Stop Tolerating Your Life.. Start Designing It

Good morning, dual coast family. Welcome back to another exciting episode of dual coast podcast. I'm your host, Dan Skoka, joined my course on the West coast, Russ Rogers, joined by very special guest this morning, Chad Lefebvre. Chad, thank you so much for being with us. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to be here with both of you. Awesome, man. Thanks for coming. Actually, you should have introduced him as Chad Lefebvre, T M I C C G L O B. Yes. Yeah, T M I C global. That's our, that's my company, our organization. That is awesome, man. Love it. Hey, it's great having you on, man. I know we missed the last time because 5, 5 30 on the West coast is not your hour. Not my hour. No. I don't know. It's someone's hour. It's not my. Yes. I was telling Dan before, you know, before you came on, it's like, man, I felt like I had all day, you know, to get ready for this show because normally I'm up at 445 and, you know, no shower, throw on the cap, brush the teeth, you get the coffee and let's go, you know. But today it's like, man, got to wash my hair, took a walk. You know, that old saying and I know it's, you know, they say in military, you know, we do more before 5am than most people do all day. That's true. That's what we do when we're, we have a show at eight o'clock. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, then you have the whole afternoon to yourself. Oh, I've got it, man. Skokka, I love that you, you know, welcome to dual coast family. I love that. I love that introduction. It's family. So Chad, let's get right into it. The last time that we actually had a conversation and we'll get into a little bit of introduction in a little bit, a little bit more, is I remember you saying that you were reading 11 books at the same time, you know? That changes from, yeah, anywhere from seven, eight, nine. Yeah, there's always books going on. Yeah. Now, I know you're a very intelligent person, very intelligent. Your IQ is up there and at a higher level than most, I can't imagine, is how does one absorb seven to 11 books at one time? I don't know how to answer that question. There's no technique. Yeah, I think for me, the, there's probably some, if I thought about it, there's probably some sort of that pattern that I'm picking up across all of these different books that I feel like I'm almost exploring it, almost like a prism. It's like, these are different doorways or access points to some underlying common pattern or theme that I'm exploring. Like for example, right now, I'm working on this book that I'm trying to get done for the end of the year. And I mean, I'm, I don't know how many I'm reading right now and going through, but the single theme or pattern that I'm exploring in all of this is what is the essence of being human. And so I'm looking through all of these different books and the things I'm researching, the topics or the themes of these books through the lens of what is the impact on human beingness in this context, right? Whether that's human beingness through how the brain works, whether that's human beingness through, you know, our health and our wellness, or whether that's human beingness through. One thing I'm really exploring a lot right now is how our beliefs determine what we perceive as possible in our life. And then that we don't have access to this thing we call reality as this sort of objective thing as though it exists outside of us, it doesn't. It exists only within our own experience and within our own mind. And we have the ability to change, you know, that experience of reality if we're so bold enough to actually address our belief systems. And because our belief systems then lead to what we perceive. And what we perceive, we then take action around or based on or no action, which is still an action, right? We either act or we don't act based on our perception. And yet those perceptions aren't like, we're not all perceiving the same thing. I'm not perceiving the same reality that you are or Dan is. And that the reality I'm perceiving is totally tied to my belief system. So anyway, coming back to the books, I mean, I'm exploring these kinds of things right now. And so I think to your question, you know, Russell, in terms of how does one make sense of and read all these books and, you know, connect to some level of coherence with them, I think it's sort of these underlying patterns that have got me sort of digging into them. And so that would be the only answer I could give from a surface level. It probably has no meaning whatsoever. So. Now, do you hand select the let's let's we'll just go with the simple seven. Do you hand select the simple seven to or are they related? Are they totally different from one another? Are they in agreement with your beliefs? Are they in disagreement? Do you expand upon that? Do you look at how other people think? You know, tell us your tell us your insight as far as like selecting a book and what you want to hopefully gain from it. I think it's very for me anyway, I think it's very much like these books are like breadcrumbs into reality. So I might be reading a book and there might be something in there that makes me go, oh, I'm curious about that. And then like literally what happens is, you know, I'm in the middle of book one, and I'm already buying book two, because book one talked about something that made me curious so now I'm going I'm going to go buy a book on that subject and then the same thing. And so before you know it, I've got seven or eight or nine or whatever books on the go, because again, they're all just to me access points into the prism of this experience that we're having, right? This dispensation or this reality. So how I select is not really sort of there's no strategy to it. It's very spontaneous. And it's in response to what what is showing up in whatever I'm exploring at that moment. And sometimes I'll buy them. I'll be in the middle of reading this book or that book or whatever. And I'll just buy them to make sure I don't forget that I want to go cover that topic at some point, right? So, so I have a yeah, I have an enormous library that I've kind of just built up, but it's very organic. It's very bread crummy, you know, following the interest and the passions. There's no real strategy to it. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. I would imagine, like if I had this elaborate, you know, bookshelf with, you know, library and everything, I'd be looking up and I'd go, man, I can't remember what I read out of that book. Well, I so when I read books, so there's a book on how to read a book, by the way, I think the 1960s, it's very famous. I need to read that. Yeah. Yeah. And and so I wrestle with these things, these books, I don't just read them. I've got highlighters and pens and flags and and all of this kind of stuff. And going on and so, you know, I'm writing in the margins and I'm highlighting, you know, things that I need to, I learned this in university, you know, I never had to read a book more than one time because I was able to remember it. But the reason I was able to do that, I think, is because I was such an avid, you know, note taker and highlighter. There's something about writing out and highlighting that locks it into your memory. Yeah. And now I do this because I'm writing a book right now. So, I want to go back and reference some of this as well so that I can maybe quote a different author on something or whatever. So it just makes it easier. And what I'm doing right now, because I'm about to go on the road for a year in July is and I've got to write this book while I'm on the road. So what I'm doing is preparing to write the book right now. And that means going through all the source material and actually creating documents of quotes and summaries of all of these books, because I can't take them with me on the road. There's too many. There's probably over 100 that I'm referencing. So I want to have that at my disposal so that when I'm traveling and I just have my computer, I can just go and grab, you know, the choice bits that are relevant to what I want to comment on. So anyway, the way I write or read these books is not just passively. It's very much like a wrestling match with the ideas, you know, in there. And sometimes I'll read something in one and then I'll like, oh, that reminds me of the one over here. So I'll go over to that one and I'll make notations that it's like this. So no one's going to want to rebuy, maybe not, maybe I'm wrong about this, but rebuy my books at some point. They're just, they're just messy with my own thoughts. They're one and done. There's no value reselling them. So Well, when, when Chad is traveling, you can, you can find him at Ernest Chadliffev Hemingway. There you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, this week, this summer, I'm going to, so we're going to Europe. We're going to be in France, Spain and Italy. For the summer, I'm doing the, I'm turning 50 this summer. Nice. So in August, so I'm doing the early congrats. Thanks. Oh, are you? Yeah, yeah, we're doing the El Camino, the one from, you know, France into Spain sort of. Yeah. And so we're doing that. And then after Europe, when we, when the fall comes, then we're headed to Asia and we're going to Bali and Thailand and we were there a couple years ago. So, but going to spend a longer time, probably about seven, eight months there. Wow. This year. So that's fantastic. It's been fun. Oh, that sounds like a great trip. Yeah. A friend of ours, Dana Grant, she last summer went to, I think it was last summer fall, she went to Portugal and did that same walk. I forget how many miles, maybe a hundred miles or something, you know, along those lines. Yeah, there's actually several different Caminos. Yeah. Okay. No, this one's a six-week walk. Yeah. Like they have different ones. There's an El Camino in Italy. There's the sort of the, I call it the famous one only. It's the one that everyone knows is the longest one, I guess, but it's the one from France into Spain. And then, yeah, Portugal has another short walk. Okay. The one in Italy, we may do that as well. So we may do the France, Spain and the Italy one. The Italy one's short, but I'm told that if you do the one in Italy, then it ends at the Vatican. And if you're on the walk, you don't need to stand in line to go into the Vatican because they kind of give the pilgrims sort of, they defer to them. So, if you're willing to do the walk, you can get an easy entrance into the Vatican. And how long is that short walk? I believe it was about, it's like two weeks. I think it's two weeks. Okay. So that's, are you averaging about 10 miles a day or more? Well, I haven't done it, so I don't know. But I mean, okay. Yeah. I've got friends who've done it. And I would think, you know, the average person walks about three and a half miles an hour. So, you know, if I'm going to put in, you know, a six hour day, maybe walking five, six hour day that, yeah, hitting about 15 miles, maybe something like that. Yeah. Putting down some tread. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I had planned this. There was this, I don't know if you guys saw this, this Stephen King thriller horror movie that came out last year called The Long Walk. And anyway, yeah. So I went and saw that movie and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do a walk like this. You never, you don't think about walking as being something that could actually be hard on you. But, you know, in this movie, they're get, you know, knee problems. And by the way, it's a horror movie. There's other plot to it, but just the basics of like, you know, like their knees hurting or they're getting a blister in their shoe. And so, you know, we've been kind of researching, you know, what are the ideals, you know, here's a tip I didn't know. Don't get waterproof shoes because, and I wouldn't even have thought of this, but it rains, you know, as you're on these walks and sometimes you could be in all day rains while you're walking. And, and waterproof shoes aren't truly waterproof with enough rain, even they get wet. And then the problem with them is because they're waterproof, they have that sealant, the air can't dry them fast enough. So if you have waterproof shoes, they actually end up staying wet longer once they get wet. And then you have a horror movie based on your wet feet. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Oh my, we're learning a lot here about the, what's the deal, what not to do. Yeah, if anyone's going to do the Alcino Trail, yeah. Yes, exactly. Love it, man. Awesome. Chad, I want to kind of dive into one of your core beliefs a little bit. And that's the idea that most people are living a life by default instead of a life by design. So you deal, you know, you kind of talk about breaking conditioning, beliefs, routines, programming, reconnecting to your natural wild intelligence. Can you dive into that a little bit for us? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. Yeah. So when I talk about people living lives of defaults, I literally mean that most people are living someone else's life. They're living the life according to their conditioning. Well, who's the someone else that they're living? Whose life they're living? They're living the life of their parents, of their friends, of their family, of their community. Because these were all the individuals who created the context in which our conditioning occurred when we were very young. So it was when we were very young that we learned, even if it wasn't directly or overtly taught to us, we picked it up sort of, you know, just like osmosis through the environment. It was, it's where we learned our value systems. It's where we learned what things mean, what's important, what's unimportant, how to react to this situation versus another situation. And it is a reaction because it comes, becomes habituated. So it's not even a response because we're not even aware of it most of the time. So all of this was picked up through our friends, family and community and became the conditioning of our life became the way that we perceive the world, the way that we attach meaning to what happens in the world. And so, so these, these are lives by default that these are the lives that we've inherited or picked up or learned from our conditioning as children. And, and even though we're doing different things as adults, we're applying the same value systems, the same behavioral patterning, the same way that our, our brain interprets and makes sense out of each new situation that emerges. So it's kind of like what I was saying earlier about your belief system drives what you perceive. Our belief systems are part of our conditioning, the conditioning that we've learned. We've been taught by our friends, family and community what to believe about things. And then what happens is, this is just classic confirmation bias, you know, that you hear in psychology that we're going to, our brain, you know, wants to be right. It wants to be accurate because it needs to support the, the, the view, the worldview that, you know, the paradigm that it has bought into. And otherwise, our brain freaks out because there's, there's, there's unknowns, you know, we don't typically like the unknown. It makes us insecure. It's sort of like a security risk to not know what's going to happen next. So we literally invent stories about what's going to happen next. And we, we gather data from the external environment to support those stories. So these stories are our belief systems. And so whatever we believe, we then, our, our, our, our, our physical body, the five senses will perceive evidence for that to therefore reinforce and support our brain's narrative or story. And now the brain can relax and our HRV levels can spike because we feel like we know something, right? We can predict something. We, we, we don't have to. Now, what's interesting about this is I think about animals and, you know, they're, they're not, you know, what distinguishes human beings from animals is our ability to create that, you know, animals, they have a certain intelligence, which is instinctive. It's instinct intelligence. And we have that, but we also have creative intelligence. We have the ability to create worlds. And the entire human world is a world that has been created, right? Everything that you were, the computers were on right now, you know, the chair you're sitting in, the building you're next to, the roads, the computers, the planes, everything has been created. And before it was created, and this sounds self-evident and obvious, but if you think about how profound this is, I mean, you know, the last I checked deer and wolves aren't building buildings and creating things. Their intelligence is instinctive, but they, they, they can't invent something that doesn't exist and then make it so. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci, you know, was drawing, you know, sketches of what he called a flying machine, which resembles a helicopter, you know, and this was like 400 years ago, 500 years ago now. So, you know, these, everything begins as an idea. I always tell people that an idea is the only thing that exists because everything that we experience as physical existence began as an idea. It wouldn't be there if we didn't have the non-physical form idea first. And so coming back to, you know, your question, Dan, that these, all these ideas that we're talking about, which lead to what, you know, the world of effects, the, the, the, the, you know, the outer world, the world we experience as reality is not actually the reality at all. The reality began in the, in the mind of someone as an idea before the, the effect of that idea was manifest and found or experienced. So, so when we talk about lives, conditioned lives or lives of default, we're talking about basically building a life around someone else's ideas. And then we have the effects of that in our own life, like manifest effects. We have the experiences we have, we hang out with the people we hang out with, we are where we are geographically in space and time. And, and so most people are living these lives of default because they, it never occurred to them or they've never been taught or instructed that they are creators and that they could even create a different life. They just kind of engage life as though it happened to them. And that essentially relegates anyone who's living a life by default relegates them to being a victim because life happens to them. They don't feel like they're autonomous or have power to influence it in any real substantial way. Like we think we have micro influence, but we don't understand that the very underlying premise of our life could also be totally recreated and reinvented and you would have a totally different life. Well, that's a life by design. If you will it to be, if you wish to create a life by design, you can be that attentive to it. You can be that intentional with it. You can look at all of the, you know, we have this program called whole life architecture where we literally treat our life as, as a creation because it is. Just most people don't think that they've created their life because they inherited it from their friends family community as a default life. But that was created by somebody, you know, someone in your family lineage, a grandfather, a great grandmother, you know, had an idea and passed it on through generations. And this is why history repeats itself. Because we, we aren't, we aren't, most of us are not connected to the idea that we could push the stop button at any time and create a totally new life for ourselves. Now, there's a ton of uncertainty in that. Why don't we do that, you might ask, because there's uncertainty and the brain freaks out. What do you mean? All the things we know aren't absolute truth. You mean we could drop these things and then we have nothing and then, because creativity can only happen in nothingness. It comes from nothingness. There's a blank canvas, there's a blank page, you know, there's, there's, it says in the, you know, for those who are religious or spiritual, if you take, for example, in Genesis and the Bible, you know, it said that in the beginning, God hovered over the void. What is the void, the darkness, it's nothingness, it's, it's the absence of a thing and then spoke the words, let there be light. And then that's an act of creation. And so anyway, we have this ability. It even says in Genesis, we are made in the likeness of God. Well, what is that? That is as creator, right? So we are in creators. So human, that distinguishes human beings from other animals. We have instinctive intelligence, we have creative intelligence, and most of us have never really, you know, contemplated the idea that our life could be totally different if we so choose, if we chose to architect it by design. And in our program, whole life architecture, we go through the four architectures that constitute being human. Those are the cognitive architectures, which is the life or the nature of our mind. How do we think? What, like, not how do we think objectively, like as a scientist might look at it, but how does Chad think? What, what is my thinking pattern? What are the underlying premise that I premises that I'm working with? What are the underlying beliefs? How do I arrive at a conclusion? Like, like, this is, this is another way of saying, this is the realm of metacognition, thinking about thinking. So we actually look at how, you know, those that are in our workshop, they actually get the opportunity to go through and analyze their own thinking. And then we look at the emotional architecture, you know, what is our relationship to our emotions, to our feelings? Do we repress them and suppress them? Do we, do we glean the wisdom they're actually trying to provide us if we were so bold enough to actually fully feel them and to, to be with them and to not just try to move through them quickly? You know, we live in a society, particularly in the Western world, that doesn't really have a lot of time for your emotions. You know, you think about sort of the popular cliches and memes, you know, you know, you know, people are like, you know, we don't care about your feelings, you know, screw your feelings, you know, let's just, you know, but, but our feelings are actually trying to guide us towards greater alignment. And we don't know that because we've been taught, we've been taught, we've been conditioned by default to repress, ignore, and they're just that they're not relevant. There's something to be managed or dealt with, but they're not actually something that is, is providing us, you know, they're not a guidance system or a source of wisdom for us. And then we look at the sensual architecture, which is everything that is the, the five senses, everything that your, your body engages with. So when we look at sensual architecture, we're looking at where you live, where you work, what is the environment in which you live, what are you eating for food, what's the relationship you have to your body from a health perspective, you know, we think about exercise and all of this, like we, you could, you could be the creator of your, your, the life of your five senses and your physical existence. And then finally, the spiritual architecture, which also includes having no, no belief system or no spiritual beliefs. And that's also a spiritual belief system, by the way, even if you don't have one, it's still the absence of one, right? So that's still part of your architecture. So they get to go through all of that. And, and in so doing, there is this awakening that happens that I, I can actually create a life by design. I don't have to just merely tolerate my life by default. So I think that is kind of what you were getting at, Dan, but if there's more, I mean, happy to dig in. That was powerful. I think listening to Chad's response to your question gives us the idea of how he wrestles with the book. Right? I got that right there. Yeah, I do, I do a full, a suplex on that book. No problem. For the wrestling fans out there, I grew up as a wrestling fan. So I got that. Oh, who was your favorite wrestler? Did you have a favorite? Oh man, Macho Man Randy Savage was my favorite. Oh, Macho Man. There you go. Yeah, I love that guy. Yeah. It's surprising. You think I'd say like Hulk Hogan or something like that, but I was always in Macho Man's corner. There's something about him. Oh, that's incredible, man. What do you think, what do you think about the person? I'm wrestling, using that word wrestling with my question here, but to try to make it make it sensible for people to understand what's going on here is that what do you think by not creating the design of life? What are people missing out when they choose the defaults or they not necessarily choose it, but just that's what they go to, right? What are people missing out when they're not creating? Well, the way I would answer that is that if you look at most people's lives, it's they're sort of, they're sort of moving between two spaces. One space is sort of managing the life that they have and the other is complaining about the life they don't have. Right? So I find that people are in one of two mindsets, you know, just kind of getting, and it doesn't mean that everyone's life is awful. Like there may be elements of your life that are just accidentally in alignment. You might be like, and how you know is because you're feel, this is where the wisdom of our emotions come in. We're experiencing these feelings of joy and contentment and peace and happiness in those parts of our life. So it's not that your whole life, in our work, we invite people to take a look at what are the elements or the aspects of your life that are out of alignment, alignment with what? With your true self. Well, in order to answer that question, you have to know who your true self is. So we actually do some deconstruction work for four months to help people get into, connect to their true essence, their true self. So what they're missing, Russell, is a really knowing themself. You know, as Socrates said, there's no greater, you know, no, thyself, there's no greater maxim than knowing yourself. So what they're missing when they're living a life of default is truly knowing themself. And when they have moments of peace and joy and contentment and happiness, that occurs to them as just sort of circumstantial or accidental. It's not like they could create a life where that is reliably the state they are in 24 seven, you could create a life where you are reliably in the state of happiness, joy, peace, contentment and thriving, you could create a life like that. It doesn't occur to most people when they're living by default that that's possible. There are there are there are things that happen in their life where they experience those emotions. And then there's the other parts of their life where they're in chronic complaint, and they're dissatisfied, and they don't have satisfaction. So living a life by default is essentially tolerating the the the experience of having a life that is sometimes aligning with your true self, but you don't know who or what that is. And sometimes not in which case you're in wishful thinking, you're in complaint, you're in, you know, some other space. Yeah. So that's what they're missing out. Yeah, well, man. So I tell people all the time that complaint is one of the most powerful transformational tools. If you're bold enough to look into it. Like, you know, at first of all, you have to be aware. Most people aren't even aware of how much they complain throughout the course of the day. Like it could be a flash in your mind of oh, that stupid person or I wish that or whatever, right? Like these. Yeah, we have 30,000 thoughts a day. Okay, psychologists tell us, I can't remember 29,950 of them, right? I have no idea, because it's all background chatter, you know, but but and in that chatter is is just a ton of complaint for most people and dissatisfaction. Complaint is just the verbal articulation of an of dissatisfaction from not alignment with your true self. That's all it is. And what we do is we tend to sort of complain and move on as opposed to treating that thing that just happened that complaint as gold. Like, okay, why am I dissatisfied with this this moment, this thing that just happened, right? And getting curious about that. We tell people in whole life architecture that that this work requires that you be your own self anthropologist, you know, really getting to the underpinnings of why you are the way that you are and and who that is and to create a life that aligns with that. But you've got to be curious enough, like an anthropologist is to really get into all of it. You know, we go back in history, and we'll, you know, we'll look at, you know, the Pompeii disaster, you know, with the the volcano and all that, you know, how Pompeii was wiped out. And we'll ask questions. T, I wonder why they lived this way. I wonder why they, you know, what they thought about, I wonder what their belief systems are. So we have no problem doing that with other people, even people who've been dead for hundreds of years, but we never do it with ourselves. Wow. That's powerful. So people just throw it out there, people don't really question enough things is kind of what you're saying. Also, they, they kind of just go with this belief system, they run with it, and they stay with it, they don't question enough things in society. So they're all people who could be successful, but completely misaligned internally at all times. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, just in general, like, I just think, he's waking me up a little bit like to certain things. You've got to just like run with things during the day. You don't really question a lot of things. It's just, it's interesting for me. Well, 98% of what you did yesterday, you're going to do tomorrow. Yeah. You're going to do the day after that. History repeats itself. And this is why it repeats itself. Because, yeah, Dan, to your point, we aren't curious enough about ourselves. We're curious about other people and we're curious about things outside of us because we're, because our orientation is external versus internal. So this work is work that requires you to go within and to get curious about your inner world. You know, I mean, it's fascinating to me. And when people do this work, you know, it's not, it's not easy because the first, so our work is technically a one-year program, but actually it never ends. And we tell people that you should never be outside of the whole life architecture program. And the reason is because where else do you get to go? Every single week for two hours to work on yourself. Now, this isn't bizarre logic. We say to CEO, companies all the time that it's important to have the perspective of being to work on the business. And you can't do that when you're in the business. Because when you're in the business, you're being overwhelmed by all of the things going on that you're dealing with. It's kind of like when you're in your life, you're overwhelmed by just managing life, which is where most people find themselves. And most people are never outside of in their life. Most people are always in their life dealing with in their life stuff. So what whole life architecture does is it provides people with an opportunity to work on their life, which begins with working on yourself. Who are you? You know, Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, you know, the caterpillar ass Alice, who are you? I mean, this is the quintessential question of the human experience. Nietzsche said there is no greater joy than the privilege of knowing yourself. Right? I mean, this on and on and on. I'm not inventing this stuff. This has been the quest of humanity. And so you can only get to the answer of that question for yourself, which by the way, it's not like digging up something and discovering it, right? Nobody's going to discover themselves like under a rock or something like that, right? Knowing yourself is knowing that you are a creator and you can create yourself. That's actually what's going on here. And you lose your emotions to know whether or not something is in alignment. It's pre-linguistic. These are not ideas that we can write in a book. These are feelings. You know, so most people, yeah, they're just, you know, they don't take the time to work on themselves because they're in it. So one of the distinctions we talk a lot about in our work, and our program is ontological. So it's all around being and getting to the source of essence of beingness, right? And one of the distinctions that we talk a lot about is how to be in the world and not of it, right? So the of the world dynamics are dynamics where we are sucking up, vacuuming up the world's value systems, expectations. We're adhering to the existing systems and structures that already exist without even contemplating the possibility that there could be different systems and structures. And if you under, so everything that we experience is system driven, you know, Paramahansa Yogananda said that environment is more powerful than willpower, right? And so we're all in an environment and that that environment is more powerful than our willpower. So you're not going to be able to will yourself out of the conditions of your life. You have to recreate those conditions, recreate those systems, recreate those structures to align with yourself. And it may not look like anything that anyone else is doing, or, you know, at least not in totality, because it should be uniquely your own life. So to be in the world and not of the world means that I am participating in the world. I'm not often some monastery or on a mountain you know, hiding away from the world. I'm participating, I'm engaging, but I'm not of it. I'm not of the the value systems. I'm not of the dynamics. I'm not of the conditioning. I'm not of the way of being that conforms to reinforce the systems and structures that don't work for me. Once I know who I am, once I know myself, I can create my own life by design. And I can participate in the world, but I can also be just a little adjacent or to the side of the world without having to be, you know, totally trapped in it. You know what, you know, people, as you described, are so into living their world. How do they, how do they pump the brakes a bit to slow down to really help themselves to discover themselves? You know, what are some things that you could share with people like, because we're, you know, we're just, we just go about our day. We get up, we, you know, we eat breakfast, we get on a log or we go directly to work. We're on a call because we got to commute one, two hours or you know, whatever, you know, we're just busy with life. But how do we, how do people pump the brakes to slow down so that they can learn about who they are? Yeah. So we're human doings and not human beings. You know, we've been conditioned over the last, especially 80 years, I would say, since the Second World War. And I had this whole sort of theory about the transformation that we've gone through as human beings into human doings. But I'll first answer your question. So doing nothing is the hardest thing for a human being to do. Right? Doing nothing is not meditating. That's meditating. It's not going for a walk. That's walking. It's not watching TV. That's watching TV. Doing nothing is literally nothing. Right? Like we don't, like, this seems like a profound, when I introduced this on our whole life architecture workshops, the inquisitive, curious, confused look on people's faces. It's like, you think I'm speaking Yiddish or something like that. Right? I mean, I say doing nothing. So is that watching TV? No, that's watching TV. Right? So then the question is, well, what does it mean to do nothing? Right? Well, it's the absence of meaning. So you can't even answer that question. It's doing nothing. Right? And so, and so why am I bringing this up? Because this is actually an access point. Whether you can do it for 10 minutes a day, 15, a half an hour, to inject nothingness into your day, which, you know, is just being. You might be sitting in a park, just being. Right? Not looking at your phone, not attending, just being in the moment. Now, what that does for you, Russell, is it creates space in your emotions. It creates space in your thinking. It creates space in your body so that you can begin to hear that inner voice that's been there all along, trying to guide you towards greater and greater alignment with your true nature, your naturalness. Yes. But because we're in this human doing state where we're perpetually moving from this thing to the next thing to the next thing, there's no space. So all of my work and everything we teach in whole life architecture actually comes down to two things, your relationship to space and time. All of your problems eventually come down to that, your relationship to space and time. And we play this game where I'll have people say, give me something that you think is a problem that you have. And I'll show you how it relates to some distorted relationship you have for yourself with space and time. And we don't spend a lot of time in our conversations talking about this, because it's so philosophical. It almost feels impractical to people. And I always tell people that a lot of our work is on the surface, can occur to them as philosophical, but that there's nothing more practical than applied philosophy. Because when you really understand, like these philosophies are not meant to just be a bunch of ideas. It's meant to be actualized. It's meant to be put into practice. It's meant to be put into your doing. But in order to have that happen, you have to be able to connect to it at a being level first. And that's where the doing nothing comes in. Because if you give yourself space, you're going to notice new thinking, new thoughts, new insights, percolating that you've never thought of or experienced in your being before. Because you've been too busy doing. You were too busy just managing things. So that would be one immediate, easy, free, accessible tactic that you could deploy in your life, which is just to carve out 15 minutes, 30 minutes a day. You don't have to be in a park. If the weather's not good, you can do it in your own house. You can just be in a chair and just be and not be reading or writing or scrolling. We scroll 78 miles a year on our phone. It's crazy. If you look at every little thumbtick, 78 miles. So not doing any of that. You're in nothing. And you'll see how hard it is. I give this as a one of, we have 52 different practices over the course of the year that people are given to go out into the world as an anthropologist and to actually try these practices on to give them a different aspect or a different access point to their life. And the doing nothing one is one of the hardest. Everyone always comes back and they're like, I couldn't even do it for like two minutes. Before I knew it, my brain started chattering about all the things I needed to do and the planning and all of that kind of stuff. You start to feel agitated and you start to feel like I want to get up. I want to do something. There's this saying we have in our culture. Don't just sit there, do something. But it's actually the reverse. Don't just do something. Sit there. Sure. It's very hard. Well, it's just like anything. For somebody that's not used to walking, right? And they feel like, oh, I need to go out and walk 45 minutes. No, you don't need to walk 45 minutes. Just go walk up, go walk 10 minutes, right? So it's practicing, right, that level. So if we're not practicing for two minutes, because we feel like we have this anxiety of wanting to move, like, or go do something, like if you practice, then you build up to two minutes and exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, if we didn't live in a society that rewarded us to always be in frenetic action, like so one of the things we talk about is distinguishing activity from action. The Taoist principle known as Wu Wei, which stands for no forced action. Okay. And so we talk a lot about this in whole life architecture, that you do not act until it feels like it's totally in flow and organic. There's no forced action. Now, we as a society, because of the don't just sit there, do something sort of maximum that sort of drives us, you know, we have all kinds of social shaming and things like, you know, you're lazy or whatever, right? If you're not always busy, you know, it's being busy is a badge of honor in our culture. You know, how you doing today, Tom? Oh, man, I'm so busy. I got so much, you know, it's like the bragging starts, right? You know, you just asked how. And so, yeah, it's sort of this badge of honor. And that's a problem, actually, because we don't get to connect deeply and profoundly to ourselves because we're so busy doing things all the time. So, yeah, it is a practice. You can start with two minutes and move to four minutes and move to, and I promise you that things will start to open. I've been doing this work for 20 years and I've been teaching whole life architecture now for eight. And there's, you know, I always tell people that time is 50% of the magic of what happens in this program, right? Just being with it over time. That time is a variable that acts on human beings in profound ways when we don't realize it. And, you know, I've seen all kinds of things, you know, after, I don't know, four months, six months, sometimes two years people have been, you know, with us in this program and they're like, oh my gosh, I finally get what you're saying and they have this, you know, but it took two years to get to that. And so, that's why I'm, you know, I'm speaking out against this whole notion that we've created over the last 40 years in the self-help, personal development, personal growth world, that there's, you know, only a few steps required for all of your life's dreams to come true. Follow these three steps, seven steps, you know, these step programs, you know, oh, come to this week retreat, your life will never be the same. No, you're going to get some insights. I mean, insights are important, right? Inspiration and motivation is what the personal development delivers. It does not deliver transformation. Never has, never will because transformation requires that we reorient ourselves to our, in terms of our relationship to time. And that's something that the current personal development industry has no time for. You know, they actually want, they have no time for time. I mean, they actually want everything done yesterday. The promise is by coming to this workshop or retreat, your whole life is going to be different. It's not the case. You'll leave with a bag of books and some business cards or maybe now they don't do that anymore. But, you know, and, and you're going to go home and the, and the self-help books you just were given become shelf help because you don't read them. And you go right back to your conditioning. And, and, and, and you wonder why, you know, six months later, you're like, gee, I better go take another one of those courses, you know, buy another book, take another course, take another workshop. It's a great recursive business model. But it doesn't actually address the fact that human beings are reliably spending $100 billion a year on, on content that they hope will transform their experience of their life. And in less than 2% of it doesn't do that because most people are so conditioned, so habituated. So you need time. And, and so, you know, that's why our program we say is never ending where in the course of your week, other than these two hours, are you working on your life as the creator of your life versus being in the doing of your life. Most people just don't set time aside for that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's it. Chad, I want to ask you one question. So good. So good. Chad, actually on Instagram right now, is self-realization a feeling and how do you measure self-realization? That was a question. Well, the question from Wex. Right on. I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about measuring it. We get obsessed with trying to measure it because well, when you, what does measuring mean? Now, measuring means that there's whatever you're looking at, then there's the, then there's that which it is not. So, you know, to measure something is to, to say what it is and as much as to say what it is. I wouldn't worry about measuring it, but yeah, self-realization is absolutely that feeling. It's that feeling you get when you feel whole, complete, peaceful, contented, happy, joyful, when you're in that zone, when you're in that space, right? These are just words we use for this emotional state. So that's the feeling of self-realization. When you, when you connect yourself deeply and profoundly, you're in a state of total peace, contentment, and joy. When you are engaged in, in life or in activities that are, are unaligned with the true self and you will feel the opposite of joy, peace, contentment, and all of this, which is not something to disparage and push aside because it's trying to guide you. It's something to pay attention to, but self-realization is absolutely, it's a state that you get into and you know that you're in it when you are experiencing this, this total peace and contentment over your body. And, and some of us have it just for fleeting moments, right? We, we, I actually think if you want to talk about self-realization as like a constant state that we can be in, I really don't know many people who, who have ever really got to that place in their life, and it probably takes the majority of your life to get there. You know, to me, this is what I think salvation is. I think it's, it's working, you know, we hear about salvation and working out your own salvation. I think it's, it's, it's self-realization is Socrates' maximum of knowing thyself, right? And, and that can take the better part of a life. It's a journey. It's, I wouldn't even think of it as so much of an end state as sort of an, of an ongoing always becoming. You know, like I say to people all the time, we aren't actually human beings, we're human becomeings because to, to, to talk about us as human beings, you know, has us believe that there's some state that we can attain. But actually, you know, I'm always a becoming. I'm always getting, you know, if, if we believe that the human soul is infinite, then how do we ever believe we can realize an infinite soul in a finite existence like this particular dispensation? It's going to be very difficult. So it's more of, it's more of a journey, you know, it's like a pilgrimage. Consider your life like a pilgrimage where you're like a flower always expanding, opening more and more and more to the realization of yourself. And you know when you're in it, because you feel peace and contentment and joy, and those are the moments to pay attention to, and you can get more and more of those as you go about your life to the point where may, maybe much of your life is in that state. But because we're always growing, we're always being presented and encountering new experiences that have us have to reorient our relationship to now this new experience. And it might be, it might not be an experience of joy and peace initially until we figure out how to orient ourselves to it, or not to walk away from it all together, perhaps. Right. So we're always encountering new people, new experiences, new situations. We're always encountering our self anew. So self realization isn't really a state, it's more of a journey of becoming. And you know when you're locking into it because you're experiencing that peace and joy and contentment, and you know when you're not locking into it because you're not experiencing that. That's where our emotions are so powerful. And yet we have a society that's spent so much time and effort to try to get us to just put your emotions to the side, you know. Dan, have we ever had a three hour podcast? Because I feel like we need to. I feel like we're just touching. That would be incredible. Like, you know, the time has just flown and Chad, your thoughts, your depth is just beautiful. And the way that you explain things, like it makes sense. And I really hope that a lot of people listen to this message, to this podcast, because you know, you're thinking, I love your thinking and the way it just, you know, it makes sense. It makes sense to people. It should make sense, right? It should, yeah. Well, I think we're in a time where it's so important though, Russell, because so I'd be delighted to do that three hour, you know, podcast with you guys if you want to. And the reason is this though. We are in, you know, it's almost not worth saying because we all get it. We're in these massively transformative times right now, right? I mean, a lot of the systems and structures that have defined our existence are crumbling. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. We don't actually talk, in our work of whole life architecture, we don't sit inside of the worlds of good and bad. That's just not where we're at, right? I mean, if when there's a forest fire and there's destruction of the forest, a new forest springs forth, we are going through destruction as part of the creative process. And so we are going through a destructive phase of what will be created next. But because our brain requires certainty and predictability, that's going to cause a lot of people to have an experience of panic and disassociation and suppression, you know, not deal with it, you know. And so I can't think of a more important conversation to have right now than to give people access point to the power of their own creativity, which will provide them hope that they're going to be able to navigate this. But here's the challenge. I believe we're on the verge of a mental health crisis, the likes of which we're unprepared for as a society precisely because we aren't having these kinds of conversations. You know, we call TMIC stands for the most important conversations and our work is to facilitate the most important conversations humanity needs to be having right now. And the mental health crisis is caused when a human doing has lost their identity for what they do and has never inquired who they are as a being. That's the moment we're in right now because so many people in our culture have been brought up to just be human doings in terms of identifying themselves with their job, their career, you know, and other things in their life, the doing of life. But they've never asked who they are as a being. And as we bring in artificial intelligence now, and it starts to, you know, displace workers and particularly, you know, the white collar workers, there's going to be a lot of people under immediate duress who are like, well, my whole identity is in what I do. And you've just told me you don't need me to do anything anymore because artificial intelligence is going to do it. And I can't just go get a job up the street. So there, that's the mental breakdown right there. Yeah, exactly. You know, so it's an important time to talk about these things. Yeah, well, we're going to entertain that idea of a long term podcast, you know, because I think that would be, I think it would be really, oh, yeah, I think people would latch onto that and want to hear, you know, deeper conversation with you, Chad. I feel like this, I feel like this question is going to be too light as we wrap things up here. But I'm going to, I'm going to ask it anyway, because we always end our conversation with this, but I know I'm going to get a deep response. Maybe not. Maybe not. Wellness is not about perfection, but it's about progress. And I would love to hear your thoughts. We ask everybody, every guest that's on here, what does that mean to you? Wellness is not perfection, it's progress. Sure. Well, that kind of goes to what I was saying a few minutes ago, that we are not human beings, we're human becomeings. And so first of all, I don't believe perfection exists. I believe it's a construct of the human mind, because we want certainty. So the mind wants certainty. So it wants to idealize a perfect state. And we do that for ourselves as it pertains to our wellness. We have these sort of fantasies or these idealized, perfect states. But perfection is, is actually, perfection is the brain's way of making sure we don't take any new action. It's kind of strange. Why? It's an unattainable thing. It doesn't exist. And so therefore, what ends up happening is we end up in these start and stop kind of situations. We teach in whole life architecture about this mechanism of the brain called the near wind. The near wind is where our brain neurochemically rewards us for almost winning behavior. We get flooded with dopamine. So we're taking a new action. And suddenly the brain is like, uh-oh, this could lead to a total new type of behavior and new is risky because it's unknown and unpredictable. There was a study done of heart attack patients years ago. And these were people who had had a heart attack and they were told by their doctor that if you don't make substantive lifestyle change to your diet, exercise, and sleep, that you will either within five years suffer another heart attack or you'll die. Those are, you know, statistically the probability is against you that one of those two things would happen. And in this study, they found that less than 10% of these heart attack patients made any change whatsoever to their diet, sleep, and exercise. When I read that study, I thought, well, this settles it for me. If you won't make change or can't make change to basic things like diet, sleep, and exercise, that's very available to everybody. It's not like you have to come over the million dollars to go for a walk. If we can't even do that, then forget about all the other things that we want to change in our life. Make more money, the better relationship, and you know, whatever. All the things people are paying money, if you won't even do that, now why is it so hard for human beings to take a new action and to change? Why is it so hard for these heart attack patients to not eat the cheeseburger and instead go for the salad? And the reason is because the cheeseburger's predictable. And the brain is, concludes subconsciously, this I know, this we know the outcome, the salad, who knows what could happen, right? And so what happens is our brain becomes flooded with dopamine to continue to take the same action. So this is just one health example. So this idea of perfection creates a situation, our brain idealizes and fantasizes a perfect state. But now we, lowly imperfect beings, are looking at perfection. And we may take one or two or three steps towards it. But then our brain floods us with dopamine to not take more steps because you know what? It's too hard. It's too difficult. You're never going to attain it. So just give up. And this is what happens. This is why so many people struggle on their wellness journey, because they don't see it as a journey. They see it as an end state that is perfect, that is attainable, but they are imperfect. And therefore they'll never attain it. So why try? And their brain neurochemically rewards them to do nothing. And so they just stay stuck in the state that they're in. Right? They may get like two steps forward and five back. And that's why that happens. I knew I wouldn't get a surface level. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. This has been an unbelievable conversation, Jeff. And we are, Dan and I are going to talk and we're going to figure out what we're going to do for that podcast. And whatever, we may not even call it a podcast. We'll just, you know, mindset or whatever. Right? Sure. You know, the TMI, see, you know, conversation, right? The most important conversation we can have. Sure. Beautiful. Beautifully said today. Appreciate your time. Appreciate your depth. Appreciate your knowledge. Keep reading those seven to 11 books that you're doing because, you know, seriously, you're a wealth of knowledge. And I love the way that you explain life. Life, because that's what it is. And what do we want to create, you know, for ourselves, no matter what age. We have a friend, and we talked about this recently, is like, we have a friend who is recreating herself at age 83. 83. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's phenomenal to watch all of her thinking going into this. Like, she wants more. She's hungry for more at 83. Like, that's the way, you know, that's the way we should be. Absolutely. I totally agree. Yeah, this idea of retirement is ridiculous. It is. Yeah. You know, it's also a construct. It's not reality. It's you don't, you're not, you're not washed up and useless just because you turn 65. I don't understand this notion that we have. But yeah, it fits into something I won't get into now that maybe we can get into on another call about the history of work over the last 80 years. Work is an environment. We've been in the environment of how we relate to work and career and how we base and orient our life around it. And there's a lot to discuss in that that creates the mindset of retirement being somehow rational. It's not rational at all. Wow. That's good stuff. That's good stuff. Well, Chad, thank you so much. I got to bring this orange bottle into view because look at this beauty. Where'd you get that? That is. I love that. It's at our store on Prenify and Dan's going to put that in there. But yeah, drink some, drink some good water today from our Prenify bottle of dual coast water. Chad, where can people follow you in your organization? TMICglobal.com is where they can find out more about what we're up to. And that's just the, when you go there, you'll, that's really just the beginning of what we're up to because we're, because we've got some large projects that we'll be sharing on our site in the fall. We're building recreation centers around the world where people can go and recreate them. That's a long term vision. That's not up there right now. But for them to engage in our work, full life architecture, what we're up to, you can just go to TMICglobal. That's so cool. And by the way, a friend who retired last year, he said he doesn't call it retirement. He calls it refinement. There you go. Yeah. You know, yeah. It's like I'm refining myself at age 65. Yeah. And just doing other things, right? So yeah, that's awesome. Chad, thank you so much. So much for joining us today. This was really great. Please check out TMICglobal.com everybody. Check us out dual coast podcast. We're on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Spotify. Check us out all social media handles, dual coast podcast. Please check out the dual coast podcast store at our printify account. It is also on our website. There's a link for it. You can see where Russ got that beautiful water bottle. Bring that back into view real quick. We'll see everybody next week. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Thank you so much. Thanks guys. Thanks, Chad. Thank you. Thank you.