Optimize Your Internal Algorithms

Foreign.

Welcome to the Big Leap podcast. We have something really, really special. In this episode, Gay is going to discuss two algorithms that can absolutely change their life. So what are they, Gay, and why are they important?

One is called the Epictetus algorithm, and the other one's called the Einstein algorithm. And you're going to learn how to execute both of them in your life, make your whole world look a lot different.

Yes. And one of the big takeaways that I've gotten so far from this is, first of all, it can absolutely benefit every relationship you're in, including the one with yourself on how you see the world. And literally, you can use these strategies to make everything seem better, and it will genuinely be that way. So thanks for being here. Can't wait to share this episode with you.

Foreign.

Hi, everybody, it's Gay Hendricks, along with Mike Koenigs, and it's our Big Leap podcast. And we are going to be talking about some things that I bet you probably never heard of today, but they will really change your life. A couple of new algorithms that I want to share with you and Mike. What's an algorithm, anyway?

Well, generally, if you think of it kind of like a computer program, it is a set of instructions that you follow in order to get a certain outcome with a certain input. So that's, I think, about the easiest way to set it up.

That's exactly what we're going to be talking about. But we're going to be talking about this computer down in here inside ourselves today.

All right, I'm game. And I know by the title of these, I've never heard of these before. You had texted me this morning saying, hey, I've got something to talk about. So why don't you talk about what the algorithms are and why they're so important?

Why they're so important is that each of us needs a really simple way to do two or three big things in life. One is how to feel good inside, how to let go of something that's bothering you and slip back into an easeful, centered state of being. So that's one thing. We really need a simple way to do that. And so I want to share with you an algorithm that. A way to do that. It's a human algorithm, not a computer algorithm. The second thing we all need to do is we really need to learn how to get in a flow of easeful communication with other people. So I want to share with you an algorithm that will allow you to do that.

All right? So one of the words, one of the descriptions is It's E, P, I, C, E, T, U, S. And it's pronounced Epictetus.

Okay, so the first.

It sounds very Romanesque.

Well, he is sort of Romanesque. In fact, sometime Google Mr. Epictetus. He lived about 2,000 years ago, roughly equivalent to the time of when Jesus was teaching over in his part of the world. Epictetus was running a school in Rome at the same time, and they were, at the time, what were called the pagan schools because they weren't religious. They taught things like physics and biology and things like that rather than theology. And so it was where all the smart kids went. Think of it as the college prep classes of the year 2000. So Epictetus was this ingenious, amazing teacher who taught these certain aphorisms, and his students collected a little book of them. The best translation is called the Art of Living. The translation by Sharon LaBelle in the original Epictetus book was called the Encounter, which is kind of like a handbook on living. But here's the punchline I've been building up, too. If you don't ever remember anything else about my hero Epictetus, remember this. He's the guy that came up with the idea that's in the Serenity Prayer. And here's what he said. The first line of his book goes something like this. The secret of happiness is knowing that there are some things you can control and some things you cannot control. And if you think about it now, I'm going into gay Hendrix, not Epictetus. But that's what his line said. And if you really think about it, if you apply that idea to any situation that you're stuck in or troubled by or having trouble figuring out, that is a simple way to get a good flow of creativity going. Because what happens is when people are thinking of things they don't have any control over, they're worrying about things that happened in the past, they don't have any control over that, or they're worrying about something that's going to happen in the future, or worrying about what somebody thinks of them, which we don't have any control over. What I'm saying is, when human beings get tied up in trying to control things that are not within our power to control, we turn on all the stress chemistry in our body, our muscles get tied, our heart speeds up, our mind gets full of ideas that aren't such productive ideas, and we generally make ourselves feel miserable to the extent that we're trying to control things that are not within our power to control. So I really want to honor Epictetus for coming up with that central idea. If you read his little handbook, he came up with some other amazing ideas, too. But that one is the one he opened with. And so when I read that. I'm an old Latin student, by the way. Ms. Emma Williams was my Latin teacher way back 60 years ago now, I guess. And so I had a special bond with her. She was an elder, and she lived up the street from us in this big towering mansion. And her family had been teachers for three generations. I think her mother had taught my mother and like that. And so Ms. Emma Williams was my Latin tutor and gave me a love for ancient languages and things like that. But one of the most exciting moments in my life was when I read that first line of Epictetus and I started applying it to myself, because at the time, I was a teenager, you know, and as a teenager, I was always concerned with what other people were thinking of me and that kind of thing, like most of us are. And that really unhooked something for me and gave me a sense of serenity at the time. See, I'd never heard of Alcoholics Anonymous or the 7 or the 12 steps or the Serenity Prayer or anything like that. But then later on, when I met people that were 12 step program people, they told me about the Serenity Prayer, and I said, that's Epictetus. And it turns out if you read the Alcoholics Anonymous and 12 Step Literature, that they do actually honor Epictetus. So I work with. I mentor several people a year. I started to call them students, but most. Some of them are as old as I am. And so in my mentorship program, I always make sure that I teach people the key algorithms that I use for transformation. And one of the main algorithms I use is that Epictetus, what I call the Epictetus algorithm, because if you can get in the habit whenever you feel stuck or having a problem, if you can get in the habit of asking yourself, what am I trying to control here that's not actually within my power to control. That can unhook you from a lot of the wear and tear on your stress machinery in your body, because the moment you let go of trying to control it, your body kind of goes, oh, and you open up a new space for creativity to move through. By the way, here's my first plug of the day for my new book. The Genius Zone, which is out in June of this year, is a lot about this thing that I'm talking about, the Epictetus algorithm. And I go into it and I have a set of processes there, some of which I want to do in our podcast, by the way, that will enable people to do this thing I'm calling unhooking. And the moment you unhook, you free yourself from a whole lot of things that have been clamoring at you for your attention. So the big learning here for me, and the big thing I want to pass along about the Epictetus algorithm is when you hit any rough spot in life, when you hit a speed bump or a barrier, pause and ask yourself the Epictetus question, what am I controlling here? What am I trying to control that actually I don't have any control over? Because the moment you can get that, you can say, oh, okay, I need to accept that as it is, instead of trying to control it, because I don't have any control over it. And so when I pop out of the illusion that I can control it, there's an amazing infinite amount of space there, and it feels good. And it's where creativity comes from. So that's a, that's a first glance at the epictetus algorithm, Mike. Okay.

And so what I want to do, I want to go just a little bit deeper, which is. So the algorithm is first of all triggered by the realization that, hey, I'm not feeling good about something. And let me check into this. Oh, the real issue is I'm trying to control something that isn't necessarily controllable or I have no control over. And to settle in, first of all, acknowledge it, receive it, and then, you know, have a conversation, maybe learn more about what you're feeling and what you're experiencing, and pay close attention to your body. Again, I'm kind of reading into what you were saying, but I want to add the, the Gay Hendrix element here. Is there anything that I may have missed when you talk about the algorithm and firing it up?

No, I think you heard it correctly. And the only thing I might add is that once you get good at it, you can execute it in a split second. It doesn't take any time at all to unhook because it's not something that occurs in time. And so it's very useful thing to know about. So you can run just about any problem that you run into through this algorithm, because it's always helpful to know if you're over efforting, trying to control something that you couldn't possibly control in a million years.

Okay. And I want to again go a little bit deeper, which is.

So let's say it's.

Something you can't Control, how do you resolve that mentally and physically to the point where you're settled or more specifically when you're doing it with a client or a student and they're troubled by something that could be major? To the point of. I talked to someone today who is taking tranquilizers right now because this person has some stuff bothering him to a deep degree. And it was like, whoa, yeah, that's pretty intense to self medicate.

But what would you say to someone like that who's got something going on and you know, both controllable and not controllable?

That's really a great question. And here's why it's such a great question. Because the letting go of trying to control something that you can't control is a first step that then gives you access to more energy so you can figure out what you can do to influence the situation. And I want to make a big distinction between thinking you can control something and having a desire to influence it because there are very different things. And so the moment you let go of trying to control it, you have more of a possibility of thinking up something you could do that actually might have a positive influence on the situation. I don't know your client's case exactly, but let's say one thing he's been efforting to try to control is what other people think of him. That's a common one. Or let's say he's efforting to try to control his fear. If he's taking tranquilizers to try to make the fear go away. Well that's a classic example of, of where control doesn't work and how trying to control fear actually makes it worse. Because the moment you put the brakes on it, it starts to, you know, the brakes squeal. Because the only way to deal with fear is by open hearted embrace of it and ah, letting yourself feel it. You know, like I think of Ken Hecht, he was a movie producer and he weighed 120 pounds more than he should have weighed. And the moment that transformed his life and enabled him to lose 120 pounds was he'd been, you know, tried all sorts of pills and all sorts of anything. And the moment that changed everything was when he paused in front of his refrigerator and he was going to get something to stuff himself with late on a Saturday night and he realized, oh, I'm scared. And instead of, as he said, instead of eating cold turkey, he went cold turkey. He just stood there and felt his fear for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes.

And actually acknowledged it. For the first time in his life and let go of trying to control it. And that was a transformative moment, after which he started just naturally losing all of this weight. And 120 pounds later, there he was a whole different person. But it starts with that one moment of letting go of trying to control something and just letting it be. You notice I keep taking a deep breath, but that is oftentimes what happens with my clients is I invite them to just acknowledge it. Just like you say, today's Tuesday or today's 4 o'. Clock. Just something that's real. You just acknowledge it. Because, you know, in the Course in Miracles, it says.

Nothing unreal exists, nothing real needs to be feared. And so, you know, if it's real, you just need to look at it and deal with it. But the fear is actually adding nothing to the situation.

That's powerful.

Very good. So I can see, as you were describing, that my interpretation of it is that.

By acknowledging it and letting it go, you're also creating space for the solution to show up. Otherwise, if you think of your body as a vessel, and emotions and energy take up a lot of that, especially if it's negative stuff, it's going to conflict, you know, and you just can't cram more stuff in there. But the solution can show up and exist once you just face the truth and accept what you can't control. And I know that may sound rudimentary.

But.

Sometimes the most obvious stuff we have to be reminded of. So do you want to. Do you want to move on to the next one, or do you have some comments or some thoughts?

No, I. I love Epictetus, and I want to honor him and appreciate him, because he certainly changed my life. And to think of him sitting there cranking out these ideas 2000 years ago is very heartwarming in a way. And so the other algorithm that I make sure I work with all my mentor people on is what I call the Einstein algorithm. And one of my favorite. If you've read the Big Leap, there's a whole chapter on Einstein time in there. We've talked about that before. But I wanted to quote one little image of Einstein's, which was when he was asked to explain the theory of relativity to, you know, like a junior high school student, he said.

A minute with your beloved.

I'm sorry, a minute sitting on a hot stove goes by like an hour, but an hour with your beloved goes by like a minute. And that's the heart of the Einstein theory, because it's that expansion of time or expansion of consciousness. That really makes a difference in Einsteinian and post Einsteinian physics. When I interpret what Einstein was talking about, what I get out of it is that when you are with something like your beloved, but anything, if you can be with your fear or be with your anger or be with your sadness without trying to alter it or change it or make it go away just to be with it, that's a magic moment. And I say that it's a moment in which love enters the equation. Because if you think about it giving space to something, like giving space to your fear, or really honoring your anger or honoring your grief or honoring your sexuality, maybe you've been struggling with one of those things in the past, but the moment you actually open your heart to it and be with it rather than trying to make it go away, is a moment of love, in my experience. Because the ability to be in the same space with something is, in my mind, an act of love. If you can simply share space with another entity, whatever that entity is, whether it's your own fear or someone else's fear or someone else's negative behavior, it's that moment when we open up and just be with it instead of judging it, finding fault with it. Any of the things that usually lock problems into place. If another person starts telling you some issue or problem, and if you go into judgment and start criticizing them and saying, hey, you shouldn't feel that way, well, that stops the problem solving process. It's why many of us choose to go to a therapist to talk about our issues rather than talk to old Uncle Bob or mom or dad sometimes. Because a lot of times when you talk to some people in your life, you're going to get censorship or judgment or fault found with you. Whereas it's that moment of being accepted for who we are, it's that moment of being able to share your anxiety or your fear with another person. That's really a sacred event in life because that means that you're willing to be equals with it. And in my experience, Katie and I have now worked with, I don't know, Something close to 5,000 couples, I think, in our seminars and in our office here. And one of the things we've found is that relationship can only be between equals. If you are trying to go one up or one down on your beloved, it makes this kind of rattle that can never get resolved until both people acknowledge that they are each 100% separate entities as well as entities in a relationship. So I call it the Einstein algorithm because it's the Moment where you open up and love something as it is. It's that, ah, moment of, instead of censoring or being afraid of your fear or your anger or your sadness or another person's anger or sadness, it's that moment of.

Accepting it as an equal and being equals with it. And that's the essence of what Einstein was trying to get at, I think.

Wow, a lot to unpack here. I have a couple observations. The first one, I'm going to do the last one first because it's a little bit easier.

But.

Everything you do, in a way, gay, and I've known you now, believe it or not, I think it's going on close to 20 years that we first met. Maybe it's not quite that. I mean, it's close to when I moved to San Diego within a couple of years. And the one thing that I noticed about you is, first of all, you and Katie spend a lot of time in your bodies, acknowledging bodies. It's like the temperature gauge. And when you, when you go or.

You know, you do, you get into your breath and.

That'S just who you are. And then when I listen to.

Any.

Of your wisdom, your strategies, a huge part of what you're doing is a reframe. It's thinking about something differently and overriding a primitive lizard brain function. And that's really what reframing is. It's when you really take wisdom and apply it to a core animal tendency and that, and it creates genuine joy and happiness. It's not fake, you know, it's not like, pretend it's not a snake. 10, it's not a snake. Pretend it's not a snake. It's all like, well, if you're, you know, if you got a snake, you're going to get bit if it's a bit. All right, so that's, I'm going to say number one again, this is like a really simple observation, but I think it's so simple. We miss it sometimes and it doesn't matter what it is. Can you reframe it? And going back to the, what you talked about, a partner, you know, loving someone exactly the way they are. I know one of the things that I really struggled with as a young man getting married, not just the first time, but the second time, was really, really accepting the other person. Because in my mind it was like, oh, if I'm committed to this, what if something better comes along? That was some. Just some.

Yeah.

And. And it'll be like, I, I made myself happy, but I didn't have the wisdom to really embrace all of the things that scared me about my partner or the things that I found objectionable, no matter what it was, versus just falling in love with that. And I know that would have given me so much peace and.

Peace of mind.

Yeah. Well, one thing in relationship is. It's almost always the case that you come into a relationship with. I don't. Do you remember the movie Rocky?

Huh?

Rocky. Rocky and his girlfriend. There's this point where somebody's asking him why he loves this particular woman, and he says in his Rocky manner, he says, it's gaps. She got gaps, I got gaps. We fill gaps. And when people come into a relationship, like in my case with Katie, she is a super good feeler. You know, she's very sensitive. She can feel, you know, something happening across. Across the planet. And I'm more. I came in more of a thinker, you know, I.

Intellectual, strong.

Mind, that kind of thing. But I wasn't very good at all at feeling things down in my body. And so it was like I had a kind of a big sign I was holding up that I didn't know I was holding up. That said one extremely heady guy looking for somebody to teach him how to feel his emotions. And I think that was one of my unconscious things that I came into the relationship with. But my problem was, in the first year or so, I kept trying to change her to be more like me. You know, I. I would excuse her.

Stop feeling already. Stop feeling.

Yeah.

What's wrong with you? Can't you think? Yeah. Huh?

Right. There's no cash value in feelings, Katie, you know, so. But very soon I learned that that was a futile occupation because it didn't improve the situation, and it made it worse. But then I realized, oh, I have created a learning situation here where I'm going to get a crash course in how to be an emotional human being. That's a good idea, isn't it? You know, and once I kind of got on board with that, wow, things really took off big time. But while I was trying to insist on the rightness of my point of view, things didn't go well at all.

Right, Right. Well, that. I'm going to touch on one other idea that popped up as I was listening to you, and that was when you said relationships can only be done with equals. Now.

My story with that, or more of an observation, is with Vivian and me, I've called this relationship velocity before. And that's when the rate of growth and the direction of growth need to be the same. And that's really what velocity is. And when one.

Person is growing faster than the other and the other or. And the other one either resists it, that's when I see the most contention happen. And. And in generally speaking, it's the women who maybe make the most emotional growth fastest. And then for the men, it might be some sort of intellectual growth, some curiosity. That's one thing that Vivian and I have been really, really committed to is.

And I'll actually, this is one of those things very infrequently can I take credit for something in the relationship that's really good. But in this case, I will say I am really, really good at adapting myself towards her intellectual curiosities because Vivian is always pursued interesting things and interesting people. And I know when she gets in kind of a wandering mode where she's gonna break out of something, it just happens. She'll.

It's how she started her foundation. She woke up in the middle of the night and said, I hear screaming babies in Africa. I need to go there. There's a Holocaust happening. I'm going to stop it. I need to do something about it. And a few weeks later, she's in Senegal. And then she went to Uganda, and she happened upon the thing that turned into the Just Like My Child Foundation. But along the way, without that.

I wouldn't have had the courage to become good at raising money and fundraising and asking like that. And also giving.

In the way and also the journeys to Africa. She's been there 30 sometimes. Zach and I have both been there six and seven times. So as a young boy, he started going at age 10, and he had. Was permanently imprinted with, you know, seeing extreme poverty, but also the happiness. And, you know, he did a documentary in high school about it. So.

I know without that commitment to remaining equal, being equals, and a commitment to relationship velocity, none of that would have happened. So I'm curious what your take or observations might be on any of those things. The reframing and velocity.

Yes. Well, I think. Well, first of all, reframing is one of the most powerful things any human being can get good at doing. And so I kind of reframe in my sleep. I've been doing it so long now. Yeah, but if you think about it, most of us get stuck. Stuck in a particular reality tunnel and start thinking that is reality, rather than just saying, oh, I happen to be looking at the world in a particular way right now. And so one of the great things about human beings is the ability to shift a point of view to suddenly look at something in an entirely different way, or suddenly feel a whole different way about it. A turning point for me. I was once on a bicycle trip many years ago. I'd been dreaming of Tibet since I was a little boy. And so I got one of the first mountain bike permits to ride my bike through Tibet way back in the 1980s. And so I got to talk to a lot of young Tibetan lamas and elder Tibetan lamas. And all the time, I would ask them, you know, what is the essence of Tibetan Buddhism and what is the essence of what you're doing here? And I got all sorts of great answers. But one of the best answers came with a reframe that I'll never forget. I asked this one young lama, what is the real essence of Buddhism? And he said, richness. And I said, what do you mean by richness? Because that's not something you usually think of with Buddhism. And he said, richness is because we are constantly getting thoughts flowing through our mind absolutely free. We don't even have to ask for them. The mind just produces thoughts spontaneously, and that's richness. And I said, what a reframe it is. Because that's what many of us call driving ourselves nuts. You know, we have these thoughts flowing through our minds, and we don't like the thoughts. But here's this guy who's managed to reframe the whole thing as a gift of God. The fact that he gets any thoughts at all is a sign of his spiritual exaltation as a human being. And so I thought of that as one of the master reframes of all time.

Oh, that's really good, huh?

Or we just went through a massive.

This might be a bit controversial, but we're just had it. Have experienced Easter here. And when you think of that, what a master reframe that is, you know, because it's not a very sexy story to tell. Well, we had this great guy, and then he got killed. You know, that's an okay story. But if you have the. But then he got reborn. That's a major sexy story right there. And so.

But it's a reframe. A massive reframe.

Yes.

So. And it worked.

Because, you know, they own real estate in every town just about. And so.

Not to be blunt about it, but that's one measure of success of a religion. So anyway, the ability to reframe has a great deal to do with, I think, our ability to be happy. And it also causes problems, though, because somebody that doesn't have our best interest at Hearts comes in and gives us a reframe.

Then that gets to be a problem. If you start going down a particular reality tunnel like a lot of people do in the various silos of life today.

Yes, I.

I think.

Well, first of all, I, I agree with everything that you, you, you said there and.

We could spend days going down the religion.

Path. But you know, it's, it's, there's something I'm going to recommend on the subject of religion, even though it's not specifically religion. It's the story about WeWork. And there's a documentary on Netflix right now and it's really worth seeing because the guy who became the founder had a genuine and created a Christ complex for himself. And.

There'S a guy really admire who I've taken some classes from.

And the NYU professor Scott Galloway got interviewed on it. And basically what happened with WeWork and what really launched it was.

This guy.

He had a big vision and he had been kind of a failure at a whole bunch of stuff and got a partner and somehow they rounded up some money.

Converted a New York space into the shared space and did it really nice, had great architecture and just he connived and manipulated everyone he could to give him good deals and then got some investors behind them and they just were like in the right place at the right time with the right thing. Right after the economic blowout in 2008, so some big named real estate developers, and this is my interpretation, not what was said, believed in that this could be a great story to elevate the value of their property, which it did. And they signed all these long term leases and bottom line is the way he launched WeWork is by going out to a whole bunch of young entrepreneurs who are millennials, told him a story and it's not me, it's we. So it turned into this big group think and then started throwing massive parties and talking about how great it is to be in these communities and how you're working together in the shared space. And everyone bought into it just because it was new and really a compelling religious story.

And I think from. There's a book by the founder of, I think it's called Pendulum, I have to look it up. But it's by the founder of.

The.

Wizards Academy in Austin, Texas, if you're familiar with that. You know what I'm talking about. Yep, I'll look it up in between. But the net net is it really told the story of how we work just took off and it was just like booze and drinking and drugs and this huge party. But it was combined with this really great mission statement and this vision that everyone just wanted to believe in something, you know, and once it built all this momentum, the guy ended up getting like just turning nuts. You know, he was firing people and laying people off and cutting costs, while in the meantime bought himself like a 70 million dollar private jet. And it just turned into this classic case of the abusive.

Heretical leader of the religion and the cult.

And.

And so I, I, I, I don't know where to go with that aside from. I find these stories, all these stories fascinating. And I think the, the key swing here was the thing I was going to say. This book I'm trying to remember the name of, I think it's Pendulum or something like that, talks about how.

As a society we oscillate. I think it's every 30 years between a we versus me mentality. So right now we're in the extreme case the, almost the peak of the we mentality. In other words, in the 80s it was me and personal focus. Now it's groupthink to the extent where we have mobs of.

Social media terrorists who are canceling people. You know, it's, it's, it, it is, it is literally psychic terrorism that's going on.

And the, the general and the belief is, and this guy's tracked it out for many hundred, you know, centuries, how this pendulum works in the development of societies, but also how it affects relationships. And that's, I know I went off on a deep ass.

Tangent there, but I'm curious because you've, you've been on the planet for a while, but talk about how the algorithms vary based upon the changes in society and how values get tweaked as well. What's in the inner sanctum of relationships versus societal.

Yeah, well, in a way, our first relationship is with our own inside. You know, that that's where everything has to start and.

That'S where a lot of the problems lie in today. Because a lot of the things that come at you from outside are trying to talk you out of your body, you know that.

I forget the name of the person. It's one of the Kardashians. I believe it's Kylie or something. She's the makeup billionaire.

Because she, that's Kylie. Yeah, yeah.

And so if you think about it, that's kind of the extreme of the situation in a way, because there's a person who became famous for nothing but for being famous and then.

Said, okay, if you want to be like me, here's a way you can do it from the outside. And so it's kind of built on a set of pretty shallow set of assumptions about life. And so I think I've seen it swing back and forth a bunch of times in my lifetime because I really. I was born in 1945, and so it was definitely. It was like everybody had a too tight pair of shoes on in the 1950s, and then they took them off and went barefoot in the 1960s, and then went back to Birkenstocks in the 1970s. Kind of a modification of sort of open and sort of closed. But then I think.

What I saw happening in the 1980s was, especially with the beginnings of MTV, where there was a lot more effort put on the visuals of something than the actual underlying music of it, you know, then it became, like the song says, video kill the radio star.

Because once you've got something visually to comprehend, your vision takes up an enormous amount of your attention. What you look at, as far as your brain goes. I think when your eyes are open, something like 60% of your attention goes through those two little holes in your body. And so once things shifted off of having some kind of body reference to having only conceptual reference for ourselves, a lot of wobble can get into the machinery there, because people are fundamentally out of touch with who they really are and what they really want and what is actually good for their inner life. And so I think we're in for a major correction here in the not too distant future where the age of the selfie ends and the age of the feely begins. Because it's going to be more important learning how we feel in our bodies in the future, rather than just what we think about and what we look at.

Yeah, Yeah. I think the key is doing it in an authentic way instead of the Kardashianized way, which I consider a disease of the soul of the planet, the whole lot of them, you know. But by the way, the book I was looking for, it's called Pendulum. It's how past generations shape our present and predict our future. And it's by Roy Williams. He's the founder of Wizard Academy, and then Michael Drew. And I've. I've spent time with both of them. Roy Williams is. Is truly one of the most brilliant men I've ever come in contact with. You'd. You'd find him endlessly fascinating. I'm gonna see if I can.

I've got his books on my wall back behind me. Okay. Yeah.

The wizard of Ads. All of the wizard of Ads.

Yes. Everybody has to read the wizard of Ads.

Yeah, he's got a really particular writing style. I couldn't read his stuff for years and years. It was like my brain just couldn't comprehend his style. And then I remember looking at it later going, what the hell is wrong with me? It's just an immature brain. But.

He'S a remarkable observer of the human condition, and I can't recommend it highly enough. So, like I said, I will see if I can't. A good friend of mine is really good friends with him, and I'm going to see if I can't arrange that. But.

Good guy to talk to. Well, listen, we're kind of wandering all over the place here. From our two original algorithms. Apologies, but just to summarize, everybody, if you're going to take away a couple of big things, one is the Epictetus algorithm, which has to do with letting go of trying to control things that are not within your power to control, and the Einstein algorithm, which has to do with opening up and loving the things that are hardest to love and thereby releasing the enormous amount of creative potential that's been locked into that situation.

Yes, and as usual, genius material and genius observations. This is fantastic. So, well, we'll bring this thing to a close. As usual, number one, make sure you, like, you subscribe. And that way you'll stay in touch with us when new episodes come out.

Of course.

Share this with people you know. And.

Also, if you want to learn more about working with Gay and me for the big leap year, we have got a special program. You can head on over to bigleappodcast.com Details are there, and you can sign up and request some information. So, Gay, anything else that you want to add?

Keep breathing, everybody. It's a great life out here, and you just got to stay in your body to enjoy the ride.

Well done. All right, we'll see you in the next episode.