Neuroscientist Reveals: Why You’re Living Someone Else’s Life + How to Break Free

We're living someone else's life. We're following a script that's written by someone else, our spouse, partner, friends, colleagues, but very often our parents. If everybody looks very unsurprised and very happy with the decisions you're making, there's a high chance you're following a script here.

Ann Laura Lecomph is a neuroscientist, founder of Nest Labs, and author of Tiny Experiments. One thing I love is you said half of life is having the curiosity to imagine new paths, the other half is having the courage to explore them.

So when my startup failed, I found myself again in a liminal space. I could have just gotten back to what I know, right? But I said no. Can actually write, read, research, reach out to people, have conversations, try and figure out what is something that I would be deeply, intrinsically curious about, that I would want to explore with no pressure for this thing to be my passion or my purpose. You need to run the experiments in order to know that if we just.

Did the tiny experiments to prove ourselves wrong, how absolutely liberating life could be. Just proving that we're wrong all the time, that all the irrational fear isn't real. What does that part of the brain that wants to avoid even doing the tiny experiment in the first place, the.

Only way to rewrite them is to.

When you quit your job at Google, your mom basically had a heart attack. You, in that moment had to decide, am I living my life for me or am I living it for someone else? What did you learn most about living your life for you?

We always think that we're following our own definition of success, but it's just amazing how many of our scripts are copy pasted from other people. And not wanting to disappoint your parents is actually a really strong driving force and making choices in life. So what I learned though, is that when you start following your own decisions, building your own life, it might be a little bit uncomfortable while you're in the middle of it. It might be a bit uncomfortable to see the face of your parents looking so scared for you. But long term, they'll be so happy to see you flourish.

They love us. They want the best for us. Yet sometimes, well, most times, parents number one job is to keep us safe. So it's not like they're wanting to put us into a jail cell. But unfortunately, unless you know you have a life of tiny experiments, we're talking about this book I'm holding up. If you're watching us on Spotify or YouTube, the tiny experiments, the iteration the testing out in life of what you think you like versus what you find out you do or don't like. This is an explorative process, but it doesn't come from dogmatism. It doesn't come from listening to exactly what your mother, father, grandparents want you to do. There's so much conditioning that we must let go of. This conditioning runs very deep. Did you have a moment where you realized the conditioning was there? And if so, what was that moment when you started to unpack the conditioning of what you should do versus what you really wanted to do?

At the time, I was working at Google and I had what you would consider a fairly successful career. I was also working really hard. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to make sure that my colleagues felt like I was supporting them, that I was contributing to the team in a meaningful way. And one day I woke up and my entire arm was black. So I went to the Google infirmary and showed it to them and they said, you have to go to the hospital. So I went to the Stanford Hospital. They looked at it and they said, we need to do surgery as quickly as possible. You have a blood clot there that is currently traveling to your lungs. My first response when that happened was to say, one second, can I check my calendar? And I opened my calendar to see if we could schedule the surgery at a time that would not disrupt any of the product launches that I was working on.

Huh.

And you kind of have this almost this out of body experience where you see yourself acting in a way that makes no sense whatsoever and you realize that your priorities are completely wrong. So for me, for anyone watching on video, the surgery went fine. My arms are still here. But it was really a moment of realization that I was so focused on a traditional definition of success, on climbing the ladder, on doing the right thing as defined by society, that I had completely forgotten about what was important to me.

It's almost like you remembered who you really were and what you really wanted because you had lived. How many years had you lived that life of what you thought you should be doing?

I was 27 at the time when.

That happened, so definitely 10 years or more out of high school and whatnot.

Yeah.

One thing I love is you said half of life is having the curiosity to imagine new paths. The other half is having the courage to explore them. I mean, this like, makes the hair on my arm stand up. Because the courage to explore. And first of all, even knowing that you can explore is not always something that's conditioned by the people that care for Us, this, this capacity, this permission to actually find what it is that you love, your purpose. You know, the Japanese call it ikigai, right? The Venn diagram that's on the screen right now, which I want to talk to you about. But, but this quote, this quote is so powerful because the curiosity to imagine a new path and then the courage to follow it and explore it, that is not an easy formula. There's a lot that we have to move out of the way psychologically in order for that to be real. How do you feel about that?

Well, you're absolutely right that it's not just conditioning from society and our parents and our peers. It runs a lot deeper. Our brains are designed to help us survive, and so they're designed to reduce uncertainty as much as possible. And when you think about it, it makes sense because just think about our ancestors in the jungle. The more information you had, whether it was where are the resources or what is that weird noise in the bushes, the more likely you were to survive. And so in today's society, this is. Our brains haven't changed that much, right? So we're still optimizing for certainty because we feel like that is going to ensure our survival. But I think most of us, we don't want to just survive, right? We, we want to thrive. We want more than that. And so there is a lot of unlearning to do and rewiring to do to be able to let go of that very deep seated need for certainty.

That deep seated need for certainty. It almost is an amygdala portion of coding for our neural tree and our nervous system. The amygdala is a really ancient part of the brain. And in your neuroscience, I know this has come up. The things that we do that we don't know why we do them, we behave in certain ways that are really electrical, you know, we're electrical beings. What fascinates you about the interplay between the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, the default mode network, the posterior cingulate? There's so many parts of the brain that literally biologically controlled our behaviors. Yet unless we have some kind of practice to experiment or to understand who and what we are, it can be really challenging to not be a slave to the mind. How do you even approach that conversation for people that don't know these portions of the brain?

I try to think about it in terms of processes that are automatic and processes that are autonomous. And the autonomous ones are the ones where you're a little bit more aware and conscious of why you're making those decisions, of why you're feeling this way. The way I explain it to people is that if you want to actually be a little bit more in control of your decisions in life, it's not about getting rid of all of those automatic emotions that we have, because you can't. This is perfectly normal. So whenever you're stressed or anxious or you have this fear of rejection and judgment, it's all perfectly normal. It's just your brain trying to protect you. What we can do as human beings that other mammals cannot do, as far as we know, is that. So mammals can think. Anyone who has a dog or a cat, you know they can think, right? But we have something else as humans, which is called metacognition, which is the ability to think about our own thinking, to observe our own thoughts, to observe our own emotions. So a cat or a dog, they can think some things. I want this food. I'm going to get this, and that's it. But they're never going to ask themselves, why did I think that? Why did I feel this way? What triggered the thought? What triggered the emotion? So as humans, we have that. We have metacognition, and it's really all about practicing it, making more space for metacognitive practices in your life so you can observe how you feel. You can observe those automatic responses and make them more autonomous.

Oh, the metacognition. It reminds me of this movie where they had precogs with, like, Tom Cruise. You remember that movie? I'm forgetting the name of it.

What is it?

Somebody right now is typing.

I think I see which one you're talking about.

Yeah, he had the gloves and he was doing the screen. And they could actually predict crime from precognition, from someone's thoughts.

And then it predicted that he was going to be a criminal.

Exactly. And so they put him in jail because of his precognition. So the brain is, I guess you could say, hackable. I don't like that term, hacking. But this metacognition, where we can have thoughts and actually think about our thoughts or be aware of our thoughts, the blending of science and spirit here is really cool, because if you look at Eckhart Tolle's work, or really anybody in the metaphysical realm or in the spiritual realm, it's about being the observer or the witness to our thoughts. Is that also science's definition? You know, in spirituality, we may name it as being the observer or being the watcher, but in science, is it really this metacognition that are saying the same thing.

I think they're not necessarily. A scientist will probably say, oh, it's slightly different. But to me they're very similar.

They seem very similar.

To me, they seem very similar. I feel like there is a tendency in science to think about spiritual perspectives as separate from science. I personally think that this is the same. And actually you see in meditators that they're very good at metacognition.

Yes.

So personally, I think that they're very similar. And by developing this ability to observe yourself, observe your own thoughts, your own experiences, you're also expanding your awareness.

Yeah. It seems like science and spirit are at war. And they don't have to be. Like, before I hit the record button, I was like, there's room for science and spirit at this table because they are one and one the same. Yet the Socratic method is either proving or disproving theorems. The spiritual aspect shares that. You know, we are all one. We're in the singularity and experiencing duality in the singularity. If we put these worlds together, really what we're just trying to do our very best to describe with our ego at times is why we do what we do and what is the meaning of life. I like to go really deep on this podcast, as I'm sure you can tell.

We're like, I love it.

Ten minutes in and we're talking about the meaning of life. But the whole premise of this book is like, instead of being in a jail cell about having goals and being obsessed with your goals and your worthiness is dependent on what letters are behind your name or how or for men, how many zeros are in your bank account. It's just such a lie. We're in this goal obsessed world where our value and our peace is dependent upon what we've created or if we're living, quote, our purpose. And a lot of this stuff actually has really blown up in the past 20 years or so. There's a section in your book that we have on the screen right now, and it's called Escaping the tyranny of purpose, which I love. There's a graph and in all the books that mention find your purpose between 1819 and 2019, there's a 700% increase over the past two decades of that phrase. I feel like find your purpose has been weaponized by marketers to make people feel bad so they buy their stuff. Do you agree?

Oh, absolutely. Thank you for putting it this way. The way I think about it is that if you ask people how they found their purpose anytime you meet someone who's obviously very passionate about what they do and you ask them, can you tell me how you got here? How did you find this passion of yours? None of them will tell you that they filled a five step worksheet that just.

That doesn't exist.

That doesn't exist.

Right.

If they're honest, all of them will reply and say something, usually along the lines of, I tried this thing or I talk to this person. I was invited to collaborate on this project. I started exploring this topic I was curious about and I got deeper and deeper. And one, one morning I woke up and I felt like, oh man, I, I think I could do this for the rest of my life. What's interesting about that too is that because they arrived at that conclusion in this very organic, emergent way, they're also not too attached to it. They will also tell you, you know, for now, that's my passion. That's why I keep thinking about all the time. When I go to bed in the evening, I think about it, I wake up in the morning, I'm excited about it. But that might change because I might meet a new person, a new collaborator, work on a new project, discover a new tech. We're seeing that with AI right now. A lot of people are just completely abandoning whatever they were working on. And they're very passionate about AI right now. And that might happen. And that's what's great, is that these people who have found their passion, they also know that it doesn't have to be for life and it can just be a period during which you're, you go very deep, that's what you want to do. And, and if you want to let go of it at some point where you feel like I'm done, actually I want to do something else, that's fine. The other thing that I think is quite dangerous with this idea that you have to find your purpose is that then the people who haven't feel like something's wrong with them, they look at these other people who, who found their purpose, found their passion, and they feel like, why didn't I find it? Does that mean my life has no meaning if I haven't found this passion? And it will in a way that is actually not helpful at all, prevent them from exploring in a more organic way, because they will be so obsessed with finding that one thing that they might go deep on a very narrow path too early when it might not really be the thing that is for them. So I think it's a very, very dangerous notion that you have to go and find your purpose.

I think there's. That's so good. There's so much pressure that I felt in my entire life. I'm more of an A type personality. You know, the podcast, this is our 10th year. And when I first started, I was a completely different human being. So if I had this dogmatism of. And a myopic lens where I had to keep doing exactly what I was doing when I started doing the thing that I thought was giving me purpose, I actually am forgetting God. I'm forgetting mystery. There's no space at any table for God or mystery to flourish. It's like I'm trying to just live my life from an intellectualized lens, and it doesn't work that way. And you talk about this in the book, these Liminal Spaces, which I love. Charles Eisenstein describes it as the space between stories, which I really resonate with sometimes. Your purpose is actually not knowing what your purpose is. You have a purpose, like working for Google for a long time, and then your arm turns black and then you're like, what do I do? Well, that's actually one of the pages of the story of your purpose. And I think if we can have this relaxed view and take a bigger breath and be 30,000ft above what is my purpose? Then that shame dragon won't breathe fire on us anymore. I think to piggyback on what you're saying, and I'm curious how you feel about this. You said that people get stuck because they're so focused on achieving their purpose. I think from an emotional perspective, like, epigenetically, what that's coming from is either the expectations of their lineage, of their grandparents. You see this a lot in Asian culture. There's a huge bolus of pride where you have to be a doctor or a lawyer, otherwise you're not worthy enough. This is a very deep, entrenched conversation. Because the way in which we find our purpose isn't because we're doing it from shame of not having it or fear of not having our purpose. I believe true purpose comes from trying things on and seeing if they fit. Doing the thing that you think will bring you joy and then finding out that it doesn't bring you joy. I have many people that have sat across from the table here in hundreds of episodes, over 700 episodes, and they went through 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 different layers of their purpose before they really landed by experimenting and knowing, oh, this feels the best. This feels the most liberating. This feels the most me. If they had this mindset of being a fireman till the day they die or working at Google forever, then they actually could rob themselves of some pretty amazing life experiences.

Yeah. And that's the danger, really. It's thinking that you can predict what you're going to enjoy, what is going to bring you this sense of excitement, and then focusing on that as if it became a destination. And you just feel like, I just need to work hard. I'm going to get to this thing. This is what I need. And not questioning the reason why you want to get there in the first place. I talk about it in the book. I explained the concept of cognitive scripts. All of these scripts that we're applying based on different areas of our lives, where we've been copy pasting these. And so there's one of them, that's the sequel, where it's just saying that whatever decision you're making today, it needs to make sense based on the decisions you made in the past. So it needs to have a nice narrative. This is why we rewrite our resumes to make sure that they make sense. And we like telling our story in a way where it looks like from the outside, that we knew what we were doing all along. The one that you touched upon is the crowd pleaser script. And this is when we want to make decisions that are aligned with whatever people around us will be most happy with. And that could be our. Our spouse, partner, friends, colleagues, but very often our parents. And as you mentioned, if you have an immigrant background, it's very likely that your parents worked really hard to support you.

Sure.

And you feel obliged to give back to them by doing something that will make them proud. And so that's what's really interesting, is that it all comes from a good place. Your parents supported you because they love you. You want to make the most reasonable choice because you love them. But we talked about it earlier. In the end, your parents just want you to be happy. And so instead of being miserable, forcing you to be a doctor or a lawyer. And I have nothing against these professions, if that's what you really want to do. Right. But a lot of us don't question why do we want something? Is it because you want it, or is it because you're trying to please the people around you?

I love the description in your writing about the liminal space, because that space, or as Eisenstein would say, the space between stories, that's where all the magic really happens. It's in that radical discomfort. Like, for me, it was 2014. I had put My mom in a mental home. I had broken up with a woman. I had gotten fired from a corporate job. It was like three big uppercuts that just put me to the ground. And it took about a year and a half for me to launch the podcast. And that time was super valuable because I got to sit with my pain. I got to actually be with the gift of that liminal space. Yet there's a part of the brain or a part of our psyche from neuroscience or even spirituality that I wonder how you feel about. What is it that makes us want to exit the liminal space to not be in the discomfort? What is that part of the brain? What is that part of our psyche?

It's really coming from a sense of seeking safety. Liminal spaces don't feel safe. It's. And it's really part of the definition of a liminal space. It's a space where you don't know the rules, you don't know the players, you can't predict the outcomes. You very often don't feel like you know yourself when you're in a liminal space. And all of that is very scary. So we want to get out of there as quickly as possible. And, you know, liminal space, it comes. Liminal comes from the Latin lemon, which means the in between, the transition. We want to transition out of this. We want to get out of here. We want to get back on shore where it feels stable, where we know what's going on and where we feel like we can predict what's going to happen, but we can't predict what's going to happen either way. Right. So it is an illusion. It's this illusion of safety, of certainty that we're seeking again. And so if, you know, that connects back to what we were talking about with uncertainty earlier, if your goal is just to survive, then, yes, do cross that space as quickly as possible. And. And I do think there are times in life where maybe it's not the right time to just explore in that liminal space and figure out what it is you want. There are times in life, it can happen, where actually you are genuinely in a dangerous, difficult situation. And in that case, go grab the first job, make money, get back on your feet.

Sure.

And that's completely fine. It's all about intentionality and realizing, okay, I'm in a liminal space right now. Am I trying to exit that space because there's actual danger? Then let's get out of here, or is it my brain telling me that there is danger when really the only Danger is this sense of unpredictability that can actually be very generative if you let yourself sit with the uncertainty for long enough.

Yes. This is the gift that I want you to unpack for us. What is the gift of the liminal space? There's a really beautiful gift there.

The gift is learning more about yourself, about your work, and about the world. It is really a space for self discovery if you allow yourself to stay in there, which can be very uncomfortable.

Very much so. I think about another term from your book called time anxiety. It's this belief or this feeling that I'm late, everybody else is doing better than me. Look at their Instagram reels that took them four hours to create, where they're perfectly feeding their kids all these snacks and, you know, they're going to Barbados and they're living their best life, which Instagram, as you know, y', all, is just a highlight reel. It's not the real stuff. That's why on this podcast, I really go deep into my own public learning, which we'll talk about later. Learning in public, why that's so valuable. When we learn in public, we can't get out of the liminal space. We're actually declaring that we're in it. It's so beautiful. Yet this time anxiety piece, I think, is a fuel substrate for us wanting to get out of the discomfort. What. What is this, this perceived space that we're in, which is really time anxiety, but it's not real. What is the time anxiety piece to talk about?

Time anxiety? It's important to talk about just time and our relationship to time in general. Something I discovered in the process of writing this book that I think is absolutely beautiful. And I wish we had that in English, and we don't have it in French, my native language either. The ancient Greeks had two words for time. They had one that described the quantitative definition of time, and that's the time of hours, of minutes, of productivity, and really visualizing time as a series of identical squares where if you want to be productive, if you want to have a meaningful life, you're supposed to fill all of these squares with as much stuff as possible. And so if you look around and you see other people who seemingly, they look like they're managing to achieve more, to be more productive, to put more stuff in those squares, you feel like you're late, you're not going fast enough, you're not being productive enough. And they have another word for time, which is kairos instead of Kronos. Kairos is the quantitative definition of time and kairos, because we don't have this word, is harder to describe, but I'll try to give it a shot. The best way I can describe it to you is when you have a beautiful conversation with someone and then you check the time and you're surprised because you feel like it was five minutes ago that you started chatting with them and it's been two hours and you feel like, where has the time gone? Right? Kairos is when you get married and it feels like it's the biggest, longest, most beautiful day of your life, even though it was just 24 hours. So in a positive way, it's when you, you lose someone and the minutes seem on like they're dragging forever. It's when you're just before getting on stage and your heart beats so fast that you feel like everything is rushing around you. And it's the idea that time is elastic, it can expand, it can contract depending on the depth of your experience in the moment. And when you optimize for Kairos time, you optimize for the quality and the depth and the richness of each moment in your life and not the quantity of work, the productivity, the widgets, the tasks, the to do lists that Kronos time is encouraging us to focus on.

You know what's fascinating right now with AI, I'm in an AI mastermind actually, because I see the beauty in it and I'm going to ride the wave and be as conscious as I can with AI, There are many people that are coming at AI with I think, malevolent intent. Just like any new movement, there's always going to be people that are self serving and people that are more serving others. Yet the part that really excites me is when we look at this concept of time. AI is doing so many things for so many people right now. Like we're in 2025. You could listen to this podcast in 2026 and AI might have quintupled or you know, 20 times X its productivity amount. I think what we really are desiring from AI, if we're conscious about it, is we want to be in that kairos like you're talking about. We want to give AI the things that we don't enjoy doing so that we can spend more time with our family and our loved ones. Being in kairos, do you agree?

Oh, absolutely. And AI is such a good example, showing that with different tools, ways of approaching things, and really reimagining your own relationship to time, you can actually demultiply the amount of time that you have, and all of a sudden you're able to actually be in different places at the same time, working on different things at exactly the same time. And so instead of seeing yourself as it just this one little robot that is supposed to go through work as if you were sitting in front of a conveyor belt, you can have this very non linear approach and also decide moment to moment, what is more important to me right now. And if it is spending time with my children and reading them a bedtime story, for example, I might have AI take care of some of the other stuff.

Absolutely.

So I think it's going to be absolutely fascinating to see how AI is also probably going to completely change our relationship to time as a society.

How so? How do you think that'll happen?

I think, I hope, I hope that it will reduce time anxiety. People will realize that they have a lot more time than they think and also a lot more control over the way they manage their time. And I think this sense of agency and this empowerment around the way they manage their time is probably going to reduce time anxiety.

It's such a paradox, though, because as my team and I have gone into leveraging AI, I've been experiencing time anxiety that I'm late about learning about it. But then in my mastermind, I realized that there's so many people that aren't even close to the curve of adoption. You know, I think it's like by 2030, it'll only be 15% true adoption of the full bolus and the full power of AI. That means 85% of the marketplace will be still learning, still trying to understand how they can have less time anxiety. So it's such a. It's such an interesting polarity that I'm experiencing right now. It's a good reminder for me to slow down and actually enjoy the process of learning about AI. We've all heard the platitude of, like, you know, it's not the destination, it's the journey. And I think intellectually we get that, like, we understand. Oh, it's not that I'm going to get there and then all of a sudden I'm going to take a deep breath because I'll tell y', all, the minute you get to one mountain, you're looking at another mountain. There's no. What I'm saying is there's no there. We think we're going to arrive and have that deep, luxurious breath that we want, but it's such a fallacy. It's such an utter fallacy. I'm sure, you felt this yourself. And with colleagues at Google, there is an AR race right now for AI. Everyone is sprinting as fast as they can to, quote, capitalize on AI. They're in complete time anxiety. And I think that when we look at these opposing forces, one being conscious in service of humanity and then one being greedy or malevolent, how can I take and how can I capitalize on people and humanity? I think we're really going to see this theater play out in ways that we can't even understand right now. We don't really understand what's going to happen. But I share the same positive intent that you do where I do believe it's going to give us time back. But was that time ever missing in the first place? We were just choosing to put our attention on these tasks that we don't really want. How did you see that play out in Google when you were there? This time anxiety piece specifically around AI.

Wait, I'm going to go back to something else you said that I think is also really interesting and then I'll go back to that. So first I kind of want to address what you mentioned about feeling like you're late already when there's a lot of people, even though you're not. But also, again, as you were saying, just the notion of being late implies that there is a fixed timeline with a beginning, a middle and an end and you're somewhere on that timeline. If you let go of this idea, it really changes your relationship to time because and relationship to productivity and also your self worth in terms of what you know and what you don't know yet and where you are compared to others on this giant fake leaderboard that we're all looking at. Because when you think about the Internet, for example, there was a beginning where at some point people were working on this and a bunch of other people felt like they were late. And then there was another beginning when we had social media and then there was another beginning and another beginning. There's always a new beginning at some point that you can choose to join and, and learn and explore and build around. And so you're never late really, because as you were saying, there's no end. There's no end. There are only just new beginnings all the time. And you can decide to opt in or opt out every time you notice that there's something new, there's a new wave and it never stops. And it won't. So when you think about it this way, it also removes some of the time anxiety because it becomes a lot More intentional. You can notice the wave. There's definitely a new AI wave right now.

Yeah.

And you can decide, am I actually interested in this? Is that something where I can build around and maybe serve others while building something meaningful and sustainable for myself and my family? Yes. Let's jump in. If the answer is no, let's, you know, I'm going to keep on focusing on whatever actually, you know, fulfill those requirements right now where I'm having fun, I'm making money, I'm working with people that I love, and I can see myself keep on doing this. And I'll just wait until the next wave comes, because it will come, and then I can decide if I want to jump in.

Yeah. Going back to enjoying the journey. It's interesting that I am this driven person, yet at the same time, I realized that what got me here isn't going to get me to the next three, five, ten years of enjoyment. It's almost like, you know, when you fill a rocket ship with fuel, it burns all the fuel and then it goes into the sky, and then it relies on the absence of gravity to float it through space. Some people believe the earth is flat. That's a different podcast. I don't know. I don't know. But what I'm saying is, like, yes, it's so important to actually enjoy the journey. And that's why I really wanted to hone in on this time anxiety piece. Because in Silicon Valley, the second part of the question I'd love you to answer is that time anxiety fuels most of the investment in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm just going to give you a few examples that I think are really good to illustrate the mindset that most people have in Silicon Valley. So first, when I joined Google, we actually all had a rubric that showed you exactly what you were supposed to be able to achieve, the skills you were supposed to have, the projects you were supposed to have worked on for you to be able to graduate to the next level.

And what was your role?

I was in marketing. Product marketing.

Product marketing.

Product marketing. And I was working on the. On Google Health. Is it called Google Health now? I don't know what they renamed it. Anyways, I was working on the watches and Google fit. So anything around tracking your health, meditation, sleep, running, and that kind of stuff. And so you had this. This rubric telling you exactly how to be successful. And with this idea that you had to go through the steps in order, you don't skip levels, you go through them in order, which was why when you had Friends joining Google, the best advice you could give them was negotiate to get at the highest level you can when you join the company, because it's very hard then to go on to the next one because of that. Again, it's that leaderboard. We can all compare where we are using that grid and you can kind of see based on how long people have been working in the industry where they're supposed to be. But that, that stage, what's interesting is that if, again, if you talk to people and you see someone who maybe looks a little bit older and they're at a lower level, if you were to go and talk to them and ask them, tell me about your story, there's usually something really interesting. Maybe they've volunteered for a while, maybe they took a break because they were the primary caretaker for someone. Maybe I don't know what it was, but there was always something interesting. But most people didn't ask. They would just assume that maybe you're a little bit slower, less productive, less creative. So that's one example. And where there was really no way at Google to skip levels once you were in that machine is that created a lot of time anxiety because people were really optimizing for climbing that ladder as quickly as possible. And then there was another ladder that everybody was watching, looking at. And that I, I actually experienced that one as well, is that when I left my job at Google, you are kind of expected. That's the script in Silicon Valley. You work at a big tech company, you save a bit of money, you build your network and then you raise more money and you start a startup. That's the script. That's the script of success. And so you do that here. What's interesting is that on top of all of these things you're supposed to do, somehow people had this idea that you had to do it before you turn 30, because if not, that was too late. And I saw a bunch of people and I had that anxiety too. I was in my late 20s and feeling like I haven't started my startup yet.

In your late 20s?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, that was very common. I know how ridiculous it sounds, but it was very common in my age group to feel like I only have three or four years left to start a startup, and after that it's too late. That's a very damaging, dangerous script to have because a lot of people were first unhappy and anxious in their jobs. Not for that had nothing to do with the job itself. It was just because they felt like they were being too slow, too late, not good Enough, really. And also a lot of people quit their jobs to start startups where that was actually not really the thing they wanted to do. Maybe not the thing they were good at, maybe not the best thing they could do in order to contribute something interesting. Just because that was the script that everybody was supposed to follow and because of this time anxiety.

Wow. I love that you pointed out the person who was older than. There's this immediate heuristic or shortcut where we just attach a label to someone that says, oh, they probably didn't have the chops to do it or they weren't good enough. And I love the scripts. You have the sequel script, the crowd pleaser, and the epic script. The epic one is probably the hardest one. I know that's the one that you struggled with, is the epic. I have to do something, and it has to be amazing. It's like, where is there room with these three big unconscious scripts? There's probably more. There's probably a lot more. But those three big ones in the book really hit home for me because I could actually see myself in all of them. You know, there are times where I've been the crowd pleaser and the sequel and the epic. But the epic one is really, I think, what's being commoditized that I mentioned earlier by personal development gurus and just the Internet at large. If you are not doing the most epic thing, then you're wasting your time. How is that harming people, this specific script? And how did it harm you, by the way, in your journey of self and of discovery to be the best ever? What's the price that's paid there when we're running this unconscious script of it having to be the most perfect, amazing thing?

Well, when we try to be the most perfect and the best at everything, we can end up being successful. But whose definition of success is that? We're living someone else's life. We're following a script that's written by someone else. That's why it's so insidious, this script. Because this is the kind of script where most people only realize way later in life that maybe that's not what they wanted to explore.

I. I would be suffice to say it's probably most people actually that run these scripts. Is it all of us? Is it most of us?

What do you think all of us have?

All of us.

All of us have these scripts. And that's why, you know, we mentioned, we discussed metacognition earlier. I think to me, that's why such an important human superpower that we need to develop and nurture in ourselves. Because we all follow these scripts. And the only way to rewrite them is to first become aware of them. So first realize that you're not immune, you're not different, you're not special. Everybody has these cognitive scripts that we just internalized by virtue of being around other human beings. It's a very natural, normal thing to happen. So just accept the fact that, yes, you have your own scripts, and then ask yourself, do I actually want to follow this script? What's interesting too, is that you can actually decide to follow scripts in some areas of your life. You could say, you know what? In my environment and in my culture and my family with the people around me, I'm kind of expected to have this kind of job, for example. And you know what? I actually like the job. And I actually like having this sense of belonging in that area of my life where I'm working on this thing. Maybe it's a family business, maybe, maybe I don't know what it is, but it actually, I don't feel that bad about it. I know, I know it comes from following a script. I'm aware of it, have this metacognitive ability to notice why I'm doing this and I'm okay with it, or I want to do something different. But most people never go through that first step of noticing the scripts and asking themselves that question.

When you first started unraveling the script, the epic script for yourself, what did that look like? What did that feel like for you?

What's interesting? And that shows that it's really hard to unlearn these scripts. I thought when I left my job at Google that I was actually finally writing my own story. I left my job at Google. It felt quite courageous to me at the time. I was letting go of a pretty good salary, working on good projects with good people. What I didn't realize is that I very quickly, just to avoid the liminal space, not realizing that that's what I was doing, I went from one script to another. And so I let go of that script that I had at Google, the climbing the ladder and the kind of like, you know, a mix of sequel and crowd pleaser here, where I was trying to please my parents and also just have a care that makes sense and felt quite linear to the epic script where I said, okay, I just left my job at Google. I have to build a startup. There was no self reflection and that liminal space where I took the time to actually ask myself what I wanted to do. It felt so obvious that when you quit your job at Google, what do you do? You start a startup. I should have, and that's what I would do today. But I was younger. It should have been like a little bit of an alarm bell for me that when I quit my job at Google and I said, I'm going to start a startup, everybody said congratulations. If everybody looks very unsurprised and very happy with the decisions you're making, there's a high chance you're following a script here. And not that you should make decisions to make people around you unhappy, but ideally you would want them to maybe at least raise an eyebrow. Raise an eyebrow. So this. So there's a little bit of surprise like, like when you're watching a movie and you say, oh, I didn't see that one coming, that's the reaction you want to have to see if you're not following a script.

Did you jump out of that liminal space so fast because of the pressure from your mom?

Part of it, part of it was that, but mostly it was the sense of, of being in Silicon Valley and having all of my friends and my.

Former colleagues just being in that ether with everyone and running the same scripts.

Yeah. And bumping into people at, you know, drinks or things like these and people at. We're asking you, so what are you working on?

Yeah.

And at first you say, oh yeah, I'm thinking about starting a startup. And then it just becomes this self reinforcing story that you tell other people and you start telling to yourself and then you start believing it yourself and then you actually do it.

Wow. Again, there's such a gift in this liminal space. It's so beautiful. For some people it could be a month maybe. For some people it could be multiple years. But see, this is the hard part. I wonder how you feel about this. The responsibilities of life, right. Like paying bills and doing the practical things like the rent doesn't pause just because you're in the liminal space. So there's a practicality here that I really want to address. How do we both hold the two worlds of one sitting in that liminal space, waiting for the intuition or the muse to come and also taking care of our responsibilities. They can seem counterintuitive because we have to live, we have to eat, we have to drink water. All these things cost money which require an exchange of our energy. How did you hold those two worlds? And how might you have held those two worlds different in the liminal space?

So actually I can give you an actual example, which is the second time around. So when my startup failed, I found myself again in a liminal space.

Why did it fail?

Co founder breakup, not aligned, didn't want the same thing.

Were they running their scripts too?

Probably. But, you know, the fact that I can't tell you what their scripts were shows that we probably didn't have the kind of connection that you have with the co founder. Okay, so startup felt another. A new liminal space. This time around, I decided to allow myself to stay in that liminal space for a little bit longer and not rush and figure out the next thing. But I had bills to pay, so I started freelancing. And that's the difference between clinging to the first linear, obvious option, which for me, for example, could have been going back to Google or going back to work for a tech company that I could have just gotten back to. What I know, right? But I said no, just for. To be able to afford this time, this liminal space that I want to explore. I'm just going to freelance. I know that's not what I want to do with the for the rest of my life, but it's paying the bills, and I have a lot of free time around it where I can actually write, read, research, reach out to people, have conversations, try and figure out what is something that I would be deeply, intrinsically curious about, that I would want to explore with no pressure for this thing to be my passion or my purpose. And what would be something that I would like to explore even if nobody was watching? That was part of the question for me. If traditional success was out of the equation and I was optimizing for feeling curious and excited in the morning, what would that be? So this is really how you balance it. It's seeing that as two almost separate problem spaces. There's the logistical one of the money, the, you know, paying your bills and all of that. So how do you solve that? But make sure that by solving that, you're not also getting rid of the liminal space. And it is possible to have the liminal space on one hand and making sure that the more immediate needs that you have are taken care of.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that playing out in my life so many times. I was raised in an environment where I really had a lot of pressure to just go out and make money. I left home super early at 17, 18. I ended up bailing cardboard at Vons and like, doing the thing. But then I was working so much that I was exhausted. I had zero time for liminal space because I was just so focused on satisfying the bottom of Maslow's triangle. I was just in survival. And it wasn't until God Universe brought me this pain of feeling so fulfilled in making money, but yet also completely unfulfilled as a soul, that then I went to go do something that was actually another escape from my own liminal space, which was being an automotive mechanic and then leaving that because my soul hurt even more. And then I actually took time, and I spent about a year in Hawaii in my early 20s, and I just went to the ocean. I kept my costs really low. I became a fitness trainer, and I did that for 10 years. And then guess what? After 10 years, I found a new liminal space where, as I shared before, there was three big uppercuts from the universe. And it wasn't until I got, I guess you could say my third return of the hero's journey, where I really allowed myself about a year and a half of going into massive debt because I so wanted to podcast. I knew I wanted to do it. I had always listened to, like, Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla when I was growing up on, like, my old school tape deck. I wanted to be a radio dj, but I didn't really know how to do it or what it meant or. Anyways, I was lost. And I think being in that lost space is so valuable because it allowed me to actually take the time. Now, granted, if I did it again, I would not get $80,000 in debt. That was not a smart choice because there was a lot of pain on the other side of that. But I got to this place where I did find something that I really loved. It took me until 34 years old to find it. And I wonder how you feel about this. Jung says, which actually, many people have said this, Wallace Wattles, Napoleon Hill, but specifically Jung, that all Life starts at 40, and everything before that is just research. It's really hard for us to have true embodied wisdom before the age of 40 because we're spending so much time just gathering and organizing information. Have you found this to be the case? Are you in your 30s?

I'm still in my 30s.

Okay, so you're. You're beating the curve a little bit.

I don't know, because I actually don't think that I have reached any kind of level of wisdom. I think the only wisdom that I have developed is being very comfortable with the fact that I don't know very much, and that's okay, and there's no rush, and I'm actually get. You know, I might get if I live a very long life, I might get to 80 or 90 and still feel like I don't know very much. And I think that would be completely okay.

Yeah.

So there's really no rush for me to. What I think is interesting with this, this quote is that it might also create a little bit of time anxiety in people in their 40s if they feel like they haven't figured it out yet. When I think it would be better if we would let go of the timelines and just embrace the fact that everybody is on their own journey figuring out things on their own. They had different and had never heard that expression before, but uppercuts from the. Uppercuts from the universe. People receive different uppercuts at different times in their lives. And so there shouldn't be a timeline. And you were talking about feeling lost. And I'm thinking about a couple of days ago I gave a keynote and there was a question from the audience that was anonymous and the moderator told me afterwards I wasn't sure if I should put that question to you because it's a. It's a difficult one and I didn't know if that would be okay. But she decided to go for it and give me the question. And the question was from someone saying, I just lost my job. I love the concepts in your book. I love the idea of experimenting. But how do you want me to be in a mental space where I want to experiment when all I can think about is that I have no job right now? I told this person that first I was sorry this happened, but also that I was so happy for them in the sense that when you're in those in betweens, when you're completely lost, you also have incredible freedom. You have so much freedom. You don't have the nine to five, you don't have a bus. You don't have people having expectations. And you can look for a job while experimenting and really reframing that experience into an opportunity for growth and self discovery. Like almost as if you got a free sabbatical and you get to still again look for a job. And this person came to the book signing afterwards. So now I know it was a woman. And we ended up having a beautiful hug. And she said that it was amazing for her to. To hear that. And seeing this, reframing it again really goes back to the fact that as human beings we can have the instinctive response, that automatic response which can be very uncomfortable, which can, can be something we want to escape as quickly as possible. But if we're Able to observe it without any of the self blame, without any of the self judgment, just saying, okay, this is my experience. This is completely normal. I'm just a human being. But now what do I want to do with this? Is there anything interesting I can learn from that experience? Is there any way I can grow from that pain, from those challenges, from this unexpected event in my life? And when you do that, and the most beautiful thing about this approach is that in a few years, you'll be able to look back and feel like there was no way you could have predicted where you are today. So instead of planning for certainty, success, feeling like you have a plan, feeling like you got everything right, feeling like you're doing everything on time, you can optimize for living a life that is impossible to predict and impossible to write in advance.

I want to speak to purpose guilt and purpose envy, because there have been many times in my life, on my journey, I'm 44. I don't have it all figured out either. So we're in the same club of, of really embodying some wisdom. You can't write a book unless you've embodied some wisdom. But also on the other side of that, you know that you haven't embodied all the wisdom that you're capable of. And I don't say that because I want to create this delta of like, well, this is what you should be doing. It's just an awareness of, like, I've come this far, but there's also this much further, further to go. I think when we look at purpose guilt. I used to have purpose guilt where I would say, gosh, I wish I was one of those people that would just wake up when they were five and go, I know I'm going to be a fireman forever. And there are some people like this right there. There's some people that they've known their purpose ever since they were a little boy or girl. And I used to have, like, guilt and envy about that. Like, why can't that be me? But it goes to what you were saying. It's like these liminal spaces and these. These really uncomfortable space between stories. They're. They're so wonderful because there's authenticity that's born there and you can't. I don't believe that we can lead a truly authentic life unless we go through radical discomfort and then use that discomfort as a fuel source to teach others what we've learned from experiencing it. I think that's where authenticity is born. How do you feel?

And being authentic can be very Uncomfortable, because it is obviously a lot more comfortable to just apply whatever model of a successful life is from someone else. Like having a playbook and saying that, okay, this is. This is what success looks like. This is what looks cool. Being a firefighter is cool. Being a YouTuber is cool. And I'm going to do this thing right. And then it gives you again the sense that you know what you're doing. But is it authentic? When you're trying to be really authentic to yourself, there is going to be this messy middle of trying to figure it out. There's going to be the questioning, there's going to be the doubt, am I doing this because I want to do it? Am I doing this because everybody around me is doing it? And to me, that's authenticity. That's the continuous questioning of the decisions you make in life.

The hard questions you mentioned. So if. If I'm leading an authentic life for me, this is my definition, then I have a certain level of peace and power that people can feel from me at all times. Like when they're around Josh, they feel that that's Josh. When I'm out of alignment and I'm running on an unconscious script, or I'm operating from fear, or maybe I haven't asked myself the hard questions in a moment or in a month or in a year, that's when I think, like, energetically on our enteric nervous system, all the wiring in our stomach. You can feel from me, I can feel from you that you're either being you, the real you, or you're just being this amalgamated version of the scripts and the inputs that you've received that are really good at making other people feel like it's you, but it's not really you. What I'm getting at is those hard questions can be really, really challenging. When your life looks good on the outside, when your life looks good on the outside and you have the income and you might even have, like, the standard American white picket fence with the car and the kids and all the things, but there's just a really vast emptiness that a human being can feel. That emptiness can be almost a fear of death, right? A fear of ego death, a fear of letting go of what I thought I was going to really enjoy, and then showing up at the doorstep of the hard question. So what is the hard question or the hard questions that people tend not to ask when they're struggling with the authenticity of their being?

What is it? I'm actually curious about what is it I want to explore? And unfortunately, I see A lot of people in my community that I work with, where people tend to think, based on my work, that the audience is quite young. And I do have young people in my audience, but actually I have a lot of people who are retired, and a lot of them tell me, oh, I'm kind of annoyed that I waited until I retired to feel like I could ask these questions. I felt like I had first to, you know, have a good job, save money, take care of my kids, make sure that they were all taking care of, put them through college. And now that I'm retired, I'm finally asking myself, what is it I'm curious about? And they start exploring a new hobby, a new, you know, a topic or a skill or. I see people who are actually, we talked about the AI wave, learn, learning AI and learning how to code in their 70s, and I think that's amazing.

Yeah.

And so to me, that's the hardest question. If, again, nobody was watching, if the traditional definition of success was out of the equation, if it was just you, and you could wake up in the morning and spend your time in any way you like, read any book that you want, doesn't have to do anything with your current career, listen to any podcast, walk anywhere, just spend your day in any way you like, following your curiosity. What would your day look like really? And obviously, for practical reasons, you might not be able to have this entire day straight away looking like that. But is there something you can start injecting in your daily life from that day, from that curiosity? Is that just maybe blocking one hour during the day to explore whatever it is? And even again, like, that's not making money. That's not. That's really not. The idea here is that blocking an hour is that joining a group of people, a writing group or whatever it is, a running group, is that just by doing this, I think you can get a little bit closer to living an authentic life where you're asking yourself, what do I want? What am I curious about? And making space for it, as much space as you can, knowing that maybe it cannot be your entire life right now, but it might be in the future. And the great thing is that once you retire, you'll have already started writing quite a few chapters of that story. And so it will be even more fun to start expanding on it.

So the take home is do not wait till you retire to learn about the things you love to bring you closer to authenticity. You know, it's funny, outside of Silicon Valley, there's an area of town called Marin County. Have you ever been over there?

Yeah.

Absolutely beautiful, yeah. And one of the mentors that I would love to interview, but he's deceased, is Alan Watts.

I'm reading one of his books right now.

Which one?

The Waterway course. It's the last book he ever wrote and he didn't even finish it. He died in the middle of writing it.

Listen. Another beautiful one is the Wisdom of Insecurity. There's so much gold nugget. A lot of the concepts that he's bringing forth from a spiritual perspective. I think you're cracking the code on from a neurological and humanity perspective. Anyways, one of the famous things he ever said was, you know, students would come to me and they would ask me, what should I do? What's my purpose? And he would say, well, what makes you itch? What makes you itch? What is it that you can't not do? What is the thing that if money was no option, that you would do anyways? And his student would say, oh, I love horses. And he would say, well, do you want to open a riding school? And they would respond and say, well, I can't do that. It won't make enough money. And he's like, listen, all you have to do is devote your heart and soul into something that you love so much. And over time, right, that liminal space, over time you will become so proficient and you'll become so talented and so good and so passionate and so known for the thing that you love that people will not be able to give you money. They'll have to give you money for it because they'll feel the energy of your authenticity because you sat with that liminal space for as long as you needed to, because you're doing the thing that makes you itch. And I just love that so much. Because what is it? We all have a thing that makes us itch, but we tell ourselves a story that we can't do it because of abc, the unconscious scripts that you write about in your book. I really love this so much, and I wonder how you feel with all the things. We're really gift with affluence, aren't we? We have so much time to explore and even talk about spiritual concepts. There are times where I'm like, I can't believe I make money doing what I'm doing. But I sat for years and probably seven years before I made really any good money doing what I'm doing now. It took me seven years of being in kind of a really fucked up liminal space for quite a while. Do people come to you with a similar question that they came to Alan Watts with. What is it that makes you itch? Have you experienced this in lectures and programs?

I love the itch thing and. But I would take it one step further.

Yes.

Which is in the way you just described it. It also assumes that you actually know that scratching that itch is the right thing for you. And it's not always the case. But the problem is that you assume that, you know, because you love horses, you might want to do this thing, but then you feel like, oh, but I can't do it. And so you spend your entire your life thinking that there might be a better life for you, but that you can't really allow yourself to explore it. Another thing that might happen is that you actually do it and you realize, oh, actually I love horses, but not.

I hate the admin.

Exactly.

Yeah. I don't want to run this business.

It sucks, but then it's great. And that's what I mean by embracing the liminal spaces and learning more about yourself and your work and the world is that if you scratch the itch. I didn't know this expression, but I think it's so perfect. You might also realize that that's not the right. It's like it's just maybe another one.

Yeah.

And instead of spending your entire life wondering how what life could look like if you allowed yourself to explore this thing, you can just go give it a try and then figure out that it's not for you. For me, although I was following a script at the time, I feel so fortunate that I got to build a startup so early in life and realized that that's not for me, that's not the business model that I didn't scratch your itch. I didn't.

And.

And it was really like, beyond the fact that the startup felt for intrinsic reasons to the startup, the startup model itself. And being the CEO of a startup with VC money was not aligned with the kind of life that I wanted to have. And so to me, it's so lucky that I got to try it and fail.

Yeah.

So early in life. And that's another gift of liminal spaces. It's the gift of failure. It's the gift of knowing that this thing did not work out. And that's really the experimental mindset when you think about it, because when a scientist designs an experiment, they're not trying to get to a specific outcome, because if they knew what was going to happen, there's no point in running the experiment.

Well, there are some scientists that do that good. Scientists, that's more like in big pharma and big food, they do that a lot.

Yes.

They know the outcome and that they're going to prove the theory for before the. They get the phone.

I don't think they deserve to be called scientists.

I agree.

Yeah. So.

But these are the people that tell us trust the science. Those are the same people.

Yeah. Don't. Don't listen to anyone saying trust.

Anybody says trust the science. Run.

But a. An actual scientist would start from a hypothesis, a research question. The reason why they're conducting the experiment is because they genuinely don't know. Right. And there's also the null hypothesis. So actually they sometimes start from a place of I'm probably wrong. They generally say I'm probably wrong. But let's give this a try. And this is what happens when you embrace liminal spaces. You can say, I actually have no idea. This could be wrong. I just have a feeling. I feel this little itch that I might enjoy this thing, that this might bring me joy. Or maybe I'm good. I'm going to be good at this. Maybe people have commented on the fact that I was a good listener. And so maybe I'm curious about exploring therapy. I don't know what it is. Right. And just. Just an itch. But I don't know. I try it. I collect actual data about myself, about the work, about the world. And looking at this data, I can actually then draw real conclusions, authentic conclusions about the actual experience. And that conclusion might very well be. I hated this. I hated this. I don't want to do this. I think it's going to be something else. I don't know what yet, but it's not the thing. And that's another gift of liminal spaces.

One itch leads to the next itch. It's like our soul has many itches over a lifetime. That's the first time you're hearing this phrase.

Yes.

I love it. This is why I love podcasting, because really, wellness and wisdom is about trading wisdom. It's not just hearing one thing as the ultimate answer of truth. It's having conversations like this where people can learn what's their truth, what's their authenticity. And I think even the title of your book, Tiny Experiments, the reason that I've experimented so much in my life is because I would itch something and it wouldn't feel good. I thought personal training was going to be the thing for me. I did it for 10 years, and then I started to feel hollow because I was Just spending my whole life shining light on other people. And I was dark, holding the flashlight. I wasn't illuminating myself. So I wonder how you feel about this concept. I've been working on a few things for my program and my students, and it's this concept of holding a lantern. A leader, a true leader is somebody who's doing experiments on themselves. And they're doing it in public, they're doing it in broad daylight, which is both, you know, jar shattering and also very liberating. This concept that I've been flushing out is that a true leader holds a lantern. Because when I'm holding a lantern up, I'm illuminating me, my own growth, my own insecurities, my own stuff, and I'm giving permission through that same lantern for them to do the same. Does that resonate with you, that concept?

Yeah, absolutely. I. I would actually think about it more, as in illuminating a space. A shared space.

Yes.

I think to me, that's the way I visualize it. That feels more natural when I think about learning in public. And it's about having this, this lantern that I'm almost holding at the top.

Yes.

But everybody joining in to that circle of, of light where we can look at each other and say, okay, hey, everyone, I'm going to try this thing. Look. Okay, this is working. This is not working. You get feedback. People tell you what they think. People also, and that's what I love about learning in public. It's that it's not just about sharing what worked, but also sharing what didn't.

Oh, that's the most important part.

The most important part.

That's the good stuff.

Raising your hand, saying, hey, everyone, I tried this. It went horribly wrong. This is what I learned.

It's so good. Okay, so this is on page 197 of the book, y', all. Which, by the way, the. Where do they get the book?

Anywhere you can just type tiny experiments anywhere books are sold.

This is powerful. Public pledge, public platform, public practice. It's a three step formula. I love threes, by the way. I feel like everything in threes. The Fibonacci sequence, beginning, middle and end. Sunrise, sunset, nighttime. Everything happens in threes. Public pledge, public platform, public practice. The part about this that's so challenging is when you're doing it in public, all the stories come up. Insecurity. Who am I to be saying this? Who am I to be learning in public? I should have it figured out before I teach it. I actually think that that's the antithesis of authenticity. The opposite of authenticity is when you have to have it perfected before you speak about it, before you share about it, that means that only black belts could ever teach white belts. It's completely false. How did you come up with this and what's been the most exposing thing for you learning in public?

I came up with it because I started practicing it myself. And so the practice actually came before the formulating of a structure that I could then provide to other people who would want to do the same. I started writing online as an experiment in public where I said I'm going to write 100 newsletters in 100 weekdays. Which was very scary for me at the time because English is not my first language. And I decided to do it in English and it was a way for me to learn about just writing in English. I'm fairly good. Sounds like braggy. I'm a very good writer in French. I won prizes and all of that. And so I had a lot of pride around my writing in French because I grew up being praised by teachers and being put up for national prizes and those kind of things. And so English for me, there was a part of me that was tempted to stay comfortable and stick with just writing emails where it doesn't matter and you can't really do anything wrong, right? Nobody's going to say, oh, this email doesn't sound very good. And so I wanted to have this, this, this public, this practice of writing regularly. And on the other hand, that's when I started my neuroscience studies and I also wanted to have a way to, and I wanted to have a way to also better understand and remember the stuff that I was studying in university. And I discovered this thing called the generation effect, which shows that when you create your own version of something, whether through writing or a podcast conversation, a YouTube video, it doesn't matter, but you're going to find form stronger connections in your long term memory when you do this. So I thought it was pretty neat and I decided to start this experiment of learning in public, learning what I was studying in university in public through this newsletter. And it was nerve wracking at first, even though the first newsletter I sent to maybe like 50 or 100 people and including my mom who was on the list, she doesn't even speak English, so she couldn't even read it, but I thought, you know, my English is not perfect, etc. Etc. So that was one. And then since then I've conducted so many. The most challenging one for me recently was around public speaking where I was terrified of public speaking and, and I'M talking really. Stomach cramps, nightmares. For weeks before I had any kind of public presentation, and it would take over my life. I was procrastinating on everything else because I could only think about this presentation that I had to give. So, again, I decided to experiment. I started small. I said for the next 10 days, every day, I have to hit record on my phone and talk about something, whatever it is, and publish it on Instagram. No editing, nothing super scary. And somehow after five or six days, not so scary anymore. Little by little, there's this habituation happening where you realize that you're. You're literally teaching your brain. Look, you do the thing, nothing bad happens. You're still alive.

Yeah.

And little by little, like, I started experimenting a little bit more. And little by little, I started becoming a little bit more ambitious with. With the scope of the experiment. And so it was small events, online workshops, up to now, giving keynotes where I'm actually not that scared anymore. And what I've done to learn in public is to really share this entire journey. So I wrote about it. I shared different tips, my experiences, the fears, the questions. Also, that's what I love about learning in public, is that it was not about me just saying, hey, I'm doing this thing. I'm experimenting with this. And this is what I learned. It's inviting contributions, inviting feedback, inviting ideas.

Ooh, this is so good. I have to interrupt you because I know you were gonna keep going. The part that I want people to feel from this is. It's the systematic desensitization of doing the thing, moving a tiny bit closer to it each day. I've heard Jordan Peterson talk about this with his. With his patients. He would actually have someone who was super afraid of going into a elevator. Just walk to the building on day one. Day two, walk to the elevator. Day three, touch the elevator. Just this systematic deprogramming, if you will, of fear, which is completely irrational. So I just really wanted people to feel that because what you're describing by, you know, your hand shaking on day one turned into probably you enjoying it.

Yes, exactly. And, I mean, that's why the book is called Tiny Experiments, is because we have this maximalist brain where we feel like if we start trying something new, if we want to get out of our comfort zone, we have to go big straight away. It has to be very, very scary. But it doesn't have to. You can actually start with the smallest version of whatever it is you want to explore, and just really asking it can be a very creative exercise. Actually thinking I had fun trying to figure out, okay, clearly I'm very scared of getting on stage. What's the tiny version of this? Me on my own, in my pajamas, in my living room, just my phone. That's the tiniest version of this that I can come up with. Let's start with that and then let's see if we feel comfortable, when we feel comfortable, how we can expand the scope.

It's so interesting. You said that the great scientists start out and they just say, maybe I'm wrong. And that's exactly what it feels like. Tiny experiments is it's actually proving to your brain that all the irrational fear isn't real, that it's wrong. Because why would it be the same fear if we hold up a phone or if we're on the stage, to our nervous system or to our unconscious mind, as if we were going to die? I think public speaking is one of the top fears in the world, but it actually doesn't make sense. It's baked in on this primal, maybe the amygdala portion, where back in the day in tribes we could be ostracized if we were deemed unworthy or if we were deemed stupid or if we were deemed unvaluable to the tribe. It's really baked in. We're on this evolutionary curve that you and I even have, and I'll say it again, the affluence and the spaciousness to even explore our own fears, to even do our tiny experiments. Because I would say for probably 99% of the things we're afraid of, if we just did the tiny experiments to prove ourselves wrong, how absolutely liberating life could be just proving that we're wrong all the time. And then there's no space for self righteousness either. It's literally, I feel like this is a Trojan horse of personal development.

Yes. And this is exactly how I see it. This is also why a lot of people ask me for frameworks and you mentioned earlier hacks and those kind of shortcuts.

Yeah.

To figure out what they want. And I always tell them I can't give you that. I don't have any prescriptive advice in this book. I'm just asking questions and inviting you to do the same. And I invite you to become comfortable with the fact that actually you have a lot more agency than you think, that whatever path you're on doesn't have to be the only one, that there might be things that you've been curious about that it's not too late to explore. But what these things are, what that looks like for you, how you design your life. In the end, I can't tell you because you need to run the experiments in order to know that.

Why do we not run the experiments? It feels to me like there's a flinch. So there's a double clutch, if you will, where we want to do the thing. We want to run the experiment. Maybe if it's tiny or medium or big, it's probably best to start tiny. Yeah. Most of the time, yes. Yet I just. I get this sense that we're, like, drowning in a soup of self empowerment, self improvement, language, and all these people on Instagram that are saying you should just be the best version of you. It's like starting out realistically with baby steps and tiny experiments is truly the way to go. But I just get this sense the reason we don't want to do that is because we want to avoid the pain we have a flinch around, you know, being seen as not perfect or being seen as dumb. Well, newsflash, y'. All. Anytime you do anything for the first time, you're gonna suck. It's just gonna happen. Like you're not going to be a great speaker. After Speaking engagement number one, it took me probably 3, 4, 500 podcasts to feel really good and comfortable doing what I'm doing. It just takes the reps, is what I'm saying. But what is the psychology behind this? You know, your studies in neuroscience, what is that? Part of the brain, or just the human being, if you will, that wants to avoid even doing the tiny experiment in the first place?

Yeah. I mean, you did mention the amygdala, but there is this fear of rejection that is incredibly strong.

Where does that live in us?

In the amygdala?

It does live in the amygdala.

Yeah. That. This fear of rejection is very primal. It's very, very primal. It comes from really, the beginning of humanity, where the reason why we're so good at surviving is because we work together. We are social animals. We have different roles. We're supposed to look like we're contributing in a meaningful way to the group. And especially, like, you know, in older, ancient times, where food was limited. And so you kind of have to think at a tribe level, who's contributing what and how many. How much resources do we have and how do we split that in between people? And so if you're the person who looks like they don't know what they're they're doing, they're not contributing much, and they're eating all the food, nobody's going to want you to stay and you're going to be in very graveyard danger. And so because of that, we also tend to associate our worth as an individual, as part of society, with how we're perceived by others. And we want to be perceived not as the person who is asking the most questions, but as the person who provides the most answers. We want to look like we're an expert, we're useful. And so it's very hard to go back to that place that is almost like a childlike kind of curiosity of being able to say, actually, I don't really know what I'm doing here, but I kind of want to figure it out, so I'm going to give this a try. And by the way, I'm 80% sure I'm going to fail, but I still want to give it a go.

I love that you said we are in fear of being the one that asks too many questions and doesn't give enough answers. That has been probably the tapestry of my whole life, which is why I ask questions for a living, because I really enjoy being in that child mind, being in that beginner's mind. I think if you look at any religious or metaphysical teaching or even scientific teaching, the people that have the most open mind and ask the most intelligent questions are the ones that, for lack of a better term, may control the situation. So it's a paradox because if you have all the answers, then there's nothing new to learn. And if there's nothing new to learn, then you may never run any tiny experiments at all on yourself. You could just live in an echo chamber, which is part of what's, I think, dividing our nation and dividing people right now is everyone thinks that they have it all figured out and they don't need to run an experiment because whatever you have to say doesn't resonate with what I believe to be true. But everything we believe to be true was taught to us by somebody that thought that it was their truth. And then they were taught by somebody that thought it was their truth. To quote Alan Watts, it's all wretch and no vomit. We just keep raising generation after generation to spew the same thing. The spaciousness for tiny experiments only happens. I believe in community. I know you did the videos by yourself, but community is where vulnerability and experiments really start to multiply apply. Have you seen this play out?

And I posted the videos online.

So you were, you were part of a community.

Yeah, and I got a lot of very nice comments, actually, from people saying, even people noticing how I was getting more comfortable. And I noticed that you smiled more. And then I rewatched the video and I noticed that. Oh, it's true, actually, I do smile more. And so I was also learning faster and becoming more aware of my own progress, just by virtue of having. Being in community, as you said, and having other people witnessing.

Yeah.

The. The experiment and mirroring it back, sending me back some signals that I could then use to implement in my next cycle of experimentation.

There's. There's so much here. We literally scratched the tip of the tip of the iceberg for tiny experiments. So, y' all, please get this book. If there was one thing. Going to ask you a difficult question.

Yeah.

If there was one thing that you'd really want someone to feel and be able to be inspired by about this lifestyle of making your entire existence a tiny experiment after tiny experiment. What is the permission slip that you really want to give to people? What is the inspiration that you really want to provide through this work?

You don't have to build a legacy. Focus on what you can create right now with and for the people who are sharing this planet and this house or workplace with you right now.

All right, well, I'm going to push back because I'm a man and I'm all about legacy. So I want to. I want to create wealth and abundance so that my children don't have to suffer like I have. So there's. There's an experiment that I'm running about. One of the other teaching models I have, which is the Wellness Pentagon. It's the nourishment of mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, spiritual, and financial self. I think when we're all feeding those parts of ourselves and when we're in experimentation by the way of learning how to feed those, because if one is leaking, it takes away from the other. Part of the financial mastery that I've been learning in my life is that it's actually not about me at all. It's about me enjoying my life so that when I leave, I've enjoyed my life and I've left them legacy. So it's not just the sole purpose of legacy, but I do desire that my fruits of my life yield a legacy for my children so that they can be afforded a spaciousness of suffering in different ways, suffering in creative ways, suffering in ways that don't have to be at the bottom of Maslow's triangle, which I've really suffered in my life. Being raised on welfare and having a bipolar mother and having a dad that left home When I was really young, These are things that I'm still unwinding at 44. And many people that read this book, they're going to have their own unique unwindings to do when they start experimenting. So I wonder. I want to push back on that. Right?

Yeah. No, and thank you.

So the legacy part's big for. For me and for a lot of men, I think.

I think the problem is really, for me, conflating really what legacy is with. With financial security. In that case, when you die and people ask your kids, what was your dad's legacy? They're probably never going to mention the money or that actually maybe something went really wrong. If that's what they mentioned, they'll mention the conversations they had with you, the long walks, the times that you gave them a hug when they were scared or when something went wrong. That's what they're going to mention. And that's what I talk about in the book. And the word for that is generativity. It's generating those unique experiences that you can only have right now when you're. While you're alive, not while you're dead, not with whatever you leave on your bank account for your kids to enjoy when you're gone. And that's what I talk about in the book, replacing this focus on legacy with a focus on generativity. Because if you focus on generativity, then your kids are going to remember you for all of the right reasons and you can still save money and give. You give them that money. It's not necessarily, you know, but that's not your legacy. The amount of money you leave to your kids is not your legacy.

Damn it. You're right. Come on. That was so good. Now, the reason I feel like you're right is because I think we can hold them both as long as one doesn't take away from the other. Like, in other words, if I'm creating beautiful memories of my children. I heard a billionaire once being interviewed, and the guy asked him, what's your definition of success? And he said, you know what success is? It's when your kids go away to college and they want to come home on the holidays and spend time with you. That's success, and that's spoken from a billionaire. So I hear you. I'm with you. I think that we can have both. I think we live in a world of abundance. I think that, like Bob Proctor said, you take from abundance and abundance is still there. So my legacy that I leave for them doesn't have to be at a Cost to the memories that I make with them. So that's a beautiful reminder. Really hit my heart on that one. Thank you for that. We covered a lot of ground on this podcast. This is really, really beautiful. This concept of experimenting, specifically tiny experiments. It makes me remember some training that I did around behavior change with BJ Fogg. He has a model called Tiny Habits. Are you familiar with this world?

So the reason why I'm familiar with his book is because I was asked when I picked the title if I was worried that people would confuse it with Tiny Habits. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not confused by it.

No. And I said no, but.

But I love that his. His. His legacy that he left through his. Through this work. I think he's still alive, obviously, but he said that, you know, it's. It's doing the. The small things every day that actually give you the bolus of change where you can do an identity shift. I think, for everyone, really, what the book represents is shifting identity. Right? Shifting identity by doing the work that's uncomfortable in community, by the way, because we're not lone wolves. We can't just do this on our own, nor are we designed to be that way. But can we just, like, let go of all the irrational fear that we're going to be not enough that we're going to be judged, that we're going to be proven to the tribe as unworthy and ostracized? It just doesn't exist anymore. It really doesn't. Like, we're in a completely new vein of humanity now where a lot of the old amygdala wiring just doesn't constitute reality now. But we're so plugged into that old world that old way. And we see so much of the technocrats from Silicon Valley weaponizing our attention through devices and phones to make us feel inadequate so that we buy things, and monetizing our own lack of emotional intelligence. So we're in a real duality here. And I wonder how you see this playing out as we say goodbye.

The title of the last chapter of the book is Beyond Legacy. And I think beyond is this keyword where I don't think as human beings that we can avoid feeling those fears, this fear of rejection, this desire to get ahead, to be successful, to look like we got it all figured out. But we can teach ourselves to move beyond these. Notice it in our lives when that's what we're doing. Notice when we're following a script, notice when we're focused on legacy at the expense of everything else. Noticing when our Priorities are maybe gone so wrong that we have no space for curiosity in our lives. And once we've noticed, asking the hard questions and trying to find the answers.

So beautiful. Tell everybody your website where they can go play.

So nestlabs.com and e s s l a d s.com have a weekly newsletter there where I write about a lot of the things that we just talked about. And then the book is available literally anywhere. You just type tiny experiments and you'll find it.

And are you still doing the social media videos where you hold the phone up?

I actually had a tiny experiment where I wanted to walk every day during my book tour because I was spending a lot of time on my computer, and I decided to film myself on my walks and just share a little bit about what was on my mind. I would have never done that a few years ago, but this time around and now, through all of those trials and errors, it actually felt fun.

Yeah. Isn't that really what we all want? We all just want to enjoy this thing. We make it so complicated because we believe the irrational fears that our brain tells us. Which, by the way, it's not a bad thing. It's just we get to evolve. We get to evolve. We get to do tiny experiments. Thank you for being my guest.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'll share with you guys. She reached out and I was like, who is this? I totally resonate with her work. And it's because I am in a phase of my life, like many of us, where outwardly it seems successful, but inwardly there's a churning of something yearning that wants something different. And at 44, whether I'm 34, 44, 54, 94, I just want to share with y'. All. Wherever you are is perfect. You know, wherever you're at in your development of self, in your family, as long as you can take a breath and have this experimental mindset, you can really shift the course of your life. You can do a true identity shift when you start tapping into your emotional epigenetics and seeing yourself through this lens of the wellness Pentagon and understanding what makes you itch, what makes you happy, what are the things in life that you really enjoy. Please promise me that you'll share this podcast with somebody who's struggling, that would really benefit from a tiny experiment or multiple in their life. All right, so until I see you next week, I'm wishing you love, wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. You cannot have power unless you have peace. We'll talk with you soon.