The Secret to Creating Your Dream Life and Business in 2025

You guys actually like spending time with family in the holidays? Yes, you do. Extended family and everything.

There's a famous saying by the, the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, Andrew. It says, if you think you're enlightened, spend a week with your family.

You do kind of go back in time to the person you used to be and the reactions you used to have.

It is super interesting to notice what comes up when, yeah, certain family members say something or do that thing they always do and you have that same reaction you always had. It is interesting to see what creatures of habit we are.

The biggest thing for me is just having someone else help out with the kids or be there with the kids. It just makes me realize we're ridiculous to have an island of our own with our own family and we spend all the time with our kids, especially when you think about grandparents want to spend time with kids for a certain amount and uncles want to spend time with kids for a certain amount of time and because we're all, we all moved, I moved for sure further away from all my family. We don't, we don't have that.

Yeah. It also shows up in the way people parent kids differently. Like I, I make up that when you used to all live around each other, everyone kind of, everyone's parenting everyone. And now it's like even funny to see it cuz it's like, well, I can't really parent my brother's kid cuz it's like they have their own system. We have our own system. And, uh, I noticed that one funny anecdote related to this is we got the kids iPads for Christmas.

Uh oh.

Yeah, I know. That we set up, uh, there were lots of people on Twitter who had lots of life advice for me, by the way.

They all involved smashing the iPad.

Give your kids a book! And I'm like, I'm like, literally my son reads 250 pages a day. Like, it's just funny how people don't know anything. But anyway, but one of the cool things, we could set up their contacts and you could set up their contacts of only people that they're allowed to message, iMessage. And we set up, it was really cool. We set up all their uncles and aunts on a thread. And so they're like texting with their uncles and aunts and they're like, everyone is having a blast doing it because it's like just a communication touchpoint they've never had. And so it was really fun.

At some point we're gonna have a conversation about boundaries now that they have iPads.

Well, we've already got 'em in place for sure.

All right.

Awesome. Well, one, one other thing, Andrew, on this note, like one thing Dave and I have done, or Dave has helped me do is, and I don't wanna take us in a too weird of a direction, but it's like, you know, if you notice your judgments on others. Those are areas where you haven't grown. So family in some ways can be the most valuable because like, to your point, you become a little kid again, you realize, oh wait, I actually haven't grown past this issue with my brother. I still have it in my brain and it still shows, it just only shows up around him, but I've been hiding it. And actually in that way that can find the family stuff very helpful. And also the flip of it, which is to see how much I've grown. Like there are a bunch of things that probably would have bothered me 5 years ago that they don't even show up anymore.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, two thoughts for, yeah, around family stuff. One is there's this notion of samskara that I learned from Michael Singer, who wrote "The Untethered Soul." And basically it's like when that stuff comes up, it's coming up to be healed or released. So that's the upside to spending time with family. It's like it brings up, you know, it's not like the stuff wasn't there and just suddenly appeared. It was there. Fester and then when you're with, you know, certain family members, it comes up. So if you take it as an opportunity and just allow yourself to feel it, look at it, face it, you can actually heal really old, you know, trauma wounds, patterns. And then just to put a finer point, Jesse, on what you just shared, it's projection, right? So yeah, when we have an aversion to something that someone else is doing, or some way that they're showing up, it's actually a reflection of a part of ourselves that we haven't fully accepted or owned or loved. And it shows up two ways. One is we know we do that thing and we judge ourselves for it. So when the other person does it, we really judge them for it, right? Like we know we have a tendency to be self-centered maybe, and then someone else is being self-centered and we're like, ah, that you're so selfish or so It's just because, you know, we don't love the selfish part of ourselves, um, or don't appreciate or accept that. Or it's a flip where like we don't let ourselves be selfish, right? Because we have a story that, you know, good, good kids are good, you know, good people are generous and not selfish. And then someone else lets themselves be selfish and like, what? Why do they get to be and we don't? That's really what it's— it's usually one of those two things that's really going on. So I love that. And in that way, like, the whole world is a mirror for you, and you just get to see all of your stuff, all your patterns, all the parts of yourself you haven't fully loved, just by looking out at the world and your family.

I had an interesting discussion with Dave this week. Jesse, this has been amazing. The last two sessions have been really extraordinary, um, and a big part of what I'm learning is to just recognize what I'm feeling and to let it happen. I'm really good about not letting feelings come through if they're not helpful. And Dave is saying, well, by not letting it come through, you're really resisting it more than you realize. And so last night before going to sleep, Olivia says to me, I'm really nervous about our kids' school. I don't know where we're gonna send them. There are not a lot of great schools in Austin, all that. And all I wanna do is shut it out, listen to a podcast or something or YouTube, and just, I said, "No, I'm gonna be with this." And then I know what happens. I then go into YouTube to try to like reset my brain, to shift this topic out of my mind. And then it's like 20 minutes in.

To withdraw or avoid or just generally not have to deal with it.

And I said, "Okay, this is my opportunity to practice what Dave and I were talking about." So I stop, I go, "Yeah, it is kind of scary that we don't know where to send the kids to school here. Like, what's next?" And she just stopped talking about it afterwards. I went back to whatever I was doing, and within 4 minutes I was asleep. It has been fan-frickin'-tastic. And one other little side thing, this is not what we're working on, me and Dave, but I don't have my phone by my bed. And this is such a little thing. Here's the thing that he showed me. And if you would tell me, Jesse, if someone would tell me without the relationship that we've had, I would've said, I'm not paying attention to this. If something doesn't work out, just try a few more options. Like if you're not good at scheduling and planning ahead, come up with 10 other options and keep exploring them and see what happens. And I told him that I tried to shift away from my phone, it didn't work. He goes, well, try a few other options. So we found one way that didn't work out. And the reason I say that is this sounds so hack. It sounds like if anyone's listening to this, they go, this is the mind-blowing revelation. If something doesn't work, try something else. I get it. I had a block in my brain. That told me that there's certain things that I just can't do. And it wasn't until Dave had some, I don't know, relationship leverage on me, until he opened up awareness in me that I was able to accept, oh yeah, these are things that I've accepted that I'm not good at and I've shifted my attention away from them. So those are just two things. Feel my feelings, number one, and number two, to actually accept that there's certain, some things that I think I'm not good at and look for 10 other options, 10 other ways to do them. Before I move on?

Well, I think, I think one thing about coaches that I think is just important in this, you know, I play tennis and you can't actually watch yourself play tennis. It's actually impossible, right? And or skiing for that matter. But, but a coach in tennis watches you and tennis is a sport where theoretically you do the same 6 motions all the time. Yet in the middle of a point and different times, your knees won't be bent, you know, a certain amount, the, your stroke will be a little flatter than it needs to be. And a coach goes, hey, move your wrist like this or shift yourself like this. And so even in that example you gave Andrew, the second one, I was like, well, yeah, try another. It's like, even though that theoretically makes sense, we don't do those things all the time. We're doing, we get ourselves stuck and we get ourselves caught. And I always talk to people when people ask about a coach and I'm like, well, it's someone who can see, see me in a way that I can't see myself and then hold a mirror up to me or challenge me. And that there's immense value as you're experiencing from that.

I was teaching an 8-year-old how to ski yesterday. I'm a ski instructor in Sun Valley. And we were talking about this whole idea of can or can't. And with this big smile, he says, I can't do it yet. Which I thought was so cute. Um, I want to actually— I want to present a few things from that conversation, Andrew. We were talking— we started talking about the marshmallow test.

Yeah.

Which a lot of people are familiar with. This— there's this test they give little kids, you know, here's a marshmallow, they put it right in front of them, and they said, if you can, uh, for 10 minutes not eat this marshmallow, we'll give you 2 marshmallows at the end. And there was this whole meme around it for a while about grit and like the kids who have willpower and discipline, like those are the ones that are successful in life. And, you know, the— you know, there's like t-shirts that say, "Don't eat the marshmallow." And these researchers went back later and really studied and looked at the videos of the kids. And what they found is the kids who were successful in not eating the marshmallows, they just had better strategies. They weren't, they weren't disciplined. They just like, one kid sat on his hands, literally sat on his hands. So he couldn't like reach for the marshmallow. Another one turned his back away. Another one sang a song. And I thought it was just a really important shift on that theme. And it's good timing because we're about like New Year's resolution season and all that. To the thing you brought up earlier, Andrew, oh, I can't do that. There's, I learned this from Joe Hudson. There's a part of our brain that's responsible for us. Not failing. And so once we fail at something that, you know, just think about like a lion, right? It's like tries to become the dominant lion and gets beaten down. It's like, don't do that again. You know, you're going to get killed. So the problem is if we code something as a failure, you know, oh, I failed, I can't do that. There's literally a part of our brain that's like, don't, don't try again. And so what we talked about is instead of thinking like, I'm going to try to finally, you know, whatever, not eat sweets or do better, you know, start planning. If you see it as I'm going to run a bunch of experiments and then the experiments— this I learned from Joe Hudson— that the experiments either fail or don't fail, right? It's not I'm a failure. It's just, oh, what happens if I put my phone in the other room and charge it at night? Does that help me stay off it? What happens if I put it in a lockbox? What happens if I set the screen time off? If I try these 7 experiments or 50 experiments, I get to see which ones work, and then I learn from it. And then when they don't work, I'm not like, oh, I'm a failure. I could never be away from my phone. I'm like, oh, that experiment failed. Next.

There's another thing. Sorry. We have a couple of topics that I think are worth getting into, but I've got to ask one other thing. I say to Dave, I'm glad that Jesse, in one of our annual planning meetings, said, just message Dave right now and tell him this is one of the things you want to work on, planning ahead and being like organized in that way. And in the conversation yesterday, I said, you know, Dave, there's a part of me that's thinking, if I'm not good at this, why am I even spending any time on it? Why don't I just spend time on the things I'm good at and screw the rest of it? And you had this great analogy that finally answered the question that's been on my mind for so long. And I think it's better coming from you than me repeating it.

Sure. And I like to give credit. I didn't make it up. Uh, it w— I learned it from Brian Franklin, another coach. Uh, the, the metaphor was you're this sailboat captain, and of course, you know, focusing on the sail and getting that just right, you know, that's your main focus, that's your strength. But if the boat has holes in it and you're constantly bailing out the water, you've gotta get the holes fixed so you're not spending all your time bailing out the water. So if you think of like, If your weakness is below the level of the bottom of the boat such that there's holes, you gotta get it just up to the point that there's no more holes in the boat and then go focus on your strengths, you know, sailing the boat.

All right.

I love that you can pull these out just when I need them. All right. We were talking before we got started about how we wanna bring up the topic of, uh, year-end reflection and responsibility. Jesse, do you want to tee these up?

Let's start with responsibility. I think year-end reflection we can maybe do towards the end or just for a few minutes. I think. You know, the first commitment of conscious leadership that Dave obviously has, you know, taught me and has been a big part of is committing to being responsible for creating your own experience. And I don't know if we can read the exact thing if somebody has it, but it's, you know, it's not just your day-to-day physical, it's your emotional, it's your spiritual. It's this idea that you are the creator of everything that's happening to you. And it's pretty radical if you think about it, because most people don't operate that way. Most people say, well, I can control what I can control, but no, I, you know, I can't control the weather. And if the weather's bad, then I have a bad day. Or they'll say, oh, but if somebody cuts me off or, you know, slams into me, well, that's, that's, I can't take responsibility for that. And I think they've come up with a really helpful paradigm. But I think a lot of times when you're learning this, framework. It's arguably the most important commitment. And yet I think a lot of people go, "Well, what does it look like to take that 100% responsibility? What does that actually— how do I do that?" So that's why I thought it would be a great topic. Dave, I see you pulling it up, I think.

I have it up. Let me read. So this is the literal language of Commitment 1 of the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership from the book and from worksheet. So the commitment is, I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life and my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. I commit to support others to take full responsibility for their lives. And then I think it's worth reading, there's a corresponding below-the-line commitment. So that's when you're operating from a state of presence above the line. That's your commitment to responsibility. Below the line, I commit to blaming others and myself for what is wrong in the world. I commit to be a victim, villain, or a hero and take more or less than 100% responsibility. So a lot to unpack in that. The few things just, I think, are useful off the bat. One is There are things that we can't control, so this is not like magical thinking, you know, which sometimes people see it as. But the one thing that we can control is our experience, right? So sometimes people say, well, I can't control the weather. Yeah, as far as I understand, we don't control the weather. Maybe we influence it somehow and butterfly effect or something, but you can control your experience of the weather, right? If you go you know, look outside and it's raining, you can think, oh, God darn it, I wish it was sunny today. Right? It's like we can resist what is. If you resist reality, you create suffering for yourself. Or you can look outside and say, oh, it's raining. Like, I'll go splash in the puddles. And, you know, I heard another metaphor recently, like two people on a roller coaster and one's like gripping for dear life, right? And scared and tense and cortisol coursing through their veins. The other one's like, "Woo-hoo!" Or, you know, same exact experience, same life conditions, circumstances, but totally different internal experience. And then if we go to even the conditions or results of life, I find most people's stance is, "Let me take as little responsibility," and really they mean blame. So we'll just talk about the distinction there, but let me take as little blame as possible especially for the things that didn't go the way we planned or we wanted them to go. It's like a deflection game, right? That's why so many companies and teams play the blame game. No, no, it was Andrew's fault. He should have come up with a better topic. No, it was Jesse's fault. He just got out of bed and wasn't prepared. No, it was Dave Kashen's fault. He's talking too much or whatever, right? We'll blame each other if, you know, whatever, we didn't get the results we wanted. And it's a really radically different experience when everyone's looking to take as much responsibility as possible. The simple way I think about it is see yourself as the creator of the results. And it's probably a good moment to distinguish blame because it all starts with the above and below line distinction of, am I relating to reality like it just is what it is? Right, with acceptance, or am I like resisting reality, attached, wishing it was different, basically calling it a problem? The moment I think this is a problem, right, oh, our team didn't hit our goal, this is a problem, then my mind goes, okay, who's— who is there to blame for this problem, for things not being the way they should be? But if I— if I can stand like, no, it just is what it is, then I can look for how did I create it this way without blaming myself. That's the probably most important distinction to make when you're practicing, because most people, it's sort of ironic, they'll like slap themselves on the wrist. Oh, it's my fault, right? Buck stops here. My fault. Done. Without actually the reflection of how did I create the results being the way they are, you know, like, oh, this VP of Engineering on my team keeps missing deadlines. Okay, I know I'm the CEO, I'm supposed to say it's my fault. Okay, it's my fault. But they don't actually look at like, well, how did I create the conditions to have a VP of engineering who keeps missing deadlines?

Well, it's kind of like it's, yeah, I envision in my head someone's going, my fault, my fault. And then it's almost like a way of trying to shut the conversation down or end it versus the flip of it, which is no, this happened. And if we want to ship our product on time, this is gonna be a, it's not gonna allow us to do that. It's not a problem, it's just what is, okay. Let's think about that and solve it. I texted someone yesterday. Once you accept and realize that you are creating your experience, it liberates and empowers you to create whatever you want because you see yourself as the creator versus as a victim to that experience. But Dave, let's— I'm curious, like, you must meet so many CEOs who walk in and they're overwhelmed. That were overwhelmed. I've got so much going on. I feel trapped. I don't even know. I can't even spend time I don't want to start learning any of this stuff because it's just, I'm too overwhelmed already as it stands. A million things going on in my life. How do you start? I remember my journey of going, like starting to realize, I, you know, it's a shift in perspective, obviously, but how do you start with someone like that? Who's kind of going, I'm overwhelmed. I got too many things going on. I can't, what do you mean, take responsibility? I don't get it.

So to. To Andrew's earlier point, I'd probably start with feel the feelings, just so we don't try to paper over them with like, "Let's just shift your perspective and ignore the fact that you're—" And I'll often try to help them identify what they're actually feeling, 'cause like, "You're scared." It's really what they're saying is they're scared. And even that distinction's sometimes useful. I notice they're like, their system almost calms down when they realize like, "Oh, I'm just scared." And then, you know, I say overwhelm is a perspective, right? At any given moment, you're doing what you're doing, you're not doing what you're not doing. You might have a list of things that you hope to do, plan to do. But, you know, to tie the topics together, I'll ask them, are you willing to take your 100% responsibility for creating the experience of overwhelm? I might even say, if I wanted to experience overwhelm the way you do, will you teach me how to do it? Right? Like, maybe, maybe, you know, you're teaching a class at the business school, how to experience overwhelm 101, right? Give me the lesson. And, you know, we, you know, it's a little playful. And every time, if they're willing, which is mostly, most of my clients are willing, they'll, they'll come up with like this perfect recipe. They're like, okay, step 1, you know, Think of all the things you possibly could do. Step 2, believe you should do all of those things. Step 3, make a list of 30 hours of tasks. Step 4, believe you should get them done in 10 hours. Right. Great. Yeah. I would experience overwhelm if I thought I should get 30 hours of work done in 10 hours. And then I just point out to them, you're never actually going to do more than 10 hours of work in those 10 hours. So all you can really do is be deliberate about prioritization and layering on this sort of additional layer of overwhelm doesn't actually help you get that stuff done. Yeah, I think it's super interesting.

You went in a helpful way, I think, to someone's mindset versus the actual choices. Like where my head was going was like, oh, well, I would, I would like pick 5 things to do. I wouldn't have enough resources to get them all done. And then I would try to do them and I'd feel stressed about the fact that they're not getting done. But in many ways, you, you started earlier, but I think it's part of this 100% responsibility thing. I was like, oh, if your mindset is I'm going to, I'm going to basically choose to stress about a bunch of things and not giving myself enough time to get them done. That's going to, you're going to create that experience endlessly.

Yeah, I think I, I do. I, I hear what you're saying. Like, you could go to, how do you create overwhelm? Oh, well, I— right, like, I, uh, try to do too much. Okay, well, let's, let's work on having you do less stuff or delegate or outsource, which we definitely get to. But I find that when they just by shifting out of the state of overwhelm, they have more mental clarity to then see, oh, I could delegate this stuff, right? Like, if they could have seen that already, they would have. That's why I love, like, state shift as a focus. Uh, and then—

but part of what you're pointing to is that they— people are creating— like, because it does seem like the same people oftentimes get overwhelmed all the time, and it's because there's a mental process going on there. Yeah. That they don't prioritize, or they decide that no matter what, they're going to have to— it's like you have to get 100 on every test, and if you get a 95, or, you know, that's bad or wrong. And it's almost like making yourself bad for not, uh, being able to get a 10 out of 100, 100 on every test or whatever.

Yes. And then they create blame and guilt, and then they feel bad, and like drives these cycles. And I think more and more over time, what I've realized is these patterns are almost irrespective of the content. So, right, if we think about the distinction of like the content is, oh, the to-do list and work, the context is overwhelm. Or let me take another example that keeps going in my mind, like worry, right? Oh, I'm just so worried because all these things could go wrong in my business. And then that person maybe is wildly successful, sells the business, Like within a week, what shows up?

Worry about something else.

Yeah. Oh, I'm worried because I'm not sure the best way to spend this free time that I have. And what if I don't spend it right? Oh, I'm worried about my family. It's actually the mind just finding something to worry about. So that's why I like to go to like, well, what is the mental pattern here? So, you know, and to your earlier, I love your word empowerment. The more that you see how you're creating it, the more powerful you are to create something different.

Andrew, do you understand the distinction between blame and fault, or like responsibility and blame?

I do. You're right to have asked it because I do just jump into, okay, then my way of taking responsibility is blaming myself and going, damn, I didn't do it. That is exactly where I go.

And what's the difference for you in your mind?

One is I can fix it. There's, all right, I've gotten myself here, let me understand it. The other is, damn it, you now owe it to the world and owe it to yourself to solve this because you just caused this issue. And so if I take responsibility, it's a lot of, all right, I better roll up my sleeves and better figure out like how I can make it up to everyone and myself and the universe as a whole.

Right. Yeah. And I think that sounds like blame. That sounds like blame. And I think for me, this like acceptance of what is that just happened. It could be that you just got in an argument in the last 15 minutes. It could be that you blew the last quarter totally. And the ability to just kind of go, that happened without a charge attached to it. Like there's, it's been such a powerful thing for me because then it really is like, all right, so now what do we want to do next? And I mean, that's taken me years to be able to be comfortable with that concept of accepting, okay, this happened. This is, this is what the last two weeks have been. Now, now how do I want to get forward? Because there is this huge— you just tangle yourself up in the, in what happened and why did you do it? And I always use tennis as this example. Like, if you, if you're sitting there after a tennis point, you're like, why didn't I, why did I not miss that shot? Or why is my backhand off today? It will destroy your rest of your match. Every time. If you just kind of go, yeah, I lost that point. Okay. I accept responsibility for that. I lost it. Yeah. I want to try to win this next one. Like, even if I just stop the mind, I find it to be very powerful.

I would, I would distinguish it slightly differently because I think the, you know, why did I screw that shot up? Or what, you know, what did I do wrong in that shot? Um, can be asked asked from two different places. And that's, I think, the most important. Are you actually curious? Curiosity is an amazing tool. And that, I think, when we're in a mode of blame, we're not genuinely curious. We're not in a state of wonder, like, oh, I wonder how I created missing that shot. Or I wonder how I, for 5 years, didn't create any additional value and stayed in this thing. That's so interesting. I say I want to, you know, blah, blah, blah. Versus like, you can feel when it's coming from blame. Oh, why did I do that? It's more like, what's the matter with me? Part of it too is we make it so personal, right? When we blame ourselves, like I'm bad, we make it mean something about us. That's something I often say to clients. Are you willing to let it go of making it mean anything about you? Right? You're playing this game. Whether it's a game called Startup or Business or a game called Tennis, and you set a goal and you didn't achieve that goal. Okay, well, what's there to learn so that you can get better next time and play better? By the way, this is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I sometimes think about the word responsible as like able to respond, right? So when you take responsibility, you're more able to respond to the same situation more effectively next time? Like, the whole— what if the whole point of this whole game called life was just learning and growth? I heard some sportscaster say, like, I can't lose. I either win or I learn. I love that perspective. As cliché as it sounds, it's like, once it happened, you know, once it's in the past, right? It's like, it's part of reality. It's— so if you were to go and, you know, make it wrong— oh, I wish that hadn't happened. I may have said this before. But I like the metaphor. It's no different from saying, I wish the sky wasn't blue. Oh, I wish we had made our quarter. Okay, but you didn't make the quarter. So now that it's done, there's literally nothing you can do about it other than learn from it. And all the blaming and making wrong and making yourself bad for it doesn't actually help you get more effective.

I want to double-click on the responsibility and overwhelm because I realized I was sitting here and going, okay, I get it, I get it, I get it. But I wasn't getting it. And in my mind, this is like one of the big problems that I'm personally wrestling with— constant feeling of overwhelm. And when you say it is maybe inherent to the way I operate, like the person who's worried, and even after he like sells his company, he's still worried— I do believe that I operate that way. Or I completely am lackadaisical, I'm gonna go and enjoy and have no— nothing to care about. But that middle zone, I, I, I'm not good at. And so you're— the first thing you tell me to do is say, Andrew, feel your overwhelm. And I would tell you, I'm feeling it all the time. All right. And I now hear the Dave in my head going, no, you're not. You think you're feeling overwhelmed. You're reacting and hiding from overwhelm. So, okay, I accept that I need to feel it.

What do I do after? Or at least resisting. You've probably been resisting feeling whatever's actually—

and you know what, just because as a listener, when I listen, I like to know what the hell are you talking about that you're so overwhelmed. I'll tell you. We're gonna go launch the Sales Accelerator again. I've got to go through all the emails that have been written to explain what the hell this is. And then also because we've taught and we've done so well to explain other people's experiences with it really well. That's a lot of like editing and, and it's not where it needs to be. So I've gotta spend hours on that. There also are members who wanna introduce us to their friends in business who could, who could potentially join the thing. I gotta find a way to respond to all of them and to organize that well. And then I wanna think through what we're gonna do and I think you get it. All of that, and my family's outside this door going, Dad promised he's going to work until 5 o'clock. 4:49, they're going to be on the door, on the doorknob, waiting to come in at 5 o'clock. That's a sense of like, oof, so much coming in. What do I do?

So first, just as you put your attention on all that, what do you feel? Literally, like what sensations do you experience in your body?

Oh, you mean in my— I don't feel it in my body. What I see is like this big mess of stuff flying all around my head. And if I had to feel it in my body, maybe there's a version of that that's in my stomach.

Like a tightening, buzzing, swirling. What sensation?

Buzzing around. Like if you had 1,000 flies in your stomach all trying to get attention.

Hmm.

So just for now, could you welcome those 1,000 flies, that buzzing sensation in your stomach?

I'm struggling with it because what I want to tell you is, no, I hate them. I want to poop them out of my body and get rid of them. But you're saying try it as this experiment, so welcome them in. Okay. I don't think I did that really all the way, to be honest with you. I did it because I want to get to the next step, but I did do it.

Well, to quote Joe Hudson, if you can't welcome the feeling, welcome the resistance. Okay. So, okay, could you welcome your resistance to feeling those sensations? I think this is a really important moment. Like, this is generally what we do. There's a bunch of sensations or feelings that we judge and label as bad, and then we resist them. And what you resist persists, so they just stick around and they become like a mood, or like, like you said, it almost feels chronic when the original wave of fear, which is probably what it is, If you just fully allow, I'm scared, scared I'm going to fail, I'm scared I'm going to not, you know, if you just allowed that wave, you would likely no longer be experiencing that. Okay. And it's okay if in this moment you're, you're not willing or ready to fully allow it. But for the sake of the exercise, um, well, just check again. Are you willing? Just any more willingness to feel? Yeah. Hmm.

Andrew, are you scared you're not good enough?

Is that where this roots? Worse. I'm scared I'm good enough and I'm not pulling it together to live up to that.

Not fulfilling your potential. That's such a trap for so many people. I'm not fulfilling my potential.

Um, it's funny you should say that, Jesse.

So there's a few ways to go with this. Let's go here. Can you bring your attention to the present moment?

Mm-hmm.

Without leaving the present moment, can you find any overwhelm? No. And when is it not the present moment? Never. To me, that's the most important insight. It's literally an invention of mind. You have to, you have to imagine some kind of future, imagine a certain way it should be, and then imagine it not going that way to feel the overwhelm. Specifically, we generally imagine needing to, having to get a certain amount of stuff done and then failing to do that or not having enough time to do that. The whole thing is future tripping. It's just like imagining the future you don't want to have happen and scaring yourself. And that future never— I mean, the future comes and you either do the things or you don't. So you might succeed and do all those things. You might do some of them and learn, oh, that was actually enough. Or didn't take as long as I thought. Or you might fail, and then you'll have that experience and learn from that. But so much of it is just about trying to control the future, manage the future.

Then how does that square with what we've been working on, which is control the future by planning for it so that you don't end up with this sense of 5 things that didn't get done because you forgot to plan for them?

Well, control is a, um, I use that word very specifically because We can't control the future. Let's just be clear. We can influence it. And so, and it's, it sounds like a subtle distinction, but it really matters to your inner experience. When we're scared, we're literally trying to control the future to keep us safe. That's a really different place to come from than, oh, I want to create this trail in my backyard, so let me make a plan for how to do that so that I do it more effectively and efficiently. And I'll go work the plan and then see what happens. And I'll learn, oh, my plan sucked, or my plan was great, or this part's worked and this didn't. So it's one is generally coming from fear and trying to control in order to avoid something, really avoid feeling something, which ironically you're already feeling by future tripping around it. The other is just an act of creation. I want to create something, so I'll make a plan so that I can create it.

I think it's where it starts, Andrew. Like, in, in, if we're doing annual planning, like, oh hey, this thing we kept doing didn't work, well, let's try something different because we want to win and play this game, versus we must hit this number in the quarter, okay, get the plan perfectly accurate to hit this number, and then we don't hit this number, we should all go home because we're all failures. Like, it's all just in the way, in the, again, the state. Yeah, the context, the state you're in when you're when and how you're doing those things. And, and setting goals and planning is helpful because it gives you— it lets you prioritize, it lets you set intention, it gets everyone on the same page. But it's not because you're trying to, you know, make sure you hit this exact number perfectly and, you know, you stick the landing, otherwise you're, you're a failure, which I think is oftentimes how a lot of people relate to it.

So what you're both saying is it's first of all me running away from the feeling of overwhelm instead of accepting it and just being with it. And the second thing is that I am projecting all the disasters that could happen all the time from not hitting everything. And that's the thing that makes the work less pleasurable and perpetuates the feeling of overwhelm.

Yeah, I heard it said once— I think this is PC to say— stress and overwhelm are white-collar words for scared. You're scared. And yeah, what creates fear is imagining the future we don't want to have happen. I mean, most of the time, if a snake jumps up at you on a trail, that's genuine, authentic, in-the-moment fear. But most of us are just manufacturing fear all the time by imagining these futures we don't want to have happen. There's also a scarcity element. You bring up overwhelm. There is an element of scarcity too. And there's a distinction. People sort of get tripped up on this sometimes. There is, you know, we made up time, but let's say within the construct of time, it is finite, right? Like 24 hours in a day, you have a week before your launch. It is finite, right? So we're not magically thinking like, oh, you have all the time. There's no such thing as like— it is finite. But scarcity has within it the notion of not enough. And that is always a story. That's always a perspective. Do I have enough time or do I have not enough time? You know, there's no arbitrary answer to that other than the story we make up. There's X amount of time. That is what it is. Again, if I tell myself it's not enough, then I'm going to experience fear, stress, and overwhelm. Same thing with money, love, recognition. Fulfilling my potential, right? It's all versions of I'm not enough, it's not enough, there's not enough, right?

And to tie it back to responsibility, when you're in that state continually and not pausing to let you recognize you're in that state, that is a way you're creating that reality for yourself, right?

Is that what you say, Dave Kashen? Totally. And The way out, if you want to have a different experience, is by taking as much responsibility as you possibly can. So really getting genuinely curious, how am I continuously creating the experience of overwhelm? And the more you get curious, the more layers and layers you see. Oh, I'm telling myself this story. I'm a man, you know, this like mechanic. I'm imagining this thing. Wow, I have a tendency to do that. Maybe I overcommit to justice, but there is reality to it too. Oh, I committed to these people to do all these things. Why did I do that? Oh, I wanted them to like me. I wanted to look good and avoid looking bad. All right, so the more curious you are, the more you see all the different steps and ingredients to how you're creating it.

I got to ask something about Jesse. Jesse, you now are doing— there are two things that I want to ask you about, but I think we only have time for one. You're aligning your schedule with a Wednesday work week. When you talked about it, Wednesday work week for us, for with Bootstrap Giants, when you talked about it, I felt like you were just so sick of us. Like they constantly are messaging me. They're constantly talking to me about this. I'm tired of this whole Bootstrap Giants team. Let me go to Aux. Let me spend time on Growth Assistant, all this other stuff. And then you had brought something up about how on one of our past podcasts about how you're kind of designing the life you want, and maybe you're a little bit afraid to even ask for it. And there was a bit of inspiration that I want to connect into, 'cause I keep battling the stuff that I don't like, like my feeling of overwhelm. I wanna get drawn to the, where is the part of you that you're trying to invent the thing that almost feels too good to want and to bring to life?

Yeah, that's a great question. I, you know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting observation, Andrew, because you have a lens into it. But like, I, you know, I don't know if I would use the word overwhelmed, but I definitely towards the end of this year, I felt, noticed I wasn't enjoying it. Right. As, as maybe as much as I want. And I have a high bar and I don't like to settle. And so I'm like, okay, wait, no, I want, I want to, and I still want to have it all. I don't also, believe in scarcity. So I'm like, wait, how can I do this differently? Now, there's a couple of interesting things that I think are worth pointing out. One is I didn't blame anybody for that, including myself. And old Jesse and most people, I think, would have spent 2 weeks trying to like diagnose the blame associated with this. Is it because Bootstrap Giants is doing this? Is it because like, oh, you know, I started too many businesses? And I think one thing I want to call out about responsibility is in some ways it's so much more light because you don't actually spend that much time time trying to find the problem, which I think so many people are programmed to find the problem. So I didn't spend any time on that. And I was like, all right, I'm just not as happy as I'd like to be. I was like, okay, how am I creating this? How have I created this? And I just observed a few different things and I didn't actually spend that much time on it. I said, okay, well, I observed that Bootstrap Giants are showing up in a lot of places. I've observed that people tell me I'm hard to schedule with. I've observed that I don't feel like I have enough time to to do networking and external stuff, which is something I enjoy. But it was like, it was like a 40— it was probably a conversation with Dave where it mostly came together, and Nak and Dave, where I had two conversations where I thought through it with a partner. I was like, all right, I'm going to try something different. And that's the amount of thought that went into it. I was like, okay, let's just— instead of having days where I have the morning with Bootstrap Giants and the afternoon with Aux, which is what I did this past year, let me just give everybody their own day. And for myself, I think that'll make me more focused. I think it'll make it easier for me to schedule with. So you're not having to chase things around. And by the way, that's the way they come. And now, right now, Patricia's working up like an example of it just so we can all see it and kind of go, does that, is that gonna work? Or are there any thoughts that are coming to our minds around this? But that's it. And it's part of me going, wait, I wanna do all these things and I wanna make sure it's free. I have freedom and flexibility in my, my experience of freedom and flexibility. And so it's just an example, but it, today's our experimentation point. We may get a month or two in and go, ah, it's not really working because people need you on the days you're telling them you're not available, Jesse. And whatever, something might happen. And, but, but I'm not, I don't know, whatever. I'm not, I'm going to try something and we're going to see what happens.

I want to really highlight that Jesse didn't try to figure out the right answer, which is what most people do. He thought, what do I want? What would be most enjoyable? And I think it's a radical distinction. I think people way undervalue their authentic wants. Like, I think if we were guided by our authentic wants instead of our intellect, analytical mind trying to figure out the right answer, we'd actually— that's like the path to flow state. We'd create much more of what we want with more and more ease.

You know, the thing that I caught was being on this side of it showed me, oh, I like that he is fighting for some kind, maybe fight is not the right word, but he's trying to create some kind of magical experience for himself that in some ways maybe might feel a little selfish or self-indulgent or whatever. And I got more excited about giving him his Wednesdays for that. And the reason that stood out for me is because when we were doing annual planning, Adam said, I wanna hear you say something like, I wanna go and see my kids' soccer games every day, or, I want to whatever. And I thought, if anyone hears that, they're gonna think I'm being so self-indulgent that they're not gonna want to support me in doing the things that are just for me. Think about the work, think about everyone else. And there's a lot that I want that's exciting, not the soccer games, but like going and working outside. You both know I love that I get to sit outside and work on like meetings, laptop, whatever. And I always make excuses for it for people, or I try to like cover it up somehow so that they'll forgive it instead of realizing that they're gonna be as excited as I am to help Jesse get to his Wednesday.

Yeah. And when you said not the soccer games, I wondered if you felt like you had to sandbag that or, or something.

I don't want everyone starting to fight to help me get the soccer games and make me realize that that's what my true per— I love watching my kids' soccer games more than watching, yeah, uh, professional sports. I just don't want us to start attaching a lot of significance to that one event. It's, But it's cool that you pointed out that I might have been sandbagging you.

Well, I want you to want what you want and to believe that you can have what you want just because you want it.

I think I'm okay with that, but what I want to do then is hide it because why should Jesse care that what I would like to do is go work outside or watch my soccer? That's like my own thing. I should be, when we're on the clock, we should both be fighting for what's good for the business and both of us.

Oh, but it's just business, Andrew, right? We are not human beings that actually love and care about each other. This is business.

I do have a hard time accepting that, partially because I grew up in New York where you really are trained to be like a killer business person and suppress your feelings for it. What helped me is where Jesse keeps saying to our accelerator members and internally that business is a way to— and then he'll say something like, I really like getting on these calls with all of you for our accelerator. I sometimes think the business is just an excuse for all of us to find each other and connect and spend good time together. Or he'll say something like, I think business is a good way for us to become a better version of ourselves. And so that the fact that that's in the atmosphere gives me permission to still do something that feels self-indulgent. Yeah.

And then it's a point of view to be clear, Andrew, cuz that, that's just my point of view. Other people think business is a place to go crush people and and, you know, or be pirates, raiding company, whatever it is. Like, everyone has their version of it. And I think some of it is just people pick their version of it, and there may or not, you know, be a right or wrong version of it. There's just different versions.

And I think some of the impetus for this podcast is to show that this version can be wildly successful too, because I think there's a tendency to believe that the ruthless crush everybody, that's what works. And I mean, it'll be a cool case study just to add to your pressure, Andrew, to make Bootstrap Giants work, uh, that, you know, what happens when you have people who actually care about each other as human beings, who actually, dare I say, love each other and want everyone to have it all, to have the things that they want in their personal life, the growth and development and the success and It'd be fun to see how it unfolds. All right.

We promised a little year-end reflection. Let's just close it out with that. Jesse, I'll put Dave on the spot.

Dave, give everyone 6 questions for their year-end reflection exercise. Oh, nice.

Okay. Uh, number 1, what do you need to do or say to get complete with 2024? I think most people don't, don't create completion. Like, I think there's something really powerful, like complete the year. So that's just general. Number 2, what do I want to let go of or leave behind from 2024? I think most people are way too focused on attaining and gaining, and I think there's a lot of value in reflecting on what do I want to shed, what do I want to leave behind? Oh, 4 more. Okay. What did I learn? You know, what are the sort of most important things I learned or ways I grew in 2024? Um, celebrate. What do I want to celebrate from 2024? What were my biggest wins? Uh, what were my biggest challenges or setbacks? Both of those can yield learning. And then number 6, I would, I would parlay this into future looking. What's my most beautiful, exquisite vision for 2025. So I like to lump those together. A bit of reflection, close, get complete with the year. And then what's the most beautiful, inspiring, exquisite vision for my life in 2025? And some people will write a letter to themselves. I like that practice, right? Oh, dear Dave, here I am on 12/31/2025. Wow, what an amazing year it's been. Da da da.

I love it. All right. That's it.

That's one of Dave's superpowers, by the way, coming up with stuff like that on the fly. He has good questions.

Well, it's just like questions like that. Like sometimes ahead of a thing, I'll be like, I need 3 questions to get my thinking clear. And he'll just send me questions and I'll, once I answer them, I'm good.

It really did help. We did an exercise on that the other day that helped me shift my, my thinking and make me realize, wait, I've been limiting what I'm I'm asking myself and how I'm analyzing. All right, thanks everyone for watching us and listening to us this year, and we'd love to hear from you. Really, we're so small right now that maybe if you're looking at our YouTube video— no, no one else does this, but I do it. If I look at someone's YouTube channel and I see that they only have 100 views, I go, I feel sorry for you, you're still doing this with only 100 people. You could have shouted into a subway train and got more. The beauty though of being here at this point where we only have— it's more than 100 views, but still, when we only have that is Dude, we share every email that goes around. So if you send us an email and tell us what you're thinking about this, we will share it. I will personally internalize it. And for 5 min— no, for 3 minutes, for 30 seconds, I'll feel good. So here it is, andrew@bootstrappedgiants.com, andrew@bootstrappedgiants.com, and I'll send it around to everyone. Thanks. Have a great 2025. Bye.