Burnout Is Self-Abandonment (Disguised as Ambition) Mandy Balak

burnout is self-abandonment with better branding. We have to ask ourselves, well, who said yes to all of those things? Why am I chasing so much? It might have been what was modeled to us as if you do enough, you will be loved, or if you achieve enough, then I will prioritize you. And if that resonates with you, you're probably an entrepreneur.

Mandy Balak is a leadership coach drawing on 20 years of building and scaling companies to teach that ambition isn't the problem. Depletion is. We all fucking fall into these traps of doing more incessantly because we think that it's somehow going to get us there. And then we get there and we feel incomplete.

That's the paradox.

We feel hollow.

The more we chase and the more we push, the further away we get from arriving. Why are some people able to just like create all this success in their life and some people continue to hit walls and run up against it, right? And so what I found out is that right when we're on the edge of growth, Do you feel like ambition and driving could essentially be abandonment of self disguised as achievement? I do believe that burnout is self-abandonment with better branding.

Ooh, that's a good way to say it. What do you mean by better branding?

Better branding. Yeah. Well, we think burnout is associated with doing too much, right? Where we've obviously got too full of calendars, there's too many things on our plate, there's too many balls in the air, too many commitment, too ambitious. equals burnout. But often when we take a step back, we have to ask ourselves, well, who said yes to all of those things? What is the energy driving those decisions?

Yeah.

Whose priorities are these? Why am I chasing so much? And sometimes the success scripts that we're working so hard to chase and fulfill and achieve, and the boxes that we're trying to check off, were not even created by us in the first place. You know, it might've been what was modeled to us as, if you do enough, you will be loved. Or if you achieve enough, then I will prioritize you. Or, you know, whatever those familial patterns were.

Yeah.

That maybe was the first place that we decided that we needed to chase and push and do more in order to be accepted and in order to be loved.

Yeah.

And if that resonates with you, you're probably an entrepreneur.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I resonate with that so deep. I think of all the buildings that are in like downtown any city, really. They were a lot of the times built by men who said, I'll prove it to you, Dad. Yeah, I can do it. And so it's this initial wound. Mark Wolin, who I've interviewed, and I don't know if you've heard of his work. I'm sure you have.

Yes.

So he says that the initial wound is the mother, and then later along comes the father wound. What's been your understanding in writing your book? And by the way, it's on the screen right now. Tell people the title of your book.

Chasing Enough: The High Achiever's Guide to Sustainable Success.

And it's actually a guide.

It's part memoir, part manual.

Okay.

And that was really important to me. When I started the book, it's actually kind of been 17 different manuscripts over the 6 years that I've been writing this book. It's been quite the healing journey and process for myself.

Yeah.

I don't necessarily write recommend that someone start writing a book in the middle of their own messy middle, but I didn't know that that was—

Sounds like the perfect place to start, really.

If that was the case. But it absolutely, you know, it was definitely the healing journey that I needed to go on. And I started writing the book from a place of wanting it to be very memoir-based about my relationship with my father. And my relationship with my father has been very complicated, as I'm sure many listening can resonate with.

Yeah.

I believe that I got the best parts of my father. He gave me his charm. He gave me his charisma. He saw me in ways that I only wished to see myself. I also inherited from him a lot of his chase. And I witnessed my father over the years always seeking more. He had this insatiable Hunger.

Hmm.

The Porsche, the perfect house, the money, the title, the stuff, the materials, all of it. And it was never enough. And he was never home because he was chasing it and he was trying to always find the shortcut to get it. And so I've learned many valuable lessons from my father in, you know, shortcuts often take longer.

But also, Yeah.

the chase for more has such a significant cost. And so many leaders I work with, you know, everyone I, everyone, every leader I speak to is, they're always saying this hunger, like, I'm hungry for more. I want more success. I want, you know, another credential. I want more achievements. I want the big house. I want the vacation. I want all those things. At the end of the day, we have to stop and pause and ask and say, what is the driver behind those things? And I believe at the core, my father's chase was a deep fear that he was inadequate and he was not enough.

Hmm.

And I inherited a lot of that, and I built the foundation of my life and my business from that very chase.

So it served you in a way, but it's the double-edged sword.

Always.

On one side, it's driving you, but on the other side, it cuts you.

I think it's really important, especially when we talk about the mother wound and the father wound. It's pretty easy for people to want to talk about the negative part. I got this negative pattern from my parents. If we're going to do that, we also have to look at the other side of the equation, right? What did they give you?

Mm-hmm.

And that's the same with our ambition. Our ambition got us to this place. Our ambition and our drive is a really powerful thing, and it's potent, but turned up too loud or turned up with the energy of fear underneath it, or, you know, the drivers behind it coming from this place of like proving and chasing and questioning if we're enough or shoulding on ourselves or this, you know, ident— over-identification with all the things we do. Then it actually has a really negative impact on us, right? But we have to look at both sides.

Yeah, I have photographs, uh, actually over there of my whole family. They podcast with us, so I bring them along for all the conversations. And I remember I was sitting with Teal Swan years ago, and she has this lens on ancestral healing, much similar to, to Mark Wolynn, but uniquely hers. And she said that, you know, the best way to heal is actually to take full inventory of all the good that has come through from your lineage. And also, you know, recognizing the good does not take away the challenges and the inherited patterns that hold us hostage at times.

Totally.

I wonder for you, what was the ultimate blessing of this relationship with your father? I think at one point he was in a Colombian prison.

Yeah.

Which is quite interesting. How did you work through that to be able to have the fuel source be peaceful and sustainable instead of chasing? How did you do that?

I didn't. That's the thing.

That's honest.

And that's what, you know, it was actually not until my father passed away and until I really went through all these experiences that I was able to take a step back and learn from them. So, you know, my father, he moved to Colombia and he was an entrepreneur as well. And, you know, he was chasing the next opportunity down there. And at that point in my life, I had just moved cities from Vancouver to Calgary. I had started, I had 2 startups on my hand. I was busy, okay? Finishing university, doing all the things.

Yeah.

And my dad and I sort of lost touch for a little bit in there. You know, different time zones you could say, but different seasons of life, all the things. But, you know, that was the complication of our relationship. And a few years went by, and I was in a really challenging place in my business. As you know, as an entrepreneur, the startup life is real.

Mm-hmm.

The demands are heavy. There are so many things to do and on your plate. It's really endless. And I received a phone call one day when I was with my husband, and we were on like a 2-day, little trip trying to also mend our relationship because our relationship was on the rocks based on all the demands and everything that was going on as well.

Yeah.

And I received a phone call. Actually, it was a Facebook message from someone from my father's account saying, your father is in jail in Colombia and he needs your help. So I go into full reaction mode. What the heck? Who is this person? They're talking to me in Spanish. I have no idea what's going on, trying to incorporate with Google Translate and interpret what is happening. We pack the car, we get in the car, we start driving home, and I'm interpreting these messages, trying to figure out what happened. And what I found out is that my father was actually caught in an airport trying to do a drug run from Bogota to Madrid. Now, my father looked like Richard Gere. 6-foot-tall man, white hair, tan skin. He would have stood out in that airport like crazy. And my father also is not— this is not him. This is not his identity. I saw my father as, you know, he was stockbroker guy, corporate guy.

Hmm.

And this to me was like, what? That's not my dad. That's like, how has this happened? And I had to kind of start going down that rabbit hole of trying to figure it out and trying to put the pieces together.

Hmm.

I ended up finding a way to connect with my father in prison. And I had a phone call with him. It was 2, 3 minutes long. And he gave me the instructions on how to get into his cell Email, how to get a lawyer. It was enough for me to go in there and start digging and start finding out who my father was, or what the what kind of life he was living, and how he could end up in this place. And you know, let me remind you of all the other things that were going on in my life. Every my business was on fire. My relationship was on fire. My father is in a Colombian jail. My to-do list at that time looked like. Find $50,000 to make payroll this week, get your magazine to print, and get your dad out of prison. Like, this is the weight of what I was carrying at that time. So to answer your question about how I faced burnout, I didn't. I just kept adding more. I actually kept saying yes to more work. I kept adding more to my plate because avoidance was my— That was the way that I reacted to the whole thing was this could not possibly be this, you know, the situation or the relationship with my father. Um, I did end up finding a way to, um, get the lawyer to get him outta prison on house arrest.

Mm-hmm.

And I rallied some people together in his emails, like people that he was connecting with, and I connected the dots. And I think my father went, you know, he had, He was in a bad spot to get himself in that situation. He was forced in that situation because he made the wrong call and he made the wrong move because he was chasing.

Hmm.

And when I say shortcuts take longer, that's what I mean. And that's where that lesson came from is like, there are, there really are no shortcuts in your life. If you're trying to get to the top of the mountain, it costs you a lot more. So I got my father out of prison, but at the same time, I was building myself into my own prison. my own prison of depletion, self-abandonment, overwork, avoidance, and my coping patterns were running my life, not my leadership.

Hmm.

So I was showing up saying, I'm fine. I didn't tell anyone what was happening. This was incredibly embarrassing. This is the first time I've said this story actually out loud. It's of course in my book, but it's not something that I, Wanted to share. I wasn't proud of it, of course. And I also felt like I was the responsible one and that I was the one that had to have it all carried all together. So who was I to burden anyone with my, you know, challenges that were going on with my dad behind the scenes? I just had work to do. I had a business to run. I had a team to support and figure out how to pay and figure out how to make it work. It wasn't until about 2020 that I had the opportunity to actually stop My dad had passed away in that period of time. I had scaled instead of felt any of it.

Hmm.

And I had created this whole world from pain, and that's how I coped with all of it. And so it wasn't until the pandemic happened that I had the opportunity to slow down because my business was essentially shut down. And I found myself on the floor of my house a bathroom, trying to let go of my team members one by one on the phone. And I feel like I finally had the opportunity to say, wow, you are not okay. This is not okay. So I did not have the resourcing tools back then in my toolkit to pause, to stop, to ask for help, to set a boundary, to take care of my needs. I actually just went in full spiral and let the dark side take over through the whole process.

What was the gift of the dark side?

The gift of the dark side is I get to create an impact with this work. I feel, and I've also created freedom for myself through it. And I think when you go to the dark side, unfortunately with burnout and, these things that happen in our life, we let ourselves get to the end of our rope. Like, that's just the way we learn. Maybe someone listening is not like me and they can actually learn from my experiences.

Possibly.

I'm the type of person that like, I have to unfortunately learn things the hard way. But it was such a gift because it allowed me to start to unravel the patterns, the layers, To start to look and question and say, why did I feel like I couldn't ask for help? Why did I feel like abandoning myself in that process was the only thing to do? Why did I feel like I needed to just add more and I couldn't stop? And that curiosity and answering those questions has given me so much clarity in how I can lead today. Life is hard, business is hard, crises will happen, but we have to learn how to resource ourselves before we need it, build capacity in ourselves before we need it.

Yeah, the resourcing, right here, we were talking about this before we hit the red button, the survival paradigm, the unlock is pride. And it seems to me like in 2020 on the bathroom floor when you're firing people, that there was no space for pride. Pride had to evaporate at that moment.

No space for pride.

And so then courage comes after pride, if you look at Hawkins' work.

Yeah.

What was the courage that you put into motion that allowed you to escape this prison you had built for yourself?

Yeah, the courage that I needed at that time was to start letting people in. And as the responsible one, I feel like in my life, in my childhood, I grew up way too fast. I, you know, I had—

Was your mom an entrepreneur?

My mom was also an entrepreneur. She was busy. She, you know, I, my, I witnessed my mom also, you know, be the, the sole provider for me and my brother and doing everything that she needed to do to take care of us. And so she also wasn't as present as she wanted to be because she was in survival mode. She was trying to make it work. And I have the utmost respect for my mother. She taught me grit and resourcefulness and like, you know, hey, we're gonna get groceries for $30 and we're gonna figure this out. out. But yeah, I witnessed her do it all and take it all on herself as well. And so that fierce hypervigilance and hyper-independence was an inherited pattern for sure. And so I just had to start learning to open myself up. And that's what I've learned. This map of consciousness that we have here, maybe you'll throw it up on the screen so people can see it. can see it as well.

Oh yeah, for the thousandth time.

I'm sure.

We talk about it every episode.

For your audience, but it's, you know, in every moment we have that opportunity to choose from fear or from love. And my entire life and the foundation of my business, my relationships, everything was being built from fear. Fear of not enough, fear of, you know, I've gotta hold it all together myself. All those energies from there and what I had to really learn, which was very challenging for me, was to soften, to let people in, to not have it figured out, to loosen up my grip, to allow a little bit of joy. Like, if you want to have a competition for who could white-knuckle their way through life, I could do that, no problem. I can suffer, I can push.

Ooh.

I can go hard. But that is the old version of myself. And the new version of myself is actually learning how to create more space And enjoyment, joy.

Yeah.

Right? And to hold that, not sabotage it. Because when we're so used to this familiar pain, we just keep choosing it.

Well, this is so good. There's a mentor who, he doesn't know this yet, but he's gonna come on the podcast.

We're manifesting that right now.

His name is Joe Hudson.

Love it.

And he talks about, you know, in moments where things are, completely burning down, when we're grabbing that wheel, and our knuckles are so white, you can see the bone, that in those moments, if we can just move 1% more to enjoying it, I'm not saying emotional passivity. I'm not saying just use positive thinking and good vibes only, which I think is bullshit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What I'm saying is, in these moments of challenge, where everything's burning down, the only thing that's made a difference in my life is what he put words to. And I'm curious what comes up for you when I share this with you. In moments where it seems like we're a victim, where, like, life is happening to us instead of for us.

Yes.

How do you remind yourself to just bring 1%, 5% more joy in these moments where it seems like victimhood is a badge that we wear?

I've had to really learn the pause. And I believe that the leaders who learn how to pause win, because the pause is when we can take a beat and reflect back. Moments of intention, moments of reflection, moments of writing. I do a lot of writing first thing in the morning, in the night. Like, I'm texting myself all the time. I've got endless notes, things like that. Because when I pause, I'm actually able to see through the fire, so to speak.

Mm-hmm.

And I had a mentor that actually really helped me with a great example for this, because I was so used to suffering. I was so used to everything being hard, business being hard, relationship being hard, everything being hard, I was just like, this is normal. I'll just carry it all like a backpack full of bricks around, and that's normal. But getting used to the good and not sabotaging it, not pushing it away.

Yes.

Right? That takes practice, and we have to give ourselves permission to practice. And so this might sound a little bit ridiculous, but it really worked for me. And she invited me to start savoring food and chocolate and things like that and be really intentional with it. So I actually got these little tiny milk chocolates that were like wrapped. And I had them sitting at my desk and I would practice by eating one chocolate, but really eating it, present, not multitasking with an email, not on my phone, eating the chocolate. And her invitation to me was, I want you to see how long you can have the chocolate on your tongue without it melting and savoring it.

Mm-hmm.

And that was like a 3-minute meditation that allowed me to realize that I was rushing through the good things.

Hmm.

I was pushing away the good things. And, you know, slowly that 3-minute enjoyment of, you know, tasting that chocolate a little bit more allowed me to stay in a moment of presence with my husband a little bit longer without trying to start a fight or something, or create more financial success for myself without, making it chaotic, you know, or with enjoying my schedule being open instead of adding one more thing to it. So those small little things are just teaching ourselves that we actually have capacity for good.

Mm-hmm.

It's like expanding that upper limit. We think about capacity as, you know, the most that you can hold. And we think about, you know, we think about that through the lens of how much more work can I do, but how much more joy can you have? How much more enjoyment can you have? How much more pleasure can you have? Starts by those little practices.

Yeah, you're echoing— I've had a few behavioral psychologists on the show, and you're echoing BJ Fogg's work. I don't know if you've heard of his work.

No.

He says, um, he has a model called, um, Tiny Habits.

Love that.

And it's about actually, like, standing on one foot and brushing your teeth. And when you do your coffee, if you do that— I don't do coffee because it turns me into a monster, but—

Rituals.

Ritual, like, like actually being present is a skill set. And what I find most fascinating is that if we're not conscious, if we're not careful, society is built upon us to go to distraction, to go to distortion, to essentially be pulled. Like, I, I explain it in my work as modernity has hooks, and modernity hooks you and pulls you and actually monetizes your unconsciousness.

Wow.

And it monetizes unworthiness as well. You know, The Gathering, there's some images of The Gathering. I'm gonna be speaking at The Gathering. We're gonna talk about The Gathering in a little bit, in addition to your book. The Gathering is a place where people can go to let go of false stories, to let go of the lack of presence, and essentially, let's be real, unhook the hooks of modernity. Because everybody that's trying to establish any kind of credibility in the world, We all fucking fall into these traps of doing more incessantly, because we think that it's somehow going to get us there. And then we get there and we feel incomplete.

That's the paradox.

We feel hollow.

Yeah, that's the chasing enough paradox right there. And the further we chase and the more we chase and the more we push, the further away we get from arriving. And when we let go of the need to arrive altogether, we end the chase. And we stop moving from this place of, chasing and we get to move to a place of choosing. And that's the same as fear and love.

That's the same. And by the way, that is not AI. That just came from your heart.

That's from the heart. That's the lived experience and the core message of the book. And the difference for me, that moving from fear to love, that chasing to choosing, that surviving to thriving spectrum, that really came down to asking myself, what is success? for me in my life, how I want to feel. If the success scripts and the foundation that I built for my life was truly just a sandcastle, not strong foundation by any means, then if I was going to start rebuilding it, what was the foundation that I wanted to build it on? And the old foundation was fear proving not enough. The new foundation needed to be love, presence, you know, Mm-hmm. community, all those things. And so when I used to think success was filling, how full is my calendar?

Sure.

How many things can I get invited to? How much more can I do? Now my definition of success is how present can I be? And understanding that difference of that KPI that I really wanna run my life with is so powerful because it allows me to say, well, if I'm not present, What is in my way? What is holding me back from being that? So if I'm on date night and I'm reaching for my phone, why?

Yeah.

Right? What's pulling me from this moment right now that I've claimed as most important? If I'm not present in my work, why? What's coming up for me? And that curiosity is also the energy of love. Instead of shaming ourselves, when we see ourselves in our patterns, it can be so easy to be frustrated, to shame, to be like, ah, not this again. Why can't I do this? I'm never changing. There is no such thing as healed. I don't believe. I think it's healing. We are always healing. And when we can see that, we can just laugh at ourselves a little bit and be like, oh, how freaking human of me. Oh my gosh. I was distracted. Oh, I reacted. I snapped at my husband this morning. Or, you know, like, We can just give ourselves a break, let ourselves off the hook, be curious, and then make a different choice and snap back faster.

I just shared that with you this morning, that I snapped at my son.

It happens.

And I'm just like, okay, well, how can I give myself grace and then go to repair as quickly as possible?

As quickly as possible.

The Toltec call it controlled folly, where we have these smoky mirrors that's described in the Toltec wisdom. And I, by no means, am a Toltec expert. I just pull from things that I think really hit me in the heart. And I love that because if it's really just a controlled folly, then we can laugh at ourselves and be like, oh my God, I fucked up today, instead of, you always do this. This self-narrative is so disempowering to us. And I dealt with it for a long time. My pornography addiction, my mom's bipolar, just like my dad's cognitive dissonance. Like, it set me up to be able to sit here with you today in year number 11 of podcasting.

Yeah.

Which has become essentially my therapy.

I love that.

And then I share my therapy with the world based on my own unique experience. So I'll flip it to you. When it comes to wisdom that you've really been able to cleave from this really up and down frickin roller coaster journey, from your dad being in prison to your marriage being on the rocks to writing the book, it's like our responsibilities don't pause just because we're finding ourself.

No.

They don't stop, right? And so how have you found the management of the responsibilities and also giving yourself grace in this new era of yourself?

So to answer the question, I wanna say what not to do first.

That's a good place to start.

Because learning the hard way, you know, sometimes we wake up, we have these moments of waking up like, oh my God, I can't believe I've been living this way. And then that awareness triggers, I need to burn it all down.

Yep.

Have you been there?

Oh yeah. 3 months ago.

Okay. So if you're there, I just want everyone to put the matches down for a second and just pause. Just take a breath. You know, maybe it is healthy for you to go like blow up your business and quit your job and leave your relationship right away. Maybe that is the right choice for you. But also, if we learn this discernment, and I believe discernment is one of the most powerful skills that we can learn and sharpen. which is the very fine line between self-care and self-sabotage. If we can learn that, we can truly manage what you said, the and. We can be responsible and we can understand when we're misaligned and we can course correct, right?

Yeah.

But we need to do this in a way that honors our nervous system and sets us up for future success. Because if we just go burn it all down, we actually might make some rash decisions that we're not able to get back.

Yeah.

And I've been there. I threw away a perfectly good brand. I was like, it's, you know, blaming that that was the problem. I got rid of a whole bunch of things in my life and granted a lot of them needed to go. But guess what the constant is in all of those things? Me. You. Unless you are the one that is willing to make the changes and make the shifts, wherever you go, there you will be. So I think it's really important that when we notice that things are not aligned in our life, or when we notice our survival patterns are running our show, our little 8-year-old is running our life, not our adult selves.

Yeah.

When we notice that, We pause, we have compassion, we look at it, we say, what would be a healthier choice? And then we start to make a plan for how we're going to release things in a healthy, sustainable way. And only then can we make the space for ourselves to rise. So holding on to some responsibilities, especially when it comes to livelihood, if it's your business, if it's your job, and you realize that that's something that's not working for you anymore, don't go hand in your notice without a plan. Don't cancel all your clients and your contracts without a plan.

Yeah.

Give yourself a date in the future. And our mutual friend, Mark Groves, he was a very powerful influence for this in my life. I wrote about this in the book as well. And he gave me a gift when I was at a crossroads and I was carrying way too many things that were not aligned with me, that were, draining me, and I needed to release them. And he said, Mandy, what's your freedom date? Choose your freedom date. And I picked a date in the future, and that allowed me to feel like I had a plan and I had some space and some energy to work with that. And it wasn't an overnight thing, but it allowed me the resourcing to move towards that. From a more grounded place. No matches.

Yeah, I was just— this is so cool. I was just talking with Mark yesterday, and we were talking about how he, during the whole lockdowns, burned his stuff to the ground. He's like, now I have the wisdom to look— I'm literally on a Zoom call with him yesterday. Yeah. And he goes, oh my God, I could have actually handled that with a lot more care. It, you know, hindsight's always 20/20. You brought up something that really touched my heart. My grandma, I haven't thought about this in so long, and you actually spoke the words she spoke to me. She told me once when I was in a relationship, I think I was 21 or something, and she was talking to me about how I was giving too much to this woman at the time. And she goes, oh, you're gonna go move to Hawaii and you're gonna go do these things, you're on this soul journey. And she goes, wherever you go, there you are.

Hmm.

And it like makes the hair on my arms stand up because it's what you just said. We think that we fall into this trap where we think that by just moving to a new city or by just burning the business down, by doing some kind of drastic thing, that it's going to somehow change the core and fabric of who we are. But I believe, and I'm curious what you believe, it is really about our access, our governor of feeling.

Yeah.

That dictates our capacity to experience an emotion, which is energy in motion. It's like we're our own feelings dealer. And it seems to me, I remember we did that panel together at South by Southwest, and Kelly Gorres was like making an entire documentary now about feeling. Who knew that feelings were so important? And so I'm curious for you, what allowed you to access this governor? I think of feelings and emotions much like epigenetics. You know, the epigenome sits on top of the genome. It's what turns on and off our DNA code for either trauma or trust. It's our capacity to be that epi. So for you, what's been the things in your life, the people in your life that have allowed you to really take access and ownership and agency of feeling your emotions? What's that been like for you?

Yeah. And that was hard. That was really challenging for me. Feeling. There was no space for healing. or feeling, feeling or healing. No space for that when you're surviving, right?

Yeah.

Um, that feels like the last thing that possibly could be on your priority list.

It's a paradox because it's the most important thing.

And it's the most important, right? Um, but, you know, I subscribed to hustle culture at the beginning of my entrepreneurial career. I've been an entrepreneur for 18 years, 3 businesses, you know, many teams of different sizes. And, uh, in the early days, that was definitely, you know, Do more, work harder, hustle harder. Like, I think I bought the domain, like hustle.com. Like, I'm pretty sure back then.

Oh my God.

So there was no space for feeling. And it wasn't until I found myself at a 7-day off-the-grid retreat called the Hoffman Process, we were talking about this earlier, that allowed me the full space to tune out of the rest of the world and the noise and fully feel that discomfort of tuning into myself that I was able to access my emotions and my feeling for the first time. And what I realized is that I had suppressed so many things in my life, whether it be my early memories and relationship with my father. You talk about the lens, the lens, right? I'd never heard of those teachings before, but in the first chapter of my book, I actually talk about, we all are walking around with this lens and it's essentially just, we actually just can wipe the lens clean.

Right.

And once we see that, The underlying thread of my life was, you're not enough. And that 7 days allowed me to say, well, wow, that is not true. That was just a situation that happened when I was 7 years old.

Mm-hmm.

And I built this whole story about that. So I wiped my lenses clean and then I slowly started this practice of, you know, tuning into my emotions every day. And if it wasn't that, then wow, there was just all this possibility left for me. And I'll come back to rituals and practices and adding pause into my life because those, that was a very foreign thing. You know, it was get up in the morning and hit, get your ass to a HIIT workout and take some pre-workout and work hard all day.

And then like checking your emails on the bike.

Check your emails on the bike. Oh yeah. And then like take a call on the way home and then work until 11 at night and then maybe get 5 hours of sleep and then do it all again. Yeah. And like I did that for a decade, right? So, so learning the other side of that, which was like, Take space for yourself. Like, we're not talking anything crazy. We're talking about like 20 minutes in the morning.

Yeah.

That allowed me to ask myself some really powerful questions. And I do it every day now. It's, you know, one, tuning in, how are you actually feeling? And the second is, how do you wanna show up today? And how do you wanna lead today? And I have a bigger practice when I have more time, but I always love to have, Plan A, plan B, plan C, so that you can always be successful with your routines depending on what life is asking of you.

Hmm.

So my ideal morning is, I've got an hour to get some movement in, to do some journaling, not pick up my phone and tune in, right? Like, what's going on with Mandy and how am I feeling and what am I thinking? And then plan B is, okay, maybe we're gonna do a walk around the block. It's gonna be a little bit shorter today and I'm gonna be just thinking those things out loud. Maybe I don't have to, the chance to journal. And then option C is I'm brushing my teeth and I'm thinking about how do I wanna show up today, right? So those 3 options are always available for you to tune in no matter how busy you are.

Yeah, 'cause I think people get caught in like, what's the perfect morning routine? It's interesting in our conversation, there's mental models, even the Hawkins Scale and a lot of models in your book, they are inherently mental models, which isn't bad by the way, because We're inherently a mental culture. Like, we're drunk on our own mind and our own ego. And so starting, like, meeting people— one thing I've learned from coaching and from podcasting for so long is, like, meeting people where they are is a real strength.

Yeah.

I can't go into hermetic principles and esoteric wisdom right off the gate. Like, that's not gonna— it's gonna turn people off, essentially. So, but I find that the deeper we go into questioning the mental models, The more we start to find that the wisdom of the body doesn't use words. And that's why it's so hard, because we're in a mental culture that wants the science and wants to understand the models and the curriculum and the paradigms. It's good, but there's this big space. Hawkins says that the greatest space for us is between the head and the heart.

Yeah.

The closing of that gap between head and heart is really challenging for men. Specifically, have you seen this in your talks, in your gatherings, in your life? I don't know, maybe even in your marriage. Yeah, the, the specifically, can we talk to the men who are trying to chase enough? They're just constantly in this incessant wheel. How do men specifically close the gap between head and heart that might be a little bit different than women?

Yeah, it's a really powerful question. And you're so right that it's all experienced somatically. So giving ourselves the chance to pause and get into our body, I find really powerful.

Yeah.

Like, breathwork is really powerful. And if we need that assist, like, looking into somatic therapy and practices, I find really powerful. I think to speak to— I can only really speak to my experience in, you know, what I— my experience with men. And so with my husband and my— our personal relationship, and then as well as the men that I've, that I've coached. And what I notice is that men more so than women even feel this over-responsibility that they have to have everything figured out. figured out, and they have to be the protector type, right? Like, this is society. Society is just— that's the picture. It's like, the man takes care of you. The man doesn't cry. The man doesn't have emotions. And dependent on what you saw growing up with, that is probably pretty embedded in you as a truth, right?

Yeah.

And for me, I'm always so honored when my husband opens up to me. and shares. And I feel— and I can't speak for him, but I feel sometimes he's surprised at like, oh, wow, that was received. And I just want to say to the man that is holding back and not communicating emotions is like, that's what women want. We want that. I love knowing what is going on in my husband's inner world, it gives me an opportunity to show up for him. It gives us an opportunity to take it a layer deeper, and it allows me the space and the opportunity to show up as a better partner. But if the man just has it all together and is walking around like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, and then has a moment like I explained I did, where one day you have your enough is enough moment and it all comes up.

Yep.

That actually can be really damaging and really harmful for the relationship as well. So we have to build the capacity before we need it. We have to practice communication. You know, I was sharing with you that my husband and I have a weekly relationship meeting and you laughed and said it's so entrepreneurial of us. Yeah, I did say that. But truly it's so powerful and it allows us the space to, there's a few questions that are in it and I'll just share a couple of them. 8 questions. We do it over coffee every Sunday and it starts with appreciation. Here's what I appreciate about you for this week. And then we open the complaint department, which is also like, here's what's annoying me, and it's amazing. The complaint department is so healthy because you always know you have a place to talk about things so you don't have to die on every hill all week. And generally by the time you get to Sunday, you forgot it anyways and you're like, nah, I'm good. Complaint department's closed. And then no more complaining for a week ahead.

Mm-hmm.

But there's another question, which is like, you know, what are you working on in yourself right now? And that's generally the question that both reveals vulnerability within myself and James. And it's, I really look forward to it. Honestly, it brings us closer and it's not about fixing each other. I don't have to have the answers. And I think we try and do that in relationships as well. It's like, let me fix that for you. I don't want you to hurt. But it's actually just letting the space be and hearing and holding.

Yeah.

And I think that's what is such a gift in our lives is when we can find safe places and people to connect with, whether it's your significant other or it's your community of friends or a therapist or We all need that outlet of a place that we can really show up to and let our full selves be seen and held.

Yeah. In my own life, I love that you said that because my, my come-to-Jesus moment 3 months ago was the fact that I had built essentially a prison with this podcast and that I showed up to interviews and in my body I was feeling fear. Like, is the packaging going to work out for YouTube? Are you guys— are you guys going to like it? And it's so silly because it was an old paradigm. It was an old paradigm of like, when I started entrepreneurship, it was inherently painful. I mean, I was in massive debt. I was $80,000 in debt. I was still addicted to pornography. I didn't have a wife or children like I have now. I was a totally different human being. The identity transformation that took place— I find that we go through these contractive and expansive cycles where we think we've healed something and then it comes back around.

Yeah.

And in those moments, I go, we go, I thought I already healed that.

I thought we were good.

Why is that coming around again? It's coming around again because what's being felt and not being said is still being felt. Yeah, it's still in the space. So I wonder for you, what is something that's come back around even recently or in the writing of the book?

Totally.

Where you had that moment of like, I thought I already healed that.

Our triggers are our teachers. They always reveal to us where we are not yet free. And sometimes that trigger comes up and it's such a gift because it's an opportunity for you to really look at yourself in the mirror and say, where am I still hooked in? What is that? Where am I repeating a pattern? Where am I choosing fear and survival instead of authenticity and love?

Yeah.

And that situation absolutely just recently happened to me. I feel like it was perfectly timed as I was recording my audiobook Never Chasing Enough. I'm in my basement, I've got this, you know, the guy on the line, this is how we're doing it, we're recording it. And then there's someone that's actually coaching me in my ear. And I can't get through this one section. Like, I am choked up, I am so triggered. We had to do like 3 retakes. And it was because I saw this old version of myself that I was currently experiencing.

Hmm.

And I was realizing, and the chapter and the part of the book that I was talking about was how, really burnout can come from self-abandonment. And I was realizing that there was a place that I was really abandoning myself right now. And I was so frustrated at first. I was like, oh my gosh, how am I reliving this story?

Mm-hmm.

It felt so similar to the cycle that I was writing from 5, 6 years ago. And my initial reaction was a little frustration and it was, it was some negative emotion about it. And I went for a walk and And I remembered exactly what we're talking about. I was like, oh yeah, these old patterns surface to right when we're on the edge of growth, right when we're on the edge of this next version of ourselves. That old little version of ourselves comes up and it's like, are you sure? Are you sure? Yes. And it's like tempting you and it's like, no, no, it's comfortable down here.

Yeah. It's like an octopus trying to pull you back down to the ocean floor.

100%. It's this little, little voice, right? And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I'm good. I'm good. So it was that choice point.

Mm-hmm.

And so that trigger gave me the gift of the choice point to take my own medicine and to realize, you know, there were, and it was a simple reorganization and I was able to make some shifts really quickly. So what had happened is my calendar got reorganized, it got flipped, and I was trying to squeeze some really important things in my life into the remaining hours of the day. after I had given to everyone else all day. And so there was this pattern of resentment that was coming up for all the people I was giving to.

Yeah.

And so that giving came, was from this place of depletion, and then it was building resentment. I noticed it, I made a shift immediately. I got up a little bit earlier and I put those important blocks first thing in the morning, and I got to be in service for those things before I went to serve everyone else. Which allowed me to show up from a place of full and from a place of, you know, abundant leadership, well-resourced leadership.

Yeah. That's so good.

So it was a simple shift.

I mean, simple in practice, but maybe not simple in execution. Yeah.

I mean, and it was some, and it was something that, you know, was, you know, it, I had full control over it. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a, I have to burn everything down moment. It was just a, hey, who, who owns my calendar? Who said yes to that? Oh yeah, me.

I mean, for me, I consider that to be, not to take away from the challenge of your experience, to me, it feels like a big gift.

Yeah.

Because we go through these cycles where things come back around. Like I said, it's almost like a residue or like an octopus trying to pull you down to the ocean. And I looked into it 'cause I was like, one of the core questions in my work, this is so cool, why do some people heal and some don't? And what's the scientific and spiritual understanding of that? That's what the core of my work is with emotional epigenetics. Like, why do, like, twins that are born to the same parents, One of them becomes a doctor, one of them's a drug addict. It's like, it doesn't make any sense. So I looked into the science of it, and there's this concept called extinction burst, which I had never freaking heard of. It was so— here I am stating a mental model for an emotional issue, but I'm meeting myself and everyone where we are. Extinction burst, like you said, it happens because a coping strategy was tied to survival.

Yeah.

And for many of us that have gone through big capital T trauma or lowercase t multiple traumas, These coping strategies are inherently really good, actually. They're loving. They're a part of ourselves that keeps us alive.

Yeah.

But then when we evolve, like you sitting there recording your book, those strategies don't hold a place anymore. It's like there's no more resonance for them. So it is like you said, this little voice coming back around to say, are you sure? And that extinction burst is crazy because it goes with evolutionary biology and psychology It's utterly fascinating that we're like half beast, half spirit. Do you ever trip out on this aspect?

100%. Yeah, 100%. And I am so curious about this exact thing is like, why are some people able to just like be successful and create all this success in their life? And some people continue to hit walls and run up against it, right? And so the method that I work with leaders and I write about in the book is called the Well-Resourced Method. it's 4 steps, that it's just a way of thinking and it's a way of resourcing yourself so that you can move forward from an aligned place. Because we try and over-optimize ourselves so quickly, right? We notice something is wrong and then we, you know, if, if you're like in, you know, the— well, I'll use an example for wellness 'cause it's so universal for all of us, right? It's like you wanna change how you look, you wanna change your body, you wanna lose weight.

Mm-hmm.

Then you might, sign up for a diet, you're like, I'm gonna do 75 Hard, I'm gonna get all the supplements, I'm gonna get the gym membership, the 20-pass class, and do a 30-day challenge and all this stuff. You go hard, right?

Yeah.

You go straight into action. Well, you've actually set your nervous system up for failure because you're trying to do too much and implement too much too quickly, so you can't possibly sustain it. You'll go hard for a few days and then you're like, wow, I now have to be perfect in all these arenas, so that's hard, I'm not gonna do it.

Yeah.

But instead, if we move through, okay, what is the— it's get real, get clear, get resourced, and then get moving. And it's a way of thinking. So get real. What's in my way of possibly being successful? So if the goal is, hey, I wanna lose 5 pounds, what's in my way? Well, I keep eating snacks at night. Between 8 o'clock at night and 10 o'clock at night, I completely sabotage myself. Okay, well, What's a healthier choice that you could make, or what's a healthier pattern? Get clear. Something else I could do is I could actually just set a rule that I'm not going to eat after dinner. I'm not going to have any treats in the house. I'm going to tell my partner so they could be successful, right?

Yeah.

Great. What resources need to be there for you to be successful? Well, I need to make sure that I eat well all day so that I'm not snacking and hungry. I should probably have breakfast. You know, I should take care of myself. And then get moving. Take aligned action from that. What are the things that you could implement that actually feel sustainable? sustainable. And it's one or two little steps, right? It's implementing one or two little habits. And when we move through that, that allows us to create sustainable success in our life, not find ourselves in that repeating sabotage and running against walls and starting and stopping and going hard and falling down.

So the first one was—

Get real.

Get real.

What's in my way?

That is the ultimate place to start. But the challenging part about getting real is that When we take emotional inventory, sometimes the stuff is really challenging to deal with. Like, I don't want to be in this relationship, and that's why I'm eating. Or I actually hate my job, and that's why I'm eating chocolate. The challenge with this is that it is essentially as simple as writing 10 things on a page that are causing you pain, writing 10 things on a page that you love, And then circling the one that's causing you the most pain and then sharing with a friend. That's a simple model, but it's the vulnerability.

It's the vulnerability.

It's the sharing. Like, you and your husband are great when you have your Sunday check-in. Yeah, but many people have just— it's so foreign to them to do that, whether they're in marriage or not. Like, it's so foreign to have a check-in with self and a check-in with other. And I love this. I've said this many times, but I just— oh, it's such a good phrase. Gabor Maté says that the opposite of addiction is connection, either to self or others. And so if I'm disconnected from self, aka not being honest, which is the first step of your process, that's, I think, the epidemic of addiction, is that we've become a society that just isn't able to be honest with self. And I think our collective experience of politics and geopolitics and just the way that the world is running right now, it's like We all know that things are so terrible. And in many ways, that energy of what's going on collectively is filtering into our personal lives. Rather than be angry at the world and angry at everything, 'cause that doesn't fix it, I actually just feed it when I'm angry at stuff that's wrong. I go deeper into myself and I go, okay, well, where am I the villain? Where am I the victim? Where am I the rescuer?

Totally.

You know, the Karpman drama triangle. What role am I playing? And I find that, I'm curious what you find, I find that the more I go into real honest inventory of self, it's both really shitty and also really liberating. What comes up for you when I share this?

Unfortunately, change is not possible unless you're willing to be honest with yourself. Your life requires, like, it starts the moment you take 100% responsibility. for the results or the lack of them. And I think that mirror moment is really important. Absolutely. You know, and I have caught myself in patterns before where I would love to blame everyone else for what I'm not—

Oh, yeah, it's easy.

You know, like, oh, my husband makes me snack at night, or, you know, it's because of this that I have to drink, or what, you know, whatever it is, it's like all these excuses. But really, it just comes down to Am I prepared to make that choice for myself and make that decision?

Yeah.

We spend more time wavering on all the things or the perfect— waiting for the perfect time for change or, oh, you know, after this busy season or after the wedding or—

Diet starts Monday.

Diet starts Monday. Yeah, let's just go, you know, let's go tonight, right? And so I think we're just not willing to be honest about it, but When you realize that you're the problem, you get to be the solution. That is so freeing. It's so freeing. I was gonna call my book, Actually, It Is You. And then I realized that wasn't very trauma aware to point the finger.

Right, right.

But it really is. And that's a moment of choice that you have right now with that awareness of like, hmm, What if I wrote down everything on this piece of paper that was the reason why I am in my own way on the things that I keep being disappointed about and the things that I keep tolerating about myself or in my life? What if we did that?

This is the ultimate shadow side, Mandy, of victimhood. And by the way, I want to respect— there actually is moments in life where people are victims.

Totally.

That's a real thing.

Yes.

So I'm not just, I'm not just gonna like—

I don't wanna minimize that either.

Right, I'm not gonna wax poetically and be like, it's just a choice, just choose. 'Cause sometimes people are victims, you know, that's, that's a real thing. But for the, for the overwhelming majority of us, victimhood is really dicey. It's got a big shadow on it because when I'm victimized, I also get to be right and I get to get attention and I get to get resources. Did you ever feel victimized by your father's situation, by life itself? And if so, what was the gift from the victimhood?

There was a season of my life, and this was all happening at once. The picture that I painted for you of my father being in prison, this really hard season in my marriage, really challenging season in the business. I woke up every day and I felt like I was wearing my body. I was just managing my life. I was just going through the motions of everything, and everybody else was to blame for that. But I was taught that I should just keep muscling through and that I just needed to tolerate it. And, you know, whether it be a business partnership that I was silencing myself and just letting, you know, bad behavior happen, whether it was feeling like I couldn't communicate my own needs in my relationship, whether it was—

Yeah.

I was not properly feeding and taking care of myself or whatever. It was everyone else's problem because of it. I wore that all like a badge of honor for a very long time until I realized and I wiped my lenses clean and realized why that was there. It was just this belief of you're not enough to communicate your needs. You're not enough to— have a voice. You're not enough to set a boundary. So I had to learn how to wipe the lenses clean, and that freedom was the gift, was, oh, I get to make a new choice here. Wow, what a concept. You know, I— prior to me going to that retreat, um, you know, I was— it was so easy for me to, to blame everything that I wasn't getting in my life on business partners or, you know, the economy or COVID or what, my husband. And when I went into that, that was my mindset, was like, this is all happening to me. How does this pattern keep repeating? Why does it always happen to me? Of course. And when I came out, it was a full waking up, and every choice got to be mine from there. And what happened was when I shifted all of my energy into just focusing on my own energy, my own thoughts, my own choices, my own boundaries, my own needs, and I got really clear with those things in myself and slowly started practicing informing other people around me, no one else needed to change. I changed and my entire experience changed.

essentially describing a modernity experience of the law of correspondence, one of the Hermetic principles that goes back thousands of years, as above, so below. And I think about all this esoteric wisdom, you know, I don't start there because it's a mental model that people are at. So it's like, why would I, if I was just beginning my journey of awakening or of consciousness, I wouldn't want to hear this woo-woo stuff. I'd be like, what is that?

That's the after the podcast conversation.

Yeah, give me like the practical stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

But what you just said is actually connected to a lot of metaphysical and esoteric wisdom of the past. When we change the way we believe about ourselves and we project that out into the world, as we know in NLP, perception is projection.

Yeah.

So I'm projecting out whatever my beliefs are unconsciously. And so I always say something like, oh, this is really hard but good, 'cause I know on the other side of this, something super beautiful is coming, like something so amazing. is coming from my victimhood. Something so amazing is coming from my challenges. But for me, it's not about positive thinking. It's about knowing that there's forces at play in this world that are not in my control.

Yeah.

And my biggest learning curve on planet Earth has been to trust God and to trust life.

Yeah.

What's, what's been your biggest learning curve?

Yeah, it is that trust piece as well. And trusting life and trusting Being present to the moment instead of chasing.

Yeah.

And I think—

So trusting life in a way.

Trusting life. And I love what you're sharing, and it's spoken from someone who's clearly been through a lot, because those of us that have moved through a lot and been to the other side of really traumatic, heavy things in our life, we do start building trust with ourselves that we can move through hard things. I think that that's really powerful. I think that for me, the biggest challenge has really been entrusting the presence and trusting myself to hold it, not fill it.

Yeah. It's a bottomless hungry ghost, to quote Matej again. It's a hungry ghost. You can't ever satisfy it.

Hungry ghost. And it's realizing that there is no such thing as an arrival. And it is trusting and enjoying the process. And I'm going to butcher this, but I heard this recently, and it's like the whole point of life was to dance while the music is playing. And then you get to the end of life and music turns off and you're like, shit, I forgot to dance.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, I love that. We are so busy trying to check the next box and achieve the next thing, we forget to celebrate and appreciate the version of ourselves that we are now. We go back and we look through photos and it's like, I barely recognize myself in the woman I was 5 years ago.

Yeah.

And it has nothing to do with my looks, but it's everything to do with I was never present for her and I never landed in that moment. I was always running. I was never in that moment. be in a moment of connection like I can now. And it was because there was a fear so deep in me that if I stopped and if I wasn't perfect and if I didn't have it all together, that I would not be loved and everyone would leave me and I would not be enough and I would be alone. So I should just keep running. So learning how to love the process, honor the process, appreciate who I am in this moment today, and choose enough today. Choose that today I can be enough and I can still be hungry for more. Like, not a settling piece, not a—

Mm-hmm.

I'm a mail-it-in piece, but like, no, like, I want big things for my life. I want an abundant, loving, happy relationship. I want to make an impact with my work. I want to feel alive in my body. I want relationships that fill me up. I want to travel the world. I want freedom of choice and creativity in what I do with my time. I want all of that. And today, right here in this moment, I am wholeheartedly enough.

Yes. Play that back again. The part that you're describing that I can understand in my heart— this isn't a mental model that I'm about to share with you. This is a heart model. The difference that I've learned between expectation and desire is that desire operates with freedom from it having to be exactly like you want it. Desire is essentially, if you look at psychology, it's not that we want the million dollars or we want to be a professional speaker or we want to have, fill in the blank. It's that we want the feeling. We want the feeling of what we think we'll feel in the moment when our mind is telling us what it wants to get.

Yeah.

And to me, it's, it's an ultimate paradox that, that can be a really hard learning curve if you ignore it. But that's the difference for me, has been this lifelong journey to, to sit with you now. And do I fall back into expectation? Of course. Talk to my wife. She'll tell you, like, I expect things all the time, but So I don't have it mastered yet, but I'm sitting in the question with you.

Yes.

And to go back to a couple of threads that you mentioned before, you know, we don't have to burn it all down. 3 months ago, I thought about burning the podcast down and renaming it and having this whole signature energy. And then I realized like, oh, I don't have to change the name because wherever you go, there you are. Like you and my grandma mentioned, I can actually show up with a new belief about what I'm creating in the exact same environment.

Yeah.

But the core difference for me is that I don't have an expectation of me sitting here with you and me having all the perfect answers.

Totally.

Can I just sit here with you and just sit with you in the questions? There's so much. It's like it takes the gas out. It takes the pressure out of the room.

Yeah.

Whether you're at the gathering, which, by the way, we're now going to talk about why we gather. All of this stuff is great that we're describing, and your book is powerful, and sharing wisdom is fun.

Yeah.

But I believe that nothing actually transforms without the presence of a wise elder, wise counsel, eldership in some way. That's where the gathering comes in. And there's many events across the world, like some, some events resonate, some don't. So I'm going to be speaking and playing with you. We're just going to have fun, really amazing, exploring these aspects of self. How can we sit in the questions together of why some people heal and some don't, and how sometimes the fuel source can drive entrepreneurs and drive high-performance people to create their own jail cell, how they can actually avoid that jail cell by being honest with themselves. When did the Gathering come online for you? What does it mean to you, and how do you make it fun?

Totally. The Gathering has always been a really special part of, of my life. I have been attending the Gathering since its first year in 2014. And I went there as a young ambitious entrepreneur. I had a media company at the time, and, um, you know, I went there because I traded a page in my magazine to one of the founders for some advertising for a ticket.

Was it like an old school physical magazine?

I had a physical magazine.

Yeah, I remember those.

Yeah, right? That was a terrible business idea. But anyways, that's another podcast. Um, so I've been attending since then, and, and I remember walking into that space and just being blown away at the level of access and honesty that I received from the speakers that were there. And it's, you know, it's in an intimate space in the Canadian Rockies at the Fairmont, 150-year-old hotel. And we bring in some of the biggest brands of the— in the world. And, uh, Dana White was a speaker that year, um, UFC. And, uh, you know, the CMO of the Dallas Cowboys. Like, all of a sudden I'm walking down the hall with the CMO of the Dallas Cowboys. And you're like, what? How does this happen, right?

Hmm.

And so I came back year after year and I rented space out of the same building that the agency that owned the gathering was in. And so became really close with the community. And year after year, the owners asked me if I wanted to take it over. And I'm like, no, I'm busy, I'm building my own thing. And, you know, I was running other businesses at the time and I got the call every year from them and I kept going and showing up and bringing my team along. and the gathering, it continued to grow and grow and grow. And, uh, and then in 2023, I got my annual call from the owner, and, and he wanted to take me for lunch. And I knew exactly what he wanted to take me for lunch for.

Ah.

And the energy felt different. I had just exited one of my businesses, and I was at a, uh, an edge in my career where I was really ready for, uh, for ready for something more. And, uh, it felt different. And I talked to him, and he shared some of his vision, and I realized that it was perfect opportunity for me to use all of the skills that I built over the years in building community, in my media company, in event creation, and helping people gather and come together to transform. And it seemed like the perfect time for me to put my fingerprints on it and, um, and incorporate some of that into the event. And so he handed me the keys and said, you know, it's yours to, to really create here. And so that was 3 years ago. Um, in the last 3 years, we've grown more than 25% year over year. So we've now taken it from 1,000 people to about 2,500. Um, and I've added a layer that I'm really proud of to it, which is The Gathering has always been about this conversation around what does it take to build a brand to last?

Mm-hmm.

And my work is about what does it take to lead to last? Behind all of these brands is leaders. And, uh, when we, you know, we can't build an empire on an empty tank. And so I've added a whole new, uh, content track and conversation there, which is, yes, let's learn from these brands, but also let's build ourselves. And, um, so that's been really, really powerful. And we've expanded it from, you know, the 3 stages into a fully immersive festival-like experience. Very much so, the magic of it for me is is seeing the connections that happen there and the genuine connections that happen there. Most big conferences, they run you off your feet and, you know, they're run on like caffeine and cocktails and, you know, doing all the things.

Yeah.

But our event gives you this choose your own adventure kind of vibe. There's a wellness experience incorporated into it. It's in the mountains. You get the Rockies, you get that mountain air. You can go to a morning workout session if you want, choose if you want to go for a high rocks run this year or you want to do something a little bit, you know, more mellow. And then evening supper clubs that are phone-free and an opportunity to really have a conversation and digest what you just learned today and connect. So The Gathering is an amazing sort of, you know, culmination of all of my experiences in it. And it's very meaningful for me and it helps me connect with people like yourself and I get to have conversations with people like you and other brand leaders where I hear intimately, you know, what is it taking behind the scenes and, and, and what are the challenges that you're up against in, in building a business, building a brand. And shaping the content is, um, I hold a great deal of responsibility for that because, you know, people are going to invest their time and, and money and, you know, come and see us. I want to make sure that they're, they're not just getting inspired, but they're getting a significant amount of value in what to do next. So this year the theme is Only the Bold Begin, and we are in this season of business where the old playbooks are burned, whether we burn them down ourselves or, you know, just the way that the world is shifting with AI.

Yeah.

And, you know, especially in the marketing and brand world, like everything is changing so fast and the new playbooks haven't been built yet. So the conversations this year, you know, the brands and the speakers that I've invited are, really people that are demonstrating a new way, that are lighting a new path, and they're writing these new playbooks and are making bold decisions, are making bold moves, even in the dark when they don't really know if it's gonna work or not. And we're gonna have those conversations together, 'cause I think all of us right now in this point in time, it's like we all get to be a beginner again.

Mm-hmm.

Those we get to build when we're thinking about building a foundation for something, of building to last. I hope we are all choosing the right ingredients for that. Courage, boldness, love. This whole conversation we've been having today, right? It's like, let's not move forward from a reactive place. Let's move forward resourced. And I think that that will build a big— bigger and better future for all of us.

Yeah, and simplistically, what feels the most fun for me is the Gathering is a place where people can gather.

Yeah.

I know it's that simple for me. It's like, okay, whether you're a high-performance person, a brand leader, or also if you're just an entrepreneur who's wanting to put their voice in the world, how to do that authentically in an era of AI where people fall into a trap where they have to use AI Yeah. To be their brand, which is inherently a paradox because I'm not anti-AI for sure, but I know that hands down, the only thing that is going to allow us to enjoy our life is meeting in person. That's it. And, you know, what's funny is I've heard Vaynerchuk and other entrepreneurs talk about this. The ultimate experience in an age of AI is meeting in person. It's going through transformation and having honest conversations. In person. When we gather, that's when all the magic happens, really. And so y'all join me. It's on the screen right now. You can head over to joshtrant.com/gathering and you get $150 off your ticket with the code WISDOM, which is super cool. So join me. If you've been following this podcast for a while, come hang out in Vamp. Come hang out with me.

It's amazing.

Come connect with me. I want to connect with you in person.

In real life. Yes.

Like, like human.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Not just through Your YouTube app, right?

Yes.

We covered so much ground. I hope y'all will join me, seriously. Come join me. We've covered a lot of ground, and I think about this core aspect of your work, which is this element of chasing, you know, chasing enough, chasing worthiness, chasing all that. What do you think we missed when it comes to the stopping of the chasing of that which we seek?

We did cover a lot of ground. There's something I would love to, to leave everyone with. And, you know, sometimes it can be too intellectual to think about, well, how do I choose enough? Or I've got all these things going on and like, you know, how do I stop? Choosing enough happens in the small moments every day, and we can start practicing enough. We can start modeling enough in some really small but significant ways in our life. So it's as simple as defining what is enough for you in this season. What is enough for this project? What is enough for this workout? What is enough work today? What is enough presence today? What is enough insert whatever today? And I think when we have a sense of defining enough, then we actually can complete something instead of the perpetual chase, right?

Yeah.

So enough is not a destination that you arrive at. It is a choice and it is a practice. And we all get to practice choosing enough. And a small example of that is like, I have an injured shoulder right now and I generally like always get my workouts in and can't really do that right now. I have to find other ways. So, you know, my workout the other day was like, okay, I have the capacity for a 15-minute Peloton Dot and it's, I'm doing my lower body workout and that's all the time I have. But you know what? choosing that that was enough for today. And so instead of the energy of shaming myself that, oh, I couldn't fulfill on my regular program, I actually got to celebrate myself for saying, hey, you made that happen even though, right?

That's cool.

And so we're up against these constraints, whether it be time constraints, energy constraints, you know, deadlines, all of it. But if we just take the simple moment to say, what is enough today in this moment? We can actually start enjoying the success of our life.

I'm so glad you came to Austin. Thanks for being on my podcast. Thanks for the gathering, the gathering that y'all get to go to. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, super fun conversation.

So did I. Thank you.

Y'all share this with somebody who gets to go to the gathering, including you. I really do want to meet you. I've met a lot of you at different events, but this one's super special. So it's on the screen again, joshtrant.com/gathering. One big takeaway for me from this conversation was that you cannot outwork what you're not feeling, because I believe what's still being felt in the space and not being said is going to be felt until we finally put words to it, until we finally have truth to acknowledge it. So, as always, I am wishing you so much love and wellness, but most importantly, which we talked about a lot on today's show, I'm wishing you peace and power. I do not believe that true peace. can come from a place that's driven only by power. I think that we rest in peace, and when we rest in peace, really amazing, powerful things are possible.

Hmm.

But we cannot have true peace if it comes only from power. So we'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us.