The Miracle of Not Taking Life Too Seriously

The fact that we're here and that we're the only planet we know of that's inhabitable by humans and it has a civilization the way that we have a civilization, it feels pretty miraculous. Depersonalization is one of the number one things that can bring us peace. When I was happy, I would eat. When I was sad, I would eat. When I was stressed, I would eat. When I was celebrating, I would eat. When I was having a stressful day, I would eat. Like food became the coping mechanism to deal with seriousness. How could it be possible that anything that happens is not also a miracle if it happens inside the container of a miracle? What if sometimes the best way to move forward is to slow down and have a little fun? In a world where self-help seems to dominate, it's easy to get caught up in the idea of constant development, always striving for more and taking ourselves way too seriously. Don't get me wrong, self-help has its place and can be incredibly valuable, but what if we took a step back and remembered that sometimes having fun and embracing the moment is just as important? The topic of self-help can sometimes feel way too serious and then there's the extreme of people who have done way too much of it and start to wear it as a talisman and act all enlightened, which is ultimately off-putting for many other people who benefit from it. And this is why I'm excited to have Jason Goldberg on the show today. Jason is a coach, a speaker and an author who is on a mission to help people escape their self-imposed prisons and to live their best lives. But what sets Jason apart is his approach to personal growth. He believes that having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously is essential to achieving true transformation. So if you're tired of the same old self-help advice and are looking for a fresh perspective on personal growth, you're in for a treat. So let's dive into the conversation with Jason and see what insights and laughter we can uncover together. So, hey Jason, welcome to the show. Awesome to have you here. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for joining everyone here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm going to give you like completely free rein. Let's talk a bit about you, get this warmed up and take it any which way you want to take it. Yeah. So what do you want to know? Tell me, what's curious about it in that ridiculous bio that I have that just sounds so narcissistic when I read it to myself? I'm most curious obviously about the former rapper part. Yeah, well of course. Well, it's funny. I got into hip hop just as a fan when I was about 13 years old. I remember went to a garage sale that was right across the street from my home, my family house. And they were selling an old CD player, like super old CD player and then a big stack of CDs. So I was able to convince my mom to give me, I think it was like 10 or 12 bucks or something, to buy this old CD player and to buy two CDs. And the first two CDs I bought, one was Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which for anybody who's like a hip hop head, that was like a very classic album in the early 90s. And then DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, which is Will Smith, his album Summertime. And I just listened to both of those and I got so into hip hop. And so around the age of 16, I started actually trying to write my own raps, like trying to like sit there and write my own. And then that just kept growing and growing. And then when I was 19, I ended up meeting up with a group of guys that were recording music, producing music. And kind of I fell in with that crowd kind of serendipitously. And then I ended up staying with them and we ended up doing shows all over the US and recording a bunch of music. And I opened for the Wu-Tang Clan at one point and it was just a really, really fun thing. And to this day, I still love hip hop. I'm actually going to a Kendrick Lamar concert tonight here in Los Angeles. So I love hip hop, man. Awesome. So when I first saw you, when we met during Mindvalley, I was really impressed by your container in you, how comfortable and at home you were on the stage and like when speaking. Do you think it stemmed back from the hip hop or like has the hip hop career in any way affected that or like was that the push you needed to like get on stage and like do this? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because if I look back, if I look back to being a kid, I was always kind of the class clown, the center of attention, the, you know, making, doing little sketches and skits in front of my family to make them laugh and to entertain them. And so I think it started way back then. And then I think the thing with the rap that was actually interesting, and you're absolutely right, there's a direct connection between my rap days and what I'm doing now. And that connection is when I went on stage as a rapper back when I first started, I got some pretty weird looks from the crowd. I was a fat white Jewish kid and people were like, why is this guy rapping? What is going on? That's a niche. Yeah, it's a very, very hyper niche. And so I would see this, you know, the crowd would basically be a crowd of people doing this. Like if you can't see the video, it's crossing their arms and they just, it was, there was a lot of resistance. Like they didn't want to like me. They didn't want to let me in. And I felt that from the stage and it's, hip hop crowds can sometimes be a very judgmental group. And so what I realized was that if in between songs or as a part of my stage act of rapping, I also could bring in some humor and levity, I noticed people soften. I noticed them stop being so resistant to seeing me on stage. I noticed them smiling more and getting more into the show and everything else. And that's when I really saw that my gift really is to bring levity and to bring humor into otherwise complex or serious situations. And so it really was a big part of what I'm able to do now was cultivating that ability to bring in levity when I was a rapper, when I was on stage. Yeah, it's never too good to take yourself like way too seriously because I had an experience kind of similar, kind of not similar a while ago when I was doing my first competition. I do like jiu-jitsu and it's like a kind of like a wrestling sport. And I had my first competition and my expectations were so high, which what happened is that I just went there and as soon as I made contact with the opponent, I had a complete adrenaline dump, tunnel vision, saw nothing else. And in two minutes, I completely winded myself out and like everything was gone. So it was like a complete failure because of the really high expectations that I had going in there. And these were all external expectations. I wanted to win. I wanted to get it, not the internal ones. Right, right. And that's and that happens to so many of us, myself included. It's, you know, anytime we put a lot of pressure on ourselves or on a thing we're creating, anytime we make something overly significant. And for me in my mind, you know, when I talk about not being so serious, and this is a big part of what I do, I mean, I have an entire talk that I do called How to Live a Not-So-Serious Life. And because I really believe that seriousness is a detriment to our success. But so when people hear me say that, you know, I advocate or invite them to consider that there's a possibility to live a not so serious life, they think what I'm saying is, oh, well, if I'm not going to be serious, that means I'm going to be flippant. I'm going to be aimless. I'm going to be reckless. I'm not going to have any goals. I'm not going to have any ambitions. I'm just going to get drunk and high all the time and never do anything with my life. And that's not at all what I mean when I say living a not so serious life. To me, I equate the word serious with significant. I equate the word serious with heaviness, right? So if somebody has told me, which they've told me my entire life, you know, if you ever want to be in a serious relationship, you better do this. If you were a serious entrepreneur, you would do this. If you don't get serious about your health, you're going to have some real problems. And these are real things that people told me. And it's not that the messages are wrong. It's that the energy we make them overly heavy, when we make them overly serious, we have a contracted energy. We don't have access to the same level of creativity. And so what I mean is think about it this way. Imagine you are a heart surgeon, right? And if you're a heart surgeon, you do very, very delicate work. I mean, the work that I do, nothing compared to what a freaking heart surgeon is doing. So step one, I don't have to take my work too seriously because I'm not a freaking heart surgeon, not life or death with what I'm doing. But imagine you're a heart surgeon. You do these very intricate surgeries with these very fine blades and a quarter of an inch to the left, you kill somebody, a quarter of an inch to the right, you kill somebody. It's such a special thing to be able to do that. Now, imagine as a heart surgeon, you walked around all day, clenching your fist as hard as you could, like literally all day clenching your fist, like your nails are digging into your fingers, all the blood is rushing down your arms and into your hands. Imagine you do that all day. And then after doing that all day, you're expected to go sit down and do or stand up and do an intricate heart surgery. You wouldn't be able to, you'd have so much atrophy or so much fatigue in your fingers and in your joints from squeezing so hard all day, that your hands would be shaking. You wouldn't be able to do this intricate surgery. But that's what we do. We put so much pressure on ourselves. You know, putting pressure on the muscles is great. It makes them grow. Putting too much pressure on the mind actually makes it shrink. So I want to remove, I want to loosen my grip, like literally and figuratively. I want to loosen my grip, which means I can still be sincere about the work I'm doing. I still want to bring all of my love and attention and focus and dedication to the work I'm doing, but I don't want to make it overly serious or overly significant. Yeah. And that has to do with what you said there before. There's a for your, let's say labels or your like worth from extrinsic values, you have no control over them, what's going to happen. Right. But when you start measuring your success against your intrinsic values, that's where you can actually build happiness. And are you familiar with Paul Graham, the name Paul Graham? No, I don't think so. He's the founder of this startup accelerator called Y Combinator. Oh, I know Y Combinator. Yes, right. Yeah. Yeah. And he has these like short stories on his website, like little parables. I love reading them. They're like such good thoughts. And there's one about, I might butcher this a bit, but it's about having labels. And I think it was titled like the more label, the idea was the more labels you have for yourself, the more stupid you are, but also, also connecting the connecting with your, what you're saying is well, the more labels you have, the unhappier it's going to make you because you have to live up to all these labels that you're putting on yourself. So I love that, the idea around that. So, but you're also, but you have been a serious entrepreneur. You have done serious things and you have come from that world. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, so the things weren't serious, but I made them serious. Right. And that's the entire thing is that my lens on the world, the reason that I got to 330 pounds, of course, we could say that the logical thing is I ate too much crap and I didn't move enough. That's pretty easy to see that that's why I would get to 330 pounds, but, or 150 kilos, but there's something that comes before that. There's kind of a meta layer to that. And the meta layer to that was that I had so much stress and so much anxiety growing up and depression and suicidal ideation into my twenties. And I was put on antidepressants when I was 15, 16 years old. Doctors put me on these antidepressants. And so I had all this stuff going on in my world that was so hard to deal with. It felt so heavy. And because I took all of that so seriously, I had to find a coping mechanism to deal with all of that seriousness. For some people, it's drugs. For some people, it's sex. For me, it was food. And so when I was happy, I would eat. When I was sad, I would eat. When I was stressed, I would eat. When I was celebrating, I would eat. When I was having a stressful day, I would eat. Like food became the coping mechanism to deal with seriousness. So if I had removed the seriousness, and I can't know because I can't go back in time, but based on the work that I've now been doing with people for the last 10 years around this exact topic, if I removed the seriousness that I was projecting onto all the things that were going on in my life, I may not have needed a coping mechanism like food to actually live my life. And so that's what I'm pointing to here for everybody listening is that I'm not saying there aren't things in your life that feel very significant. I'm not saying there aren't things in your life that feel very serious. The question becomes which version of you is going to be the most effective at dealing with those things? The one that is projecting that it's all serious and it's all big deal. It's all heavy and oh my God, this is life or death. And if I don't get this right, then my whole life is over and I'm going to fail and be a failure. Is it that version of you that's going to be creative and expansive and be able to figure out the issues? Or are you better equipped to deal with those things when you have a clear, calm mind, when you have perspective, when you don't take the things too seriously, when they're still important, but when you don't make them overly significant. So this isn't just to be like some airy fairy like, oh, everybody's in, let's just meditate seven hours a day and all of our problems will disappear. I'm not saying that at all. We live in the world of form. I love Buddhism and I love Buddhists, but they get to be isolated in their place where they don't have the things of the world coming at them the way we do. We live in the world of form. And so we have to know how to balance that. How do we live in the world of form that a lot of it does need our attention, but without bringing that level of seriousness to the process? Speaking from personal experience, what happens to me is these things go in waves. I have periods where I'm very serious and then I have periods where I'm very playful. And they change within, let's say, three months, six months, a year, depends on what the exact duration of them is. And I've noticed it has a lot to do with my work if I'm building something, if I'm working on a project. And right now I'm really trying to balance all of them because we are building something. But the habit pattern that I want to break that I've noticed myself in the past is I get so serious about things. And when I go home, I get so serious about my work. And then when I go home, I bring this all with me. And with previous partners, I've even gotten to the point is like they're having a good day, they're in their playful element. I go home with my energy. They maybe start telling me a joke or what went on with on like what happened during their day. And I'm just like impatient. That's just like, just like shaking. It's like, okay, get on with it. Get to the punch line. Okay, like, tell me the joke. Tell me what happened. Like quick, fast information. Give it to me now. You know, I don't have time for this. So it's a very weird place to be. And balancing it out is difficult. As I said, it's going in waves. Absolutely. Yeah, of course, of course it is because it's the human condition. Like it's and I would never expect anybody to be like fully zened out all the time. But the good thing to look at here, and if you don't mind me asking, what do you think would happen in those periods where you're building something? What do you think would happen if you just weren't serious? What's at risk if you're not serious? But that's the thing. I'm not conscious about it. It just comes on to me, sneaks up and jumps at me. I don't want to be serious, but it's just something that happens. And as soon as I notice it, I might dial it down if I remember to dial it down. You know, I even had this thing where I tattooed this hinga on my arm here. It means breathe in Estonian. It's kind of remind me this, but I got used to the tattoo and I don't ever notice it until someone points it out. Like, hey man, cool tattoo, you know, it just becomes so these things become invisible to you. That's at least my experience. Yeah, well, even that's funny, right? Because like, and I love that you have that, but even that's funny because the natural system, right? The way that the physiological system works and biological system works is that whether you remember to breathe or not, you're still going to breathe. Right? Breathing is done through you, not done by you, right? So breathing is one of those things that we can do both voluntarily and involuntarily. There's very few things in our bodies that we can do both voluntarily and involuntarily. Blinking is another one. So there's a few of these things. So just, I love that you brought that up because the same thing happens here where the natural state of the system is to be at rest, right? That the natural state is to be at rest. Doesn't mean we don't push ourselves and get out of our comfort zones and all that stuff. But the reason I was asking you what's at risk is because there is something, if I were to come up to you when you were in the midst of it, like you were really in it and I'd say, you know, why are you taking this so seriously? What do you think you would respond with in that moment? I'd get angry. Yeah. Why would you get angry? I feel it's like maybe the ego would feel challenged. You know, it's like, can't you see this is important? You know, why? And start like get defensive, let's say not angry, but defensive, definitely. Yeah. So what if I agreed with you and said, yeah, I get that it is super important, but why does it have to be serious? Yeah, I wouldn't have any good comebacks there. Right. And so that's the thing. That's the right. So that and so what I'm pointing out here is that the answer you're giving is what most the answer most people would give. They go, I don't really know. I just this is just isn't that how you're supposed to do it? You got to be serious. And when we really dive into that, and I've done this before, I remember I did a talk not too long ago for a big sales team for this company. They brought all their sales managers together. And I basically I took I wrote on the whiteboard, I drew a line down the center of the whiteboard. And on the left-hand side, I wrote I wrote in flow. And on the right-hand side, I wrote ready to blow. Right. And I said, so tell me some of the things like when you're in the flow, tell me some of the things you feel. And they go, you know, creative, expansive, collaborative, enthusiastic, excited, like all these things. Right. And on the right-hand side, I said, you know, ready to blow. What does it feel like when you're just when you feel like you're ready to blow, like you're ready to blow up. And people go, oh, you know, angry, resentful, irritated, agitated, you know, anxious, stressed, fearful, whatever it is, they're all in these two lists. And I said, cool. So so which of these lists do you feel you do your best work in? And everybody unanimously said, well, the inflow one, of course, right. And I said, cool. So why don't you just do more of that? And they look at me and this is the legitimate question. And they're all kind of like they're kind of looking a little like, you know, kind of like a dog sideways, kind of looking up at you. And like you said, something really strange. And then finally, somebody raised their hand and said, because if I don't stress out, then people aren't going to think I'm taking my work seriously. Or if I don't stress out, I'm not going to have the motivation to actually get it done. Or if I don't stress out, then, you know, I may not get a promotion because people will think that I'm not a hard enough worker. It's kind of like in the Japanese society that when you're sleeping at work, that's kind of rewarded socially because you're a hard worker. You're taking it seriously. You can't even say, yeah. Right. Exactly. And that has become the entrepreneurial badge of honor, right? Like hustle, hustle, hustle. You sleep when you die. Sleep is for the weak. Like all that kind of stuff. Exactly. It's like a talisman that people wear, like an ego talisman, like a symbolic talisman. It's like, I work so hard. I have no time. I'm constantly rushing around. Like I have so much to do. I'm in a hurry and I don't have any time for you. And exactly as you say, they wear it like a badge of honor when in reality it's like, you should get your shit together and organize your life. Right. And so that's what I kind of, that's what I'm pointing to here is that if we were able to let go of this belief that the only way we can really do good important work is to come from a place of seriousness and stress. If we really let that go and tested it, I'm not the guy that says, just trust me. If you let it go, the universe will provide whether you believe that or not, that's fine. But I'm not even telling you to do that. I'm just saying to test it, just test it and see what happens if you bring 5% less seriousness to whatever you're working on. So I had this one client I was working with. He was a physical trainer and he had all of this fear and all of this stress around having the money conversation. I quote the money conversation. Oh man, selling and I got it. Oh, I don't want to be salesy. And money is scary. And what if they think I'm too expensive? And all these things are going through this person's head. And I told him, I said, you know, listen, the reason we exchange money is because it's way more convenient than exchanging goats and chickens, right? That this is why we're doing this. It's just for ease of transfer of value. And we had some conversation. He really got that. And then he went on a call with a prospective client the next day and they get to the money part, right? So of course, this is when the fear is supposed to come up. And for whatever reason, when his prospective client said, okay, cool. Well, how much is it to work with you? My client said to him, it's three goats and two chickens. And immediately both of them started laughing, right? Because it's like, what do you mean? That's ridiculous. And then he told him the actual price. But do you see how just by bringing that levity in, both people got to relax and then they still had the money conversation. We didn't ignore the money conversation, but that same money conversation went from being serious and heavy to being light and playful. And that's available to us no matter what it is we're working on. And you what you said before about your childhood and growing up, I have some of the parallels there. And the way I dealt with it, I buried myself in computer games, but I still carried all the stress, the anger, the resentment and everything inside me. And I heard you say as well in another interview that you used to explode with anger. And I never thought of myself as someone snappy or angry, but I remember even getting teased when I was like, maybe 15, 16 by classmates that like picked on because I would get so angry so fast and people had fun just picking on me and getting me really worked up and like wound up. And that's a long winded way of asking what's your experience with exploding at people with anger and what's the story behind that? Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that with me, man, because we definitely, we are tracking on that for sure. Anger was always a big part of my life growing up and from a very young age. And I would be the teenager that punched holes in walls. And once I could drive, if somebody cut me off in traffic, I'd chase them. I'd chase them down. I would be so hijacked. And I'm sure you know what this feels like. And I'm sure anybody else here has ever dealt with anger and knows what it feels like. You don't feel like you have any conscious decision. You just blow up. You just react. And so what's good to look at is it's not just for men, but especially for men. Anger is a more socially acceptable form of fear. Men don't like to admit they're afraid of something, but it's manly to get angry. So that's okay. We can get angry, but it's all still fear. So if I would get angry at somebody for picking on me, and I absolutely did, what I was really doing was I was afraid that I wasn't enough. I had a fear that I wasn't enough. And this person picking on me was activating that fear. And because I didn't know how to work with my emotions of fear, I went to the different emotion, which has some action and has some energy, and that's anger. And so anger is something that I'm afraid of. And so even if you blow up and you get angry, like whatever's going on, the first step here is afterwards. It's okay. If right now you just get hijacked and it's just your conditioning, it's how you've been programmed or how you've been responding up to this point, that's okay. The first step is not to radically change your life and stop being angry. The first step is after you get angry, once you've calmed down again, go back and look at the trigger of made you angry and ask yourself, what is it that I'm actually afraid of here? Because if you were going to pick on me, let's say, for example, if a five-year-old kid walked up to me and said, Jason, you're a poopy head with purple hair. I wouldn't get angry because there's no fear inside of me that I'm actually a poopy head with purple hair. I have no belief in that whatsoever. So I don't need to do any work on it. I don't need to meditate or calm myself or go see my coach or go see a therapist. It doesn't affect me because I don't have a story that that's who I am, that person can activate. So if I can look at those fears afterwards even and just say, huh, that's interesting. When that person picked on me and I got really angry, when I really sit with that, I realize I'm afraid that I'm never going to be accepted. These people picking on me, this is a sign to me that maybe I'll never be accepted. Cool. Let's work on that fear of feeling like I'm never going to be accepted. Let's really go into that. Let's contact that emotion. Let's sit with that emotion. Let's be graceful with that emotion. Let's welcome that emotion in and say, thank you for being here and I'm so sorry you feel that way. What can I do to help? What do you need from me right now? Do you need some reassurance? Do you need some love? Do you need me to let you know that it's all going to be okay? These are all just these unexplored parts of ourselves, a lot of times from childhood, that get activated in adulthood. So long way of saying, anger's okay. There's nothing wrong with anger as an emotion. The challenge becomes when we let the anger overtake us and we don't look at the actual root cause of why we get so emotional about that Let's put a pin in the what you mentioned about childhood and this stemming from a lot of let's say child what happened in your childhood but I want to address the triggers because what we talked about before the stages of being serious, being playful and as they like change in your life. What I find personally as well is when I'm in the stage of seriousness I have way more triggers than I usually do and I still have triggers even in my playfulness. I remember well I one of my most silliest triggers but this gets me anytime is technology in a sense if if something is supposed to work in a certain way but it doesn't then I get really angry like unreasonably angry I like scream angry and that if that would happen to me like let's say in even like today or tomorrow something that I would still get triggered and I remember being at like a Burning Man-esque kind of an event you know I'm I'm going with the flow everyone's happy there's this whole opening ceremony and I see a guy in front of me like people didn't have cell phones up but he brought his iPhone out you know and he wanted to film the opening ceremony but I'm standing behind him now I'm focused on him and I see his iPhone crashed and I'm man I got so angry at that dude's iPhone it's like how dare that iPhone crashed on him that man wanted to film that opening ceremony but that iPhone crashed I got so angry on that stupid that is yeah but but I get that I get that and the technology stuff has been a trigger for me too I get it I've also gotten really upset when technology is not doing its thing and and when I slow that down and I look at that for myself at least I don't know what it is for you but when I look at that for myself when the tech stuff's not working I start feeling out of control right like I don't know what to do and I need this thing to work and it's not working and so that triggers in me is the I don't know what to do means I must not know enough I must not be smart enough maybe I'm not cut out for this why didn't I get some other tech person to be involved so I didn't have to deal with this and it becomes all of this attack on myself right so if I'm not aware of that in the moment it's just me getting angry and yelling about technology but what's really deeper underneath there is that I feel like I did or I am something wrong and that's why the is giving me problems so so part of this and the same thing with the guy with the iPhone is the the tendency that we all have to take things personally right depersonalization is one of the number one things that can bring us peace depersonalization not making it about us and this is one of the things that I've had I remember there was this time that I was speaking at an event and it's an event that I had spoken at every year for probably three or four years and my talks were always the top rate of talks most of the time they were the number one rate of talk of the event I would always have an hour on stage and this year I get there and I notice that I have a 20 minute slot instead of an hour and I go well what the hell this is this is bullshit I've been speaking at this thing for years and I get the top rate of talks every year and why are they only giving me 20 minutes am I not as good as I thought I was are they sick of me are they bored with my talk did maybe people complain and say they don't like my talk and so they cut my back to 20 minutes like I went into all these stories and then I started getting angry how dare they do this to me I've been so loyal to them and come to this event every year and serve their people all because I went from an hour to 20 minutes like literally the only thing factual that happened is that I usually had a one hour slot now I had a 20 minute slot but I have made up an entire season of a dramatic television show about what must be going on behind the scenes to make happen and so finally I sat for a minute I calmed down and I thought to myself okay if I knew this had nothing to do with me how would I respond in this situation right because I had personalized it but if I knew this had nothing to do with me personally how would I approach the situation and what occurred to me which it's so stupid it's so so simple but we just don't see simplicity when we're caught up in our thinking and we're sped up and we're angry is what occurred to me is to go ask the meeting organizer hey typically I've had an hour slot this year I only have 20 minutes I'm curious what changed sounds really simple right but it didn't even occur to me when I was caught up in the anger and so I went and I asked the organizer very calmly hey I'm really curious I typically had an hour slot this year only have 20 minutes did something change and they said oh yes sorry you know what we meant to email you about that we're trying to bring in some new speakers this year that nobody's ever seen before and just from a scheduling perspective in order to bring these additional speakers in we had to make everybody's talk a little bit less time and that's why you got bumped back to 20 minutes had nothing to do with me it literally had nothing to do with me and so so that's the thing here is to notice the difference between what's happening and the story I'm creating about what's happening and when I can take a step back and say how would I show up in this moment if I knew this thing whatever it is the person cutting me off in traffic the technology not working the you know the person shutting my idea down during a meeting whatever it is if I knew this had nothing to do with me how would I react and I always react better I always react from a more calm centered place when I ask myself that question yeah because most of the time no one else thinks about you as much as you think about you right there was an old meme I saw a long time ago and it said dance like nobody's watching because they're not they're all looking at their phones and uh and I was like yeah that actually is pretty accurate I throwing another curveball in here I remember listening to a podcast and I'm going to butcher this one as well but that was on the topic it ties into here a bit that was on the topic of buying expensive things you know you want an expensive car you want an expensive watch and but we buy those things so other people would think better of us so we would raise our value in the eyes of other people but when was the last guy you saw last time you saw a guy with an expensive car and you went like holy shit that's that must be a cool guy no you imagined yourself in that car and that's what it's like for other people as well when you have the cool car nobody gives a shit about you if you have a cool car they're imagining themselves in your cool car how good life would be if they had your cool car and tying up the previous topics you know is obviously harboring uh harboring anger at inanimate objects is silly we all recognize that but if you hadn't addressed that event organizer then you would have maybe went around harboring some sort of anger at them as well and uh was in a sauna with a friend a couple of days ago and he he uh i heard this quote from him it's like going around being angry at somebody i think it's an old proverb it's like carrying around a hot stone uh with the idea of giving it to somebody because you're only going to burn yourself carrying around that hot stone yeah yeah so you're destroying both like you're destroying yourself it's not doing nothing to them yeah it's not worth it at all yeah another version of that that that old proverb is like it's like drinking poison and wanting the other person to die right it's yeah it just doesn't it doesn't do it it just hurts you right so it's well-meaning but it's it's really good so much of this is about really slowing down and there's a there's a book that i love it was by an author by the name of richard carlson who is uh no longer with us he passed away from cancer a number of years ago uh but he has this book and it's called uh don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff right and it's and it's so great because it's it's so true that you know there there's this level of this has been a realization for myself over the last year just diving more and more into my own connection to spirit and spirituality is realizing that when i take things personally when i get overly angry when i get overly upset that things are not working out the way i want them to i'm actually bringing a huge sense of arrogance to my life right because i think that i know how everything should work in my life i think i know how everybody else around me should act i think i know the way technology should work all the time and it brings this level of arrogance and it's like look around us the fact that we're here depending on what your belief system is but the fact that we're here and that we're the only planet we know of that's inhabitable by humans and it has a civilization the way that we have a civilization it feels pretty miraculous science notwithstanding it feels pretty miraculous that not only did this planet exist but that somehow humans came to form and that we built all the things that we've built now so if we have if we can be in agreement that the fact that we are here is a miracle then shouldn't it mean that every experience we have within that miracle is also a miracle right how could it be possible anything that happens is not also a miracle if it happens inside the container of a miracle and so the reason i say that is because this is our chance to stop bringing so much arrogance to life and start bringing more humility to life start bringing more i couldn't possibly know how could i possibly control this there's a one in 400 trillion chance that i would be a human being this is the same probability of taking a life preserver and throwing it into one of the oceans randomly and having it land directly on a turtle's head as the turtle pokes its head out of the water that's the probability that you're a human and yet we think that technology should work all the time and nobody should cut me off in traffic and everything that i want should happen the way i want it to happen it's a pretty stressful way to live and it's not it's not accurate this year i've fallen behind my reading a lot and i haven't been working on myself as much as i did in previous years you know some periods you're consuming a lot than other periods like other other stages are doing a lot and putting energy into things and you don't have that much time to consume but i felt until rather recently that i was in a stage with myself where i was like completely done with self-help not in a way that i've never been too big into self-help anyway but i felt that i finished it i've done it all i know it all and i'm done i don't need any of stuff in my life and i remember my partner Miriam took me who you know as well very well she asked me to go with her to the mindvalley university that was happening in talin and there was a specific talk by florencia florencia andres and she was talking about confidence and i wanted to do my taxes and i was so dumb with self-help and i don't care about that stuff you know but okay if if miriam wants to go i'm gonna go there support her and her friend florencia and i'm just gonna sit in the back row on my laptop and do my taxes you know that was my plan going in and when i got there she started speaking and i was like okay it's gonna be rude to open my laptop into like the first minute you know it's just like right away i'm just gonna give it five minutes and then like go there like down there like when nobody's noticed when nobody notices anymore and i actually started listening and i got hooked and i was just looking at their listening and i had realizations that holy shit it's like i do have problems with confidence because she wasn't talking about confidence that i should show up it was talk she was talking about confidence in your work and what you're putting out into the world and to believe in to actually believe in your abilities and in your work and what you have to say is important and i realized that i have crippling self-doubt and anxiety around my work and she even tricked me into dancing which i was never gonna do like i'm not gonna go to a mind valley meant to do the dancing and singing part like that's not me you know but she there was a switcheroo and i just happened to dance and sing along and at the end of the session i even grabbed the mic and asked the question so i did the full mind valley experience nice that's awesome but what that made me realize is that i'm in a stage where i think i'm done with all this stuff but then something happens and it opens up and i realized i'm not done and there's like so much more to learn and it's coming from this place to the that's that's what i'm trying to aim at as well here is we get lost in our work our everyday lives and since we're feeling okay or like we're feeling good we might not notice all the things that are like slightly wrong or or what's going on in the background and with this long-winded explanation i'm trying to just like reach the people who are in this stage as well who might not be paying attention to like these little nagging things that are building up in the background that are gonna pile up and make you explode or burn out at some point because you need to address these things or might hinder you from actually reaching your full potential or trying to reach the goals that you want to reach to achieve them to really achieve them and that's what i love about your work as well is because you'd also talk about these self-limiting beliefs and how to prioritize things that are really important so maybe let's explore that you can take it any which way you want yeah yeah you know it's it's one of these things where and and i want everybody to know that's listening to this because i get this question a lot it's like oh so you've just always been this like you know not so serious whatever kind of person and as i mentioned earlier with my stress and anxiety and depression and everything else when i was younger but that hasn't miraculously gone away it left my own devices if i'm not doing the work on myself i will default back to seriousness and stress and anxiety and all those things so none of my work is about immunity from life it's about how to navigate life when it comes up so i'm not trying to get people to a place where they never feel stressed they never feel anxiety they never feel sadness that's reserved for people who are either sociopathic or heavily medicated and i don't want to be either one of those so so i want to still be able to feel but what happens here is that so often we think that or at least i'll just own this for myself when i was getting into this work i believed that me working on myself was a waste of time when there were real things that needed to get done right i got payroll to make or i gotta make sure this project gets launched or i gotta make sure to get back to all these clients who have emailed me like those are real things you want me to go meditate for a half an hour screw you i gotta get to work there's people are waiting on me they don't i oh sorry client i can't talk to you right now i'm gonna go sit with my eyes closed for a half an hour like no i'm not gonna do that right but here's the funny thing there's there's an old saying an old kind of proverb uh maybe not a proverb because it's that i meditate 30 minutes a day unless i'm super busy and then i meditate for an hour because that's the entire point the more you have going on the more you need to take care of yourself i was talking to a client about this yesterday is that traditional stress management and time management the metaphor that i i feel depicts that accurately would be if you if you flick on a lighter right and you have the flame coming off the lighter then it's it's it's how do we move our hand as close as possible to the lighter how can i how can i withstand the flame directly against my hand how can i get as close to the flame as possible that's what most stress and time management is how can i do more in the time that i have how can i do you know even more with less and how do i get more stuff done and how do i put more on my plate like you know how do i do that what i'm saying is the opposite is that if the lighter is up and the flame is going and i'm moving my hand towards it as soon as i start feeling some heat on my hand i want to slow down say oh wait a second okay this is getting hotter instead of moving closer to the flame let's take a pause and see what's actually going to help me in this moment and so we really really have to slow that down and realize that working on ourselves is a part of it's not apart from what we're trying to create we have to do that inner work now if you feel good and everything's going great i still say it's it's important to do the inner work stuff because it's it's uh it would be like going to gym one time and then saying oh i'm good i i did some some cardio i did some whatever i'm set now no you go back over and over again and so it's the same thing so i really want personal growth as much as possible and i know this won't always be the case but i want personal growth for people and like inner work and self work and all that i want people to do that because it's the most interesting thing they could be doing in that moment right that it really is like hey i wonder what else i'm capable of i wonder what else would happen if i really understood how to navigate my thoughts i wonder how much better i'd perform if i really understood where anxiety came from i don't want it to be oh man i'm broken and so i need to go read this book oh i suck so i need to go read this book oh i'm damaged so i need to go get this coach i don't want it to be something that you're doing because you're wrong and you need to be not wrong i want you to do it because we're just capable of so much and this is one route to figure out what we're capable of Mm-hmm. Wait, let me think quickly. Where do you take this next? I was so caught up. I was so caught up that I didn't think of the next question. No, no worries. That's okay. So... This is actually great. I would love to, I don't know how much of this will make it into the episode, but even in this moment, you're actually illustrating a beautiful point. Because the power in the moment we just had together was that we were both hyper present with what was going on. I was present with you sharing whatever I was sharing. You were hyper present with me listening and taking it in and seeing where it applies in your own life and formulating your thoughts around it. And so you didn't have another question ready for me right then. That's beautiful. That means you were fully present in the moment, right? And you didn't just listen to reply. You listen to understand. And the more we can practice that as humans listening to understand instead of just listening to reply, listening to really understand, not listening to just fill the space or go on to the next thing. The same thing with our lives. Like if we can really be present with the work we're doing in this moment and not say, well, I got to get through this because I got five other things to do. We're going to do this thing more effectively and we're going to have more energy for the next thing that we do. And if it means we have to take a slight pause in between thing one and thing two, that's OK. I completely agree with that. And to add to it is you never know what better feels like if you've never been better. You think you're well off. You think you're really good. But until you can take a level up, then you want to stay there. You don't want to level down. If you get what I'm saying is you want to stay good. But if you never explored what better feels like, then you're just stuck here and like maybe you don't have interest to explore these things. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's part of the same intelligent system I was saying before that, you know, that breathes our breath and that beats our heart. Like I'm not beating my heart right now. I have nothing to do with my heart beating whatsoever. It just happens on its own. When our body feels like it needs fuel, it sends a signal and goes, hey, idiot, you're hungry. Go eat something. If you haven't had any liquid in a while, your brain goes, hey, idiot, you're dehydrated. Go get some water. It shouldn't call you an idiot. I'm sure I hope your system is nicer to you than my system is to me. But the intelligent system is there to say, hey, this is off. You should go do something about that. And so the same way when I get thirsty, I don't go, oh, my God, I can I am such an idiot. I can't believe. Why am I thirsty? I just had water two hours ago. How dare my body be thirsty two hours after I had some water. Right. Same thing with hunger. Same thing with sleep. I don't know. I don't know that I've ever beat myself up for being hungry, for being tired or for being thirsty. And yet we beat ourselves up when we have self-doubt. We beat ourselves up when we're unclear about what to do next. We beat ourselves up when we think we said something stupid and we wish we had said something else. What if that's just an intelligent sign, just like thirst, just like hunger, just like just like fatigue or tiredness? What if that's just the internal system saying, hey, seems like this is a little off. You may want to look at it. Right. What if that's the early warning system that's built into our bodies and into our minds to let us know, hey, before this thing goes too far off the rails, seems like you're a bit stressed. Maybe we should slow down and take a look at that. But oftentimes we just fill the space and we distract ourselves instead of really going in to figure out what's going on. That's something that really resonates with me as well is these internal warning signs and listening to your body. And since most people, I guess I could say that most people are very disconnected with their bodies and their own feelings in general. They don't listen into their own feelings because, as you said, they're distracted constantly scrolling social media, getting new information on. So they're rarely alone with their own thoughts. And because of this, you don't notice the early warning signs until it's too late. And because we have so much information coming in, we're like lost in it. I would bet something and maybe I'll have a small monetary bet on place. Small amount. I would maybe place a small monetary bet on that, that this is one of the reasons that we have so many problems with mental illness. And that's why we prescribe so many antidepressants everywhere, everywhere, all over the world. Yep, I totally agree. Yeah, I totally agree. Those things that there is a time and a place for a pharmacological intervention, right? For taking drugs. There is a time and a place for it. The challenge becomes that has now become the first line of defense for so many physicians and so many people in health care. It's like, oh, let's just pop the pill instead of looking at the reasons why we're looking to pop the pill to begin with. So I'm not against medication for depression. I'm against using medication for depression or for anxiety or whatever else to distract ourselves away from what's actually going on in our system. And you're absolutely right. There are so many people, myself included, who are completely disconnected from their bodies. Like I for the first 30 years of my life, I completely lived from the neck up. I had no connection to my body at all because of my weight and because I was so overweight. I had to disconnect from my body because I hated my body. And if I didn't disconnect from my body, then I would just hate myself all the time. And so when I started getting into personal growth and really kind of looking into what was happening and what I was feeling, and there were people that would tell me like, you got to get in your body. It was like they were speaking Estonian to me. Like I had no idea what that meant. I'm like, what do you I'm in my body. Do you see my body here and me over there? Like I'm in my body. What do you mean? Like, no, but get in your body. I'm like, all right, you guys are crazy. I have no idea what you're talking about. And as I practice that more and more and just sat with sensations in my body, just noticing them, even things like rubbing my fingers together and then stopping and noticing that there's still a little bit of energy in my fingers after I stop rubbing my fingers together. I started realizing what they meant. And so I just started focusing on the sensations in my body and noticing when I would sit and I would just close my eyes. You know, let's call it meditation. But I was just sitting there with my eyes closed and I would notice different sensations in my body. And then immediately, dude, I would notice a narration start in my head. I would go right back up to my head again. And so it was this conscious practice and I would repeat this mantra in my head. Sensation, not narration, sensation, not narration, sensation, not narration. To remind myself, stick with the sensations. Don't create a dialogue and a script over top of the sensations. Just stick with the sensations. And that's been huge to help me get back in my body. And in terms of narration, don't believe everything that you think. Right. That's a good life advice there. Yes, you don't have to believe everything you think. And this is what happens as well is, as we talked about the being on the go, being really busy before and wearing that business as a talisman or as a badge of honor. It's also how much you consume. I listened to this many podcasts, read this many books, did this many things, whatever productive things. But that's also that all of those things are constant influx of information. And even if you do meditate, we sometimes like take the meditation app like I meditated for 300 hours this year. And we wear that as a badge of honor. Everything's gamified. I mean, it's arguably a better version of gamification. It's arguably a better version of gamification. But it's my point is, again, coming around is we should take time to be alone with our thoughts. It's a practice that I have is when I'm driving a car, the radio is off. Very rarely I'm listening to a podcast, maybe when I'm on a long trip. But when I'm driving alone from point A to point B, maybe going training for like 15 minutes, the radio is off. And you cannot imagine how many problems I solve in my head. These solutions just come to me. And if you don't do this, if you don't take this time, then you know what's going to happen is you're going to go to bed and lie awake thinking about these things because you didn't take time during the daytime to figure these things out. And you're going to be unable to fall asleep and you're going to feel miserable. Yeah, it's so true. I have one of my best friends, a guy named Jesse Israel, and he's a meditation teacher. He led meditations on Oprah's World Tour back in 2020. And he's a big meditation guy and his company, his entire meditation movement is called the Big Quiet, right? The Big Quiet, like getting people together and cultivating quiet in our lives, cultivating some silence in our lives. And what you did there is beautiful because think about this when you're driving and you're lost, I know this never happened to you. It doesn't happen as much anymore because we have GPS. But even me, I still miss turns, even though the GPS is telling me I still miss it. But if you think about this, when you're driving and you get lost, you don't speed up the car. You slow down the car, right? You slow down so you can get really aware of what's around you and everything else going on. And then a really funny thing happens, too. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I know I always did this and I never recognized why until later on, at least for me. Is that if I got lost, not only would I slow down, I would also turn the radio down. Like somehow the radio being on makes me worse of a navigator, right? And so I would turn the radio down, but that is turning down the noise, right? So if we slow down the car and turn down the noise in the car, we can more easily see where it is we need to focus our attention. We can see where we need to make a U-turn, where we need to do whatever we need to do. And the same thing applies with our lives. The radio thing actually happens automatically now because I used to do it when I was parking, reversing into a parking space. I used to turn the radio down, but when I have a podcast or a book or anything on. But now the cars do it automatically. You start reversing and the radio goes down. You don't have to turn it down, but there's definitely something there. So wrapping up here, what's your number one piece of advice to people who would need self-help, but they think they're done with self-help? They finished it. They read all the books. They've done everything. There's a difference between information and transformation, right? There's a major difference between information and transformation. And so what I often do with clients who are in that space where they read a book a week and they listen to podcasts constantly. If they're pooping, they're listening to podcasts. There's no moment where they're not listening to podcasts or doing something. I put them on a 30-day information diet. And what the 30-day information diet looks like is they can pick one book for 30 days, right? And the caveat is anytime they're reading that book and they want to highlight something that that really sticks to them, resonates with them or they dog ear a page or whatever, they're allowed to do that. But then they have to stop reading and go take action on the thing they just highlighted. Right. You don't get to just skip from one insight to the next and be like an insight junkie. Oh, my God, I need another. Oh, yeah. One more insight. Oh, yeah. Another practice. Oh, another meditation. It's like stop being a junkie and really slow down. And so for me, there are times, plenty of times where I probably read maybe one book a year. But it's because when I'm reading something, if something really, really resonates with me, I will literally just read that over and over and over again for sometimes weeks at a time where every morning I will read the same three pages of one book. Because that thing resonated with me so deeply. I want to embody that. I want that to be so front of mind that it's not just a fleeting thing where I can go like, oh, that was really cool. And then I forget it two weeks later. I want to really go deep with that insight and make it real for me. So so my my invitation to anyone who thinks they're done with self-help or they're done with personal growth. First of all, I would say, look at the best performers in the world. Michael Jordan was never finished practicing his jump shot. Steve Jobs was never finished practicing innovation. So unless you have some kind of magical powers that make you even smarter and more creative and more innovative and a higher performer than Michael Jordan and Steve Jobs, you may not be as done as you think you are. That's awesome, man. Hey, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for joining me here. Thank you, man. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. I love our conversation. Before we finish. Book here, book recommendation, Prison Break, Prison Prison Break, Jason's book. You got to check this one out. Really recommend, really highly recommended. And can you drop us your socials as well? Yeah, yeah. So you can find me on Instagram. I'm at the Jason Goldberg. Jason Goldberg was taken, so I had to get the most pretentious name possible. The Jason Goldberg. I kind of want to change it now to just a Jason Goldberg. But I think that may mess things up. So so, yeah, you can find me Jason Goldberg. And yeah, Prison Break is my book now. Prison Bake is my baking book that's going to come out next month. So that's a whole different recipe book. Recipe book. That's what you do. You create a book and then you have the recipe book. Yes, exactly. You can do the bacon recipes. That's it. But for people in prison so they can bake when they're in prison. Or like a baconitarian recipes. Yeah, there you go. Prison Bake recipes for baconitarians. Prison bacon. I love it. Prison bacon. That's a good micro-easter. I love it. I love it. Awesome, man. Thanks for joining. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Take care. All right. See you. Bye.