99% of Beginners Don’t Know the Basics of How Addiction Really Works (Ken Wells)

Addiction is a solution. It is a solution to pain. Now, we treat it like the war on drugs, but the war on drugs is the wrong war, because the war on drugs is like war on addicts. You know, the drugs are actually the solution. The problem is the fucking pain.

It's so helpful to recognize how deprivation in my life fueled the addictive components that I engage. So why do I want to look backwards? So I can understand. I don't want to live in that storyline. I want to give that up. And to do so if I can understand and if I can clean out some woundedness, it helps me. Recovery and balance and embrace of discomfort only improves results. It's about that. It helps enhance destiny. That's what we're all about.

First off, thank you for being here.

It's my privilege. Looking forward.

So you have a book. Dare to be average.

Dare to be average.

Why the hell would anyone want to dare to be average?

Well, that's a good question, because I think it's a matter about how we use the word. We use all kinds of different words to mean different things. So average. Who wants to be average? If it means half hearted, half assed, that's certainly not me, for sure. But on the other side of the coin, how about all of the everyday experiences we all experience and share together, things that we don't really want to look at. And so the guys I work with, they don't need to be told how to produce successful results. They're at the top of their game, have more money than they know. What. Some guys have more money than countries do. And so they're not into that. And yet they struggle, Joe, with the same things that I or you or anyone else in the world struggles with. It's like as if there is a pack of wolves chasing them through the woods, nipping at their heels. Fear, shame, anxiety, failure. You see, these are common threads that we all experience in life. And yet it seems to me that so many people run from those words like failure. I mean, in all this whole room, we've all experienced failure in our life. I was thinking about Tom Brady, and here he has. He's been in the league, just retired 22 seasons. An amazing, unprecedented seven. What? Seven Super bowl championships. And yet there are 15 times that he finished Leston first. And so, you know, and then I think about. I read this deal about Mickey Mantle. He's my hero. When I was a kid, wasn't a Yankee fan, but I was a Mantle fan. He wrote this stuff. He said, you know, I was in the league for 18 years, and I was up to bat over 10,000 times. So he says, I struck out 1700 times in my career, and I walked 1800 times. And he said, you know, if you figure it out, I get up to bat about 500 times a year. And he said, you know, that figures out to be seven years. I didn't even hit the ball.

Wow.

I laugh at that because, you know, at some point, someplace, we have to be able to connect and touch failure, fear, anger, hate, and work with it. Because it's a part of the human condition. Everybody has it. I tell clients, I say, you know, there are some people and there are some things in this world I hate. Really? Aren't you supposed to not hate? I said, you know, I don't know about supposed to not to, but I just do. There are people who've done things to me. They screwed me over, and I hate it. And I hate the. He said, well, don't you hate the acts? Not the behavior. The behavior, not the person. I say, well, if we didn't have the person, we wouldn't have the behavior. So I just go right to the source. I hate these guys, but what am I going to do with it? It can eat my lunch. Shame's the same way. Failure's the same way. Or can I shift it and make meaningfulness out of all of it? And so I think about average. Average is about how do we take what is every day of life that all of us deal with? You know, when it's all over and the lights shut down and I feel empty inside? How do I fill that emptiness with meaningfulness? That's an important piece to wrestle with. So that's the reason I wanted to write about it. Cause what I've discovered is this. Dare to be average. Dare to embrace the everydayness. Dare to embrace boredom, Dare to embrace emptiness. Because I've discovered when you can find meaningfulness in those spaces, that's where you find your own personal brilliance. Yeah, personal brilliance. See, that's what I think is so important. We all are brilliant. It's fun to go around looking at people's brilliance. Behind where I live, there's a whole row of people who live on the canal here in Phoenix. And I go by those places often and just check in and listen to how do you guys survive out here? You know, and inevitably there's this personal brilliance that comes out. And I can connect with that because I know my own personal brilliance. And so I think it's really important for us to wrestle with it, with the Issue. It's just a word. Dare to be average. Dare to embrace the commonplace. It doesn't really matter what we call it. But I think so many addicts choose not to wrestle with that and they'd rather just medicate, escape, avoid the most precious experience of life. That's what I call spirituality. It's finding my own personal brilliance within me.

Yeah, absolutely. That's great. And we've had lots of conversations about God. What is God? Is there a God? You know, different people's beliefs. Used to be a minister. The struggles is that God is a very charged word. I'm not gonna make this whole conversation about God. I just want to bring that up. Cause there's, you know, Bill W. The founder of aa. One of my favorite lines from him is, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And so you're either trying to drink your way to God, work your way to God, gamble your way to God, fuck your way to God. I mean, there's, you know, it's like trying to drink the pain away. Screw the pain away, Work the pain away. And there's this deep pain that a lot of the world's highest achievers, you know, that they're not going to look for the, you know, the rich guy with the house on the mountain sort of thing. You know what's even funny? As we sit here, have you guys seen the brochure of this hotel? And there's a mountain, Camelback Mountain, right there. If you've gone up to the gym and you see that mountain right in front of, like, where the gym is and the treadmills and the yoga studio, the house on the very top of that mountain in the photo in the brochure. I used to own that house. You remember that?

Yes, I did.

Bought it in two. And I used to own half that mountain. And people would drive by that house and they would look up and they'd be like, oh, you know, it's my dream house. That house was such a pain in the ass. We remodeled the whole damn thing. And it, like, had four floods. And, you know, and it's like, no one felt sorry for me because I had this beautiful view, but it was a nightmare. I would jokingly say it was like a hot chick that was a pain in the ass. But it was, you know, which doesn't sound very appropriate these days when you say things like that. Where's the woke police that are gonna come say, freedom of speech, motherfucker? All right, so now. So the thing is, though, some of the world's highest achievers live with great pain and great angst. And it's a struggle. And I'm also glad, like I met you when I joined a group for sex addiction. You know, lots of shame in sexual addiction and much easier to talk about being a drug addict, talking about alcoholism than yeah, I used to look at porn all the time. I used to go to massage parlors, I used to sleep with hookers and all that stuff. And I could never talk about that, let alone ever think I would say what I just said in front of groups of people, right? And the whole saying is, you're as sick as your secrets. And it was really you and several other people and just a lot of 12 step groups and a lot of therapy and a lot of work that really got me to the point where I just, you know, I shed enough of the shame to where I could maintain levels of sobriety for periods of time. And at this stage in my life, you know, the last time I had any bottom line behaviors in that department, you know, drinking and drugs were easy compared to, you know, the sexual stuff. It was in 2016 after a breakup, I had another relapse sort of thing. But then after that and kind of what did it is in this hotel, I stood up in front of a room of everyone. I don't know if any of you remember. Well, of course those of you would remember that I got up and I just shared as much as I could and I was like, this is either going to ruin my career or I'm just so done with this sort of stuff now. Do I still have shame? Of course I experience all of these sort of things. But can you define two things? What is addiction? I want to hear your definition of it. And shame. What is shame? Because I know so many people here that have struggles, deal with it and they may not even recognize it.

Well, first it's hell addiction. But the real thing I wrestle with would be in defining would be it's a pathological relationship. It's an unhealthy relationship to a mood altering experience that has life damaging consequences. And you can't stop by yourself. You know, I mean, I've done a lot of things that had damaging consequences to me, but I could stop it myself. I too, as Joe talking, I've been in recovery from sexual addiction for 32 years. And I'm a workaholic. You know, those two things more of a workaholic than I'm a sex addict. But the point is to me is how you know, is there Anything wrong with sex? Of course not. You know, actually on the media, the many. The many relationships, people say, well, porn's awful. Only if you use it. Awful. In my case, I did. It hurt me. It didn't help me. How would you know? Well, you have to know your values. What are your values? And if I do something against my values and it's hurting me and people I care most about, and I can't stop it by myself. For me, to you, I believe that's an addiction. So that's how I would find that. Yeah.

I can also say, too. Cause, you know, and I'd love, I mean you, anything that I'm always wanting to understand and clarify my thinking and understanding to this. I look at all addictions as excess and deprivation. When someone hears the term sex addict, you think, oh, that's a pervert. That's someone that wants to have sex with whoever, whatever, all the time. And there's a lot of sexual addiction manifest as deprivation, where you're not able to be sexual, you're not able to feel any real connection sexually. And so there's a lot of sexual anorexia that exists. It's binging and purgin. What addiction consists of.

Yes, for sure. So to talk a little bit about deprivation, see, most people like not to identify themselves as addict. I get it. I understand. And I understand why. I mean, I've been over to 3500 SAA meetings and all kinds of meetings you can think about in my days and time. So when you walk in, you're basically saying, I'm a sex addict, I'm an alcoholic. I'm whatever I am. Okay, so who wants to do that? Well, it's helpful to be able to take that term and separate it from your personhood. Who am I really? I am an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. Have been, always will be. I won't get better on that. I'll become a better person in my behavior, and I won't get worse no matter what I do. If I walk out of here and act out forever until I'm dead, I don't improve on that. A diamond is a diamond. That's what I've always been. So I'm saying that to say this is that it's so helpful to recognize how deprivation in my life fuel the addictive components that I engage. So that goes all the way back. As a kid, I grew up in a hellacious family. I grew up in a family of 12 children. To the best of my knowledge, all 12 of us were Sexually abused in some form or another by. Through a church. They called it a church. It was a cult. So I have all kinds of craziness in the background. But the point is, to me is how do I fill up those needs that I have developmentally? Some people say, well, I don't want to go back and look at that stuff. Well, I would entreat you to consider Soren Kierkegaard. He's an existentialist philosopher. He says, well, life's meant to be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards. So why do I want to look backwards? So I can understand. I don't want to live in that storyline. I want to give that up. And to do so, if I can understand and if I can clean out some woundedness, it helps me. But when I don't, I live deprived. And so I want to fill that deprivation up in my life. And so I use all kinds, not just one addiction. I'll use a cocktail of experience of life, work, sex. I use sports, gaming. I use bitching and complaining. I use all of these things I can do to fill up and escape that emptiness that's inside. So what I always help people understand is deprivation fuels entitlement. Entitlement to what? To feel good again. And one thing for sure, any addiction really delivers. It delivers what it promises. At least for a brief moment, there's a payoff. I mean, you're gonna pay for it. But when you're in a lot of pain, when you're in a lot of, you know, discomfort, then quickly, in a shortsighted way, I'll pick my addiction in that regard. Now, I think of it this way. I love what I heard Ned talking about yesterday. He talked about, I believe it was distractibility, changing into curiosity. He talked about impulsivity being changed into creativity, and then it was hyperactivity into energy. Well, I think that about addiction, see, this whole lifestyle, it's a metaphor. It's a paradox. What do we do? Well, we just take, like, we take opposites and make them different. So, like, for instance, addiction. My goal is to take my curse of addiction and make it a blessing. How do I do that? Well, I don't do it from run. I don't do it by running from it. I embrace it. I listen to it. You know, actually, I make it my understanding of the voice of God. If God's anything, it's that voice talking to me, what's out of balance. It's that voice telling me what I need to address underneath. It's the legitimate need that must be met in a healthy way. And so I take a pause. I get out of the way of the addictive rush. You know, like sitting in the middle of a intersection in New York City, here comes a bus. You don't sit around thinking, well, how did I get here? You best get the hell out of the way. So I try to get out of the way from my addictive rush. And then I sit and think, what's a legitimate need that must be met? That's called intimacy. To self, to people I care about, intimacy is so important. And that's why we talk about addiction. Anyway, Joe, it's an intimacy disabling experience of life. Yeah.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. You know, again, I've said this before. Most people in this audience heard me talk about my favorite definition of intimacy, which was given to me by a guy named Wharton, who basically is now 80 years old, in his 80s, and he spends his. He volunteers his time to help people with sexual addictions. And he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And I often think of not just intimacy romantically, but intimacy, the ability to connect with people. And the reason I always, to use a Dan Sullivan term, front stage and backstage. There's the front stage of what our clients see, who the world sees, and then there's the backstage. In a business, it's like, what's going on backstage and front stage? And it's like part of. I sit and observe people, and I observe my own behavior. And I often think, you know, you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape. You're either talking to someone. And, you know, as you guys meet each other and you talk, you know, you're either you feel real connection with someone and other people. Like, I need to kind of get away. And sometimes it's the other person, sometimes it's me. You know, if I'm not connected, it's really hard for me to connect with someone else. But then you take that into how much of my life was I Trying to escape, you know. And addiction is a solution. My viewpoint of it, it is a solution to pain. Now we treat it like the war on drugs, but the war on drugs is the wrong war, because the war on drugs is like a war on addicts. You know, the drugs are actually the solution. The problem is the fucking pain. And if you don't deal with the pain, it's an attempt to self soothe. If you're, if you're depressed, if you're lonely, if you're suicidal, if you're hyperactive, if you're losing your fricking mind, you're stressed out, you're lonely. There's nothing wrong with wanting that feeling to go away or to change. It's how you scratch the itch, you know, with what you're saying. And so addiction works. It works really well. The problem is it has consequences. And those consequences could kill you, they could hurt other people, they could damage and destroy your life. So part of it is getting people to feel real connection and real intimacy and to experience it. And that requires the shedding or the processing of the shame and the fear. And so what I want to say, because up to this point in our conversation, a lot of people might be like, what the hell are you talking about? I don't identify as a sex addict. I'm not staying up till three in the morning every night looking at porn. I'm not snorting cocaine. There are a lot of people in here that are full blown work addicts because workaholism is a respectable addiction and it's a performance addiction. There's all kinds of things to it. And so I would really like. What is workaholism? How does someone know if they're excessive?

I mean, well, people close to them can remind them how hurtful.

I'm glad that's funny to Joe. But they know that's okay.

That's good. How do I know I'm a workaholic?

Because it's real easy to make excuses for performance. Look how fucking rich I am. Look at how much money I've given to charity, you know, all that sort of shit.

Yeah, I think it's. It's what takes me away from my soulfulness. Now that's kind of a nice little statement to make. But you know, when you really dig into it, I have to be more to keep from being less in order to be good inside. And I can't ever stop. I remember once about 20 years. It was longer than that. It was 25 years ago. I'm getting older here.

How Old are you now?

I'm 70.

70, yeah.

So I remember deciding I was going to cut back and only work a certain number of hours. And I remember going back in the backyard up next to our fence, and I sat and I went through withdrawals. Literally shakes. It was embarrassing. It was crazy. I don't know of a lot of people who do that about workaholism, but I sure did. But what I did is I found. I tried to find my sense of okayness in what I do, not who I am. And that's that great problem. Not everybody who struggles with finding meaningfulness in their being. I call it my amnes. But all is out here doing stuff. They're not all workaholics. I get that. But what I want to share is this. There's an interesting thing. I've been reading and listening to this woman named Pema Chodron. Many probably know who she is, this Buddhist female monk. And she talks about how she's learned unconditional confidence. And she said, okay, if you've listened to her piece on unconditional confidence, she shares the metaphor. Walking alongside the Oregon coast, and she's lost in her thoughts. The tide's out. It comes in, it knocks her sideways, rolls her into the sand. And she said, for a moment there, I thought I was going to drown. So I stand up, gather myself, and I get hit by another wave. And she said, well, you know, maybe it lasted maybe three or four minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. But I got to the sense of knowing that I could go down and come back up and I would not die. Well, she says this. Here's the deal. I can't control the results of my life totally. I do a lot of things to create success. I'm all about achievement, personally. I want to achieve. I want to be the very best I possibly can be. It's. It certainly has been a part of that goal, has been a part of my workaholism. She says, I can't control the results, but my unconditional confidence is that I can control. I'm going to go down and come back up, regardless of results. I can make meaningfulness no matter what I face or deal with. That's been a great sense of source for me. So I can't try to compete and compare and say, I'm this. I can compete. I like to compete. I am that. Okay? But that's not who I am. Well, I found great, great peace. And all these guys I work with who have women who have all this status and stardom and all this stuff, ultimately, all that has not brought peace. See, and so what brings peace is knowing that I can find meaningfulness wherever I am. I can be present right here, just with you, Joe. I'm not worried about what these guys think, or I'm challenged not to. I really just want to have a conversation, be present right here. Why? Because that's where meaningfulness is. You know, I was a minister way back there. Heaven, hell, that crap. Well, my thought was, this is what is heaven and hell. It's my decision on how I engage you right now. And for me, heaven is just hanging out with you. Because I know this. I know I don't know you in this environment. I know you. We have coffee, we talk. We talk about addiction. We talk about your life, your world, all that stuff. It's fun. I love you as a friend. I love your spirit, Joe, your soulfulness. I was telling my wife last night, I said, joe, you know, I have all these marketer guys I work with and stuff. Joe is a different cat. He's a guy who's a real, genuine, authentic person. That's not easy to accomplish, being authentic goodness. The hardest thing I've ever done in my life is to be truly honest. Nobody accuses me, Joe, of being. Walking around telling a bunch of lies. But look at myself in the mirror and saying honest, real things down deep inside and sharing them with another person who I choose to trust. Now, that's tough. But that brings a lot of peace. So that's the opposite of what workaholism can do. See, a lot of guys, I'm trying to do more to keep from being less. And what happens in all that deal? Shame makes it so. What does it make it so? It makes it. I can never get enough of what I really don't want. I really don't want to keep doing all this craziness. I do it anyway because it's the only way I know how to escape what, emptiness, you know? And it's an interesting thing to sit with discomfort. I mean, my God, who does that? And yet to do so, to lean into that, opens a whole avenue of genuine, authentic peace. It's not about religion. It's not about that stuff. I mean, I tried that for more years. You care to know? It did not work for me, but this process we're talking about does. I love what Ned said yesterday about the default piece because, man, is that great. See, with shame, I get all these messages in my head. You think, well, if you're in recovery, then you got it all together. Right? Oh, never. You just realize how much you don't have it together. And so what happens is I. I have these voices in my head that tell me all the stuff that Ned said so beautifully yesterday, all this craziness that I tell myself. What I've learned is how to bring myself back to center. Shame is that part. See, it's like this. Shame is like. People say, well, shame is bad. It's just what we have. It's there. Call it whatever you want. It's like acid in a battery. If you keep it in the battery, then it starts the car. If you take it out, put it on your skin, it'll burn you. If I put shame on my personhood, my sense of self, it'll hurt me. But if I take it and I put it on and I put it on the behavior that I did, I mean, we've all done shitty behavior, no one's excluded. But if I take that shame, I put it on my behavior. What happens to transforms to compassion? When I think about the ways in which I hurt my wife. We've been together for 46 years now. When I think about the way I hurt her when I was unfaithful, when I acted out sexually, I'll never forget her eyes, the look in her face. What does that do for me? I could turn it on myself, say, you piece of shit, what's wrong with you? You know? Or I say, you know what? I would never want to hurt someone who is that precious, that desirable in my life again. And it transforms that sense of shame into compassion. Let me read you something that Pema Children says. She says this compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when I know my own darkness well and can I be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when I recognize our shared humanity. We're all in this together, baby. We really are. And there isn't that much difference in you and me. And I learned how to hang with people in a most paradoxical way is by hanging out with my own brokenness, not wallowing in it, but recognizing how that has been a link to my own brilliance. And I am a brilliant person. I'm happy to tell myself that I answer my shame with positive affirmations. And like I heard Ned say yesterday, it doesn't happen with one and done. Seldom is this kind of transformation a one and done piece. It takes condition. Just like I get up every morning and run at five in the morning and do my thing. I don't want to do it, I usually wake up with a bad attitude every day that I have to address every single day. I know. So that's about me. But I'm saying to you that if I condition myself and I go back, just like, think of it this way, Joe, let me leave you with this. It's this idea. Some kid who's playing basketball, okay, so he's playing for a college team. The times run out, his team's behind by one point, and he's at the free throw line, and he has a 1 and 1. He has to make the first to tie the game, the second to win. So what happens? What do you know? Well, the guys behind the goal are doing everything they possibly can, legally or illegally, to try to get him to miss that shot. Okay, what does he do? He just programs back to the summer where. What did he do? He practiced a thousand free throws. And then what he would do, he'd run wind sprints until he almost dropped dead. Then he'd go practice, and then he'd run up and down the bleachers, and then he'd have his. His friends beat on him and then yell at him while he's making those practicing. And he draws all that in on that one critical moment. And if he misses, he goes back and does some more of it so he can improve. So the goal isn't to be before and after. Like, I'm finally, now I'm all together. I just want to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday. And, man, has that made a big difference in my life. And I tell you, if you practice, I haven't read that second chapter of that book you told me. I'm gonna go read it. But the point. If you practice what I'm hearing being said, that'll work. It'll help me anchor myself in what my authentic sense of being an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. I never knew that. I mean, I knew that here because I'm a smart dude, but I never knew that in my guts until I practice it every day. Practice it this morning, I'll practice it tonight. I practice. When I walk off this stage, it's just being that. So I really think we have hope in transforming shame. You know, all these energies that are negative for you, anger, you know, what do we do? Well, what we do, we have to redefine it. It's just an energy source. That's all these feelings are, you know, so mine, as a responsible adult, is to move that energy from what I don't want to. What I want. So I'll take some time when I'm angry is to throw it up. I just make sure I don't throw it up on people that I care for. If I had the flu, I wouldn't want to throw up in your lap. I'd go to the bathroom. So I don't want to throw up in somebody's lap. But once I throw that up to that person, I move it to the issue of injustice, the issue of oppression, and then I move it to what I want, you know, and what I want is respect, dignity. I want to treat myself that way and treat you that way. And the more I work with it, the better I get. I'm not perfect. I have to circle back and make amends all the time because I'll fuck it up. But still, what I've learned is how to be true to myself. And you know what's more important than never acting out again? It's knowing how to find your way back. Isn't it? Isn't that really important? I mean, if you go out for a hike with somebody and the guy says, I've never been lost in all the times I've taken people out for a hike. Or if you say somebody take another guy and he says, well, I have a compass here, and I know how to read the sucker, well, who would I want to go with? I'll go with the guy who got the compass. I just need to know how to find myself if I lose myself. And you can learn that. That's what recovery is about.

Absolutely. No, this is great. Thank you. Was that valuable? Yeah, I think life now is. You're on track, you're doing a few things, Things are working, you get thrown off track. I wanted to introduce Ken to all of you because I've been talking with him about. He writes a blog called Velvet Steel. Velvet Steel. And I would like him to start working with me and us with Genius Recovery. What I'm almost thinking, you know, say, like, what would be the most useful for everyone in the group? Because conversations like this, you know, I. I smuggle in these addiction conversations. It always pisses off a few people. And it's usually. I had one guy, one. One Genius Network member that literally. He dropped out of Genius Network when I first started talking about addiction because he was. He's like. Couldn't identify with it. He's like, I didn't join this business entrepreneur group so we could talk about addiction. I'm not an addict. You know, blah, blah, blah. And he calls me up about a year later, when he's in town for some business stuff, and he's like, you know, could we meet for lunch? It didn't matter. Lunch or office, whatever. And I was like, yeah, I got some time. So he comes over and he's like, I want to sincerely apologize. He's like, my daughter's been struggling with heroin addiction now for several months. And he goes, I never understood why you were talking about this and what it meant and how it would even relate to me. And he's like, now I totally get it. And I just wanted to say I'm sorry. And, you know, what you shared was really helpful, and I need some help. What can I do? And so I gave him some. I gave him some resources. And, you know, last I talked with him, his daughter's been, you know, on a path to recovery and doing better and stuff. But it's not a matter of if this relates to you. It's just a matter of when. If it's not you, it's going to be a family member. It's going to be an employee. And I personally can explain from my perspective, the whole pandemic through the lens of addiction. I think we have a bunch of addicted, crazy, power hungry, twisted, crazy human pain that has caused so much of what we're experiencing right now, Joe.

Even if we're not all addicts. And I know. I don't believe.

You know, I don't either. Yeah. I don't believe everyone's.

Oh, no, you don't. I don't believe everybody's an addict. And I think sometimes we're a little loose on how we use the term. But we all are challenged to figure out how to sit with discomfort and make meaningfulness out of it. That's where your brilliance can be found, in average, everyday, commonplace spaces of your life. So I hope we can do that if we just open. Become vulnerable, be open with each other. Talk about the places where we're uncomfortable, not with the whole world, but with people you choose to trust.

Yeah, totally. If someone here is really in pain, and I know a few are or will be or have been and go in and out, how available and accessible are you to. I know you're a busy guy, so.

It was in recent. Yeah, yeah. And you buzz and I can. And I have to practice my workaholism. Boundaries.

Yeah.

And I'll do that. So, yes, I'd like to be helpful. I've heard folks say that they want to be always available. I was always available. Available. It didn't help me. It hurt me. So I can't be always available, but I can be helpful. And if I can help you in any way, I'd be more than happy to do that. And certainly to be confidential. Yeah.

So if anyone just.

Just approach.

Ken, where are you sitting at right now?

I'm over there in the corner with these other great guys.

Yeah.

Okay.

God, look at that. That's like the healing freaking corner of the thing over there. Got Baron Baptiste.

Yeah.

Baron Hollowell. Yeah. Amy over there. Got Annie over there. Geez Louise.

Baron told some really good jokes he might share later when he comes out. I like it.

Yeah. No, you guys thought you were coming here for marketing, but you really are. You really are here for marketing because you know you're going to sell. You know, you're going to sell yourself into things or sell yourself out of things. And, you know what I realized is before my sabbatical, I had this insight where I was like, you know, I've had to claw my way into most successes. I've had the shit that I want in my life. My God, the effort. I had to claw my way into stuff. But then I also had the insight I've had to claw my way out of so many troubles that I've gotten myself into because I clawed my way into them. Right. You know, and I just got sick of clawing. And a big part of taking the sabbatical is like, I want to really think about how I do shit. How do I, you know? And the time to do it is not when you've hit bottom. I don't believe in even that thing of, like, you gotta destroy your life in order to get help. I mean, you can bring the bottom up. I believe you can do that. And so part of having the awareness and really the reason I want Ken and Ned and different people, even Baron, who we're going to have on Sunday to talk to you, is, I know that whole line, the issues are in the tissues. I mean, this is more than just the thinking thing. I don't give a fuck how smart you are. I've seen some. The hardest people to recover. The people that got all the damn money and have all the talent and capabilities because they think they can outmaneuver this shit. Like, oh, I really can. You know, I mean, I think half the people that go to Tony Robbins seminars are addicts. They just, you know, they don't want to hear that rap. You know, it's like, you know, I mean, that shit works. But with addiction, it's more about surrender. It really is. It's not about muscling your way through this shit. And so there's so many incredible speakers, but when you bring in addiction, that shit will fuck you up. I've seen people that go to seminars to try to deal with something that requires surrender, that they're trying to, you know, power their way through it. Good luck, buddy. You just wasted another two decades of your life.

You know, just make sure people know, Joe, that recovery and balance and embrace of discomfort only improves results. It's about that. It's not about taking away from being results focused and being excellent and fulfilling yourself. It's actually. It helps enhance destiny. Yeah, that's what we're all about.

Yeah, totally. You know, last thing I'll say here, like, even as I sit and talk about it, I notice an anger that I have. Like, I cuss more. I'm a little more, you know, I mean, can you tell, like, the anger, like. Cause I really just. To me, it's so part of me wants to speed up people's ability to kind of get it. Cause, God, I know the suffering of addiction, it sucks. It just sucks. And I really wish I could remove it. And at the same time, I know that people have to go through their own journeys and stuff. So even as I have these conversations, I became aware of my own perception of how I view this. And so even as Ned sits back there and I've got the love coaches and I got Baron and I've got all these incredible people and Whitney and everyone that's talking about different subjects, it just makes me think how all of this can be integrated to just create the greatest connection, network and brain trust that everyone here can tap into whenever they're having any particular area in their life that you want. I say any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. And I will tell you, I actually think my addiction has been greatly enhanced as a result of a genius network of people. And you have been a huge part of that genius network. For my addiction, Ned has been a huge part of that. I literally have one of Ned's ADHD coaches who I talk to every two weeks that I've. And I have access to some of the world's greatest experts. And I pay to do it because it separates me from that and it allows me to jump into it. So I'm a big believer in doing that. So thank you not just for being here, but, you know, this is another conversation which we'll have. You spent many years going to prisons without any pay and talking to sex offenders. You would just volunteer your time. And I said to you, why do you do that? And you responded with, why do you do that? I'll just ask you to say, like, why would you go and spend time with sex offenders to just talk to them?

Well, it's real simple who they are in principle, in soulfulness is who I am. We're all in this together. I don't do their behavior. Thank God I don't have the same temptations. But most of us don't want to connect with someone on that low of the totem pole is because we don't want it to connect with our own pain. But if I connect with my pain, I find my pain is like yours or like theirs or like whoever, because I'm just part of this universe. We're all part of the same energy. That's what it is. And so it just reminds me to be. Helps me to be spiritual.

Yeah, yeah. And like the Ram Dass line, you know, walk each other home. Thank you.

You bet. Thank you. Okay.

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