Mindstorm Ep. 4: The Heart and the Mind

Hello everyone, welcome to Mindstorm, a podcast about enlightened and awakened entrepreneurship, bringing best practices to help entrepreneurs solve real problems in the world. My name is Adeo Ressi, I'm CEO of The Founder Institute, and I'm joined here by Josh Whitton. Josh, hello.

Josh Whitton, I'm the founder of MakeSoil.org and other planetary interventions.

So today we're going to be talking about balancing the heart and the mind. And you know, that sounds pretty foofy. And if you had told me I would be talking about that 10 years ago, I'd be like, you're crazy. I know. Well, what do you mean? So maybe it's good to start with a definition of what is the heart and what is the mind. And you know, I think we all have a sense of what the mind is. It's the rational thinking. It's the organization of your head that tries to put everything in a box, put everything in a framework, make sense sense of the world. And, you know, it has things like ego underneath it and a lot of other things. It's a bucket of the rational thinking human.

It has a subconscious and a conscious part.

But yeah, yeah, so we, we, I think a lot, and a lot of entrepreneurship is mind-driven. So it might be, we can leave the mind with that. Yeah. The more interesting thing is to look at what is the heart. And maybe you want to take a stab at that, Josh.

I don't know exactly what it is, but I've gotten in touch with it a few times, and I gotta say there's something to it. And from what I can tell right now, at the very least, it's an additional kind of intelligence that's completely different than the mind. So if some of the more mind-based listeners out there who think the heart is kind of a foofy kind of sub, you know, topic, I'm convinced— you know, I used to be that guy, I used to be very rational— and I'm convinced now that the heart is an additional processing unit, kind of like maybe a GPU versus CPU or something, that can really crunch something about reality that the mind can't. And so now I hugely respect the heart and want to integrate it, right?

So I, you know, you led me through an exercise actually which helped me understand, uh, the role of the mind and heart playing together. And, you know, for me, a lot of the mind is obviously in your head and a lot of the heart is in your body. So when people say things like trust your gut, that's actually for me code for like feel with your heart, because you feel your heart very viscerally a lot of times in your stomach. If your heart beats really fast, you get a biophysical reaction in your stomach. And trusting your gut in many ways for me is just like trusting your heart, leading with your heart, etc. So heart for me is the range of emotions largely centered in your body, so in the area like around your heart and stomach, where you feel emotions like love and you feel passion and desire, and they're mostly positive emotions. I think things like fear come out of the rational mind for the most part, are driven from the mind, but these positive emotions come from the heart and in other areas. And I like to say the mind is a map and the heart is a compass, right, as another way to think about it. So whether you're getting advice, hey, trust your gut, or, you know, maybe you need to be more passionate about what you're doing, these are all comments that are really driving at the heart. And the reality today, as we said early on, is that the mind governs. So especially when it comes to entrepreneurship.

It dominates the industry today, at least.

Right, so I can't tell you how many people— in fact, just today on Twitter, a friend of mine was talking about, "Wouldn't it be great if there was a company that knew my basic credit card information and situation of my home finance and would alert me when I could refinance at a better rate?" And I tweeted back at him, I'm like, is this really a business?

I was like, did we just switch episodes or is this a promo?

No, no, I get it. I mean, that's a total mind business.

Yeah, exactly.

There's no heart in that at all.

It's like, I'm not sure the world needs another one of those.

Right, it's an optimization.

It's an optimization.

Right.

Whereas we're talking about a quality that is like super missing in the world today in a lot of ways, right? It's almost like a zero-to-one kind of moment we need to have as far as the heart in business and entrepreneurship.

Right, and we're definitely at zero because when you map the world out, which the mind is really good, you see holes. Oh, look, no one is doing a supermarket on this island in Fiji. This would be a great business.

Sure, lower prices and blah blah blah.

Total mind businesses in the world of startups are driven by mind. So I guess, you know, what can the heart offer?

Right, and those, those businesses that you mentioned as mind, I actually believe that we can improve the mind quite a lot, and you can actually create companies that matter and that are good for the world even without a lot of heart, because there still is constant— there's, there's knowledge, there's wisdom, there's clearing our misperceptions. You can get pretty far just cleaning off the mind, right? And I went that path for years. I just like, that's all I did. Now what I ran into was that it wasn't ultimately sustainable. Like, if you're just— the mind is kind of problem-oriented, and if you're just like solving problems, eventually the mind realizes— you wake up one day and go, oh my God, the problems, they're endless. Like, I didn't— I solved it, I worked all day yesterday or for the past 10 years, and I haven't— like, there's more problems than there were last year, right?

Right.

And life— so in my experience, life starts to seem like a bit of a hassle when I'm just working from the mind. No matter how efficient you get, no matter how much bulletproof coffee you drink or whatever, like you still can't solve the world. And then I realized that my heart's been missing for like days or weeks or maybe years, and I'll do what I can to open my heart. And then with the heart open, oh, life seems like we're worth living again. Life's not a hassle anymore. You're here for the love, you're here to do your work, and the mind and the heart team up. And to me, that's, that's the only way now, especially if you've had some success and you're not just driven by some fantasy of fame or whatever, like it's the only way that life is worth living anymore to me. If I don't feel the heart for an extended amount of time now, the world just starts to seem like a hassle.

Right, so the heart offers really passion, love, and commitment.

Yeah, that helps you sustain.

Right, that is needed to overcome the wealth of problems that you're gonna— yeah, because the mind will just get tired and give up after a while if there's no heart in it. And in fact, you know, a good friend of mine recently posted on his Twitter account, Jason Calacanis, @Jason, you know, tell me honestly the reason that your startup failed. And if you read, there are 300 responses within a few minutes or an hour, and almost all of them were like, the mind gave up. It's like, oh, we went after this market, or the mind was wrong. Right. It was like, just like mind reason, mind businesses where the mind gave up, right? No examples were like, man, I loved it with all my heart and I was totally passionate and then it died. It was all like, I had a reason, a logical reason it failed, and, or the logic was wrong. It was all mind reason. So, you know, the main benefit for me of what can the heart offer is that that, that determination, that passion that allows you to go through every obstacle and wall. Yeah, but more than that, you know, there's a lot of things that— so, so the heart, like, you know, when people say trust your gut or whatever, what I found as I've gotten older is like, and this happens to me a lot on business trips, right? And it's like, I need to go to China because they're gonna maybe write us a half a billion dollar financing check. And I have the trip is perfectly planned and like I'm flying in and I have all the meetings and on paper it looks great, but something feels wrong, right? And I can't put my finger on it, but I'm like, the trip is perfectly planned. The meetings are perfectly planned. The opportunity is perfectly scoped, but something feels wrong, right? And it just feels wrong, right? And so I'm always like, I don't know, should I go, should I not go? And I can tell you 100% of the time, when I go, it's a mistake. And that's an example of like where the mind has this beautiful, like perfectly planned thing, but your feelings, your heart has some sort of an intuition that it's wrong, and you don't follow your heart, you follow your mind. And I can tell you that whether it be hiring a candidate, planning a complicated trip, another big area is doing business. Like, I was talking with a friend of mine, he got a half a million dollar deal, and it was a really sweet deal, and he was dealing with the CEO And the CEO was a little crazy, like making all sorts of irrational demands and crazy requests. And the COO is like, don't worry, I'm your interface. My job is to handle the CEO. And sure enough, but he had a bad feeling, right? He's like, I don't know what this is, but like half a million dollars, look, you know, again, the mind made this perfect. And then they fired the COO, the CEO took over, and it was a nightmare, right? So like, I think the value of the heart is not just in the passion and the commitment and the love of what you're doing. It also provides you these subtle clues with your intuition and gut about what's right and what's wrong, and people avoid it.

You know, you're reminding me that I actually, for a couple of weeks— I don't know why I stopped— was practicing a meditation where you put your awareness in your chest center, in your heart center, which is tough enough for most people. It's totally doable. It takes a little bit of practice, but it's profound. And then a lot of people just put their awareness in the surface of their chest, but you put it in the middle of your chest and your consciousness actually shifts a little bit. But you would actually put your awareness there and you would behold in your mind or in your heart two different options, like, do I partner with this company or not? Do I take the check or not? And you would notice the sensation in your chest and it was profound. You would feel the heart like shrinking up like a prune when you consider one option and like expanding, getting warm when you thought of another option. It was like a really powerful compass. I think it's an incredible tool and an incredible ally that we've barely begun to leverage.

Especially in entrepreneurship. I think in other fields there are heart-driven fields. Certain medical practices are heart-driven, maybe not like— surgery, but like certainly, uh, certain forms of psychiatry and others. So, you know, I think it's— but in entrepreneurship, it's definitely mostly a mind-driven thing. And so, right, I mean, just, just being aware of your heart having a role is, I think, step one. And, you know, you were just talking about why we might want to balance the heart and the mind. You know, and, you know, my feeling is that when they're out of balance, there's a risk, right? There's a— in fact, I would argue there's a lot of risks.

Looks a bit like what's happening to our planet right now.

Yeah, pretty much. So, you know, if you— right, so let's go back to the optimization of home refinancing, right? If someone went and did that business today, right, they might make some money. Great. But I could tell them 100 other businesses that they could do that would make money, totally, that would be better for the planet, and it still may be a mind exercise. Now imagine if they did their heart, yeah, and the business that made sense for the planet. This could be a real win. So I think To your point, one of the reasons, one of the why should they do it, because the world needs it. I also think, you know, there's a— I just read a stat that something close to 70, over 70%, approaching 75% of entrepreneurs who were surveyed by UCSF said they had mental health issues at some point or another.

And what if the mind is meant to be part of a larger system that includes the heart?

Then the mind—

we're likely to have mental health issues, right?

Right.

It's a symbiotic function that's needed there, right?

We've shut the heart down.

Yeah.

And you're living in this spiraling mind of problem solving. You know, one benefit is we are destroying the planet, and so we can stop that by letting the heart come in. Another benefit is mental health.

I bet, now that we're talking, I bet that when our heart is actually activated in addition to our mind, I bet that's when we come up with the best ideas. Like, like that kind of Venn diagram I think you were just pointing to, right? It's like, I'm jazzed about this, it could make money, it's also good for the planet, right? And I feel great when I wake up to work on it every day. I think you can only probably get that bullseye in the middle of that Venn diagram if, if all your systems of self are contributing to what you're doing in the world, right? And I think you get to see so many businesses, and it sounds like over the years you're getting increasingly dissatisfied with people coming around, and instead of a, you know, instead of a zero-to-one kind of thing that could help the planet, they're doing a 1005 to 1006 kind of business, right? It's just—

and well, the heart is a tricky thing, you know. The other problem that we have is we convince ourselves that we love the business. Right? And that is a dangerous game because—

Convince the investors that we love the business.

Well, you convince— I think you start by convincing yourself that you love the business. And this goes back to we've shut our heart down so much in our daily life that we can get to the point where we act like we love the business, we talk like we love a business, but it's a giant fake.

I think there's a line in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, where this character says, "Do not lie. Above all, do not lie to yourself." And that's something the mind oftentimes does, right? Can lie to itself.

Well, you know, there's a lot of people that write about essentially a collective mental health issue that we're facing. It's not just an individual mental health. We've all accepted some things to be true that are lies. And we accept them individually as truth and collectively as truth. And so I think your heart won't have that, right? It knows what's a lie and what's the truth.

That's it. That's it. It can perceive some truth about reality that the mind has trouble figuring out.

Right. So again, like the trip to China that looks perfect on paper, like, you know deep inside that it's all some sort of sham. And which, by the way, I went on the trip and it was a total sham. And your heart kind of can feel that, but like your mind can't. And then you get stuck in this, like, so, you know, and I think this is a really important bit. But then, then let's talk a little bit, you know, how, how, because, you know, if I like, if I say to my team, like, hey, you know, guys, I'm not going on the trip to China, and they're like, why not? My heart says it's the wrong thing to do. They'd be like, okay, don't wear your Care Bear shirt that day. Like, okay, Dale, have some weed, chill out, you're going on the trip. It's like, okay, you know, so how do you— how do you— there are two hows. Like, how do you do it, right? How do you find out what your heart is saying? And I have some thoughts on that. But then there's the other side, is like, how do you communicate to human beings that, hey, we're a heart-led organization? I've made we've made a decision.

Well, for the second point, we can mitigate some of the, the danger if we are balancing the heart and the mind, because I do think there's actually people who— they might not be as common, but they've had bad experiences of the mind, maybe with their parents who were super rational or something, right, and didn't love them the right way and all this stuff. And now they're totally focused on the heart, and the mind is like out to lunch, right? And there's just like, there's some rational realities that are right there to be perceived about their business or about their team or whatever. And now they're just walking around like feeling warmth in their chest. And we're not— we're talking about balancing the heart and mind, right? So I think if, if that—

you can't go too extreme, right? Yeah.

And if that's in balance, I think there'll be a way to communicate it to your team. There'll be— it'll prove out, right, what the, what the truth of it was.

Yeah. So like, let's use the China trip example though. Because I did say, "You know, guys, I feel something's wrong about this trip." And they're like, "Ah! Go, it's all planned. Don't worry about it." And the reality is that's an example where the mind won and there wasn't any balance.

I bet if the heart were open and the mind and heart were in communication— because that's my experience. It's the mind and heart, when they both open and they're both active, they integrate they have a symbiosis, and then there's a conversation. So look, I don't profess to be like, yeah, some guy who's in Christ consciousness all the time, but I sometimes go into retreat and do some serious meditation. And on those experiences, I felt the heart super fully open, talk to my mind like a literal sort of conversation going on. And then I felt them unify into the heart-mind. And from there, I think you can then— you get the best of both worlds.

You can communicate with the heart and the mind.

Yes, and so it starts off with this trip doesn't feel right, but then a few minutes later, the heart and the mind team up and you go, wait a minute, there's somebody— I want to ask them one question about this trip, you know. You know, can you send a bank statement that shows availability of funds or whatever? And if they don't do it, right? What I'm saying is the heart-mind together can come up with really clever and intelligent courses of action.

Right, by finding a way to have the two work as a team.

That's right.

Right, because that's something where I have definitely seen it happen but struggle with day to day. I mean, it's pretty easy to tell what the mind thinks because the mind's always chattering a million miles a minute. Ah, this makes a lot of sense. Oh, great. It's much harder to understand or feel what the heart is, is because you really have to— it oftentimes feels like a spidey sense or a gut reaction, so to speak, and it's not always perfectly clear. Like, is it, am I unhappy, or do I have this feeling because the trip is bad? Do I have this feeling because the person I'm meeting in the trip is bad? Is it because— you know what I mean?

Like, it's very hard to parcel out It's hard, but it's because at this point in the human race, we're so disintegrated between those points. And I think it can get much easier. So we're all like, we're humbly saying like, look, we haven't fully integrated the heart and the mind either, but we are here to tell you it's a thing, it's a possibility.

I would say today I'm very good, and maybe I could, but not done by any shot at all. You know, so, so maybe how do I do it? And like, how do— how might that help someone else do it? So the first thing is that I try my best to understand what is heart and what is mind when I'm, when I'm in a, in a, in a situation making a decision or whatever. And so going back to the China trip example, like, if everything's planned out and it makes perfect sense, that's clearly the mind, right? It's like, okay, the mind says this makes sense, but if I'm feeling that it doesn't feel right, I'm like, okay, the heart is feeling something's wrong here. And then what I try to do is, um, oftentimes the way that I unite them, and I think there's a better way to do it, maybe we could discuss it, is I 'Cause when they're in alignment, no problem, right? And a lot of times that's the case. It's more an issue where one says go and one says no, right? And that's where the trouble comes in, 'cause—

Or where one is missing. Maybe not for you these days, but if—

Yeah, I would say these days I don't have that problem. And we can talk about how to see what your heart says. But let's say one says go, one says no. Then what I do is I say, okay, Is there something— am I willing to do this and get let down? And if the answer to that is yes, because I feel there might be a greater lesson, or I'm okay with the general experience of getting let down. So I'll give you a great example of this where the heart said yes and the mind said no.

Okay.

Because, uh, in this one, the China thing, the mind said yes and the heart said no. And but I'll give you one that were in the opposite. So I was invited to a healing, um, event in San Francisco which brought together psychiatrists and doctors and all sorts of practitioners and venture capitalists. And the event was like, I don't know, some sort of dinner, and it was kind of organized by a bunch of young people, so I had some skepticism. And I had children and I had a friend coming over, so I could go for 45 minutes. Now the problem is I live an hour outside of San Francisco, so I'd have to drive an hour there, go for 45 minutes, drive an hour back and then see a bunch of friends, take care of my kids and everything else. It just made no sense. The mind's like, what? That's no, hard no. You're not driving 2 hours when you're bookended with appointments and kids and everything else to go to something for 45 minutes. And my heart was like, you need to go. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna hit rush hour traffic and it's gonna be a total nightmare, but what I'm gonna do is is I know all this going in, so I'm not gonna let it bother me. I'm gonna enjoy the entire experience because I've accepted doing it. Even though the mind said no, in this case the heart said yes. So I drove through the traffic, listened to music, had a smile, windows down, got to the event, ended up being amazing.

The 45 minutes?

It was amazing.

Wow.

It was literally all the important people in Silicon Valley who are working on healing and healing modalities and mental health came together to say, we want to put mental health on the agenda for Silicon Valley. And this is the event, Day Zero. And I was there. Well, but I didn't know that.

Yeah.

So when I went, I found it out. And none of the materials would have clued me into this. Right?

Yeah, right.

My heart just had a feeling, you gotta go.

Yeah.

And I did, and it was amazing. Yeah.

You know, a story I want to share is that I was, I was in this process of integrating my heart and mind on a kind of a coming off of a meditative weekend or something, and I, it was like Monday and it was time to work, right? So I, I had this integrated heart-mind and I was like, what's the most productive thing I can do today? And the answer that came back clearly was to write my parents a letter and say like a lot of things that I hadn't said. Positive things, to really actually like tell them how much I appreciated them without any like, "And could you guys fix yourselves up or get better?" No, it was just unmitigated— Yeah, no, it was just unmitigated appreciation. And I was just like, "No, no, no, I mean like productive stuff, you know, worky things," you know, and it was just like And it said to me, it was like, it's like, I know the kind of thing you're looking for, but like, believe it or not, this is the most productive thing you could do. This is— and, and I did it, and it was, you know, my parents are up there in age. It was profoundly healing for the family. They revisit that letter often because I'm not around that often. And so who knows, like, if you just take from a mind perspective, I bet there was a massive productivity boost because it improved our relationship so much. Subconsciously, I just I don't think about our situation that much because it feels like we're in a good relationship. And when I go home and visit, the relationship is better, right? So it probably paid like productivity dividends, right, from here forward, right? But no, I just wanted to like knock out a few more emails or something, right? So that to me is like the power of what can come out of the integrated heart and mind, right?

So, and then when you have these discrepancies where in this case you had the same thing. The heart said one thing, the mind's like, oh, you should be answering emails. You know, I think what you need to do, whether it be the mind saying yes and the heart no, or vice versa, is if you decide to go with the thing, you have to consciously accept that you're going to be frustrated in some capacity.

Yeah.

And, and let that frustration go.

Yeah.

Before you endeavor with the activity. Okay. Right. So like my guts— and, and when I did this China trip and my heart was like, no, no, no, I didn't do that. And as a result, I was on the trip and it kind of didn't work the way I wanted, and it ended up being pretty frustrating. Yeah, yeah. And so I think that's— in order for you to get the most value out of the experience, you have to let go of the frustration because the heart and the mind will be out of alignment.

Yeah.

And that brings the other sort of question, like, how do you know what your heart says? Because again, I think your mind's fairly easy.

It says a lot of things quite often.

Yeah. So, so you talked about doing this meditation where where you're just patiently letting your—

Yeah, because here's, you know, meditation is pretty hot these days. People are into it, mindfulness. And what's funny is a person can like practice mindfulness for years and never really put their awareness anywhere. They're just like trying to like clear the mind of thoughts and then, oh no, there's another thought, you know, and getting frustrated. You can actually put your awareness places, you know, like you could think of your family, you could think of a loved one, you could think of a tree, you can, you can think, you can move your awareness into your body. And I find that now it's one of my favorite meditations is to move my awareness into my chest center, into my heart, actually feel the warmth there. And I find dramatically afterwards I am dramatically friendlier, more upbeat, more positive, and people don't annoy me as much. I'll engage with people in an optional way, you know, like you're in the line at the grocery store and you just like mention, say something to somebody, you know, it's like I didn't have to do that. And right, and without my heart open, I'd be like, what a, what a risk, you know, like the person might be crazy or whatever, right? I'll just keep to myself. I'm just, I'm just a way more personable and enjoyable person after I've done that meditation.

Well, I'll tell you, so for me, I would give two pieces. Right now I know because I've come to doing things like that myself without your exercise. But if you're really early on, I would say there are two things that might be helpful. So they say trust your gut because you often feel your emotions in your gut. When you're like, you know, when your heart is uncomfortable about something, you get physical discomfort in your stomach a lot of times. It could come as cramps or just general upsetness. So you'll physically feel it, often in your gut, and ergo the saying trust your gut. But another thing that I did that's even more, um, tactical is I would flip a coin. Now flipping a coin is an interesting thing because you're like, should I go on this trip, yes or no? Heads, yes.

Flip a coin. Oh, I knew it.

And if it comes up tails and you're relieved You're like, "Phew!" And then that's your gut, right? Your heart is like, "Well, I didn't want to go on that trip." Okay, great! But then your mind's like, "No, I got to flip again." So when you find yourself in your—

Your reaction to the coin, right, tells you.

Your physical, your relief that it came up tails, you cannot give you this very clear sense, but then your mind's like, "No, no, you got to flip again." Right, so if you're getting the— you kind of have a relief with the answer, that probably means that's the one your heart likes. But then your mind is like, no, do it again. That's probably the one that you're— the answer your mind doesn't like.

So that's the cool—

the coin presents you, I found, with like this kind of very visceral reaction that gets your system to show you what's going on. And then you can— then what I would recommend is like, don't flip 50 times until you get the answer you want, but use that exercise to inform an alignment that you do without the coin.

Also remembering that if you're choosing and struggling between options A and options B, the answer might be C, right? So letting it, letting it marinate for a bit.

So actually, you know, that could be another really interesting topic for a future podcast, decision trees. Because I found as a startup, at the end of the day, it always boils down to a binary decision on most things. And then when you just, you know, what do I do about this? Well, I need to do this or this, and okay, let me choose this. And then with that, and then it's like, I should hire or fire this guy, and I should fire or not fire this guy. I should say. And then it's like, okay, that's a binary decision. And usually when you walk down the decision tree and when you get to that final binary decision, that's when the coin flip— but I do agree, sometimes there's a— there is a—

sometimes there's a false binary decision. So we'll consider that for another podcast. What I wanted to add is that, back to the visceral statement, movement can be very helpful. So I, like many computer science guys, like, sat at a desk in front of a computer a lot and then was surprised to find, you know, that my mind was getting exhausted or I wasn't integrated, my heart wasn't open. It's like, well, duh, you're just using your mind and staring into a glowing rectangle all day long, right? So what do you— maybe do the opposite, right? So now I'll have these decisions to make sometimes, like you're saying, and maybe the heart says one thing and the mind says another thing, I will get— I will stand up and I will start to move. I'll start to do tai chi. I'll just start to do intuitive movements of my body. And I think that's actually like circulating— certainly circulating fluids and things in the body. Might be circulating information as well. It may be helping to get that whole body intelligence going. So, I'm a big fan of movement. And—

Well, I was going to say taking a break because a lot of times when you get spinning on an issue, you're too much like attached to it. So, you can't either feel it or think about it productively. So, another tactic that I've used very effectively is say, okay, I'm overthinking this one. And so it can get really insane.

Well, and take a break.

Yeah, it's like, you know, I like was getting a mattress to go camping and I bought one, returned it, bought it, like all this stuff. It's like I got kind of crazy. So it's just like, all right, stop thinking about the mattress or whatever, go for a walk.

Yeah, exactly.

Come back or just do something else. Yeah, switch off of it, do email, whatever, and then come back to it when you have cleared a lot of the thought patterns and feelings, because that can be another thing that happens. You have so many things and so much pent-up emotion about other things, it all gets tangled together. So clearing is a good way.

You know, the monks had a saying in Latin, solvitur ambulando— it is solved by walking. And that's actually what the labyrinths are for. You know, a labyrinth is not a maze. A maze has like wrong turns. You can take a labyrinth— has no wrong turns, really, a traditional labyrinth. It's just like how to get a 1-mile walk, you know, in a tiny radius, right? And so there's no wrong turns. You can just look down at your feet and walk, and quite often the solution arises, right, when you take that break. Another thing I want to mention about the heart opening, and we're probably coming down to the end of our podcast here, is what you're eating and drinking. And so there's— if you're having trouble getting in touch with the heart, might need to lay off the coffee. Yeah, might need to lay off the booze. And I would— and the good news is you don't have to lay off of everything because there's other things to eat and drink. And so one that I have found very helpful over the years is cacao, which is kind of bastardized into like milk chocolate at some point, right? But like cacao itself, in many indigenous cultures, is a powerful heart-opening medicine. And if so, we're not just talking about going and getting a Hershey's bar. We're talking about getting, yeah, some cacao nibs, some— there's even stuff like ceremonial-grade cacao. And so you drink caffeine in it, got caffeine, but it's got other things, right? And you drink a cup of that, and it could be a good coffee substitute, but you drink a cup of that on an empty stomach and it can be profoundly heart-opening. And so if anybody out there just kind of like needs to kickstart the process to remember what the heck we're even talking about, feeling your chest, what does that mean, cacao might be the medicine for you.

Yeah, and it's definitely available over the counter, I think, everywhere in the world.

It's totally legal.

It's the basis of chocolate and a lot of other things. Well, that's beautiful. So, you know, for every entrepreneur out there that hasn't really aligned their heart and their mind, I think what Josh and I are telling you is from it, two mind-driven people for most of our life, that when we— at least when I started allowing my heart to play a greater, greater role, I not only felt more fulfilled, more aligned, happier, but I feel like I'm doing better work in the world in general.

So, and for me, if I can't feel my heart and the love isn't there, You know, maybe I'm getting old, but I just don't even want to participate anymore. It's— the love's got to be there, or else for me it's kind of like, what's the point? So there we are.

Pro hard, everyone.