You Are Enough: The Most Important Lesson Of My Life and Career #TheOnePercent

Hey, 1 percenters. Ryan here. And this is the most important podcast I've ever done. That's a bold claim. And I originally was gonna sit out and have my talking points like I normally do, but instead I'm just gonna riff on this topic because I had a breakthrough in my life about four weeks ago that was the most impactful shift I have ever had in terms of personal development and in terms of my overall happiness and my success. And I would like to attempt to communicate that shift to you. And if I can help.

If I can help it happen faster for you, I've done a really good thing. So stick with me as I process this. This is a hard shift to try and communicate except via story and to tell you what happened. And as many of you have probably could tell from the last year or so, I have gone through a lot of transitions in the last year. Ish. Right around the time I sold a majority stake of my primary company, I also went through a separation. And I really felt like my whole life was upended.

I sold a business, which was a huge financial win, but it also sent me into a real exploration of, well, what's next. And most importantly, I felt like once I sold my company, I had also given up a lot of my purpose because I had so much meaning and purpose in the company. And I went into a lot of self exploration of like, well, who am I now? Like, who am I without this? Who am I without a company that I'm scaling? And it's so kind of first world problem to try and talk about this. You get a big financial win and now you don't know who you are anymore, you spoiled millennial. Right? And so I have always kind of felt weird saying that out loud, but that was my experience. And so lesson number one, if you think that money solves your problems, it does. It solves a lot of problems. And it also opens up new challenges, mostly in terms of development. And I also took a lot of swings and misses in the last year. I hired several people that didn't work out. I tried new projects that didn't go the way that I thought they would. I bought a company that didn't grow the way I thought it would. I had a company pull back in sales pretty significantly, and I found myself at like, kind of a crisis of identity, if you will, of, you know, the things that I'm trying aren't working the way that I thought they would. I don't feel like this sense of, this sense, this sense of purpose that I used to feel and there's like kind of a new level of well, what is this all for? And I dealt with that on a really deep level. And that all kind of came to a hilt. Is that the right word? It came to a hilt. It came to its climax about five weeks ago or so. And like every good story, it starts with, it happened at Burning man. And it did. For those of you who aren't familiar, Burning man is a 80,000 person, week long temporary city in the desert where you come build a temporary city and you take it down at the end of the week. There's no. There's really no cell service or wifi and everyone. There's no food provided and there's no money allowed. And so what happens is people put down their phones for a week and they connect. And it's a beautiful experience and difficult experience, both physically and emotionally. And it's a big adjustment for a week. And then you go back home right when you're starting to adjust. And what happened for me was I went by myself. I did not know anyone who was going to be there. In fact, a lot of the individuals that I was expecting to see didn't go. So I ended up being by myself for several days, which was a wonderful experience. And what happened at the end of it was someone said something to me that stirred something up inside of me where I basically.

Discovered some really, really deep junk that I did not know was there, that once I processed, it created a level of freedom and ease around business, around my life and my purpose that I would like to share with you before I go there. There was one experience that I had that I found really weird and kind of, well, obviously interesting. But there was one day where I've been in the practice of meditating every day and I have found it very, very helpful. I found it very grounding and very centering. And there was one day where I don't know exactly what happened, except that I would describe it as a kind of psychedelic experience while totally sober. And I don't know if you would call it a psychedelic experience, but it felt like one. I wasn't seeing things, but I felt very expansive and extremely present for about nine hours, where.

It felt very trippy for about nine hours, to the point where I felt almost present, to the point of infinite, almost present to the sense of every moment is infinite in its nature. And that was just kind of the experience of being of practicing presence for a long time. And. And it was a wonderful experience of kind of what normal life can feel like. Cause I Wasn't on anything as far as I know. Maybe someone slipped something in my food. But no, I was totally lucid and sober. But I stood up after.

Actually a talk at Burning man and was. Was in a meditative, psychedelic state for nine hours. Biking around the place, speaking with people, almost like hyper alive. It was a really bizarre experience that faded by the next day. And what you need to understand is the context of Burning man can actually be very stressful. It's very not my style. It's very not my normal experience. There's a lot of loud music, there's a lot of bright lights, there's a lot of drugs, there's a lot of sex. There's a lot of partying going on, which is so not my scene. So not my scene. And the night of my experience, where I felt as though I was having kind of a psychedelic trip without any drugs, I went out, I tried to stay out late, I tried to go out partying. My buddy Aubrey Marcus, who runs on it, had a bunch of team members there and some of them were going out and I tried to go out. And what I was experiencing was I'm feeling this incredible amount of presence. I'm feeling this incredible amount of connection with myself and other people. And when I went out to party, I felt. I looked around, and for the first time in my experience, in my life experience, I looked at this party scene. I looked at this, like, drugs, alcohol, hookup culture and was like, this is so stupid, because all of you are looking for what I'm experiencing right now by myself. And it's called presence. And all of you trying to hook up, all of you taking drugs, all of you drinking, all of you out dancing, are just in the pursuit of presence. All you're looking for is this sense of connection to yourself and happiness and contentment with what is.

And this is the first time I ever thought that way. Because that culture of having a lot of fun or having a lot of sex or.

Having the big highs, I've always felt like I didn't belong.

There was something wrong with me for not having or having that experience. I was a virgin till I was almost 26, and then I found out I was gonna be a dad. My. My idea of a party is having a couple friends over until, you know, past 10 o'. Clock. I have never had that kind of party portion of my life. My party years were filled up with work and being an entrepreneur. I get what Gary Vaynerchuk talks about when he says that he worked for 12 hours a day. While other people were chasing around, hooking up with chicks, I was like, I get. I know. Yes, I know. That's a thing. And for me, what I experienced was, for the first time in my life, this sense of realizing that we were all looking for the sense of presence. We were all looking for peace. We're all looking for happiness with what is.

And what we usually do is pursue it in the form of some sort of stimuli. And I do this too. I caught myself doing that this morning where I was looking for stimuli in order to be happy with what is to be happy with. To be happy with the moment. And for the first time in my life, I realized that we're all looking for that and it's available to us all the time. That was my first experience. That was my warm up experience to what happened later, which was kind of a life transformation. And it happened when I was listening to Aubrey Marcus give a talk. And I have invited and will have Aubrey again on this podcast to communicate exactly, hopefully in his words, what was communicated. For those of you who follow the work of Aubrey Marcus, he was in a very serious car accident just before burning man about 10 minutes. 10 minutes, 10 days before burning Man. He posted about it on social media and basically part of his face was ripped off in a car accident. He should have died. He survived, he recovered. And he was at Burning Man 10 to 14 days later. And we were camping together. We were at the same place. And Aubrey gave a talk in which he expressed several things. First of all, he talked about how life was different post the accident. He talked about the things that he appreciates that he did not appreciate before he was in the hospital, before he almost lost his life. The things like the taste of food, the things like the smell of a lover, the things like being able to breathe out of your face. These are the things that he now appreciates that he did not appreciate before. The second was realizing that he was enough. Realizing that he was enough even with his face mangled, realizing that he was enough even without the ability to produce in the way that he was used to producing, even losing the charm of a smile that he used to seduce women or comb over a stressful situation, that those things, when taken away from him, made him feel threatened because all of a sudden he had lost the things that had made him feel valuable. And when he processed that, he realized he was enough just because of who he was. And the third thing that he talked about was how everything was a blessing. How he can point to every painful situation in his life and Say something good came out of that. So it's all a blessing if you're open to it being a blessing. So there was the appreciation of what is, the realization of being enough and the acceptance that everything is a blessing. There is one part of that that kind of like, stuck on me. It was like a fly getting stuck on one of those fly magnets that you put on your. On your desk to try and attract the fly so they get stuck. It was like the fly was expecting to fly through and it got stuck on something that was. What was that? One of Aubrey's words was exactly that. And he said this. I just got goosebumps as I'm thinking about it. He said that when he realized.

That he couldn't smile the way that he used to smile, that he couldn't produce the way that he used to produce because he was in the hospital.

He felt the need to apologize. He felt the need to tell other people that he was sorry, that he had lost part of himself, that he was no longer.

As valuable as he used to be.

And as he processed that and as he worked through it, he realized that he was the same person, he had the same value. And other people loved him and valued him for the real part of him. Not the part of him that could produce, not the part of him that was successful or good looking, but the part of him that was his true essence that came out as long as he didn't get in the way.

And that stuck with me like, it was like, wouldn't go away. I sat on this and I was processing it over and over again, and I just asked myself the question, does that show up for me?

Do I feel as though I'm not enough at times? Do I? Do I. Do I feel like I'm not valuable at times?

And I was kind of sure the answer was yes, but I couldn't process exactly how or why or how that showed up for me. I just sat with it. Does that. Does that show up for me? Where does that show up for me? If it show? If I thought if maybe I believe that I'm not enough, how might that show up?

And I sat on it for a good 24 hours.

And I felt really kind of this heaviness in my chest, like there was something there, like I needed to explore this idea. Do I act like I'm not enough? Do I believe I'm not enough?

Does part of me operate under the belief that I'm not enough?

And if I do, where does that show up?

About 24 hours later, I Met up with some friends.

Actually a tribe member.

And someone who used to work with me and a friend of mine here in Austin, Texas, who's now an investor in one of my companies.

So all friends that I knew through work in some capacity.

And I went into their RV and I processed this with them. I just talked through it out loud for hours.

And I.

Everyone was having a good time, and my friend Carly turned to me and said, ryan, what's going on for you over there? What are you working through? And I said, I'm sad.

I'm just sad. It's like I'm. It's like I'm processing this idea that in some way I know that I was. I know that I believed that I was not enough for a long time. I don't know how that shows up for me, but.

I feel like it's. It's really been a part of my experience for a long time. And so I pulled out my journal, and I just. I'm actually holding my journal in front of me, and I wrote this journal entry where I just played with this idea of.

If I really believed I was enough. If I really believed that I was.

I didn't need anything. What. I was just enough. How. What would I think? Because I know there's something to explore here, but I'm not quite sure what it is. So let me just play for a second. If I really believed that I was enough, if I really believed that I didn't need anything, that I was enough, just as I am, what would change about my life? Would anything change about my life? So this is the journal entry that I free flowed.

If I am enough, then I have no need for outside approval from anyone. If I am enough, then my body is perfect exactly as it is. If I am enough, then I can give freely simply because it feels good to give. If I am enough, then I do not need to worry about what anyone else thinks. If I am enough, then I have enough money. If I am enough, then I have enough status. If I am enough, then other people can do whatever they would like without it affecting me. If I am enough, then I can help other people more fully. If I am enough, then all of my goals can be by choice. If I am enough, then there is no need for me to stress, because stress is resistance to what is, and what is is enough.

If I am enough, then my failures are illusions because I cannot fail what is already complete. If I am enough, then my experience is all. And all that I do is a gift both to myself and to Others. If I am enough, then I am perfectly at choice at all times. If I am enough, then I can love more fully. If I am enough, then I am complete as is. And what I was really processing when I wrote this was, if I'm good, if I'm just enough as I am, then all of the goals that I've been pursuing outside of myself, the amount of money I want to make, the relationships I want to have, the type of home I want to live in, all of those things are fine. But they don't change anything about who I am or my value.

There's one note in here. It's one of the first ones. It's, if I am enough, then my body is perfect exactly as it is. And that's interesting that it was one of the first things I wrote, because I remember looking up in the mirror and I've kind of done a decent amount of beating myself up over weight fluctuations or having ABs versus being strong and kind of always feeling like I wasn't manly enough. I guess, gosh, that's hard to say out loud into a microphone that tens of thousands of people are gonna hear. That's my junk admitted to you. That's often been a recurring fear of mine. You know, am I strong enough? Am I manly enough? Am I.

My enough? And this is the first time I acknowledged that. And I remember looking in the mirror in my friend's RV and going, huh? That assumes that being in one shape versus another is somehow better.

Like being ripped is somehow better than not. That somehow being strong is better than not. Is it? I don't know. But better how? By what measurement? By what. What data point? Who says one is better than another? And.

If someone says that thin is better than not thin, or muscle is better than not muscle, that doesn't mean they're right.

If I really believe that I'm enough, then my body's as fine as it is. It doesn't mean that there aren't things I want to change. It doesn't mean that I don't want to be healthy. It doesn't mean that.

Not making conscious choices, it actually means I'm freed up to make the conscious choices that lead me to the best experience possible. Because I believe that I'm enough and not operating from a position of lack. And what I realized, I started going through my journal. I started looking at my goals. I started looking at the things that I had been focusing on, and they were things like what I wanted my body to look like, how much money I wanted to make, how Many followers I wanted to have. And I looked at it and I said, this person is sad. Whoever wrote this is sad.

And I looked up at my friends and I started to cry. And I was like, whoever put down these goals is a sad human being who doesn't feel like he's valuable because he thinks that by having more money in the bank, who, by having more status or by having better abs, he's somehow more loved or more valuable.

And I realized that I had been operating my entire life from a position of lack. For my entire life, I had been acting as though I wasn't enough, and I needed to go accomplish something in order to prove to myself that I was valuable.

I had to go make the money, and I made the money. I had to go get the abs, and I got the abs. I had to go get the house and the car, and I got the house, and I got the car, and I still felt as though I wasn't enough. And the reason for that is because when you have outside stimuli trying to fill an internal void, all it does is make it louder. It makes it more expansive. It makes it. I explained it to a friend once where I operate. I realized I was operating from a place of believing that I wasn't enough, of believing that I wasn't valuable. And I thought that if I had a few million bucks.

Five or ten million bucks, that that would make me enough, that would make me good, then I'd be at peace. And so when I got that money, all that happened was the feeling of lack went with it. And so now I said, well, now it's gotta be $100 million. Now it's gotta be that much more. And so the gap gets bigger, the workload gets longer, and at the same time, I'm in resistance to the work. I'm in resistance to the work that it will take to make the hundred million dollars. Because I don't even like the process, because it's not based on my happiness. It's not based on my skillset. It's based on fixing a problem and fixing a belief that was internal to myself. So I'm literally working hard at something that will amplify my feeling of angst about who I believe that I am. I'm pursuing the money, I'm pursuing the outside stimuli, believing that it will fix an internal angst, and I'm doing the things that make the angst worse.

Ah, man. I cried in front of my friend because I realized how much I had lost by spending so much time.

Trying.

Trying to fix a Void through outside stimuli.

If I had said this message to myself two years ago, I would have been like, ryan went the hippie route. Ryan became a hippie. But what I really realized.

Was that all of my actions.

Were trying to prove something to myself or to someone else.

Rather than amplifying who I was. It was the idea that Aubrey said of who I am that everyone loves comes out naturally as long as I don't get in the way. And I realized that I had been getting in the way because I was worried that that person of who I was wasn't enough.

I looked up at my friend and I said, where did this come from? And in the same breath I said, the only thing I can think of is when I was 13 and my parents split, and then I told the story of the day that I believed that I wasn't enough.

I went like this. In the same breath I said, where did this come from? The only thing I can think of is When I was 13, my parents split and I had a friend in middle school that I clung to and that friend.

Introduced me to other people. I really clung to this other friend.

He was really into fitness and I learned a lot about fitness from him. And the same person also was really about business and learned a lot about business from him. And I really admired this person. And then one day he said to me, I really find you annoying and I'm only friends with you because I feel sorry for you.

And I never went back to the lunch table. I went and hid in the computer lab for the rest of the year. And I learned HTML programming, which was how I built my first website.

And I would skip lunch every day.

And I would.

Be starving when I would get home. So I would go home and I would binge eat because I was starving. I hadn't eaten all day. I'm 13, I'm in puberty, I'm hungry.

And so what I realized was, wow, Today if you look at my life, my two comforts, my two emotional processes are I work. I work. I'm a work kind of a workaholic at a computer.

And I eat.

And I said, oh my goodness, I'm being controlled by a 13 year old.

Now, if we fast forward a couple years, I had a mentor a few years later.

Who really mentored me around. And this is, you know, my parents split and I was really craving for like a fatherly leader in my life. And I had an older mentor who was very successful in real estate and he was actually a bodybuilding champion. And so he was the first person to put me on a fitness plan. And he was the first person who taught me about investing and money. And I've been studying investing and money since I was 13, 14, actually like nine years old. Right. But he taught me about options and real estate and investing, which is why I have an investor mind, an investor background from like 14 years old, 14 years old on. So 17 years I've been studying this. And that person turned out to be kind of a creep.

Did some uncool things. And once again, when that relationship ended, he had always told me that I'd be a millionaire by the time I was 30. And I told him I was gonna beat him by five years.

And so what? Once again, around the idea of fitness, body and money. I had been kind of betrayed by two male figures in my life that I really looked up to.

And.

What I realized that I had internalized was that I had to be a certain physique and had to be a certain level of success in order to prove to myself and other people that I was enough. And my vices, when I felt lonely, when I felt sad, were to go to the computer and to eat.

That amount of heaviness of realizing the source of a lot of pain.

Was both devastating and freeing at the same time.

Now, I mentioned two things. One, I mentioned to my friends. I mentioned that my friends were. I knew them all from work in some capacity that I was spending time with that day. And I told them this story, and I mentioned to you on this podcast that when I wouldn't go back to the lunch table anymore, I would go into the computer lab and I learned HTML. So I played this out a little bit more because I had built my first website when I was 18 on a dial up computer using hand coded HTML programming, which ultimately led me to learn how to build websites, learn search engine optimization, which led me to learn pay per click, which led me to learn email marketing, which led me to learn Internet marketing, which led me to pay for college, make hundreds of thousands of dollars from my dorm room, which led me to meet the other people that I was in the RV with. And I looked up and I was like, I can't believe I'm having this breakthrough, but I know all of you through work.

And I wouldn't know any of you if it wasn't for that moment at the lunch table.

That forced me or that sent me to the computer lab.

And I realized that Aubrey was right, that it's all a blessing.

And then I pulled out another page in my journal.

And I wrote this. It is now clear to me how many of my goals have been made out of a fear of not being enough. If I have a six pack, then I will be manly enough. Manly enough for what?

If I have more followers than other people will admire me, admire me for my followers. If I have a few million dollars more, then I will be truly safe to do what I want. Which seems to be the exploration of even more pursuits of my ego.

What if I didn't have any of those needs because I was always enough? What would I want then?

I know this much. It wouldn't be based on numbers.

Some goals that I might try instead of trying to have a six pack.

Make a goal, to feel full of energy with perfect digestion and mobility.

Or to have a culture at work that inspires growth for my listeners, for my members, for my team.

Maybe instead of pursuing money, I should pursue having customers that joyfully share my product products and my work.

Another thing I wrote down was to feel proud of my work and to have a regular and abundant creative time.

And to cultivate community that invites and inspires others. Those sound like good goals. What were they before? Have a certain amount of body fat, Make a certain amount of money, have a certain number of followers, none of which had anything to do with happiness or presence. And this was the braingasm that I had. I realized I had spent my entire career trying to scale growth rather than scale happiness.

That I was seeing growth and opportunity as the end. Rather than focusing on what's the process that I want to be fully abundant in.

What are the things that I really want to scale?

What are the opportunities that I want to be joyfully involved in? Because if I don't outline that, what's the fucking point.

If I have money but it's not used for me to spend my time how I want, I have missed the entire point.

And I realized that I had been building businesses on.

That biblical parable of sand.

I had been building businesses. I had been building a life based around things that other people could take away. What thieves can take in, what moth can destroy. It can be swept away by the ocean because it was built on the sand.

I was building.

And scaling things that had nothing to do.

With highlighting the things that give me enjoyment. Not that I didn't enjoy my work. Not that I didn't enjoy the status that came from my work. Not that I didn't enjoy part of the process, but I was always doing it with a goal in mind rather than to enjoy the process.

And realizing that I probably would have gotten to my goals much faster had I built them around the idea of enjoyment. Anyway.

Since having this realization, my stress levels are down about 80%.

I've realized that that project that I'm stressed about because could go away and I'm still the same person.

Maybe I'll be disappointed in the end result, but ultimately.

That didn't matter.

My worries about money, my worries about what I look like.

Were all based on a belief that I wasn't enough. And that if I believe that I was enough as is is, then I could just focus on.

Scaling the things that I enjoyed most, which would lead to probably more financial abundance than I knew how to do with, which would just allow me to scale happiness that much more.

I have felt that amount of presence fade ever so slightly.

As I've gotten further away from the experience.

But every time I tell the story, I feel it come back.

So thank you for allowing me to.

Relish in that presence that comes back every time I tell the story.

What I have learned is that.

Regardless of what happens in terms of external stimuli, we are all enough as is. It doesn't mean we are perfect. It doesn't mean we are good.

It doesn't mean we're valuable in the marketplace.

It just means we're enough even if we're not valuable in the marketplace, even if we are alone.

That there is no measurement for value.

And so there was never an enough in the first place. There was never a point at which we were enough because there is no measuring stick in the first place. We create the story of us being more or less valuable based on our social status and what we think other people view about us because we're wired to survive within the tribe.

And to win that game is to opt out of it.

And since then.

I've learned that I don't need to pursue that cool opportunity because making more money might make my life no better. And even if I do pursue that, I will be pursuing the dollars rather than the enjoyment, which means it's probably not going to work out. And I don't need to do with that business, that business with that person that I don't like very much, because.

What'S the point?

And so I say no to opportunities that I don't enjoy.

Which actually makes my fees go up.

I'm creating from a place again that feels authentic.

I'm connecting with people just because it's enjoyable to give.

I don't know if I can give you the same shift that I have had.

But if I can give you a peek into it.

I've done a good thing.

And I can honestly say that as a listener who has made it 41 minutes into this episode of me talking about my junk.

That I love you and that I appreciate you.

And that can only happen because I now love and appreciate myself.

That's.

That's a breakthrough that only 1% of people have.

And I hope that for you.

Sending you a hug, sending you love, sending you appreciation. This is Ryan signing off. Thanks for listening.