortable. And to try to avoid that is what makes that a longer problem, a more consistent problem, a problem that repeats itself. Not in the case of the car, but the problem that would repeat itself in the case of the car is how you react to loss, how paralyzed you are when accidents happen, how quickly you can recover, those things. And then I'd say finally, we're never completely the full dynamic. So in this case with the car and the and the tree falling on it, that we were not at all a part of that dynamic, even though we might beat ourselves up over it. We're never fully the dynamic. We're never fully a part of any of the dynamics that create what we call problems in our lives. The tool isn't meant to assign blame. The tool isn't meant as a way that you get to beat yourself up. Oh, if I only would've felt this. It's meant as a, oh, here is a way that I can move through my problems more quickly. Here's a way that I can stop repeating patterns. That's what I mean.

So it sounds like a lot, a lot of what you're saying there is it's not necessarily the problem, it's like the— it's the stuckness that we feel in relationship to the problem, which sometimes makes certain problems feel far more ongoing.

Yeah, or, or I'm making a distinction between something that's happening in our life that needs to be addressed and a problem. A problem being something that consumes us and guides us and pushes us and we rebel against and resist. Yeah.

Yeah. Rather than a random occurrence.

Yeah, exactly.

Got it. Okay. Well then let's, let's move on and talk about what makes this work.

Yeah. The easiest way to describe it is that there is no problem if you're like, if you're feeling great. So So let's just say, for instance, your company, you're facing your company's implosion. And in that implosion, you knew you were gonna feel great and you were gonna feel free and you were gonna feel successful. What's the problem with your company imploding? Or let's say I was gonna get a divorce and I knew that I was going to feel wonderful about the outcome, that I could look around and I would go, wow, this is exactly what needed to happen, and I can see the benefits of it. And like, there's just like a full feeling of freedom and success and, and joy in the result, then there's no problem. So what I, what I mean to say is that what, what we call material problems out in the world, what they really are emotional problems. What they really are is that we don't want to feel a certain way. And so that's what makes this work.

So if we could just paper over all of our negative feelings and feel positive feelings regardless of our company falling apart and everybody getting laid off, and then we're good, right?

You know, people have tried that. It doesn't work. But I like, I like the thought. That was great. Yeah. So, yeah, so I think if I'm, if I'm taking the question of it, does that mean like, oh, we— so it's not having the positive emotions that get you where you want to go. It's not avoiding the negative ones that get you where you want to go. So it's not, you know, it's not like, oh, if I'm happy, then I'm gonna, you know, make great decisions. If I'm happy, that it's helpful if you're authentically happy. What the issue is, is far more about not avoiding negative ones. The cause of the pain is in the avoidance of the negative emotions. Yeah. And that's why, that's why being positive all the time doesn't work. We've all met the person who's, oh, I'm positive all the time, and you're like, their life is—

right?

Yeah, right.

And it's not authentic. It's not what they're actually feeling.

Correct.

So So this seems like a pretty simple algorithm. It's just what you're avoiding, you invite in, and exactly the way you're avoiding it, you create a blind spot. You're gonna get blindsided in your blind spot. That's just how it works. So what makes this hard for us to just see in our daily lives if it's, if it's so simple?

Yeah.

Daily life.

Yeah. You know, it's so strange. It's, it, it, it took me a long time to even be able to articulate it. And, and I still, Notice when I'm articulating it to folks, it confuses people. So it is, it's a challenging thing to see even though it's so simple. And probably some of the people listening to this, their minds are going numb currently. So one of the issues is the one I just talked about, which is that we think our problems are material when they're actually, we're using the material world as a strategy to feel a certain way. We want to feel good, and we think that the fast car and the beautiful spouse and the happy children are going to do that. And so, we're using the material problems as a surrogate for the emotional. And so, that's the first one. So, you have to undo that thesis that the material world is going to make you happy. And I think that's something that every major religion points to in its own way, that it's— you're never going to get the happiness you want from the external world. And then the other thing is that it's hard to admit that it's happening because we're avoiding stuff, right? It's like, because there is a— there is that movement that you just described, which all of a sudden is going to be self-abuse. Oh, it's my fault for avoiding this. All of these problems are my fault. That by itself is more avoidance, right? That is more like to beat yourself up over this is just another way not to feel it, right? So let's say I'm avoiding sadness and I start beating myself up. It's just another way to avoid feeling sadness. So that's another reason that it's really tough to see. It's tough because we can't blame anybody else anymore. Including ourselves. If you really take a look at it, blaming yourself is another way to avoid other uncomfortable emotions. So, and I'm sure we can describe that later. And the other issue is time dilation, which is basically there's the short-term feeling good and the long-term feeling good. And so the avoidance is, I'm going to trade long— I'm going to trade feeling good in the long term for feeling adequate in the short term, feeling okay or feeling just a little bit better in the short term. And so our reward system as a mammal was built in such a way for short-term rewards to be the important one because we didn't have psychological development then, right? Mammals, it's not— from what we know, they don't have identity, and so they're not protecting their identity, they're not protecting their psychology, they're not protecting their sense of self. And so when you're dealing with, oh, I eat that mushroom and it causes me pain, it's a great thing to avoid. When it's, oh, I, um, somebody calls, points out some way that I'm in error and it causes me pain, so I get defensive, it doesn't work so well. So that's the other problem is that it, it, it's, it's, it's It's learning that our emotional, the way we were emotionally evolved doesn't work for a sense of identity.

Yeah, okay. So the time dilation thing, that's interesting to me. There's sort of an objection that comes up where I think a lot of people actually engage in this avoidance behavior because they think they're doing something for their future. You know, I'm just gonna keep giving things away to this client because then they're gonna like me and I'm gonna get the bigger project in the future. But what actually is being created is that I'm going to come back and be like, have behaviors that seem entitled or aggressive when later on I start to feel like I've given too much and they took it and didn't, you know, give me enough in return or something.

Yeah. So the key there is Is what is the choice that you're making, uh, for instance, giving the client a whole bunch of stuff without naming that you want something in return, is that an avoidance behavior or is that, uh, something that you're doing out of strategy? And the only way to know that is to feel in your system, oh, am I avoiding anything, and to go and feel it. So there's obviously times that we will take short-term pain for long-term gain. However, this is very much in the avoidance of an emotion. That's the really critical component to notice. And if you're not avoiding it, then great.

So there's a, there's a different way of kind of flipping this, which is that to be— to have the preference for feeling the short-term pain despite its, its discomfort for what we know is the long-term best outcome. Is the thing that allows us to move through this.

Yes. The, the only thing that I would change about that is that the— it's not actually painful, right? The resistance to it is painful, however we might label that. Yeah, yeah. And it's not even that— that's what I mean to say is that the emotions themselves are not the painful piece, it's the resistance to them. And so part of the path of Noticing all these emotions that we're avoiding is when we invite and welcome them in, they change. They don't feel as uncomfortable as they used to. Yeah.

Yeah. So how does knowing that we are avoiding these emotions help us?

Right, yeah, instead of, yeah, it's funny 'cause we do this exercise where people do that thing that we just did over and over and over again. They just see all of the problems that they're having and how each one is an avoided emotion. And I was with some people doing that a couple days ago and someone's like, "How does this help us? Like, Christ, what are you doing? It's just making us feel like, ugh." And I said, "That's exactly why to do it is because now you're motivated to change it." Like, if all you have to do is just invite and welcome emotion and you don't have to suffer for all, in all these reasons, like what would make you not do it? So one thing is because it does help us solve the problem. And it also, it makes our decisions cleaner as soon as we notice that we're running away from an emotion, an uncomfortable emotion. And also, once we start doing it and then solving that problem, once we start inviting and welcoming those emotions because we see this is the issue, it just makes a lot of our habits that we don't like go away because we're no longer using them to run away from emotional experiences. Makes the decision-making cleaner, makes us less defensive, all those things.

Yeah, and it's in the emotion that we're avoiding that is like— like, that emotion contains the information needed to get out of the situation or to change.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. If you think about each of these emotions as data, and it's all important data, and you've been rejecting the data, and that you don't have the the tools you need to solve the problem because you've been rejecting the data. The other way to think about it is, you know, that you have that kitchen drawer. I've had the CEO said to me one time, I love this. She said like, "My job as a CEO is to look in all the kitchen drawers that nobody wants to look in," right? There's the drawer where everything just gets shoved. My job is to open them up and look in them and sort out what's in there that everybody else is avoiding. And it's the same thing. It's the same thing here. It's that that's the work. And you open the door and you have that first moment of, "Oh crap." And then when it's all cleaned and organized, it feels great.

Okay. So let's say we recognize that all of the problems in our life— I even feel like some pre-attack from some in the audience when I say all.

Yeah.

I'm just going to say generally, so we've, we've, let's, let's say we take on this tool, this perspective.

Let's do better. I say, I say all. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the big plunge and say all. And if somebody in the audience can find one that isn't, where this isn't the case, where they, they, they can't find an emotion they're avoiding inside of a problem that they're having, then please let us know, because I would like to find one that where that's not the case. So we'll say all, but I want proof. I want proof that I'm— because I would love to see what I might be missing. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So like, let's say we take on this perspective. All of the problems that we have in our life.

Yeah.

Are, are resulting from us avoiding emotions and we are bringing those problems into our lives in exactly the way we're avoiding those emotions. Let's say we take on this perspective. What are some of the pitfalls that can happen if we take on this perspective and over-index on it or get it slightly off? Like, what, what's some of the dangers of, you know, taking this as like, let's say, like to the extreme, making it a dogma?

Yeah, that's great. I love that question. It's like a hammer is a great tool, but how can you misuse it? And so, right, so I'd say One of the pitfalls in using the tool is the depth in which you're using it. And this is kind of the opposite of a pitfall, which is it means it doesn't work as well unless you go into the depths. So if you're— if you say, what's the thing I'm avoiding? I'm avoiding pain. That's not going to work as well as, um, uh, I'm avoiding helplessness. And so that's one thing. And I want to talk about depth a little bit later as well, because there's a, there's a cool thing that goes along with it from what I can tell. But other things is that another issue with the tool is that you might still repeat these patterns that come up if— because you found one of the emotions you're avoiding, but you haven't found all the emotions you're avoiding. So one of the pitfalls of the tool is that It's only one emotion at a time. And a lot of times people make the assumption that there's only one emotion they're avoiding. Another pitfall of the tool is if you're not learning how to feel into the feelings. So it's only half of a tool. So seeing the feelings that you avoid is one thing, but until you can feel into them, welcome them, love them, invite them in, nothing's going to change. There actually has to be the not avoidance of it, but there also has to be the learning to welcome it. And there's a space in between those two. A lot of people, and I would call it like indulging uncomfortable emotions. And so it's really about having the mental attitude of, I want to understand this, I want to explore it, I want to listen to it, I want to hear the information it has, I want to respect it, I want to give it the love that it never got, I want to welcome it, and I'm not here to try to change it. I'm here to just fully be with, appreciate this emotional experience. So, and if you're not doing that, you know, it's not gonna— it's not gonna be of great benefit to you. And then the last one is the one we've already talked about, is people can beat themselves up over it. They can say, oh, I now understand everything's my fault because I'm not feeling into emotions, which is both not feeling into emotions and a way to avoid emotions.

So yeah, I think the latter is really common if you're in depression. Like, yes, if the feeling is shame. I know I went through a period of time with this where it was— for me, it was shame. And I didn't realize that I was actually kind of indulging in the shame and that being in the shame felt safe. It felt like somebody was— I had an excuse to not be empowered and that somebody might come rescue me, or at least be with me.

Yeah.

And so I wasn't actually allowing the shame to move through. It wasn't like I wasn't willing to feel the shame dissolve. Yeah. I was willing to feel the shame and wondering why— and wonder why it wasn't going away.

Yeah.

But not to let it actually shift and change and become whatever it was going to become.

Right. And that would be the language that I would use. I would say that you were feeling the shame, but you weren't welcoming the shame. You weren't because it's the welcoming that lets it move all the way through.

Right. So a lot of people think that— a lot of people feel like these are difficult emotions and that's why we're avoiding them. And so what would you say to somebody who thinks that not avoiding emotions is the hard thing and avoiding emotions is easy?

So yeah, what I would say is if you think it's easy to regenerate over and over and over and over again the emotion that you're avoiding and you think that's easy, that's— I don't like— if you think about it long-term, I don't understand how that math works out. That would be the first thing I'd say. The second thing I would say is avoiding emotions means resisting them. So not resisting them is different. And if you have a moment of not resisting whatever you've been avoiding, immediately you will feel the sensation change somatically in your body and it'll become lot more comfortable. So until you have really experimented with not resisting an emotional state or welcoming an emotional state, you really don't know if it's going to be more difficult. What you have in your head is an idea that, oh, every time these topics get brought up, I feel like shit, so I want to avoid these topics so I don't feel like shit. And that's the idea and it's because nobody has ever taught you how to be in these topics with no resistance, without the shame, without the defense, with curiosity, with wonder, with impartiality, with self-empathy, then you'll know. Then you'll know that, "Oh, wow, this isn't difficult at all." This is actually— it's literally when I walk people through an emotional inquiry exercise, which is Learning to welcome and through wonder your emotional experience. The thing I'll say is like, so you've just sat for 10 minutes with an experience that you've avoided for decades. How hard was it? Did you explode? How difficult was it? And everybody's like, no, it just felt great. And not always, occasionally you'll have somebody who's like, oh, it got a little better, but, and that's usually because they're, trying to change it. They're trying to get rid of it. And that's something else that when you're fully welcoming your emotion, and you'll— one of the things that happens is you'll notice that it starts to change and shift. And then you might start immediately or over the long term welcoming your emotions to make them go away, which isn't welcoming them anymore, so it stops working. So yeah, as soon as people experience it once or twice, they get it. They're like, oh yeah, this isn't hard. This is immediate relief.

So what are, what are some examples in which this doesn't work? I know, and I'm not talking about the kinds of things we were talking about before where you were saying if anybody can come up with any problem in their life that this doesn't apply to. Yeah, but yeah, but that's like the emotions that we're avoiding. Does it work with positive emotions? Did I get that? Yeah, in a usable way.

Yeah. Um, so that's a great one. So it, it does not— the algorithm doesn't work. What I, what I think about it is it doesn't work with positive integers. So I have a hard time saying that some emotions are negative and some are positive, even though the world classifies it that way. These are negative and these are positive. And the reason that I have a hard time experiencing that or saying that is because it's not how experiencing experience them. Meaning for me, then helplessness and anger and shame and all that has like our blessings. So I have a hard time calling them negative. But if we call them negative for now, then the negative, the algorithm works if you're avoiding negative emotions. The algorithm doesn't work if you're avoiding positive emotions. And So the way I would describe this is like working out. So let's say that my problem is that my body isn't feeling good. So it's, it's feeling in what I would call in a negative way, it would be a negative feeling. And so I work out and, and I start to work out and it doesn't feel good, so I avoid it. Then my body's gonna continue to feel bad. If I work out and it doesn't feel good 'cause there's some resistance to it, to the working out, I haven't, you know, it has some pain in it, and I lean in and I welcome that pain and I look forward to that pain and I see that pain as information, then my body starts to feel better. And then if my body feels good, and I say, oh, I'm gonna work out, and I'm not gonna allow the feeling of goodness to happen, then what immediately happens is I start feeling bad. The workout feels bad, and then I stop working out, and then my body starts feeling bad. So it's the same way. If I'm feeling— if I have negative emotions and I feel into them, then I feel better. And if I have positive emotions and I don't feel into them, then I feel bad. So that's the experience. And so this is something I wanted to speak to earlier when we talked about shame and seeing through shame. So what I've noticed is there is a there's emotional states that people call emotional states, but they're kind of blocker emotional states. And we've talked about this with shame. So I would call these things like shame, judgment, and guilt. And what they do is they stagnate the emotional experience. And so there are emotions that have to be felt through, but they're kind of the top level because they stagnate the emotional experience. And then underneath that, you have the emotions of like sadness and anger and helplessness and what we call negative emotions. And then if those are all felt through, then you get to the positive emotions. And if you start feeling the positive emotions, just like working out, you feel better and better and better and better. And it goes from like, oh, happiness, and then there's joy and contentment and bliss. There's like a whole rainbow of positive emotions out there, and it just gets more— the intensity of the, of the positive emotions gets bigger and, and it's wonderful. And it can also be very scary in that process. So one of the things that I say to describe this is joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome. And so welcoming all these negative emotions, uh, what we call negative emotions, leads to joy. But Feeling joy and expansiveness and bliss and peacefulness can be very scary in itself. And when we stop allowing ourselves to feel into that, then we revert right back to the negative emotions.

Got it.

So that's why it doesn't work with positive emotions. If you find out, "Oh, I have this problem because I'm avoiding this positive emotion," then the answer is, feel that positive emotion. It like lean into the positive emotion. So the answer is the same, lean into the positive emotion, lean into the negative emotion. But the avoidance doesn't bring it back. The avoidance of the negative emotion brings a negative emotion back. The avoidance of the positive emotion doesn't bring the positive emotion back.

Yeah, there's a sort of what kind of comes up for me in processing what you just said, and there was a lot there to to process and unpack.

Yeah.

Is that, you know, there's emotions, we might label them as positive or negative, and that's just sort of a way of determine— like a way of stating which ones we prefer and which ones we don't.

Yeah.

And so if we prefer not to have an emotion, then we're going to avoid it. And then like avoiding, it's, it's— that's going to invite the emotion that we're avoiding. But with the emotions that we actually do prefer, or think we prefer, there's actually something uncomfortable about them often, and it's that other emotion that we're actually avoiding, which is why we end up feeling the other thing and not the, not the emotion we think we want. So like, avoiding feeling joy doesn't make us full of joy. Avoiding feeling joy makes us feel the thing that we're actually feeling when we're avoiding joy. Which might be, you know, might be the shame around being exuberant.

Yes, that's right, that's right. And it's a great way to put it. And the other thing that I would say is there does seem to be like a, um, there does seem to be a thing where people need to break through the shame and judgment and guilt so that they can feel the negative emotions. And then once those are felt, then the positive emotions come. And the positive emotions are also scary. They're very big. They're very expansive. The positive emotions make not a lot of room for you as an entity, or like, as a— doesn't make— they don't make a lot of room for your identity. When you are in bliss, there's— there, like, it's more like you're one with everything and less like you are you. And so there's a scariness to that, and there's like a, wow, what's— like, fears come up, like, how will I relate to people? Or I might just like go off into the infinite and, you know, not come back. Or what if I'm just like sitting there laughing in a coffee shop all by myself where everyone's gonna think I'm crazy? Or what Wow, I'm happy all the time. Everyone's looking at me like, what's wrong with me? You know, there's all sorts of fears that come along with, with that level of joy and ecstasy. And so when you stop— to repeat myself here— to when you constrict on any of them, it brings you into negative emotions. It brings you back up the ladder, right? So if you constrict on joy, you're the the joyous emotions, you're gonna be back into the fear and anger and helplessness. And if you constrict on those, you're gonna be back in the shame and the judgment and the, yeah.

Yeah, so welcoming the feeling of being out of control allows us to have the feeling of uncontrollable laughter.

Right.

Have that experience.

I like that, yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah, so that's, that's it. That's the golden algorithm. And that's— and it's, you know, if you blend that with some of the view practices and some of the emotional inquiry practices, and, and it creates so much freedom so quickly. So I, I, it's such a— it's such an exciting thing. And the, the reason that I came up with it It's because I noticed my brain was doing that calculus every time I was working with clients. I'm working with clients, I'm like, oh, okay, here it is. Here's the, here's the thing that if we, if we learn to accept this, this problem starts to dissipate. If we learn to love and accept and welcome this, then the problem starts to dissipate. Yeah.

Yeah. And I noticed a lot of times where the, where that process gets stopped is when people end in a story, and then that's, that's just the ground truth, like, right? And it's, and then that's bad. It's like, well, the company will fall apart.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the end. Well, what would you feel if the company falls apart?

Yeah, exactly.

Companies fall apart all the time and people live on. And like, what, what is it that you'd actually be experiencing in that moment beyond the story?

Yeah, exactly. And then what the odd part is, is that when we fully grieve or feel that feeling that we'd have to feel if the company falls apart, it's so much less likely for it to fall apart. And if it does fall apart, it falls apart so much better in such a way that benefits us so much more than if we're resisting the whole thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. Beautiful.

Thank you so much, man. That was exciting. I'm so glad I got to explain this. This has been a doozy to really get out, so I appreciate your help in that.

Yeah, I loved it. I enjoyed it. All right, thank you everybody for listening. And remember, if you can find an example of a problem— yeah, you know, relevant to Joe's challenge— if you can find an example of a problem where this doesn't work, please send it in.

If you can find a problem where you're not avoiding an emotion, please let us know.

All right.

Yeah, awesome.

Thank you.

All right, bye, Brett.

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