#5 Going deep to FEELREEL with Andy Swindler.

Foreign.

And welcome to In Pursuit of Purpose with me, your host, Tim Jones, the Grow Good guy.

Hey, and welcome back to another episode of In Pursuit of Purpose with me, Tim the Grow Good Guy. So in this week's episode I have a chat with Andy Swindler. And we are both members of the Global Purpose Leaders. We're a bunch of pretty cool people trying to do some cool things. And yeah, we go pretty deep on this one. We go talk a lot about the shadow, we talk about Andy's experience and his journey from leaving entrepreneurship and getting into more purpose driven world. We touch on a whole heap of stuff, toxic masculinity, resilience. Yeah, so really interesting stuff. So yeah, sit back, relax and check it out. And I guess more importantly than that, please do let me know, give me some feedback. Is this stuff of interest to you? Is there something else you'd like me to delve into within the realms of purpose? And is there anyone else that you think I should be talking to about this stuff? Give me some, give me some comments. Awesome. Anyway, onto the show.

Hey. And so with me this week I have got Andy Swindler. Andy and I have connected relatively recently and that's been through an amazing organization of which we're both members called the Global Purpose Leaders. And yeah, so really excited to have Andy on the podcast with me this week. So Andy, welcome or as we say here in New Zealand, kia ora. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hey Tim, thanks so much for having me. It really probably will never get old to just effortlessly connect with somebody on the other side of the world. So that's pretty neat. And you know, also talking about the weather never gets old.

So yeah, let me, let me think what to share about me. So I am an entrepreneur for most of my career. I learned a lot about leadership that way. I owned a small business. I'm based in Chicago, Illinois in the usa. And along the lines along the way there, I met conscious capitalism. And that was actually when I was struggling in business and you know, we had grown too quickly. Maybe we'll unpack more of that story later. But you know, the short version is got really tough in a lot of ways for me emotionally, you know, financially. It was kind of all tied together, you know, meeting people's obligations and things. And that really, I think was a lot of what led me to these various movements. But I still remain pretty grounded with conscious capitalism as a way of orienting ourselves around purpose driven business, heart centered leadership consciousness within the context of business and really normalizing that and over the last few years I've gone extremely deep in that category. I ended up selling that business, going all in on purpose coaching and consulting. And now I'm in the midst of launching a startup called Feelreal that I can talk a lot more about, but that is really focused on the extraordinary power of vulnerability within intimate spaces. And looking at first of all, what are the conditions that we can create that increase the likelihood of vulnerability.

And sharing between people at a deeper level and what outcomes does that lead to? And one way I like to frame it is the grand arc here is shifting the dominant narrative from fear to love. And I think that's very much related to purpose. I'm sure we'll get into that more. And then one area we're specifically looking at really intensely is this idea of diversity, equity and inclusion which you know, in many cases is treated as this bolt on or add on, you know, kind of auxiliary effort. But we're starting to see it potentially as the front door to a much deeper look at what is an inclusive culture look like. Which really actually in my opinion goes far beyond the isms, you know, racism and sexism and all that. Those are all things we must address and things we need to really have a sober outlook and hold space for all of that and how that affects all populations, particularly marginalized populations. And then yet there is something else possible there. Once, you know, and that I would just, you know, that word inclusion, which we could equate with belonging is extremely important and I think that relates to purpose and that relates to love and that relates to how each of us show up as a fully embodied and expressed human being.

Very cool. So quite a lot of stuff then you're up to just, you know, just take you on the small challenges first.

Yeah, just the little things. And my inbox just feels like this rising tide.

Work on so, so I.

Mean where I'd really like to start is, is going back to your, your pre purpose existence and you know, what, why were you doing what you were doing in a pre purpose life, like what was driving you as an entrepreneur in a high growth business if it wasn't purpose?

Great question. And I, I guess my philosophy about purpose is even if we haven't explored it formally or expressed it in words that we know and we know to be true, that they're probably there's some kind of accidental purpose. Yeah that we're you know, following some thread and so I think, you know, one of my mentors early on in business told me, you know, and this wasn't even really related to purpose, but it actually kind of does relate to. So it's basically, look, there's two kinds of businesses, you know, ones that are responding to a market need. You know, there's just some clear gap in the market and some people who can fulfill it and great, they show up and start doing the work. Which I wouldn't say is necessarily purpose driven in the sense that I think most of us within the global purpose leaders think of a higher purpose like a source driven purpose.

And yet by some definition of purpose, you could say, well, if there was a market need, then there's a purpose in fulfilling that need.

And that is really how I launched. You know, it was, it was. I had been with a couple of other small companies and they kind of fell apart. And then those clients needed, needed help and I knew how to do it. And we'd actually developed some proprietary proper along the way. And so that, that helped in a sense because there were only so many people who knew how to do that. So. And then the, and I would say that's actually what drove that agency and was, was more of a response, more of a, hey, you know, who needs this thing and can we do it? And one of the things that led to was an ex was a real lack of focus. You know, it was little kid in a candy store with, you know, probably especially as easy in the digital realm. You know, if you're a manufacturer and you need a million dollars to build a new line, you're not just. It's just you can't trivially think about that or jump into that in the digital world. It's a little easier to jump around, which I think is a challenge. It's also an extraordinary opportunity. Like digital has disrupted so many things and moves the world forward, I think has liberated a lot of things and creates all these opportunities, you know, but for us that, that lack of focus and discipline eventually really hurt us because we got spread really thin. You know, we were a software company developing our own platform. We were a web design shop first and foremost. We were storytellers, which kind of led us to marketing. And in 2007 I got so excited about the democratizing potential of social media. So it was like, oh, let's figure out the social media thing, which was tricky in terms of consulting because I think people found it difficult to value for various reasons. So.

That alone created some challenges for us. And I think that's a lot of the value of a higher purpose is to make decisions using that purpose as a lens and really Staying focused and grounded in that purpose and knowing, gosh, yeah, there's all these shiny objects out there, if they distract us from this higher purpose, that's not, not what we should be doing right now.

Yeah, 100% agree.

And it's interesting. I've just been starting to listen to this guy, John Viveki, John Vivaki, who's a professor at the University of Toronto and he's got an amazing 53 part YouTube video series called the Meaning Crisis. And one of the videos I was listening to this morning when I took the dog out for a walk was he talks about, you know, why are humans easily distracted? And I think if you're a more creative, kind of open, expressive type human, which I would suggest most of us in the global purpose leaders are because we're pretty deep into some, you know, what has been relatively fringe thinking. He, he points to that creativity actually being, that's part of the opening door to transcendence and transformation. Because if you stay too focused and too conservative, I guess with a small C, the risk is you, you don't have the, you know, your, your basic system isn't challenged or questioned. So you don't, I guess, zigzag or riff onto new ideas. But, but I think equally being a similar kind of creatively type human, everything's an amazing idea, but 100% like that lens of purpose just really hones it in. It's like, okay, well does this align with who I am and what can I actually contribute? And, and if not, then it's an easy no. So yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting.

Eh? Oh yeah. And I, what that brings up for me is, and there's so many definitions of purpose, you know, that float around and you know, we had that effort to really codify that as the global leaders, which I appreciate that and I line around that one that's been up for me a lot though is that purpose is the natural creative expression of the universe. And that speaks to a kind of a through me energy. Right. That this is, I'm a conduit, you know, to this creative energy. And I think most a lot of us, when we think about higher purpose, that's, that's the tone of it. And yet, you know, if we, for those of us who want to label that as, you know, a feminine kind of energy or a shakti energy, well, alongside that is always the masculine or the Shiva. Right. That energy does need a container to.

Yep.

To show up and to take form and to be manifest and useful in the 21st century.

And I think it's. When you look at. I mean, it's recorded, you know, some of the biggest creatives in human history have often said that, you know, I was but a vessel who painted this picture. You know, this came to me from outside of me. And so there's clearly something in that expressiveness or that level of connectivity to your true calling, which I guess artists are in many ways the extreme.

Ideal of that. They. They typically shun everything, you know, that the rest of us would hold to be dear to ourselves, like a, you know, a good house and a good car and a solid job and all the rest of it. Yeah, it's interesting that there's something in there. I hope there was another.

This was the Jordan. Because you. I know you've been down the Jordan Peterson rabbit hole. And this was the. The video that I posted on. On the group and where, you know, he talks about this idea that when an idea captures you and you cannot shake it, like, where does that come from? We don't know scientifically. We don't know why we get captured by an idea. And I guess again, that artist is all that extreme artistry is where that idea has captured you so much that you just feel you have to do something with it. And I think you're right. I think at that deepest level, that is what purpose is. It's that calling. It's that, why am I here? What is the contribution that I can bring forth? Yeah.

Absolutely. I think in a lot of schools, most of my training is with the True Purpose Institute that was founded by Tim Kelly, and certainly we subscribe to, and I think a lot of purpose areas do as well. That it's a somatic experience. Right. That it's a felt sense. That's when we are connecting to a kind of truth. And we could use a lot of words to describe that. I think it's related to actually also to HeartMath's work around measuring the energy field of the heart. I personally love when science and spirituality and mysticism can kind of align and explain things through different lenses. But to me, this. Yeah, there's something about higher purpose and connecting to this idea of trusted source, this energy beyond us that can't be contained by the mind, that can't be calculated by the ego, and that requires some trust. And I know personally, I had virtually no training and I'm pretty new to it, actually. I would say in the grand scheme of things, in the last few years, to a somatic, you know, felt experience on the one Hand, I have quantified that I have a lot of what I would call feminine energy, that I am an empath and I'm highly sensitive in various areas and I've had training and a lot of revelations around that. On the other hand, I just wasn't exposed to that growing up. And I don't imagine most people are in America, maybe in the west, maybe in the whole world. These are some of the casualties, I think, of obliterating indigenous cultures through colonization as we have. We both live in colonies. Right. Well, actually, is that true of New Zealand?

New Zealand, you know, the Queen is still head of state. We have a Governor General appointed essentially, I believe, by the Queen. And there is a, a republican movement in New Zealand that's, you know, I guess, you know, no representation or no taxation without represent. Not that we give money back to the British government per se, but that movement is, is growing and it's an interesting conversation.

So yeah, so I got a little off track, but that, that felt sense, I think is so, so critically important. And I, I, I just use that a lot when I'm checking in. If I'm in a conversation, especially if I get charged around something which is just, you know, a lot of my work is around, you know, privilege and whiteness, especially in America, and really recognizing the history of how we got here and how, how many of those patterns really still play out. And we can't just like subscribe to the convenience of, well, slavery was a thing of the past. Civil rights were a thing in the past. It's so much that is still here and present for so many people. And I never want to equivocate. And yet the reality is every human being has an emotional spectrum. Every human being, I think, has a right to express that in some way. So there's this question of how do we do that in the moment? How can we check in? And this idea of starting to locate different emotions within the body is so incredibly useful as a, as a map. You know, it's like using the body as a map for what's happening in the moment. And one of the critical things about the purpose work, you know, that I do is just learning to listen really carefully to when is the voice coming from Trusted source, which another way I describe that is it's a voice of pure love. And then when is that voice coming from the rest of us, which we could call ego or the parts of ourselves.

You know, and I want to be careful, you know, I don't like to think that we have that some emotions are good and some are bad. I think that's also a lot of the, you know, conditioning or training that I had growing up and just is common, you know, we want to kind of avoid certain emotions and not others.

Yes.

And I don't want to suggest we should all just be, you know, bathing in sadness all the time. Great. And yet I've also heard it quantified that it only takes 90 seconds. You know, unless we're talking about, you know, hardcore trauma, it really takes about 90 seconds for an emotion to fully process. If we give it time to process and we just simply don't in most of the society.

No. Because we're just too busy and got to move on to the next. The next trigger or trauma. There's. I definitely think, with that, you know, the indigenous learning, I mean, and it's interesting. We talk about colonization. So coming up on Friday. No, Thursday this week, 6 February, is Waitangi Day. And Waitangi Day is the day where the crown settled with the. Basically the. The Mori Iwi. So the Mori are the indigenous population of New Zealand, and the IWI is like the name for the tribe. So the collective Iwis came together and basically signed an agreement with the crown to sort of say, okay, well, look. Yeah, because there'd been some significant wars, the New Zealand land wars, and so that. It's interesting that we. I guess New Zealand is relatively progressive in that, you know, there has been attempts, and I. I'm by no means a scholar of the Waitangi tribunals and the settlements, but there at least seems to have been an attempt to, you know, rectify and take ownership for some of the past things. And by no means am I saying that's been completely done or fully done or even in the right way, but, you know, there has been some attempt. And, you know, New Zealand is theoretically a bicultural country, or in that respect, which is. Yes. Interesting perspective that we have on that here. Not that I'd say we have the solution by any means, but the other thing, I think there's a really cool Russell Brand podcast, and I'll try and put the link into this in the notes. And he talks to a guy called Ed Stafford, who's a British explorer, and he does a lot of crazy stuff. Like, I think he. He walked the length of the Amazon solo. And, you know, that that's a pretty good way to test your psychological fortitude, I would suggest. And he basically said, you know, he did almost. He almost went tropo because he. He only had himself to talk to or some, you know, little village of indigenous Amazonian people who didn't speak English. But then he, the thing he really referred to was a few months after that he was asked to go to Australia pretty last minute for this video shoot. And he was talking about how he was really stressed. You know, he hadn't really recovered from the Amazon trip. I think him and his partner had just had a child as well. And he was like, well, you know, I kind of need the money, so I should probably go and do it anyway. So he flies to Australia, which, you know, is like a 36 hour or 24 hour trip from the UK. He gets off in Sydney or ever and gets on another flight to go to the middle of the outback. And he said he's been, you know, sitting there in this outback airport and he's really stressed and he's thinking, you know, I'm in the middle of nowhere, no one knows where I am. You know, this guy could be an ax murderer. This could be it, you know. Anyway, so this Aboriginal elder guy comes and picks him up in his, in his pickup truck and doesn't say anything to him, just grabs his bags, puts them in the back of the truck and they're driving along and Ed's going, okay, like, this is really scary. You know, what is going on here? This guy's not speaking to me. And after a few more minutes, this, the Aboriginal elder just turned around to him and just said, mate, would you shut up? And they looked at him and said, what do you mean, I haven't said anything. And he said, no, I can hear it. It's like static coming out of your head.

Over the course of his time with this tribe, what, what they, what they were basically saying is, you know, this is where, you know, essentially you white fellas have gone wrong. Is that in, in the Aboriginal, you know, I guess physiology, they work 90% or maybe 90, I don't say 93. Working in their gut. So in their soul, like what feels like the right thing to do? And then he said, we, we probably put 5% through our heart. Like, does it feel like it's coming from love? And then we'll put the remaining 3%, if that's right through the logic. Whereas he said, you guys are the opposite. It's like you're probably 98 or 97. Logic, 2% heart and 1% soul. And he said, that's what you guys basically need to figure out. And that really hit home for me because I think most of us in most businesses in Most of our lives are making rational decisions. That's the basis post enlightenment modern world is it rational? And I think we've lost any and all connection, apart from small pockets of us in the west to these deeper ideas.

That's powerful. Even the way a lot of us approach purpose is this really rational kind of like logical approach.

Here's my, here's my 12 step program to find your purpose. Right.

And, and maybe that's how we have to meet the west, the Western mindset, right. To, to try to back. I mean it's, that's been my journey, right. Kind of backing into a deeper felt sense and somatic work and things. But yeah, that's, that's powerful.

No, I totally agree. And I think.

I think the people that are doing well in the, in the world of purpose and training and coaching and consulting are the ones who are approaching it from the rational angle. And I think there's a lesson probably for, you know, and I think it's, it's for us to try and help people go deeper on that journey. But I think from my own experience, and I'd be keen to hear yours, Andy, is I kind of find it's like a rabbit hole or a wormhole. Once you, once you lift the lid on purpose and you connect to it for the first time, you just go further and further down the rabbit hole. Um, I don't know what your. I'd be really interested, I guess two questions really be, be keen to know like what was the defining moment when you know, you kind of like, okay, this isn't working for me in terms of this, you know, corporate driven world. So what was that moment? And then what was your first glimpse into purpose?

Yeah, so, you know, I talked a little bit about my, my longest entrepreneurial experience with my agency. I wonder if, I wonder if there was a specific moment. There were several moments and it kind of turned into a cascade. And then I suppose that all led to a moment, a real wake up call of saying, okay, this is not working. I, you know, this is not, this is going to get worse before it gets better. And so that led to a whole series of decisions about how to downsize and how to, you know, really reconcile a lot of the things that, that were problematic and really not allowing us to be of service.

And.

You know, actually one way, one place that really showed up for me was romantically, you know, the way I was letting a lot of that pain and grief pollute my romantic relationships at the time and not having firm boundaries there and maybe even using that as an excuse for not showing up a certain way in romance. And that really actually was probably the big thing almost exactly five years ago. I think it was the day after Valentine's Day. It's funny how that day can be a catalyst.

And, you know, I just had a breakup and really looked at myself in the mirror and just didn't like what I saw. It's like I'm jealous. And I, you know, just sort of. Just a lot of the things that didn't feel like me or felt like, yeah, like I. I was being, I don't know, driven by. By some force that wasn't. Wasn't really a natural part of me. And.

You know, I want to be a little careful with that language because I don't. One thing I love about true purpose is that we. We celebrate the ego as a natural part of the human expression and indeed, and indeed a necessary one. If we look at ego is simply, you know, the part of us that individuates, right? The person says, I am me. The part that the parts, I suppose, of. Of the psyche that get things done, you know, that isn't necessarily connected to oneness and source and all that so much as, oh, well, first and foremost, I need to protect my physical being. And then second, something I think about a lot is I think the second prerogative of. Of the average ego is to protect my worldview, right? Protect the way I've come to understand and contextualize the world I live in. And that I think about a lot because I think that leads to a huge amount of conflict once we scale that up, you know, because people really dig their heels in, right, to protect that worldview. And if we challenge it, and this is. I've come to think of the US as actually one of the great PR experiments of human history. And as I've spent years unraveling the history of colonization and things here.

That'S. It feels like a lot of what we're up against, you know, here and a lot of places in the world where we just don't really want to peel back all those things because that's such stark contrast to. To what a lot of us have learned and been conditioned into. So to answer your other question, so for me.

Well, there's a few steps I'll skip. Maybe we'll come back to. For the sake of time. But there was a moment I decided to go into coach training. I had just wrapped up a couple big projects, sold my company. I really didn't know what was next. I was super burned out. Tim Kelly actually was in Chicago doing an event with conscious capitalism and we were chatting and then it turned out just a lot of synchronicity, which we view as one of the measuring sticks of purpose. It's like if you're. If things are showing up synchronistically, which might seem like coincidence or accidental, but the reality is the more that a person connects with trusted source and uses that for guidance, the more of that synchronicity tends to show up. So, you know, you tell me if that's accidental or not. So that there was a coach, there was a coach training starting. Just I think a couple weeks later I jumped in. I really went all in with that. And again, that was the first time, let's say that was the first time I had formal dialogues with my trusted source.

I've also discovered along the way that I had certainly received messages from trusted source before. The, the most notable is that feel real. My startup is really the current iteration of the last 12 years since I had a dream where I've received the most clear vision I've ever seen. And of course I think any dream work on the one hand, or we could argue that's the most direct access to the subconscious we have on the other hand, I think it's all a matter of translation the minute we're in the conscious world. But I did wake up in 2007 and wrote out, grabbed seven pieces of paper and wrote out this whole thing. And the thing that's remained the most consistent is reorganizing the Internet into intimate real time dialogue spaces and circle and circles. And again, going back to that synchronicity, I'm not the only one. I mean a lot of people over the last several years or decade have.

Been working on this and experimenting with circling practices, developing formal schools. The technology has really caught up in terms of using video for that. So there's something, I think there's a huge culmination there and it just seems like it couldn't happen any faster the way the Internet's evolved, the way social media has evolved. Um, so I know I'm branching off a little bit that going back to your question, that formal connection with trusted source and there's a specific journaling kind of two way journaling practice that we use called active imagination journaling, that just, that flowed so easily for me. It was, it was. I think I have hundreds of pages of journaling over the years certainly. And really. Yes, yes. Learning purpose statements is wonderful and they're helpful to anchor and they're especially if you have a group or an organization, the words are, I think, even more important because we all need to anchor around the same idea. It's most important to anchor on the same shared meaning. And that's true of values as well. But it's hard to do that unless we have shared language. But the deeper thing is really this connection. And it's just like you were saying about the aborigines. I think you know where they seem to start culturally. Yes, it's kind of where I and many others are digging deeper into.

But I think, I think it's very common that the thing stopping most people connecting to their purpose is that ego. It's that, you know, the world, as I think, feel, see, hear it to be true, looks like X. And you're telling me that it might look like why. And I, and I think that's also.

Where, you know, in, I guess the US election that is kind of be coming up is the perfect example of, of multiple egos split dead into two ego camps where neither one wants to admit that the other one might have something of value.

And I think that is the on the individual purpose context that, that, that is the big challenge. And I think I was really lucky in that I had like two significant events that kind of made me question myself. And I think it's interesting that you had that traumatic event. And I know we're early on in the podcast series, but talking to Catherine last week, you know, she had a relatively traumatic event and it's, it seems, it's interesting that as humans we need that, that trauma to spark the, the consciousness or to get us to think and, and, and think maybe. Well, am I being complicit in my own demise here with my own actions and to take control of that ego? Yeah, it's fascinating and I think that's why people don't do it. Because it's hard.

Exactly.

You know, and it, I would, I'd say it's hard for any, anybody to go against their conditioning in any way. And then, you know, one of the ways I think about privilege and marginalization is how much energy does it take to move through the world? So, you know, I pretty much won the privileged lottery as a straight white man, you know, middle, middle class, coming from an educated, stable family in America.

You know, and it comparatively takes me a lot less energy to walk out of my door and move through the world.

Yep.

Than a lot of other people. So that has given me a lot of surplus energy to do a deep exploration of purpose. And now you know, I, I pick up that as a. As a responsibility to figure out, okay, how can I leverage all that surplus energy to, you know, to do this? So a lot of what, certainly that applies to purpose work and. But a lot of feel real probably, I think, even goes beyond that because a lot of that's around. How do we share stories? You know, how do we create spaces where we can. We can actually share more vulnerable stories together? And I think at the core of that is seeing each other as full human beings.

That's. I love that. And I'd never considered that, that energy piece, but I think that makes it feel. It makes it feel real. So there you go. Yeah. Like you say, if you, if you are of a certain background and type, then the world flows easier for you. There's less hurdles for you to go and do stuff. That's a really. I think that just encapsulates it in a really easy to grasp way.

Yeah, that's super cool.

Well, and by the way, I have a drinking game going. Every time you say feel real, I'm going to take a shot of kombucha.

Of course, this could go downhill really quickly, or it could be the best podcast anyone's ever listened to Tim and Andy get drunk on going in pursuit of purpose.

I wonder if anybody's thought of that.

Well, maybe, maybe that could be the end of season finale. We'll get as many of the global purpose leaders on a podcast, and every time someone says purpose or meaning or ego.

It could be close to some sort of shamanic induced experience for us to connect to the next level.

There you go. Expand our consciousness. What you just said reminds me of one of our colleagues, Gabriel Grant and I. I love, I love looking at motivation. I think if. If we're going to try to do change, really at any level, or especially at a broad level, we really need to understand whatever we can about motivation. And a lot of his research is in the sustainability space. And basically there's an instinct for a lot of people to use guilt and shame as motivational techniques.

Yes.

And we see this all over the place. And it's. I, you know, my bias is that, you know, once somebody sort of wakes up. Right. There's this term, you know, being woke. Right.

That, you know, is used probably misused in a lot of ways.

You know, I think. Well, what I mean by that is if we're grabbing onto the identity like, you know, I am woke or I am an ally or whatnot, there's a danger there of focusing more on the Identity than the deeper work and staying in it. But you know, in terms of motivation, I mean again like that relates directly to purpose. Right. This idea of a higher purpose coming from source, coming from soul, that's an intrinsic motivator that you don't need anything in the world actually to back that up. No, you're getting it from something much more powerful.

Yes. Rather than your manager prodding you in the back saying could you please get that spreadsheet done by four o' clock today.

Yeah.

And for not for no seeming reason.

Right. And most of those are really fear based motivational ideas. Right. If you don't do this job, you will get fired. You can't pay your rent, can't feed your family. That's fear.

Yes. And I think you know that the sort of the fear based world, when you look more broadly at the, you know, and interesting. This actually loops back to when you were talking about your startup and know there was a need. And I think there's two parts to this. You know, one, when you look at sort of Maslow's hierarchy, okay, what, what are the real needs that a human has and you know, is I'm trying to look for something around here in my office. I can't see anything that's too unnecessary. Actually my daughter has like five bags from the same manufacturer whose name I shan't mention because they get more than enough activity from the children at my daughter's school. You know, does my daughter need another school bag or another bag for her swimming gear? Probably not. But you know, the marketing world will inform us and tell us that she does. You know, so what, what is that real need.

And then allied to that? I think, yeah, the modern world keeps you in that state of fear. I think you, you, you.

You know, spoke about it so well that it's like, you know, you, you, if you don't do this meaningless task, then I'm going to probably, you know, fire you, which means you won't pay your rent, et cetera, et cetera. But then on top of that, the wider societal fear based state that we're in where it's like, well no, you should live in this type of house, you should, you know, have that type of job. You need to earn this type of money, you should go here on holiday. There are all these, yeah. Kind of societal pressures that inform the needs that you should have. But actually they're not fulfilling you in any, in any way because 9, 9 out of 10 of them are completely meaningless. And I wonder if that was something that you felt in your business where, you know, the need that you were fulfilling, clearly it wasn't a need that perhaps you thought was a true need.

You mean for me personally or sort of what we were doing for the market?

For you personally, I mean, the market. There's always a need in inverted commas in the market, by all accounts. But, you know, is it a true human need? You know, what's the contribution of fulfilling that need? Or is it just, wow, These people, they say they want it, but, you know, they don't actually know what they want. But hey, they want to pay us some money for it, so we'll ship it.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I think a lot of. A lot of companies are really living under the shadow of their leadership. And I really mean the deeper sort of psychological definition of shadow, which is this. Typically the parts of our subconscious that we really would rather go away. I would rather not. Not look at. Not. And I, I guess I feel like it's always important for me to offer a caveat that I'm not immune to any of this. I'm still a human being. Right.

And I, you know, that's a, That's a big. A huge part of why I like the training that I went through, particularly with True Purpose Institute, is it's like I had to go through all of it and I'm still going through it. There is no done.

Yeah.

So there's no, there's no done on the. I, I consider the subconscious to be infinite and, and yes, there are, you know, very wonder, very good techniques that we can use to, to unravel some of that and to. Actually, I prefer to think about pouring love on it.

And, and to. To heal that. But it's like, you know, it's a good metaphor because, like, you know, just like a wound, well, there's still going to be a scar and still going to be tender. Right. And. And so I think. I don't know if I've ever met anybody that I would, you know, whatever that maybe that definition of enlightenment is. You know, they've somehow just really released all of that. I don't know if that's possible in this life. I don't even know if that's the point of it. I think it's something about being in it and learning from it and, you know, like, offering it love and attention on an ongoing basis. And, you know, there's always. There's the things we grew up with and whether that was wounding events or trauma that helped shape us that, you know, I subscribe to the idea that, you know, those were specifically part of our training program to be, to be more purposeful later in life.

And you know, I think there's a difference here. Again, just since we've introduced a lot of context around marginalization where there's, there's a difference between, you know, my soul's kind of signed up for this soul training program in this life and looking at, you know, systemic oppression and systemic marginalization is yet another layer that a lot of people are living with and living under. That is all of that can suppress a soul driven purpose.

Yes. I mean, it's hard to go and do purpose work if you're struggling to put food on the table for your kids. It's pretty, you know, again, I kind of go back to Maslow's hierarchy is like if you're, if you're struggling to make rent and feed your family, you know, you're kind of in that survival loop which is I guess that very.

Visceral. There is an element of purpose there, I guess. But I think that's, that's the trap in the bigger world is when you have got that freedom to go deeper is that you kind of think that your purpose is still providing that basic survival mechanism to your family.

But yeah, I agree that there's, and it's interesting because I, I haven't delved into taking psychedelics, but I'm intrigued by the concept and, and where that can take people. And you look at, you know, the criminal LSD and what have you in the 60s, but the kind of promotion of alcohol and the promotion of tobacco and you know, other products where you kind of go, well, yeah, is there a wider. I mean, if everyone was doing purpose work and had taken psychedelics and had, you know, was free from the shackles of.

Systemic abuse, the world would look quite different, I'd hazard a guess. And it probably would mean that a lot of organizations that we currently have in the world would cease to exist. And maybe that's a part of it.

Yeah. You know, I think to me the key word there is enough. You know, it's, it's. On a personal level, I'm going through this in the last few years.

I guess I never lined it up time wise, but right in this moment I'm realizing that I was also, in that time when things were really tough for me, I was also just accumulating a lot of stuff and not, I don't know, I'm not like a shopper. My, my numbing agent is more related to food than shopping. If we all kind of have to pick one.

Yep.

But.

You know, but there's lots of ways to accumulate stuff. And so I've spent the last few years untangling that, you know, and just systematically kind of going through things and just clearing more and more and more and more space for myself. I actually just spent this last weekend with my folks doing the same thing to get them ready for their next phase in life. And I think it is just so present for me. It's really alive for me right now. Like, well, what is enough? And I think generationally, there's a huge shift happening right now where.

The boomers were raised by people who went through the Depression in America and elsewhere, where there really was this hardcore scarcity. There really was a lot of conscious energy around, like accumulation and holding on to things. Right. And I think that is shifting. If we look, if we, I don't like to generalize too much, but if we look at a trend, generally millennials care and subsequent generations care less about hoarding stuff, more about experiences.

Yes. Yeah, you could say how that would, that kind of literally that baby boom is, would be a natural reaction to that period of, you know, depravity and, or deprivation rather, and, and lack. But, but on that, I mean, I, I feel I was interviewed by a good mate of mine, Stephen Moe, on his podcast many years ago, well, a couple of years ago now. And he, one of the questions he asked me was, you know, would you, what would you go back and tell your 20 year old self to do differently? And I said, I said, well, I wouldn't tell them to do anything differently because if I hadn't done what I did, I wouldn't be where I was today. And going back to some of the comments we've been talking about, you know, that trauma that you, that you need to integrate the shadow work.

I mean, I guess, you know, the Buddhist philosophy and others would say that, well, life is always going to be suffering, but do you feel that as humans we need to have some, you know, some element of trauma in our early life for us to then have to go and do the work on as an adult to get that full integration? Or do you perceive or do you know of any cultures where, you know, they, they minimize the trauma and you kind of have an integrated human from an early stage? Because I'm, I'm curious as to know what that would look like for us as a species.

Yeah, well, one thing I'll share is a message that I downloaded from my trusted source, a part of my message, and that's that is that all power comes from pain.

And, you know, I don't, I don't interpret that to mean we just need to stew in our pain and sort of just always be in that. But it does mean that we can look at pain differently, know, can, if we do, face it head on, which I'm again just going to caution that that's much more challenging for people who suffered deep, acute trauma than it is if you haven't. And yet there is an element of facing that pain head on, that, that then healing that, that then translates that into a kind of personal power and fortitude that I think, you know, does drive us. It does drive us to be our best.

I'm also reminded in this moment of. I was watching something recently, just about childbirth, and, and their take was that, you know, you know, you know, we've devised some means to reduce the pain and suffering of childbirth, but evolution didn't seem to care much about that. It's actually going back to that word enough, unfortunately, especially for women, that.

It seems like one way to think about it is evolution said, you know what? It's good enough. We're getting babies through. Even with a pretty high mortality rate, an insane amount of pain and also mortality for women. It was like, hey, we're making enough babies to keep the species going. And, and so we've devised, you know, means to, to reduce that pain. So I, I, you know, so by looking through that lens, it's like, gee, what does it take to, to enter the, the mortal sphere? Right? That is a, that's, that in of itself could be a traumatic event. It's probably as much as I, I always, I'm trying to turn a balance, like the celebrating, you know, a lot of the advances and especially technology and medicine in the west, but also wondering what we've left behind. Right. So, so I want to say, you know, gee, we've, we've had these advances. We've reduced infant mortality, which again, even there, you look at different populations of people and, you know, that's not all true across the board, but this idea of, I'm just curious in this moment of, okay, well, you know, a lot of the Western ideas around childbirth also seem, you know, traumatic. And I know there are a lot of ceremonies and processes and indigenous rituals that really have a pretty wildly different view of that whole ritual of coming into this life.

I think, yeah, there's a couple of things that definitely there, I think the R word that you use at the end there, ritual, I think that's something that is massively lacking in general. And I think.

Yeah, I tend, I think my general thought is we're trying to make the modern life as pain free as possible. Everything. And you know, I quite like watching infomercials on TV occasionally just to see what pain in my life they're now trying to eliminate. You know, it's like you struggle to carry the groceries from your car to the house. Well, you need the new garage trolley. And it's like, do I, you know, not that that's actually the best. Like, do I really need that? Or is that just part of my, A mini. Part of me suffering is carrying a heavy load of fruit and vegetables out of my car into the house.

And so I tend to agree. I think, I think you look at a lot of indigenous cultures, other ways of being, particularly for men, and this is something I want to pick up on a thread in a minute is, you know, the, the, the sort of rites of passage, the initiation ceremony, the. There is some trial that you need to under.

Transform you and transcend you from being a boy into being a man. And that typically involves some kind of pain or restriction or, you know, there's some ceremony around that. And I think that's deeply, deeply missing in, in the Western. And by Western modern culture, I'm talking about your New Zealand's, Australia's, Europe, America, so on and so forth.

Yeah. And I think if you look at most major, you know, spiritual, religious belief systems or any belief system of a higher order, the basic principle is that there is witness to or direct undertaking of suffering which would suggest that it's been there since forever. And it is. And I think your analogy of childbirth is like, you know, your journey starts in significant pain for at least one of you in that process. It's kind of, it's everywhere. But I think we're trying to get rid of too much of the incidental pain that probably actually does help build our resilience to the bigger stuff that when it does hit you, you're just not used to having those little micro doses of pain.

Oh, I love, yeah, I love bridging it into resilience. I, I recently this popped back up for me, this research around blue zones around the, around the world. And I want to say these are. There's like five of them where people average a lifespan.

Right.

I think, I think about 90, maybe even higher. And it's like there's basically 10 things, one of which is purpose. Which. One of which is purpose.

Excellent.

But the one, but the one that stuck out even more to me was very much what you were just saying, which was that, you know, they haven't automated away all of the labor. They don't tend to exercise. Like we think about it, right. Like I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna get a hardcore workout. Which is, you know, something I brought into my life, which in many ways seems positive.

And yet it's funny. Like I, you know, my house has, has three stories and, and the kitchen's in the lower and my office in the top. So I am actually spending all day long and, and I've noticed I have a cat and I've actually noticed it's been good for both of us. She actually can jump. She can jump further. I could actually probably. I didn't actually, I didn't literally measure it, but I feel like I could. And so that was their point. Like they don't go to the gym and get a hardcore workout. They just don't automate away all of the labor.

Yes.

And movement that we tend to want to look at is like, I know some people, you know, when they go to the grocery store, they park all the way at the opposite end of the lot. You know, but there's this conditioning of like, I gotta get the best spot.

Yeah, yeah. I run outside the door. Yeah. And maybe if I ring them, they'll deliver it to me. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. That's interesting. Yeah. I need to go and I'll, I'll go and research that and put that in the notes. But yeah, I just think some of that basic, just human and there's connectivity, there's typically, you know, working with other people doing something. And I guess, I guess there's why there's purpose there. Like doing, doing something, making something, doing something that is providing for you, your family, maybe your community.

There is more, there's meeting in that as well. So that, that would instinctively make some sense. So the other one I want to, I want to drop into here and this one's really applicable for me and I think you've touched on it. And I also think in general the sense that I get from the other males in the global purpose leadership is that we are generally, I would suggest, more empathetic. More empathetic. Higher eq, um, the feminine side is, I would suggest, easier for us to tap into. And yeah, really curious. And, and in my personal life I live in my house here. I have my daughter, my wife and my mother in law and my only other living relative within close proximity is my mother. So I'm In a very estrogen loaded environment and I am a male who can connect to, to the, to his feminine part relatively easily. Where does, what it. I guess like where does masculinity fit in? And, and how does, how do we, how do we, I guess, make use of the masculine within us, but also the wider, more masculine side of humanity? Because I feel like the whole male, like you and I, you know, like you say we're privileged white males like that. That's, that's kind of, I'm not saying we're under attack, but it's, you know, we've not, we're not exactly up there, held up there as.

Society'S greatest right now. So how do we be strong male figures in a purposeful world?

There's a lot to unpack.

Sorry, dropping that one on you.

How much time do we have?

Yeah, I agree with your maybe casual observation that those of us who are purpose coaches and guides, who are men who identify as male. Yes. Tend to be more sensitive, tend to be more attuned to those things.

You know, so part of that I think is some sort of natural disposition.

But I think it is something that everybody has access to. And I, for the last year and a half I've been involved with the Mankind Project. And I that, to me that was my exploration. You mentioned ritual earlier and the rite of passage right from boyhood into manhood. That's a lot of what the whole premise of that organization is about which, you know, something like 60,000 men have gone through it in the last 35 years. So that's an extraordinary gesture towards sort of writing that.

You know, part of the challenge as I see it, is that, you know, we have disembarked from, from the feminine across everything. You know, it's not, I don't think it's true to say that a lot of women are totally connected to their feminine energy for lots of reasons. You know, one is that just as a. And I think I'm speaking generally, let's say specifically to America in my experience of it, but that applies probably generally to a lot of Western culture that we are disconnected from so many things. We are disconnected from the earth, especially those of us in urban populations, although that's not necessarily like a reason not to be in urban populations, but it's true. We're disconnected from our food supply. Right. We're disconnected from just all of these things we take for granted that, you know, is. I'm sort of slowly re. Engaging with a little, little by little, like, okay, I'll. I'LL grow a basil plant or I'll start composting or, you know, it's, it's really kind of baby step versus, you know, I do know people who are out with full on isolated regenerative culture experiments. Yeah, like, great, we're gonna need that, we're gonna need that roadmap, you know, when we, when we hopefully kind of reorient. So I think a lot of that's that, that feminine energy, which I do associate with the intuitive. And you know, I think especially, and this is actually where I appreciate some of Jordan Peterson's work. And I know we were riffing on that. Hopefully I get this pretty right. But as I remember him saying it, you know, up until the turn of the, you know, 20th century, the average household in the world was making about a dollar a day. And so it's really easy and in some cases probably accurate to demonize the way men have grabbed control over, over societies over, over many centuries. And yet when we really boil that down, it's easy to kind of demonize, I think at scale. That's just part of the challenge. Yes, it's all this or all that. So, you know, generally I also talk about, like, it's easier to scale fear than luck. Right. And so it's, it's, you know, once we get into these huge categorical generalizations, all these people are this, all those people are that. I think we've already lost something really important. So when I, when I heard hearing Peterson say that, and I was just imagining, oh, the average kind of household and kind of what they were going through. And yeah, this would have been a time when women had virtually no rights. They certainly didn't have property rights. They were in many cases treated as property, which even if at the most generous we say that that was actually an effort for men to protect them and take care of them. Clearly that's what a lot of the last 100 years or so has been, is to say, okay, well, guess what, you know, that's not, that's, that's not promoting what. I always come back to my two core things, dignity and agency. Dignity and agency for every person. And that's a really helpful pilot light, I suppose you could say, because it, it means that that provides the, the circumstances or the, the conditions for somebody to have an intrinsically expressed purpose without dictating it, without just, you know, going around and saying, well, everybody should have this purpose thing. And it looks like this. I don't actually think that's useful either. And we could, we could say that that's a masculine kind of energy. Because if, if the definition of masculine is that it is around a container, well, it's all about balance, right? So if we are over expressing masculinity, which we could, I don't mind the label toxic masculinity if it's applied to a, an overreach of masculine energy. What is challenging is if somebody's suggesting that, you know, all masculinity is toxic, all men are evil, which I don't even know if that's really the expression a lot of times.

So there is those of us men, and I've been in a lot of these situations with like Mankind Project, which is also embracing the virtual universe, which is really cool.

You know, I, I, we generally hold, and there's others, like victories of the Heart and there's a few other men's groups out there. And you know, I think most of us in IT are really realizing like we're on the edge. We're on the edge of kind of reinventing masculinity and exploring what this even is. And it's not easy. You know, we're going into our deepest core wounding kind of unraveling these things. So, you know, again, I mean, a lot of the theme here, I think, is that we stay in it, right? It's not, it's not this transaction. It's not like, oh, I got my purpose, I got my healthy masculinity, I'm off to the races. You know, now there are, I think there are shelves. If it's a climbing metaphor or sort of the next, you know, like base camper gets. Yeah, it's like, okay, you know what? I've been doing a lot of my work and now I'm gonna really take this out into the world. I think that's healthy and important as well that we don't, we aren't just always kind of locking ourselves in our work because if we don't ever express it, then we're also not gonna really necessarily change the systems that are reinforcing all of these patterns that many of us are conditioned to do. So those of us, whether it's purpose or masculinity or any of these things, we are all really trying to reinvent these systems from the inside out. And I think to me that's the right approach.

And so. Oh, and I was going to say just about women and masculinity as well. Fast forward to kind of the late 20th century Women entering the workforce much more, and guess what? They show up and it's A boys club. So of course they have to really kind of steep up their, their masculine energy to compete and to be in that. And so I don't think any of this is a straight line. I don't think any of it's straightforward. And again, I think, I think it's getting into these, these intimate spaces and sharing these stories and really, really being with each other, really hearing each other like that, to me is the only conclusion I've drawn about how we can get through it.

I think that's great, great summary. And yeah, I kind of feel my sort of take on it is if we can, you know, I guess you look at all the, again, you look at all the ancient principles, it's. It's about that balance. It's about whether it's, you know, Taoist or, you know, the Yin Yang or, or however you want to look at it. It's. We need both, we need masculine and feminine. And yeah, there'll be some males who have slightly more feminine traits and there will be some females who have slightly more masculine traits. But my kind of overarching sense, and I guess the call to men would be like, how can we use our. Use your masculinity and the traits of that and the behaviors and attitudes of that, but for the greater good. So, you know, I think we, we need the warrior archetype. We need strong, brave people, which is, I guess, you know, the masculine archetype, to take on big, bold challenges and, and provide a better future for more people as opposed to channeling that aggression, perhaps, or that masculinity just for their own interests. So I think, yeah, but like you say, it's going to be, it's going to be a hard road. And I guess that leads us really nicely just to finish up on, to talk a little bit about feel real. And how do you see that playing its part in everything we've talked about?

Well, that remains to be seen. You know, we're in startup mode. We're doing market research. We've interviewed more than 30 people to really get a clear sense of what's happening out there and where the opportunity really is to meet the market. You know, we believe in circling techniques and we know that works. And you know, our first pilots are going to be launched around the idea of inclusive cultures and really the idea of inclusive circling. So. Right. So can we. There's a strategic component, you know, how can we design a search, a circling matrix, if you will, that will, you know, cross pollinate people's stories within a community or within A company. And that's going to be our experiment over the next several months.

Very cool.

Now, beyond that, I will say there's a public. The public facing part of feelreal is one thing we're building that we're also excited about is a calendar of virtual gatherings. Mostly virtual, some limited gatherings in the Chicago area.

So if you are out there and you are hosting some kind of virtual gathering where people come together in an intimate space and there's a facilitator and there's shared agreements and a lot of the things that we believe must go in to create that container, we would love to hear about it. Please connect with us.

Cool. And I'll put a link in the notes to the Feelreal site.

Cool.

Thank you very much.

Well, that's pretty much 60 minutes, give or take. So, yeah, I don't know if you. Any final thoughts, anything else that you want to say or comment on before we close up shop?

Thank you so much for having me. I just. I love these discussions. I think on the one hand they're. They're complex and there's a rich tapestry to unfold. And on the other hand, if we stay rooted in love.

That is my guiding light.

Love it. And a big thank you for being my first male guest on the. On the podcast. So kudos to you. I'll think of some prize I can give you for being my first male contributor, which is interesting in itself that there's been sort of two female contributors so far and I've got the next couple of females lined up as well. I'm struggling to find men of purpose. So if there are men of purpose out there listening, let me know. I'll. I'll give you a call. So, yes, that's it. So, yeah, thank you so much, Andy. All the best for Feel Real. I'll certainly be cheering that on from the sidelines. And if you let me know if how I can share and promote that. And obviously through gpl, we'll be learning more about it and getting it out there. But, yeah, thank you so much. And go well in relatively chilly Chicago compared to currently very hot Christchurch. And.

We'Ll catch you soon. Cheers, mate.

All right, thanks a lot, Tim.

Bye.

And that's a wrap. Hey, thank you so much for listening in to my podcast. As I say, I'd love to know where you are on your journey and pursuit of purpose. And if you've got any questions that you'd like me to try and answer for you or people you'd like me to interview on this podcast. Please do let me know through a message or a comment. Also, do connect with me on other social media platforms. You'll find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and on YouTube. For more information about me and what I offer through my business, Grow Good. You can also go find me at www.growgood.co. that's GrowGood co. If you want to get in contact with me, my email is really easy. Tim at Growgood Co. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, go well and keep on pursuing your purpose.